February 28th at 7.50 p.m.
I got just over £10 at the end of November. Today I was told that I was getting a payment of £13.32. Of this, £2.08 was from October, £3.38 was from November, and £8.32 was from December. Since I put the prices up a wee while ago, I don't suppose I've sold more than a couple of books, but every one makes me about £1.50. Since the sales were obviously increasing in December maybe I should have left the prices at rock bottom, but who knows?
Tuesday 28 February 2012
Monday 20 February 2012
Sales in February!
In the first twenty days of February, my ebooks have sold twelve copies. I've done nothing to market them at all.
I started a thread in the Meet Our Author's forum about pricing, and so far I've been told the books will have to be priced at $2.99 to meet the 70% royalty band.
I'm coming round to the opinion that having the books priced at the lowest possible price is having virtually no effect on sales. At first sight this doesn't seem rational, but you can get hundreds of downloads if the books are free and almost none if the books are priced at 77p, which is less than I pay for my morning paper. I think the whole thing works on visibility. It's harder to find books at 77p than it is if they are for free.
Also, last month my top selling book was Ancient Futures. In December, it sold two copies. In January it sold eighteen copies. It has one jokey review on the American site and none on the British one. It may have had a selling bounce from the five free day book promotion, but I doubt it.
The books I'd like folk to buy are The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf and TheBlissBook. In January, these books sold nine and five copies respectively, so making them dead cheap isn't shifting them so far.
I suppose the best thing I should do as regards the pricing and such is to leave things as they are, but I think I might put up the prices, at least on the books that have to nothing to do with Buddhism; the ones that are just novels. Maybe I'll put up the prices on the latter and leave the former dead cheap. Don't know what to do really, but I'll do something soon!!
Later: I've made all my books cost $3.50 in the USA and whatever that converts to elsewhere. I think it means they'll cost around £2.20 in Britain. You have to have the books at $2.99 to hit the 70% royalty band. So I've put them at a wee bit more than that because I think if you lower the price at any point, some folk get alerts, so making it a wee bit over the 70% barrier makes a wee bit of sense.
If you want to download them at the cheap price, you'll got about twelve hours from now, it seems.
Hopefully, this is the beginning of my not having to spend time trying to market ebooks when I should be writing them or meditating!!
I started a thread in the Meet Our Author's forum about pricing, and so far I've been told the books will have to be priced at $2.99 to meet the 70% royalty band.
I'm coming round to the opinion that having the books priced at the lowest possible price is having virtually no effect on sales. At first sight this doesn't seem rational, but you can get hundreds of downloads if the books are free and almost none if the books are priced at 77p, which is less than I pay for my morning paper. I think the whole thing works on visibility. It's harder to find books at 77p than it is if they are for free.
Also, last month my top selling book was Ancient Futures. In December, it sold two copies. In January it sold eighteen copies. It has one jokey review on the American site and none on the British one. It may have had a selling bounce from the five free day book promotion, but I doubt it.
The books I'd like folk to buy are The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf and TheBlissBook. In January, these books sold nine and five copies respectively, so making them dead cheap isn't shifting them so far.
I suppose the best thing I should do as regards the pricing and such is to leave things as they are, but I think I might put up the prices, at least on the books that have to nothing to do with Buddhism; the ones that are just novels. Maybe I'll put up the prices on the latter and leave the former dead cheap. Don't know what to do really, but I'll do something soon!!
Later: I've made all my books cost $3.50 in the USA and whatever that converts to elsewhere. I think it means they'll cost around £2.20 in Britain. You have to have the books at $2.99 to hit the 70% royalty band. So I've put them at a wee bit more than that because I think if you lower the price at any point, some folk get alerts, so making it a wee bit over the 70% barrier makes a wee bit of sense.
If you want to download them at the cheap price, you'll got about twelve hours from now, it seems.
Hopefully, this is the beginning of my not having to spend time trying to market ebooks when I should be writing them or meditating!!
Monday 6 February 2012
Promoting ebooks: After the five free days, what price?
I had some free book days left from the fifty free days I got on my ten books at the end of January, but I've decided to hold off with them till the end of February. There's a couple of reasons for this.
I found it impossible to see if I was actually selling any books during January since the figures were muddled in with the "sales" you get accredited when a free download happens. So from the start of February the statistics are coming up clean since they start at nothing at the beginning of the month. This month so far I have sold seven books. So I'm selling just about a book a day.
So far I don't see any affects from the five day free book promotions. I haven't had any new reviews from it. I guess I can judge the results of that at the end of February as well. The only marketing I was doing before this free book day promotion involved leaving links to the books in the Meet Our Authors forums, and I assumed that was how I was getting sales, but I'm not going to do that this month.
To market ebooks properly would take all day. It's a job in itself. What I'd like to do this month is nothing at all and see how many books get sold. My assumption was that the links in the forums were providing sales, but the books might have been bought for other reasons.
If the continue to sell at about a book a day, I'd like to find out with the optimum selling price would be. My assumption was that books would sell more at the lowest price, which is why the books are at 77p, but the royalty cheque I got on 25th November last year was payment for books sold before the end of September when the books were about £2. That puts you in the 70% royalty band, which is where I'd rather be. It may be that selling them at the cheapest price might put folk off!
So I'll just keep my eye on the sales this month and come up with a pricing strategy then.
I found it impossible to see if I was actually selling any books during January since the figures were muddled in with the "sales" you get accredited when a free download happens. So from the start of February the statistics are coming up clean since they start at nothing at the beginning of the month. This month so far I have sold seven books. So I'm selling just about a book a day.
So far I don't see any affects from the five day free book promotions. I haven't had any new reviews from it. I guess I can judge the results of that at the end of February as well. The only marketing I was doing before this free book day promotion involved leaving links to the books in the Meet Our Authors forums, and I assumed that was how I was getting sales, but I'm not going to do that this month.
To market ebooks properly would take all day. It's a job in itself. What I'd like to do this month is nothing at all and see how many books get sold. My assumption was that the links in the forums were providing sales, but the books might have been bought for other reasons.
If the continue to sell at about a book a day, I'd like to find out with the optimum selling price would be. My assumption was that books would sell more at the lowest price, which is why the books are at 77p, but the royalty cheque I got on 25th November last year was payment for books sold before the end of September when the books were about £2. That puts you in the 70% royalty band, which is where I'd rather be. It may be that selling them at the cheapest price might put folk off!
So I'll just keep my eye on the sales this month and come up with a pricing strategy then.
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