Archive | 09:30

The Big Reveal Part II: How Many Copies of MOUSETRAPPED Have I Sold?

1 Sep

So earlier I wrote the world’s longest ever blog post about how much it cost me to self-publish and promote my spectacularly niche market travel memoir, Mousetrapped: A Year and A Bit in Orlando, Florida, and so now it’s time to tell you how many copies I’ve sold. In exchange for this information I’d really like to know how well my actual sales figures mesh with any impressions you may have had of them, or of POD-ed or self-published books in general. I think, for instance, you’ll be surprised to learn how few sales have occasionally pushed me into some Amazon bestseller ranks (who can forget the time I was No. 1 in Kindle Books -> Travel -> United States -> Regions -> South -> South Atlantic, eh?), just like you’ll be by the amount of Kindle books I’ve sold without doing much of anything at all to promote them. Kindly let me know in the comments below.

So – let’s do this thing.

What Qualifies as a POD Success?

But just before I do, let’s try and get some perspective, and by perspective I mean self-publishing perspective, because there’s no point in comparing my little POD’d baby with a traditionally published book, one that starts its life with a print run in the thousands, actually has a chance of ending up in one of the bookstore chains and comes with a whole publishing house behind it. (But if we were comparing, I’d tell you that to get into the Top 10 bestseller list here in Ireland, you’d have to sell around 1,000 books in a single week.) But if we stick with Print On Demand self-published titles – and we kind of have to, because that’s what we’re dealing with here, books that are only printed, one by one, as they are sold – what qualifies as a success?

It’s hard to find a definitive answer to that question, but the magic number seems to be 500. If a book sells 500 copies on POD site Lulu.com, it’s considered to be a Lulu bestseller. Another figure that pops up with regularity is “20-200″ – on average, POD books sell somewhere between 20 and 200 copies, with 200 being a significant success, although I’ve also read that if you took the total number of books ‘published’ on Lulu and the total number sold, it would turn out that each title sells only a couple of copies. Aaron Shepard, author of Aiming at Amazon and other books about POD self-publishing, says that in his experience, a non-fiction book that’s ‘well conceived and executed’ might sell between 50 and 200 copies per month, but will probably only reach its maximum potential after a year.

I have been brutally realistic throughout this entire experience, and set myself goals I felt I’d be both happy to achieve and capable of achieving: 100 books within one month, 250 books within three months, 500 books within six months and 1,000 books within a year. In terms of these goals, I didn’t differentiate between print and e-editions; as long as it was a full-length text that someone paid money for, it got counted as a sale. (And when I say ‘sold’ I mean sold. I don’t mean bought by me from Createspace and then stashed under my bed.)

And so…

Are you waiting with baited breath?

(Well? Are you?)

Since March 29th I’ve sold 531 copies of Mousetrapped.

That’s an average of about 25 copies per week, or 106 per month. It will have been on sale for six months on September 29th, and so I’m well ahead of my goal of selling 500 copies in the first half of the first year of the title’s life, and on track to sell 1,000 by March 29th of next year.

The Breakdown: Paperbacks

Of the 531 copies sold, 183 or about 35% were print editions. Their list price is $14.95. Of those sales:

  • 38% were sold through Amazon.com
  • 21% were in my local independent bookshop (I sold stock to them; most were sold on the day of the launch)
  • 17% were direct sales where I sold them myself through Mousetrapped‘s website
  • 15% were sold through Amazon.co.uk and other outlets that fell under Createspace’s Extended Distribution Channel, such as Barnes and Noble, The Book Depository and other international Amazon sites (see full listing of my sales channels)
  • 8% were direct sales where I sold them myself to family/friends
  • 1% were sold through my Createspace e-store*.

*The Createspace e-store is not really a viable selling option as you have to register for a CS account before you buy, and their international shipping costs are criminal.

The Breakdown: E-Books

Of the 531 copies sold, 348 or 65% were e-book editions. Their list price is $2.99. Of those:

  • 84% were sold on Amazon’s Kindle store (US)
  • 8% were sold on Barnes and Noble’s e-book store**
  • 3% were sold on Amazon’s Kindle store (UK)***
  • 3% were sold on Smashwords.com
  • 2% were sold on Apple’s iBooks* application.

Clearly Kindle sales are largely responsible for Mousetrapped‘s e-book success; I sold nearly 300 copies of my book without doing anything but uploading a file to a website. Lesson: upload your book to Kindle right this minute! (Well, after you finish reading this, of course…)

Mousetrapped Catherine Ryan Howard iPad iBooks

Mousetrapped on the iPad.

**Smashwords’ Premium Catalogue distribution makes your e-book available to buy on Barnes and Noble’s e-book store and Apple’s iBooks, among others.***Amazon’s UK Kindle store only went live at the beginning of August. NB: Sales data from Barnes and Noble’s e-book store is only reported through July 25th 2010 and sales data from Apple’s iBooks store is only reported through June 26th 2010. Therefore it’s possible and even likely that more e-book sales have occurred through these channels since.

Paperbacks Vs E-Books

I know what you’re thinking. No, I really do. I can practically hear it through the screen. You’re thinking, 531 copies? Well that’s all well and good, but 348 of them were e-books, so she can’t say she really sold 531 books.

Once upon a time, I discriminated against e-books too. I readily admit that I considered them second class citizens in the world of book sales. (I still do in the world of book reading, but that’s an argument for another day.) But then I took a look at my royalties and realized that there is only a 13 cent difference between what I earn on a paperback sale from Amazon.co.uk and what I earn on an e-book sale from Amazon’s Kindle store. (A paperback sale nets me $2.22 while a Kindle sale nets $2.09.) Yes, I prefer that people buy paperbacks if only so they can gaze at my cover and read my Acknowledgements (which, for some reason, I omitted from my e-book), but ultimately it doesn’t matter. E-books take much less effort – the book is already written and they’re way easier to sell – but bring almost the same royalties as some print editions.

Some Graphs and Charts

There now follows some fancy graphs and charts. You might not be interested in them but now that I’m working at home as a writer I rarely get to use MS Excel anymore, and I miss it. It’s so much fun. (Click for larger images.)

Weekly Sales Mar-Aug 2010: Paperbacks Vs E-Books

All Sales Mar-Aug 2010 by Location

All Sales By Month: Mar-Aug 2010

Could I Have Sold More?

The short answer is yes, absolutely.

I could have sold more books because I could have spent more time trying to sell them. A lot more time. Because the truth is that besides the week of the online launch back in March and the week of the bookshop launch at the beginning of May, and I haven’t really spent more than a couple of hours a week promoting my book. I also haven’t done anything other than the absolute minimum any writer should do to promote their book. My efforts weren’t spectacular, especially innovative or at all inspired and I’m sure if I used my imagination, invested the time and read all the ‘How To Promote Your Self-Published Book’ books, I could have done a lot more to shift more copies, but I was in the middle of editing my novel with my agent and so couldn’t really devote myself 100% to the cause. And of course, with a self-published title, you have to get out there and sell every book.

Read more about what I did to promote my book here.

Am I Happy?

Yes. As I outlined above, I set what I felt were reasonable goals in terms of my own abilities and the saleability of a POD book, and I have reached them. So far, so good. Mousetrapped is a very weird, very niche book (if I do say so myself!) that is only for sale in one brick-and-mortar bookshop – where up to 68% of commercial books sales originate – and therefore I think I have a right to be proud of shifting any copies at all.

I’ve also got some great reviews which are prozac for the writer’s soul (chicken soup doesn’t do the job, I’m afraid), and as a side-effect of this whole endeavor I’ve begun to build – as much as it pains me to use this term – an author platform, and I’ve got an agent to represent my fiction. (Which I would never self-publish, but that’s another story too.) In the process I’ve also made some great new friends and contacts, and new avenues of opportunity have been opened up to me which will undoubtedly help me in the future with my writing career.

I know that in the scheme of publishing as a whole, 531 copies is but a drop in the ocean. I am, after all, a realist. But to me, it’s a large enough drop to make the whole thing worth it, especially since the alternative is no one reading it at all.

And when it all comes down to it, it’s nice to know that that many people have read a book I wrote.

Well…?

So there you have it. What do you think? Is it what you expected? Better or worse? Fascinating or mind-numbing? Worth it or pointless? Coffee or tea?

Let me know in the comments below.

Or, you know… help me get started on my first anniversary sales post by buying a copy!

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Read more about Mousetrapped, the book I self-printed

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The Big Reveal Part I: MOUSETRAPPED’s Costs & “Royalties”

1 Sep

As promised, today I’m going to reveal exactly how much money I spent self-publishing my travel memoir Mousetrapped: A Year and A Bit in Orlando, Florida, how many copies I’ve sold and how much money I get to keep when somebody buys a copy. In exchange, I’d like to know what you think about it. Does it sound like it was worth it? Are you impressed, or underwhelmed? Does this cement your decision to do it too, or confirm that it’s a bad idea?

(I know I said I’d do sales in the morning and profits in the afternoon, but I’ve decided the information makes more sense the other way around and coming together. So in this post I’m going to reveal exactly how much money I spent and how much of it I get back as profit, and then in a half hour or so I’ll post Part II, which will reveal my sales figures.)

Let’s Get You Up to Speed

If you know nothing about my self-printing adventures, here’s a quick summary: I used the Print On Demand service Createspace to ‘publish’ a 232-page paperback measuring 5.5 x 8.5 and both Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) and Smashwords to release an e-book equivalent. The book tells the story of the eighteen months I spent living in Orlando and working in Walt Disney World, and I decided to self-publish after being told by an agent and three different publishing houses that while it was well-written and an enjoyable read, it didn’t have enough of – or anything resembling – a market to warrant publication. It was released on March 29th last, and is for sale almost exclusively online. The only exception is my local independent bookstore where I had a signing/book launch at the beginning of May. You can view a full list of sales locations here.

The Costs

As I’ve said before, I had two goals for this project: (i) to not embarrass myself and (ii) to spend as little money as possible. So far, I’ve parted with cash to pay for:

Pre-Publication

  • €330 on copyediting (a proofread only, no structural editing)
  • €50 on cover design (got a great deal with graphic designer who built my mock-up in a PDF).

Publishing with Createspace

  • €15 on my proof copy, including shipping
  • €30 on a “Pro-Plan” that would enable extended distribution, i.e. international Amazons, Book Depository, etc.

Promotion

  • €25 on two WordPress.com domain name upgrades (“catherineryanhoward.com” and “mousetrappedbook.com”)
  • €50 on miscellaneous items, such as stationery
  • €124 on free books – including postage – sent to reviewers, bloggers, etc.
  • €180 on printed materials such as posters, invites and postcards, all used for my bookstore launch.

(All costs approximate.)

This is a total expenditure of €804, or $1,020 or £665. While I spent money on the book launch and review copies, most of my promotion and publicity came from free sources such as:

Um… “Royalties” Did You Say?

Strictly speaking, the money I make from sales of my book are not royalties in the traditional sense. What I’m really talking about is profit, or the portion of the list price that rightly belongs to me. But if we’re going to get into technicalities, then I didn’t really self-publish my book (as I didn’t purchase my own ISBNs, set up my own publishing company or produce a print run) and by definition, Createspace is a vanity press (as you pay them to publish your book, albeit it on a case by case basis as copies are sold). But I use ‘self-publish’ as a shorthand, and I intend to do the same with ‘royalties’ –  especially since that’s what Createspace and Amazon’s DTP calls them too. And we’re all just going to have to get over it, okay?

How POD Royalties Work: A Crash Course

Upload your files, order a proof copy and tell Createspace everything is a-okay: that’s pretty much all you have to do to get your book for sale on Amazon.com. Then when someone buys a copy, all the parties involved take their share and you get the rest. Or:

List price – (Createspace’s manufacturing cost + Amazon’s cut) = Your profit.

I opted to pay for Createspace’s “Pro-Plan” which allowed me to take advantage of their Extended Distribution Channel (EDC) and see my book for sale on online retailers other than Amazon.com. (Click here for a full list of my sales channels.) When someone buys my book from, say, The Book Depository, the money formula looks more like this:

List price – (Createspace’s manufacturing cost + Createspace’s cut as distributor + The Book Depository’s cut) = My profit.

Once a month Createspace then adds up all your sales and pays you by way of a cheque, in US dollars and usually on a delay, so that at the end of June for example, you’d be paid for your sales in May. (It’s like a little poem…!) If you live outside the US and fail to provide CS with non-resident tax information, you will be deducted 30% as a sort of emergency tax. Remember there is no such thing as non-taxable income – if you don’t pay it to the U.S. government, you’ll be paying it to your own. (Unless you live in Ireland and you’ve written something that qualifies for the Artists’ Exemption, but that’s a whole other story…)

The Same-Sized Small Print

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to list all amounts in US dollars, as that’s how I’m paid. (Except for the list of all royalties at the end of the post.) The amounts below are purely profit, i.e. all costs have been taken into consideration. For example, when I sell via my own website, I have to take into account the cost of the book, shipping the book first to myself, the envelope, postage and other miscellaneous costs (such as printing a packing slip) that accumulate over time. In that case, the ‘royalty’ you see below is the profit I clear once all those outgoings have been taken into consideration.

Some Perspective

A ‘properly’ published author will receive, on average, about 10% of the list price. (Of course they’ll get an advance, have entire departments behind their promotion, suffer no costs of their own, etc. etc. but that’s all for another day. If you’re familiar with my blog you’ll already know I’m not a self-publishing evangelist, and would have gladly – deliriously – signed on the dotted line if somebody had asked me to. Self-publishing – or self-printing – would only ever be my Plan B.)

Get On With It, Already

Mousetrapped retails for $14.95 for the print edition, so 10% would be $1.49. My print royalties, in descending order, are as follows (all percentages rounded to the nearest whole number):

  1. Createspace e-store: $7.92 or 53% of price*
  2. Author sells direct (no shipping): $6.36 or 42% of price
  3. Amazon.com: $5.07 or 34% of price
  4. Author sells via own website (domestic shipping): $4.93 or 33% of price
  5. Author sells via own website (international shipping): $3.63 or 24% of price
  6. Bookstore: $2.96 or 20% of price
  7. Extended Distribution, i.e. international Amazons, Book Depository, etc: $2.22 or 15% of price.

*CreateSpace’s e-store is not really a viable selling option, as you have to register for a CS account before you can purchase from there and if that didn’t dissuade you, the ridiculous shipping costs most definitely would.

I think my pricing of $14.95 (or €11.00 or £9.75) is extremely reasonable. Many self-published books I’ve come across in bookstores or online seem to me to be overpriced (around $19.99 or €14.95) and I can only imagine that this is down to greed and/or not sourcing cheap enough manufacturing options. Go into your local bookstore, independent or otherwise, and find a book similar in size and shape to yours. How much does it retail for? Your book shouldn’t be much more than it. (My book is about a euro more expensive than traditionally published books of the same size.) I talk about pricing considerations in this post.

E-Books: The Bonus Round

Mousetrapped retails at $2.99 for the e-book edition. To sell through Amazon’s US Kindle store, I uploaded directly to their Digital Text Platform (DTP). Later Mousetrapped automatically appeared on Amazon’s newly launched UK Kindle store. After I uploaded to Smashwords, Mousetrapped went on sale on their website, but also on Barnes and Noble online e-book store and Apple’s iBooks through Smashwords’ free extended distribution plan, or ‘Premium Catalogue’.

My e-book royalties, in descending order, are as follows (all percentages rounded to the nearest whole number):

  1. Direct from Smashwords.com: $2.09 or 70% of price**
  2. Kindle store (US) higher royalty option: $2.09 or 70%***
  3. Apple’s iBooks: $1.81 or 60% of price
  4. Barnes and Noble: $1.28 or 43% of price
  5. Kindle store (US) at standard royalty option: $1.05 or 30% of price
  6. UK Kindle store: $1.05 or 30% of price.

**Smashwords.com has not been a successful selling avenue for Mousetrapped. For whatever reason, only a handful of e-books have been sold from their site. However uploading it was worth it as there has been many sales from their Premium Catalogue. ***Only applicable to US sales.

For as long as I live I will never buy an e-book priced the same as its print equivalent. I have yet to invest in one that costs more than $4.99 because I love books themselves, not just reading them, and if the e-edition is more than that well then I may as well buy the real thing. Yet many self-published authors today have the audacity to charge print prices for their e-books – something, as a consumer, I can’t understand, because e-books are just not worth as much as real books. When pricing your e-book, think of those sales as bonuses, not as compensation for all your hard work. And remember: you get to keep a larger percentage of the price in most cases.

When I sell a print edition of Mousetrapped on Amazon.co.uk, I net $2.22. When I sell a (US) Kindle edition of Mousetrapped, I net $2.09. Yet e-books are so much easier to sell, mainly because they cost just $2.99. It pays to keep your e-book price low, especially when it doesn’t mean (much) lower royalties. (I talk more about e-book pricing in this post.)

All In

When we compare the net profit from both print and e-book editions, we get something that looks like this (P = print, E = e-book):

  1. $7.92 | €6.24 | £5.16 from Createspace e-store [P]
  2. $6.36 | €5.01 | £4.14 when author sells direct with no shipping [P]
  3. $5.07 | €3.99 | £3.30 from Amazon.com [P]
  4. $4.93 | €3.88 | £3.21 when author sells through website (domestic shipping) [P]
  5. $3.63 | €2.86 | £2.36 when author sells through website (international shipping) [P]
  6. $2.96 | €2.33 | £1.92 from bookstore sales [P]
  7. $2.22 | €1.75 | £1.45 when sold through EDC (international Amazons, Book Depository, etc.) [P]
  8. $2.09 | €1.65 | £1.36 when through Smashwords.com OR Kindle store (US) [E]
  9. $1.81 | €1.43 | £1.18 when sold through Apple’s iBooks [E]
  10. $1.28 | €1.00 | £0.83 when sold through Barnes & Noble’s e-book store [E]
  11. $1.05 | €0.83 | £0.68 when sold through US Kindle store at standard royalty rate or from UK store [E].

Selling Through My Website

Due to some bad planning on my part, I ‘launched’ Mousetrapped immediately after clicking the ‘Publish’ button on Createspace, and so could only offer potential customers the services of Amazon.com. So as not to dissuade Irish, UK and European customers from ordering the book, I offered signed copies of Mousetrapped delivered to your door for a flat rate of €12.99, regardless of your geographical location. As you can see above, there was a difference in about a euro’s worth of profit between a domestic (Irish) sale and a sale anywhere else, due to postage costs. However sales to each were pretty evenly matched in terms of volume and one ended up off-setting the other.

If I had my time over again though, I wouldn’t do it. First of all, there was no need; Mousetrapped appeared on Amazon.co.uk within a few days. (See my Timeline for specifics.) Second of all, it was a pain in the ass. I had to buy stock and envelopes, arrange hosting of site as WordPress.com doesn’t allow commerce of any kind, worry about things like customs forms and PayPal and drag the books to the post office twice a week. Having said that, selling like this did have its advantages. It was extremely helpful at the very beginning with cash flow, as money from these sales was depositing immediately in my PayPal account, and could be in my current account within three business days. I also sold a few copies to people who had read the e-book and wanted a signed print edition to keep. On balance, however, it was more trouble than it was worth and I don’t plan to continue it. So, if you want a signed edition of Mousetrapped for €12.99 including worldwide delivery, you’re going to have to order it from here before September 30th.

Well…?

What do you think? Is it what you expected? If not, is it better or worse?

And is this the longest blog post you’ve ever seen in your life?

Let me know in the comments below or join me in about half an hour for – dum, dum, DUM! – my sales figures.

CLICK HERE TO READ PART II: HOW MANY DID I SELL?

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