Since my last post, this is what has happened:
- Feral Magic has a new edition out to all previous fans.
- Episode 4 Bone Mine is out.
- Episode 5 Blood Oath is out.
- I caught a cold and fell behind in The Bliss Hour (sad) on account that I couldn’t speak to do voice acting.
- I contracted back pains and couldn’t sit at my computer for a few days (puts me remarkably behind schedule).
- I’ve been doing some manual paid labor on a part time basis.
- That’s about it, really.
Once I take a bit of a break and return to the computer today, I will have Episode 6 Slave Trade out as well. Today I didn’t have my .doc file all ready for Smashwords the way I did for the others, and I need to make up a cover for it quick. You can tell that life has interfered with my publishing schedule.
So this is how my downloads look now that I am 2 1/2 months into my active publishing schedule. The first light blue peak indicates when I published Episode 1 Knock. Black Locust Letters was already available at that time, but wasn’t doing anything as you can see from the white space before Episode 1 Knock. So we’re clear, this is color coded according to retailer. Light blue is Smashwords, yellow-orange-color is Barnes & Nobles, darker blue is iBooks. The first big light blue peak was when I released Feral Magic for free download, the start of the dark blue peak is from the paid Swift Magic release–though I haven’t sold that many copies of Swift Magic itself, perhaps 15 copies to date. However, it’s been selling at a fairly steady rate which is what I want to see happen.
I have no account for why one retailer will take off an another one will decline. No idea at all. It just happens. But it seems that iBooks likes the thriller genre, while Barnes & Noble favors romance. I’m thinking this way because I’ve watched which books peak on what days.
As a comparison, let’s look at a similar graph which I posted earlier last month.
This appears to have been taken about 6 weeks ago. It was because I was excited about Feral Magic taking off. It now has over 1,000 downloads and I’ll be honest, I started to have a bit of a panic attack. Because I’m a freak and I just remembered I also panic over having to submit my visa for renewal.
You’ll notice that I’m not posting anything about Amazon. That’s because my stuff is kind of just … there … right now. And I haven’t yet kicked them into making some stuff free.
So here’s Amazon. The green indicates free copies ordered, because Bloodstone is currently enslaved into KDP Select and I thought I’d see how it did to have a title chilling in that program. I ran a free promo without saying a word because I wanted to see what would happen if a random not-new-release title with no reviews just popped up cold turkey on Amazon. I’m pretty pleased with the results, actually. Now I have a baseline to compare future freebies with. You’ll also see that there are a number of tiny red blips. These are sales. One to Bliss Den, one to Black Locust Letters, and the others are about half-half between Feral Magic and Swift Magic. You’ll also note that the sales are occurring to some extent around the Kindle borrowing thingamajigger. Free sells paid books.
So I’m beginning to get a little love from the Big A. But not as much love as I’m getting from iBooks and Barnes & Noble, which is totally opposite from what I expected. Additionally, had I remained KDP exclusive, I wonder how this would change the graphs and sales. On one hand being exclusive would let all my freebies be enrolled in KDPS and that would in theory lead to a whole lot more love from the Big A. But on the other hand, if I’m exclusively wed to the Big A, that means that if it ever decides to divorce me, boom, all my sales and revenue and reputation is cleared out. I’m not comfortable having all my eggs in one basket.
A potential middleground would be to enroll a title in KDPS for one 90-day period and then to take it abroad after this. But had I done that, right now Knock would still be in contract and I wouldn’t have even begun to touch Smashwords yet. Another potential middleground is to have some short stories exclusive to KDPS. Which I am considering, but I have a fair deal in my lap at the moment. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.
That’s about all I have to report on.
Till later,
Your Dearest Nicolette
Nicolette Jinks 