WRITE-A-PALOOZA!!!! Myrtle Beach Spring Edition

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It’s that time again for me! I get this itch for the beach every so often, and I’m incredibly lucky and grateful that I only live a short drive away from the beautiful beaches on the Atlantic coast. Myrtle Beach, SC here I come!!!!

Here WE come, actually. I’ll be heading there on Saturday with my little family of three. We have a two bedroom oceanfront condo, and I can’t wait! The weather is supposed to be gorgeous, warm and sunny. Exactly what I need right now, let me tell you.

But this isn’t a vacation in the typical sense. This is a write-a-palooza! I always seem to get inspired at the beach, and when I write there, the words just seem to flow. We haven’t been since last October, so I’m really looking forward to getting some great writing in and being inspired by the sounds of the ocean.

What’s even more fun is that I’ll be starting a new project! I finally finished the current draft of Death’s Awakening. Looking over it, I know it still needs some edits, but I’d like to let it sit for a while before I come back to it with fresh eyes. Instead, I’ll be working on The Trouble With Goodbye! This story is so strong in my mind, and every time I sit down to write the other book, it’s Leigh Anne and Knox there in my head instead. I HAVE to write this book! My plan for this write-a-palooza is to write the first half of my rough draft. 30,000 words. More if I can swing it, but I want to keep my expectations realistic.

My husband will be watching the baby a lot, but we’ll still hopefully have some fun-in-the-sun family time. Mostly, though, this will be a working vacation for me, and I’m so excited! Actually, I’m even MORE excited after the amazing cover reveal earlier this week. Over 300 people added The Trouble With Goodbye to their goodreads shelf and over 60 blogs featured the cover on Tuesday. The response totally blew me away, so thank you to ATOMR Blog Tours for organizing the reveal and to every blog that helped with the reveal. It was so much fun!

As I’ve done in the past, I’ll be putting up a word meter for everyone to be able to follow my progress. It helps to keep me accountable, so I hope you’ll check in with me and see how I’m doing throughout the trip. I put one meter here and one on the homepage too. Hopefully by the time I come home on Wednesday, the word meter will be full and I’ll have 30,000 new words written!

Do you get inspired by the beach? Or are you more of a mountains/woods type of person? OR, do you prefer big cities? My husband would be in Vegas every weekend if he could, haha, but me? I love the beach!

MILESTONE: 100,000 Sales. The numbers.

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I remember a time when selling a hundred books was the most exciting thing in the world. I had actually sold books to people who were not my family!! Unbelievable! To see a number like 100,000 just makes me so incredibly grateful and happy. I never thought I would sell a thousand books, much less a hundred times that. (For my celebration giveaway, click over to my Sweetie Chronicles Blog to enter.)

So how did I do it? I know that as a new self-published author I would always look to blogs and sales figures for ideas and for hope. If even one thing I have to say or share makes a difference to other writers out there who have dreams of being able to make a living writing, then I’m more than happy to share what I’ve learned.

THE NUMBERS

I thought it might be helpful to post a comprehensive list of my monthly sales numbers and then divide them out by vendor so you can see where I found the most success. After that, I’m just going to talk a little bit about what I think helped me to sell over 100,000 books in less than 2 years and also what I think has held me back from selling more.

First, my sales numbers. To be honest, it’s up and down and I never know at the beginning of the month what I can expect to make or sell. The best I can do is keep writing and hope that with each new book, the average continues to go up.

The basics: I write Young Adult paranormal with a bit of romance and mystery. I self-published my first book October 29, 2010. Beautiful Demons is a short novel at only about 47,000 words and is the first book in my Peachville High Demons series about an orphan who is sent to live in the strange town of Peachville after being kicked out of so many foster homes she’s lost count. I currently have 5 books out in the series and the 6th and final book is due out next month. I don’t have any other books out at this time, so the 5 series books is what makes up the sales figures you’re going to see.

As I post this list of sales figures by month, I will also post if I had a new release that month. These monthly numbers only include Amazon and B&N.

As you can see, I am on track to have more sales this year than last year (I hope!). I also highlighted July 2011 in blue just to show that this was my best ever month for sales.

Every night at midnight, I plug my sales numbers into a spreadsheet saved in Google Drive, so my records are pretty accurate. Unfortunately, Smashwords and the premium catalog are much more difficult to keep track of since they report at random and don’t have a great reporting system. Rather than separate them out and cause myself a huge headache, I’m just listing those sales here in bulk.

(*It’s worth noting that I didn’t put my books into the Apple store until December 2011. What was I thinking? Lol. Probably a lot of missed revenue potential there.)

100,333!!! Yippee!! It’s so exciting to see that six-figure sales number. It’s still hard to believe! Here’s how it all breaks down according to the top 4 vendors in order of total sales:

There’s no doubt about it that Amazon is where I’ve seen the most success. Is it enough to take my books off sale everywhere else and go with KDP select? I think my income at these other sites is enough to stick with it. Plus, I believe in being good to my fans. It wouldn’t be very nice to current fans of the series for me to publish the next book exclusively at Amazon, so I haven’t gone with KDP select for any of my books. If I had a standalone, I might try it out since Amazon is such a huge source of my sales, but for now, it isn’t really the best choice.

INCOME AND PRICING

Sales numbers are great, but income is important too. 100,000 books at 99 cents doesn’t produce nearly as much income as 100,000 books at $2.99, so where do I fall? There have been way too many posts online about pricing for me to try to discuss all the ins and outs of the pricing debate. Instead, I’ll just tell you what I decided and why.

As a new author in 2010, I decided to put my first book up at $0.99. This isn’t because I didn’t believe my book was good. I priced it low so that it would be an impulse buy. A no-brainer. If someone was interested, they would buy it without having to think too hard about it. When book 2 went up just 2 months later, I decided to stick with the $0.99 price. I figured that early-on, more sales was more important than more money. My hope was that if people liked book 1 even a little bit, they wouldn’t even think twice about paying just a dollar for the second book.

With book 3, however, I raised my price up to $2.99. I knew that if readers had followed me through the first two books and were still interested in the series, they wouldn’t mind paying a bit more. $2.99 was low enough to still be easy for readers to pay but high enough for me to get that 70% royalty. Win-Win. I have kept the price of the next books in the series at this same $2.99 price just to stay consistent and to keep prices low so that anyone who wants to read can afford it.

Could I make more money by pricing my books higher? Yes, I am sure I could make quite a bit more. In fact, I could sell LESS books and still make MORE money. For me, then, it becomes a question of what’s more important? More sales or more money? I don’t even have to think twice about that at this point in my career. More sales is way more important to me, because I know that the more books I sell, the more potential fans-for-life I gain.

My belief is that the better I am to my fans, the more willingly they will follow me to my next series, and my next, and so on forever. My goal is to become a must-buy to as many readers as possible. The best way I know to do that is to 1) Write the best books I can and 2) Keep my prices low. I’m not in this to be a one-hit wonder or a flash in the pan. I want to still be making a living writing twenty years from now, so that’s always on my mind when I am making decisions about price.

I certainly don’t judge anyone else for their pricing decisions, but for me, this is what has worked. So far, I have made about $120,000 off of my books. I’m extremely happy with that and hope that my decision to keep prices low in the beginning of my career will really pay off for me in the long run. I don’t know that I’m always making the right decisions, but all I can do is try my best. One thing I know for sure is that self-publishing was the right decision for me in every way.

WHAT MADE THE MOST DIFFERENCE?

In my opinion, these are the things that have made the most difference in helping me sell 100,000 books:

  • Fast release dates – Especially in the beginning, I was able to get my books out back to back very quickly. I really think this made a huge difference in getting my books noticed. Of course, since I didn’t have a backlist of books to put out, that meant I was writing them fast too. I had a book out in October, December and February that first year I self-pubbed. My sales soared because of it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep up with that pace as infertility began to take its toll. Then, when I finally did get pregnant, writing got even harder!! Now, with a newborn, I’m struggling daily to find balance. My release schedule has suffered, and I hope someday to get back to a faster schedule. I firmly believe that releasing books quickly can make a huge impact on success.
  • Writing a Series – I enjoy reading series and so do a lot of other readers. They are especially popular with young adult readers, so I think my decision to write a series helped me find success.
  • Professional, Branded Covers – I originally had a friend’s husband design my covers. They were cute, but they looked homemade. In Feb. ’11 with the release of book 3, I also hired the amazing Robin Ludwig to create all new book covers. I adore these news covers. Yes, I have had a few people make negative comments about them, but no one is going to like everything. Most people love them and say that the covers drew them to the series. One thing Robin really did for me was to help me brand the series. When you see these covers, you know instantly that they are part of a set. Since a lot of readers like series, they are drawn to the similar covers as well.
  • Low Prices and Going Free – See above about the prices. Something I didn’t mention there, however, was that I worked to get my first book to go FREE everywhere, including Amazon. I hope to leave that first book perma-free to draw in readers and let them sample my series. In addition to my 100k paid sales, I’ve also had about 100k free downloads of Beautiful Demons. It’s made a big difference in keeping my sales high even without a new release this summer.
  • Writing What I Love In My Own Way – Instead of following all these rules that are placed on writers (can’t start a chapter with the MC waking up or in a car), I decided to just write the way I wanted to write. I write fragmented sentences. I don’t always follow the expected plot. The love story between Harper and Jackson develops slower than a lot of YA. I think readers really appreciate that my books are not like all the trad pub YA books out there that have similar plots and love stories. They like those other books too, but sometimes they want something a little bit unique, which hopefully is why they keep coming back.

WHAT HAS HELD ME BACK?

In the same way that I recognize some of what has helped me find success, I also have some ideas about what has kept me from breaking out into a Top 100 Overall Best Seller.

  • Cheerleaders – My books are about cheerleaders who are witches. I think a lot of people read that and think the books are going to be very surface and cheesy. That’s not at all what the books are. The characters and relationships grow very deep and the story really goes a lot deeper than the cheerleading aspect. Still, I think a series that on the surface is about popular cheerleading witches holds me back somewhat. I don’t want to change that, so instead I’ll just hope my next series has a broader appeal.
  • Slowing Release Dates – I listed above that my fast release dates were a big plus. Well, it was really only the first 2 of 5 that came out quickly. Book 4 took almost 5 months to write, Book 5 took about 6, and now fans have been waiting for Book 6 since January. I honestly believe that if I had been putting ALL of my books out quickly, I would have had much more success. Still, I can’t regret my journey to motherhood, so I’ll just chalk this up to life experience and leave it at that.
  • My Blurbs – I’m honestly not satisfied with my blurbs. I wonder if they’ve kept some readers from trying out my series, and I think I need to rewrite/revisit them. I have a feeling they are holding me back, but for lack of being able to come up with something better yet, they haven’t changed yet. I think my covers draw attention, but the blurb doesn’t always deliver.

MARKETING

This post is already crazy long, so I won’t keep you much longer (if you’ve gotten this far!). Still, I think it’s important to touch on marketing. I think a lot of writers who are new to self-publishing think that marketing is the most important aspect of selling books. In my experience, this is the biggest mistake self-published authors make.

Sure, marketing is great. It doesn’t hurt, that’s for sure. It’s important to have a social media presence and to communicate with readers in a positive way. (My friend Tivi calls this Warm Fuzzies.) I think readers appreciate this about Indie authors. Our approachability is awesome.

On the other hand, it’s all too easy to get caught up in spending most of your free time writing blog posts, arranging blog tours, and hanging around on social media sites instead of WRITING. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but let me just add my voice to the chorus: Your best marketing tool is your next book! NOT blog posts or tours or twitter followers.

It’s much more important to write and get more books on your virtual shelves than it is to have a blog tour. If you have time for both, more power to you. Great. But don’t sacrifice writing time for marketing time. For me, I know I only have so much creative juice in me on any given day. I can only write for so long. So I write as much as I can, and THEN I market. And I try not to stress out about the marketing aspect of self-publishing. It’s not worth it. The books are the important part. The rest is just the cherry on top. That’s my two cents anyway.

That being said, I will say that reaching out to book bloggers was probably the most valuable marketing I have done. Once book 3 came out, I started spending my spare time approaching popular book blogs about the possibility of reading and reviewing Beautiful Demons. I had a good response and I really owe a lot to bloggers like Julie at A Tale of Many Reviews, Ivy at Ivy Reads, and Kim at The Caffeinated Diva. They were some of the first to take a chance on my book, and I can’t thank them enough. Book bloggers are awesome and if you’re going to spend time on marketing, I would suggest reaching out to bloggers first.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I know there are a lot of other writers out there who probably ramble less and have more valuable information, but if what I’ve had to say and share has inspired even one person, then it’s worth it. I never dreamed I would make it this far, but now that I’m here with 100,000 sales under my belt, I feel as though it’s just the beginning.

There has never been a better time to be a writer or a reader. There is more money to be made than ever before and we can charge less for the books at the same time! Self-publishing is hard work, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. I can confidently say that the decision to self-publish was one of the best I’ve ever made, and as things stand in the industry right now, I can’t see a situation where it would be worth it to sign a traditional publishing contract. At least not here in the US, but that’s a post for another day.

All I can say to wrap things up is that I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported me along the way to this milestone – fans, my critique group, bloggers, other writers, the community on Kindle Boards. The Indie writing community is amazing, and I hope to give back even a part of what they have given to me.

The fact that I can write the books I love and still make money is truly a dream come true.

And honestly, I don’t ever want to wake up…

So Close To The Next Milestone!!

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September is going to be one of the most exciting in my publishing career so far!! As of the beginning of this month, I have sold 97,579 books! I am so incredibly close to the HUGE milestone of 100,000 paid sales, and I have no doubt I will hit it within the next couple of weeks. In fact, I’m still waiting for my August sales figures from the iTunes store, which could push me up as far as 99,000 or more. EEEEEEK!!!!

I honestly can’t believe this is happening. And the fact that I’m this close before I’ve even hit my two year Indie-versary is so mind-blowing. When I first started this journey in late October 2010, I was so nervous and scared. I had no idea if I would ever sell books to anyone other than my family, haha. Now I actually have almost 100,000 copies of my books floating around out there! It’s insane!

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me. You are really the reason I’ve made it so far and that I’m actually making a living as a full time writer. It’s truly a dream come true. Hopefully I’ll be posting again soon to announce two things. 1) That I’ve reached my 100,000 sales milestone, and 2) Hopefully I’ll finally get to announce my secret news, because it’s so hard to keep it inside! I will tell you that some contracts are getting signed this week, so an exciting announcement is definitely coming soon!

So what do you think? What kind of giveaway would you guys like to see as a celebration when I hit the big 100k milestone???

75,000 Books Sold!!!

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It’s been a while since I did a sales update, but wow, this year has already been so amazing! I posted back in February that I had hit a sales milestone of 60k sales. I didn’t expect to hit another milestone so quickly, but as of this month, I’ve officially sold 75,000 ebooks in my Peachville High Demons series!!!!

The two biggest boosts in sales for 2012 so far this year have been 1) the release of Rival Demons, book 5 of my Peachville High Demons series back in January and 2) Beautiful Demons (book 1) going free in all stores. I had heard other Indie authors raving about going free and how much it helped them get their series off the ground, but I never knew the full power of it until I set my own book free through Smashwords.

Beautiful Demons Sarra CannonI think I set Beautiful Demons free on Smashwords back in February (maybe? I can’t quite remember). It took some time, but eventually they ‘shipped’ the free ebook to Barnes & Noble, Sony, and iTunes. I saw a boost in sales at B&N, but it wasn’t huge. I didn’t realize how much of a boost I’d had on iTunes until I saw the numbers come in. Having the first book in a series free on iTunes seems to be a very powerful sales tool over there. In April and May combined, I sold about 4,000 books there.

Then, miracle of miracles, Amazon price-matched Beautiful Demons to free on April 10th. Beautiful Demons rose all the way to #13 free in the Kindle store, getting over 35,000 downloads in the month of April and just over 7,000 so far in May. Of course, these free downloads aren’t sales. They are giveaways, so they don’t count toward any sales milestones. However, a certain percentage of the people who have downloaded the book for free actually read the book, liked it, and decided to pick up the next books in the series. This is where the sales boost comes in, and I couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who has supported the series and continued to read.

Since it had been a few months since my newest release, I was actually expecting a very modest sales month. Instead, here’s how it turned out in April:

  • Beautiful Demons – At least 36,752 Free downloads (even though there are really more since iTunes doesn’t report free downloads and I’m not sure how many I got on Sony or B&N either) and 86 sales (before it went free).
  • Inner Demons – 2321 Paid Sales
  • Bitter Demons – 1642 Paid Sales
  • Shadow Demons – 1459 Paid Sales
  • Rival Demons – 1554 Paid Sales

Total Paid Sales: 7062

(*This figure doesn’t even include the roughly 2500 sales from iTunes that I got in April. I just haven’t taken the time to go through the Smashwords report yet, so the real total is more like 9500 paid sales.)

To my delight and extreme surprise, April 2012 ended up being my very best month of all time. I made over $13,000 last month, which believe me will come in handy since we’re having our first baby in about 3 weeks, haha. It’s honestly hard to believe this could all be true!

So far in May, I’ve already sold 4330 books (not including Apple since they report late through Smashwords). When you combine all of my paid sales since I first self-published in late October 2010, it comes to an amazing 77,516 paid sales!!

I honestly never dreamed this could be my life. I always wanted to be a writer, but I never imagined so many people would be interested in the stories I had to tell. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you who have picked up my books and continued on through the series so far. You have truly changed my life.

MILESTONE: 60,000 Books Sold!

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Yippeee!!! I’m very excited to announce that yesterday, I hit a new sales milestone. 60,000 books sold. This is an all-time figure, starting when I self-published my first novel, Beautiful Demons, at the end of October 2010. It took me almost exactly 16 months to reach this milestone, and I couldn’t be happier.

More than anything, I just wanted to say thank you! Thank you to all my faithful readers who have purchased the books in the Peachville High Demons series and supported me. It means more to me than I could ever say. You have all made my dreams come true. There is nothing I have ever wanted to do more than write, and every day for the last 16 months has felt like a gift. So thank you so much.

I’m setting my sights now on 75k, and then the 100,000 sales milestone, hoping to hit them both before the end of 2012! That might be a tad ambitious, but a girl can hope right? :)

MILESTONE: 50,000 Books Sold!

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Is this really happening? That’s the question I ask myself every day. Am I really making a living doing what I love to do? It’s the most amazing dream come true, and none of it would be possible if it wasn’t for all of you out there who took a chance by picking up BEAUTIFUL DEMONS and giving the Peachville High Demons series a try.

Yesterday, I hit the huge milestone of selling my 50,000th book. It took just a hair over 15 months to reach that sales goal, and I’m really proud of that. I was looking back at the other milestones I’ve posted here on my blog and here is a quick breakdown of what and when:

  • 1,000 books sold – January 2011. I only had the first two books in the series out at that point, but it was a big accomplishment for me. When I first decided to self-publish my books, I knew I was taking a big risk. Would I make any money? Would anyone like my books? Would I ever sell a thousand books? Thankfully, the answer was yes to all of those questions!!
  • 10,000 books sold – Mid-March 2011. This is when my books really started to take off. After book three, BITTER DEMONS, released in late February, I had a huge boost in all sales of my books with Beautiful Demons reaching an all-time high ranking in the Kindle store of #363.
  • 25,000 books sold – Late June 2011. Just about a week before Book 4, SHADOW DEMONS, was released, I hit the 25k milestone mark and set my sights on the 50k. Well, if you read the post, you’ll see I actually started day-dreaming about hitting the million book mark, but that’s still years away, hehe. Someday…
  • 50,000 books sold – January 2, 2012!! So you can see that I sold exactly 49,000 books in a year. What a dream come true!!!
  • 100,000 books sold??? This is the next big goal I have in my head. I can’t even begin to predict when I might hit that. Maybe by this time next year? I hope so!! I have some lofty goals set for 2012, especially considering the fact that I’ll be welcoming a sweet baby boy in June. But I have so many stories I want to tell and I love to write, so I will keep working even if my writing does slow down a little bit.
Thank you to everyone who has read the Peachville High Demons series and continues to support the books and tell your friends about the series. I appreciate it with all of my heart! Less than 18 days now until RIVAL DEMONS comes out, and I hope you’re as excited about it as I am. Just to tease you a bit, here is the description for the book: (Add it to your Goodreads To-read list!)

After narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Order of Shadows, Harper finds herself thrust into the strange and beautiful world of the shadow demons. But crossing through the portal doesn’t mean she is safe. The Order of Shadows is determined to bring her home and transfer the Prima line to the Harris family. They send their most vicious hunters after Harper. Hunters who will not stop until they have found their prey. 


Determined to keep her safe, Jackson takes her deep into an underground world filled with dangers of its own. Here, Harper will begin a journey that will teach her more about herself and her own path than she ever imagined possible.


Also, if you have a moment, take just a second to sign up for my brand new mailing list. You will find the sign up on the right sidebar just below the Rival Demons countdown ticker. I promise I won’t send out any spam or share your email addresses with anyone. Mostly, the newsletter will be used for announcing release dates and important information about my upcoming books or contests.

The Newest News from Amazon – Kindle Owner’s Lending Library

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I got an interesting email today from Amazon. They announced that Amazon Prime members, in addition to already receiving free shipping and getting some streaming media, will now also be able to borrow books for free from the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. There are limits, of course. You can only check out one book a month. There are no late fees or anything like that, but you do have to return your previous book in order to get a new book. Also, there are a limited number of books currently available in the lending library. From what I’ve heard, it’s somewhere around 5000 books to choose from.

I think it’s an exciting development. Actually, it kind of makes me want to sign up for Amazon Prime, haha. I used to have a membership several years back, but back then, all that the membership gave you was free shipping. I didn’t order enough merchandise to make it worth it. Now, however, there are a lot of perks that come along with an Amazon Prime membership. Free two-day shipping. Unlimited streaming of TV shows, movies, etc, similar to Netflix. And now a free book a month. Considering that some of these NYT bestseller books are $10.00 or more each, it’s really a good deal. The Amazon Prime Membership is only $79 a year.

I have a feeling this new announcement will actually spur some people who are already members of Prime to go ahead and spring for a new Kindle. I mean, with the low price point now of only $79 for a brand new Kindle, why not? Especially when you have access to so many free books?

It’s interesting to me that some authors already have their defenses up about this lending library. They are worried that they will not get paid for books that are lent through this new library. But to me, that’s really narrow thinking. Free books have always been available, whether through borrowing from friends or borrowing from a physical library or from stealing or whatever. Authors still have always been able to make a living writing books. Readers still buy books, even when there are free ones to be had. I personally think it’s a great announcement. I don’t think it will have a huge impact on books sales except that it will be another way to connect readers with books and authors they love.

My only question is how do I get Beautiful Demons into the lending library? So far, I don’t think they are letting a lot of Indie authors into the lending library. All I know is that if given a chance, I would definitely put the Peachville High Demons books into the lending library. Any chance I have of introducing my series to more readers is a huge opportunity. I have a feeling that right now, Amazon is sort of hand-picking books and authors, which currently doesn’t include that many Indie authors (if any), but I would be incredibly excited if my books were to be included in any way.

What do you think of the new Kindle Owner’s Lending Library? Are you an Amazon Prime Member? Would this new perk make you want to sign up for Amazon Prime? I’m interested to hear what you think.

Happy One Year Anniversary, Beautiful Demons!!

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I’m a little late with this happy birthday celebration, but as of October 29th, it’s been exactly one year since I first published BEAUTIFUL DEMONS!!! The decision to become an Indie author and self-publish my books in ebook format was a huge decision for me. Like most writers, I had always wanted the validation of seeing my book in a physical bookstore and having an agent or editor tell me they loved and believed in my work. It took a lot of time and hair-pulling to finally move beyond that false idea of validation and realize that my future was staring me right in the face.

When I first self-published Beautiful Demons, I was scared, but excited. I had no idea if anyone would want to read it. The idea of bad reviews made me insane, haha. Luckily, a year later, the results are way beyond what I ever expected. Since last year, I have published the first four novels in my Peachville High Demons series and have sold a total of 45,641 copies between them. Beautiful Demons leads the group with 16,404 copies sold so far, and I couldn’t be happier or more grateful.

I honestly feel that my decision to become an Indie author and take my career into my own hands was one of the best decisions I could have made. I love the creative freedom I have. I love feeling closer to my readers. I love being able to make the final decisions about the plot and characters without someone in New York telling me what I have to cut. Now, I’m not saying my books are the most amazing in the world or that I couldn’t benefit from an editor or agent in some way, but in the end, I know this was the best route for me. I’m loving every minute of being an Indie author, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who has supported the Peachville High Demons series, either by writing reviews, buying the books, or telling a friend about the series. I appreciate you all so much. It’s been an amazing year, and I’m looking forward to hopefully many more years of success!

Amazon’s Big News!

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If any of you have been on the fence about whether to buy an ereader or a new tablet, now is the best time ever to jump into the ebook revolution. Amazon announced a while back that they were going to do a press conference this morning and everyone was anticipating their unveiling of a new tablet, but Amazon actually announced 3 new offerings today.

  1. An ad-supported Kindle at only $79. What?! Yes, I’m serious about this. For less than eighty bucks, you can have a Kindle. And don’t worry, the ads aren’t scrolling while you read your books or anything. The ads are just the screensavers when your Kindle goes to sleep. Trust me when I say the cheesy pictures of dead authors they use for the regular Kindle screensavers aren’t all that exciting, haha. I might actually prefer the ads!
  2. New Kindle Touch! This touch-screen ereader is only going to be $99, with a 3G version at just $149. (Just to compare, the Barnes & Noble touch is $139 just for the wi-fi version, so that’s a huge $40 price difference.) The Kindle Touch is going to be much slimmer and will have no external controls – only touch screen controls.
  3. Kindle Fire Tablet – Cnet calls it a “color ereader on steroids”. Lol. It looks similar to the Nook Color and will retail at only $199! (Again the nook color is currently $249, which is showing how much Amazon wants to be on top of the ereader market.) You can play games on it, watch movies, read books, nearly everything you can do on an ipad. The tablet also comes with a 30 day Amazon Prime membership, and with Prime adding tons of streaming video this fall, I think this will be a huge advantage to the Fire Tablet. Exciting news! Now I want one!
So if you’ve been thinking of asking for an ereader or a tablet for Christmas, or thinking of getting one for yourself or someone special, the time has never been better. I think it’s going to be a very exciting time for those of us who love to read and love to buy ebooks. I’m thinking the Fire Tablet just jumped to my new #1 must-have for Christmas!

August Sales Numbers

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Wow, so they weren’t kidding about a summer slump. My sales definitely slowed down in the month of August, and it was scary! Overall, I had a good monthly total simply because I now have four books out instead of 3. On the other hand, each book’s individual sales were the lowest they’ve been since February, which is disappointing. That’s one of the hardest parts about self-publishing. It’s a lot of ups and downs and you never truly know what to expect from month to month. The only true way to guarantee growth is to keep writing books.

August Sales Numbers:

BEAUTIFUL DEMONS (Book 1 of the PHD series. 10/31/10)
  • Amazon Kindle Store: 855 US + 234 UK + 2 DE = 1091
  • Barnes & Noble: 296
  • Smashwords: 2
  • Total: 1389
INNER DEMONS (Book 2 of the PHD series. 12/22/10)
  • Amazon Kindle Store: 702 US + 157 UK + 1 DE = 860
  • Barnes & Noble: 244
  • Smashwords: 2
  • Total: 1106
BITTER DEMONS (Book 3 of the PHD series. 2/24/11)
  • Amazon Kindle Store: 671 US + 118 UK + 1 DE = 790
  • Barnes & Noble: 219
  • Smashwords: 1
  • Total: 1010
SHADOW DEMONS (Book 4 of the PHD series. 7/3/11)
  • Amazon Kindle Store: 1146 US + 111 UK + 1 DE = 1258
  • Barnes & Noble: 284
  • Smashwords: 3
  • Total: 1545
Total August Sales: 5050

Overall Sales To Date: 40698


There are two very exciting things about my August sales, despite the slowing numbers. 1. My UK sales got a huge boost this month. It’s the first time I’ve sold over 600 books in the UK, so that was super exciting. 2. I passed the 40,000 books sold mark! I never dreamed I would be able to sell that many books in less than a year! And I still have until the last day of October to try my best to hit 50K in a year. Of course, with the huge slow down, that’s definitely not a guarantee. Already in September, the numbers have continued to seriously drop. For example, Beautiful Demons hovered between 1000 and 1500 sales rank for months, but lately has been seen closer to 4000 and 5000 in the kindle store. I ended last month with an average of 162 books sold per day. Yesterday, I only sold 84 books. To be honest, it’s scaring me. And since I started this sales number report in order to be honest and give a true picture of what an Indie author’s sales look like, I have to tell you how I feel.

I have thoughts that go through my head about what if I’ve reached the maximum numbers for this series? What if it’s all downhill from here? There are a million scary thoughts in my head. Still, I do understand logically that if I continue to put out new books, there will be spikes and then things will begin to drop again. It’s a pattern. It’s natural. It happens to everyone. I think it’s scary because it makes me feel a little bit out of control. I’m not sure what to do to boost my sales back up – other than writing more books. I plan to release the 5th book in my series, RIVAL DEMONS, in October. Then, if all goes well, the 6th book, DEMONS FOREVER, will come out just before Christmas. Perfect timing to end the series just before the biggest boost of ebook sales, right? I hope so. For me, that’s the only marketing strategy I can come up with, and I think it’s a good one. I’m a writer. So I’ll write. As for sales, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Have you seen a lag in your summer sales? What have you done to boost them? How do you get over the fear of seeing sales drop? If you’re an Indie author, please let me know how you handle these lags if you’ve seen them.