Sunday Scribbles: Another Look at Numbers

So I said I would be up front and honest about numbers. When I first reported in December, I said that I was doing well. Now, I am doing even better.

My numbers in December were:
A Little Harmless Submission: 3602
Infatuation: 1659

Now in about the same amount of time, I did another one-two punch.

A Little Harmless Fascination: 3856
Possession: 2168

There has been a dip in sales at Kindle, not sure why, but WOW I made about $7500 on B and N in one month. Also, my showing on ARE has been low because they refused to announce my books at new or feature them. It irritated me, but it is THEIR site. And, I understand with one of them and might have to repackage the cover because of it. Still thinking that one over.

Now, a couple of things to consider. The HUGE swing of sales at Kindle came after an ad in RT. I have one coming out in July for my military harmless books so we will see if that changes anything. I am a pretty steady release schedule set up, no more breaks. Also, remember on B and N, A Little Harmless Submission and Callum weren't on there most of May, so they are now adding to the daily total. All of the Harmless books (as of the writing of this blog) are under 10K are the moment on Amazon and B and N. A Little Harmless Sex has already sold over 50K in digital copies as of my last statement so to have it hitting at 6K in rankings on Amazon is cool by me. My paychecks from those books, along with the rest of my books at that publisher, usually range between 5-7K monthly.

My feelings on KDP are kind of mixed. I think I am going to go for sales, dropping the price of the previous book, rather than go for KDP. I have a HUGE audience at B and N and I value them. Pulling my books from there is not a good thing, and the sales just did not outweigh the irritation of my readers. For people who have a large audience mainly at Amazon or possibly new authors trying to gain some foothold, I think it is a good thing. For me, not so much and I am going to shy away from it for awhile.

I will report in after I release Surrender, the third of the back to back to back Harmless releases. This is the first time I have had this many releases in this short of time for my self publishing, so we shall see.

I have other plans, including two new series starting this year: Savannah Heat and By Blood. The Cursed Clan proves that I have to roll those books out slowly. The sales are good, but nothing compared to my Harmless books, but I always have to remind myself, I did not have this happen over night. ALH Sex first released in 2004 as a novella, and it has been a long road.

Other things down the road is a bunch of rereleases. I am going to be rolling a lot of those out in 2013 to help me over the FINAL MOVE. That will happen in the fall of 2013 and there will be a lot of work to get ready for it. So, I am going to be filtering newly packaged covers along with new editing, and probably some bundles. This will keep me from going crazy trying to write a bunch of new stuff, edit and release, all while dealing with the massive mountain of red tape involved in hubby retiring from the Air Force.

I am still not a HUGE seller like people like Marie Force  and I definitely pull in the dollars that Mandy Roth and Michelle Pillow do, but I think I am proof that you can more into self-publishing and sustain an already hearty audience and grow. I think by the end of 2012, I will have a nice bit of self-pub released and I will be outdoing all my epublisher royalty checks.

I am also given more freedom to plan. At this point, if I had stayed with my publisher, I MIGHT have had ALH Submission released, that's it. And, I am taking advantage of my ability to write fast and start rolling out more books. I have to be careful not to overdo myself because of the blood pressure issue, but I am enjoying this and can't wait to see what will happen with Surrender.