I’ve decided to follow Alex Adena’s lead and do a weekly summary of my sales figures, warts and all. I hope it will be interesting for other indie authors to see how their fellows are getting on. In rather a lot of the authoring-related forums and groups, there are plenty of whoops of joy on a good day, but a lack of transparency on the not so good! Of course, no one’s obliged to divulge what their sales actually are, but it may help create a more realistic view of actual numbers of books that can be moved in various genres. A lot of people come in to publishing with way over the top expectations. Generally results are fairly steady and mundane.

So, to get going I’ll do this report every Monday morning, at more or less the same time (farm chores etc etc permitting!).

To get the ball rolling, here are my sales to date i.e. 17.10.11:

 

Amazon Kindle

Oh Auntie! (99 cents)     9 (US 3, UK 6)

Beat the Hackers (99 cents)         4 (US 1, UK3)

 

Smashwords

Oh Gran! (free)                                                757

The Witch’s Dog (free)                  336

Escape the Volcano (free)            235

Oh Auntie! (99 cents)     24 samples downloaded, no sales

Beat the Hackers (99 cents)         7 samples downloaded, no sales

Oh Grandad! (99 cents)                 9 samples downloaded, no sales

 

It’s fairly clear – and disappointing – to see that people like free books and find even 99 cents a bit of an imposition! Now, so far I’ve only epublished children’s books, which I haven’t put illustrations in. (The original printed versions had them, but I only have the rights to the text, not to the illustrations so can’t reuse them in my ebooks.) Children’s books for younger readers without pictures aren’t the most attractive, it has to be said. So really, results have been better than expected. And as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, listing my books on www.getfreeebooks.com has given them a significant boost, as has their appearing in Barnes and  Noble’s Nook bookshop.

Let’s see what this week brings.