a sales snapshot, May 2017
Some writers hate, hate, absolutely hate the business side of self-publishing. I don’t! Because if you understand the business side, it can give you the freedom and control to write what you like. That’s why there are fifteen FROSTBORN books – I was able to write and publish them because self-publishing lets me do what I want.
I didn’t publish any new books in April, so I thought it would be interesting to see which sales platform sold the best and which series did the best. You can see the results here.
In May, I published the final book in my FROSTBORN series, FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON. So I thought it would be interesting to compare April to May in terms of sales.
Two things to note first.
First, I would like to say thank you!
FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON sold really, really well. I had been self-publishing for nearly two and a half years before I sold as many copies of my books in a month as FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON sold in May 2017. So thanks for coming along to the end of the series!
Second, FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON, by itself, was 27% of my book sales in May 2017.
Now, on to percentages. In April, when I didn’t release anything new, here is how my book sales looked by platform.
Amazon US: 39.3%
Amazon UK: 29.8%
Google Play: 17.7%
Kobo: 8%
Amazon AU: 4%
Barnes & Noble: 3%
iTunes: 2.4%
Amazon All Other Countries: 1.7%
By contrast, here is how they looked in May with FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON.
Amazon US: 40.8%
Amazon UK: 23.7%
Google Play: 17%
Kobo: 7.4%
Amazon AU: 3.2%
Barnes & Noble: 3.3%
iTunes: 2.5%
Amazon All Other Countries: 2.1%
Occasionally other writers ask why I don’t have any books in Kindle Unlimited. Based on the percentages above, the answer is because 25% of my book sales are on non-Amazon platforms, and I highly doubt I would be able to generate enough page reads in Kindle Unlimited to make up for that.
Which of my series sold the best? In April it looked like this:
Frostborn: 58.2%
The Ghosts/Ghost Exile: 13.1%
Demonsouled/Mask of the Demonsouled: 12%
Cloak Games: 9.9%
The Third Soul/Tower of Endless Worlds/Tech Books: 6.8%
In May:
Frostborn: 69.5%
The Ghosts: 9%
Demonsouled/Mask of the Demonsouled: 7.1%
Cloak Games: 4.9%
The Third Soul/Tech Books/Tower of Endless Worlds: 9.5%
FROSTBORN is the big fish, so even though I finished the series, I am starting a sequel series called SEVENFOLD SWORD. Data is useful for making decisions! 🙂
-JM