Seventh Monthiversary: Latest Book Sales Figures!

[rowyn]

These are the sale figures for my polyamorous fantasy romance novel, A Rational Arrangement. (Buy it here! Amazon ~ Kobo ~ Nook ~ iBooks ~ Print).

Sales Graph from June 24, 2015 through January 28, 2015.



(This graph is only Amazon Kindle sales, because only Amazon breaks out sales by day. I generated it in Excel, though, since Amazon will only generate a graph for the last three months or less.)

Total Sales:

Pre-launch: 36
1st Month: 507
2nd Month: 292
3rd Month: 146
4th Month: 68
5th Month: 75
6th Month: 37
7th Month: 38
Total through 1/28/2016: 1199

Average unit sales:
1st Month: 16.9
2nd Month: 9.4
3rd Month: 4.9
4th Month: 2.3
5th Month: 2.4
6th Month: 1.2
7th Month: 1.2

So the good news: sales has held steady for two months! At a non-zero number!

The bad news: Sales has also held steady for the last week, at exactly 0. Whoops.

But there's more good news! I'm releasing Further Arrangements next week! Typically a new book in a series will increase sales of the previous books, so this may perk up A Rational Arrangement's sales.

RA was priced at $4.99 for about ten days of the latest period, and then at $5.99 for the remainder. I plan to put it on sale again for the launch of Further Arrangements, perhaps even as low as $2.99. That will probably also increase unit sales.

I also noticed that Amazon doesn't show RA categorized as fantasy any more. It's now in "Bisexual romance" (I don't think this category existed when I first launched -- I think it was all "LGBT") and "mulitcultural/interracial romance". "Interracial" is technically true and I remember checking that box, but I think "romance -> fantasy" is more to the point. The presence of greatcats and Blessings has much more impact on the narrative than the difference in races. I may fiddle with the keywords to see if I can get it lumped back into romance -> fantasy.

In milestones: A Rational Arrangement got its first one star review! Which was basically "I thought this would be a fantasy novel, not gay romance". Okay then. I don't mind that it picked up a one-star review, but I am a bit sad that it's likely to be the most recent review when Further Arrangements goes live. If anyone out there has read A Rational Arrangement and liked it but not reviewed it on Amazon yet, now would be a lovely time to drop in a review. c_c

In better milestones: A Rational Arrangement has now earned enough in royalties to qualify me for membership in the Author's Guild! I don't plan to join the Author's Guild currently; I find membership in SFWA useful and informative, but a lot of that is because it's got genre-specific resources and advice. I may someday join Romance Writers of America for similar reasons, but the Author's Guild doesn't hold that attraction for me.

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

As long as they don't come and break your kneecaps.

[rowyn]

Fortunately, no state-enforced guild monopoly for them! :)

[elbren]

one star reviews that are partially accurate are super helpful!
I read lots of books with one-star reviews that say "ugh. too much *whatever*" and I'm like "yay! *whatever*!"
the other reviews will balance out the inaccuracies.

[rowyn]

Hee! Yeah, I have this one awesome 2-star review that starts: "The author is talented and inventive. The author sells bisexual fantasies with explicit homosexual content. If that is what you are looking for, this is pretty well done", which is like, wow, best 2-star review EVAR. :D

People keep asking me why I don't put a "contains explicit gay sex" warning on it, and all I can think is "If I put 'contains explicit gay sex' in the blurb, I'm gonna get 2-star reviews that say 'Does not contain enough gay sex' and 'has too much icky straight sex' or whatever."

Also, I feel silly warning about the three gay sex scenes when I don't warn about the 1 torture scene, which I can't warn people about because SPOILERS. Sigh. It'd be cool if Amazon let you put in content notes that people had to click on to reveal. -_-

[aedifica]

Woo! Do you know which day you plan to release Further Arrangements? If you release it Tuesday, I can read it after my root canal! :-) (I expect you to release it whatever day works best for you, I'm just hoping that that works out to be Tuesday. I'll buy it no matter what day, though!)

[rowyn]

I do plan to release it Tuesday! I am sorry you need a root canal, but I hope the new book will make your day a little brighter. :)

[aedifica]

Ooh! Oh, yay!

[tagryn]

OK, turns out I hadn't reviewed ARA before, so I did so.

Squick level is so individual that its a hard thing to argue about. I'm a hetero male who's been reading in the scifi/fantasy genre, including my fair share of graphic-graphic novels, fanfic, etc., for decades (not too much romance, though). so I think its hard to shock me with something I haven't run across in some version previously...and when I encounter something I'm also better at recognizing sooner when its probably not my thing, and either moving on to something more enjoyable, or just browsing through it until we get back to whatever attracted me to it in the first place. I mean, if ARA were a hardcore m/m, my reaction would have been "well, OK, I can appreciate the craft, but not really what I'm interested in" (as another example, I have friends who love yaoi, but it does nothing for me)...but that's not the vibe I got from ARA. The core of it is more about the relationships between the characters and what I think haikujaguar noted as "emotional intimacy" in her post a week or so back, at least for me. Its also why I enjoyed her Kerishdhar books so much.

[rowyn]

*nods* Emotional intimacy and connection is the main thing I look for in a romance. I almost didn't include sex in ARA; it's there in large part because all the romance novels I've read that were written in the last 10 years have explicit sex, so it seemed de rigeur. (Apparently there's a specific sex-free subgenre now, though. I just haven't happened across anything in it.) Also because the sex scenes show things about the relationships that'd be hard to explain without them.

Also, thank you for the kind review! ♥