A Rational Arrangement: Third Month Sales!

[rowyn]

It's been over three full months since the official launch of my polyamorous fantasy romance novel, A Rational Arrangement. (Buy it here! Amazon ~ Kobo ~ Nook ~ iBooks ~ Print).

So: sales data time!

I can no longer get Amazon to give me the full history in one handy chart! Here's most of it, from 7/1 to 9/28:


Total Sales:

Pre-launch: 36
1st Month: 507
2nd Month: 292
3rd Month: 146
Total through 9/28: 981

Average unit sales:
1st Month: 16.9
2nd Month: 9.4
3rd Month: 4.9

Sales continue to fall off by 40-50% a month. It's most of the way through the fourth month now, and that trend looks likely to continue in October. It's close enough to October 29 that I was tempted to wait and post months three & four at the same time. Then I realized I will probably be slow about posting month four too, so let's just get this one up. As always, the vast majority of RA's sales are from Amazon, though sales through Draft2Digital stayed flat at 6 copies so they've gone from 2% of sales to 4%. (Go non-Amazon bookstores! Provide some competition!) Despite the continuing drop, I remain pleased by overall sales and rather boggled that it hasn't fallen to zero yet. Not even for one day. O_o (Though that day is presumably coming, perhaps even this month.)

I've gone from checking on sales a few times a day (when it first came out) to checking a few times a week. Maybe my desire to check is tied to "whenever 5-10 copies have probably sold"?

I did nothing to affect sales in September, and have no plans for October, either. On November 6, I'll be putting the book on sale for $4.99; this timing is connected to events in the serial. I may buy some advertising at the same time, depending on whether or not Marketer Rowyn comes out from under the kitchen table.

In one last piece of sales news: RA didn't break 1000 units in September, but it did hit that milestone in the first week of October. \o/ SO EXCITED.

I'll close with a link for those interested in publishing numbers in general: Kameron Hurley's fascinating post on the average sales of published books.

Comments

[terrana.livejournal.com]

1000 people. Considering the general size of social groups, that means more people than you will ever personally know have bought your book.

[rowyn]

So weird.

Great!

But weird.

[archangelbeth]

*hi5s!*

[rowyn]

*hi5s!*
*fistbumps!*

[kunama-wolf.livejournal.com]

What is draft2digital? I don't see it in the list of places to buy that you post at the end of every chapter post...

[rowyn]

Ah! Draft2Digital is a distributor: they place books in various e-bookstores. In my case, they distribute to Kobo, iBooks, Nook, and Tolino (which is German bookstore that sells direct through their devices, so no web link). I could in theory get accounts at these places and upload RA to them directly, but D2D doesn't take a large cut and the sales in all the non-Amazon outlets combined don't amount to enough to be worth the hassle.

[medicmsh.livejournal.com]

Huzzah! Hopefully Marketer Rowyn gets these figures in her den under the kitchen table, as they certainly look like Good & Encouraging News!