First Month Complete - September Sales Results
So, I’m going to publicly share my September Sales Results. I’m a little nervous about doing this to be honest, but I haven’t talked myself out of it yet. Though I won’t promise to continue doing this.
You see, as a “Self Published Author” it’s really hard to know how you’re doing. And to be fair, it’s very hard to compare apples to apples when looking at the performance of these books. There’s so many factors that go into success besides just the words on the page. I’m no Shakespeare, and I basically had zero Social Media presence as a writer prior to hitting the publish button on KDP. And not everyone travels the road of a self published author for the financial results, it’s just one barometer by which you can measure a book’s performance.
From talking to other authors over at r/selfpublish, I did fairly to very well for my debut novel’s first month. More importantly, I’m very pleased with the results. They’re enough to make me feel like I’m on the right path and that there’s an audience out there for me.
So, the results…(all dollar values are estimates because of exchange rates and other factors).
223 e-books sold = $417.84
9 paperbacks sold = $49.97
225,693 Kindle Edition Normalized Page (KENP)* reads = $886.61
Total Estimated Royalties for September 2020 = $1,354.41
And to some authors, those wouldn’t be impressive results, but for me? They blew me out of the water. I will say that, while I’m happy to have the $49.97 from paperbacks, I realize that those were entirely friends and family. And I sold about 31 e-books in the first 2 days after I launched, a good chunk (but not all) of those were likely friends and family as well.
However, after the first 48 hours, I think the majority of the sales were strangers. The KENP reads I’m especially proud of. Those only add up if people are actually reading pages, and 225k is a great number for a no-name’s first month in my opinion.
I’ve done some light social media marketing, on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram. I don’t think those efforts yielded huge dividends, because my follower numbers haven’t really gone up, but I did notice a difference when I took a week off from blasting posts out. So, there’s that. And social media is free.
That said, all in my total investment to get the book to this point was $2,405.50. I won’t be giving a line-by-line breakdown of how much I paid for what, because that wouldn’t be fair to some of my partners. It included, my cover art, my editing and proof reading pass, website, domain names, and a round of Google Ads. So, one month in and I haven’t broken even yet, but so far results are improving 5 days into October. I’m expecting to break even in a few weeks based on the current pace (about $50/day).
It’s not a livable amount of money for most people. However, writing isn’t my fulltime job, being a dad is. That said, I have high hopes for my audiobook when it comes out (still no details about that, but hopefully soon). However, it’s a start, and maybe it could be a living down the road. That’s the sincere hope.
Anyways, your mileage will vary. Hell, my mileage will vary. But there it is. Gonna keep pushing and see what happens.
If you haven’t yet, please sign up for my Newsletter, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, Instagram and/or Facebook. I’m trying to make it more then just book pimping and post some fun/funny memes and the occasional political rant (because it’s 2020 and my work has political tones to it**) .
Wish me luck.
*KENP = is the total of pages read by Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. The royalties for this vary from month to month based on how much is in the KDP Global Fund and what percentage of total activity your page reads represented.
**Vote Often. Vote Early. Vote Blue. Black Lives Matter. Healthcare is a Human Right. Science is Real. Love is Love. Opinions Are Not Facts. 45 is a Racist, Liar, and a Fascist.
