A Brief Sales Update

Since it's been a while, I figured I'd give a quick sales update for those who find an interest in knowing how those without a large fan base do in self-publishing and being published by small presses. I've been tweaking my sales tracking spreadsheets, so can give a bit of a run-down based on total sales:

Heroes Die Young has been in circulation since September 2008 (over three years), and is available in both print and e-book formats. The publisher does some promotion at sci-fi conventions (as do I). Counting both personal sales and publisher sales (except for the publisher's 4Q 2008 sales, which I can't find my statement on), a total of 231 copies have been sold (on top of that, I've given away 198 copies). That breaks down to around 73 copies sold per year.

Friends in Deed has been in circulation since January 2010 (almost two years), and is available in both print and e-book formats. Same publisher as HDY. Counting both personal sales and publisher sales, a total of 65 copies have been sold (41 additional copies given away). So, sales have been slow in comparison, with only around 33 copies per year. I could make guesses as to why it hasn't sold as well as the first, but I'll just stick to the facts for now.

Seeker was my first foray into self-publishing, and is a novella just slightly smaller than Heroes Die Young. It's priced at 99 cents compared to the (currently) $2.99 price point of my first book. Coming out in December 2010, it's been available roughly 11 months and is only available in e-book format. Right now, I've seen sales of around 42 copies, so a little more than the annual sales on FID (although that book is currently running $4.99-$5.99 in its e-book format), but lagging behind HDY.

Dead or Alive was published by a new house, and is a short story collection. It's mostly available in print, with an e-book currently available only on the Smashwords site (and an app for Apple devices, although for the purposes of this post, I'll only be discussing print sales). At the moment, I've seen 19 true sales (and an additional 20 giveaways) between my publisher and myself since the print version was available back in February of this year (so nearly 9 months).

The Cure is my first foray into self-publishing a full-length novel. It's available in both e-book and print formats, and has been since July (the print has only been available since September). To this date, I've seen a total of 2 print sales (3 additional giveaways) and 11 e-book sales (not counting the lag that I've noticed from several vendors under the Smashwords distribution umbrella). Not anything stellar, but it seems roughly on par (13 for the quarter equates to 52 copies for a projected year) with my other titles.

For a few future projects, I'm considering the idea of packaging a trio of short stories into a single e-book and placing them for sale as e-books. If that comes about, I'll be sure to add those into the mix.

Perhaps some conjecture into the how and why will come for another post, but for now, hopefully these facts and figures will be useful to you. And of course, for those who have questions about anything I've posted here, feel free to leave a comment.