It's almost the end of 2011, which means that 2012 is right around the corner, which means the ancient Mayans are going to come back from the dead and eat us all. That's how the prophecy goes, right?
Anyway, instead of doing a rambling post about this past year, I thought I would just share my e-book numbers for the year, split up by each month. I find it's interesting stuff, looking at the progression (I'm a nerd like that). Granted, these past two months have been great for sales, which no doubt is thanks to the holidays.
(Note that I'm also not including the free downloads for The Silver Ring and In the Land of the Blind, which number over 30,000. Also note that these are for Kindle and Nook; Sony and iBooks and Smashwords only gave me a handful more, but wasn't worth my time adding up for each month as Smashwords' spreadsheets can be tricky. Also note the bump in sales come June; that was after The Silver Ring finished its free promotion and, surprisingly, kept selling like hotcakes. And finally, note that there are still two full days left in December, so the numbers listed are as of right now.)
- January: 13
- February: 13
- March: 81
- April: 232
- May: 793
- June: 1,858
- July: 1,054
- August: 1,272
- September: 1,166
- October: 1,244
- November: 1,661
- December: 2,102
For the year, I've sold nearly 11,500 e-books. My bestsellers were, hands down, The Serial Killer's Wife (3,175) and The Calling (3,663). My best 99 center, besides The Silver Ring (2,534), was Spooky Nook (671), which really picked up there near the end of the year.
What can we learn from this?
Who knows.
People have told me that the e-book bubble will burst soon, and maybe it will, though I don't think so. It's clear that e-books is where the future of publishing is headed. Print books will always be around, but e-books will definitely begin to dominate the marketplace. And of course, in terms of sales, what goes up must come down ... and eventually (hopefully) go back up. I have more books that I plan to release this year (about five or six), and if I've learned one thing this past year, it's the more books, the better.
Actually, let me rephrase that.
The more quality books, the better.
Great cover art, great product description -- they're both very important, but if you don't have a quality book to sell, readers will quickly sniff it out and sales will drop.
So will my sales progress throughout 2012? I certainly hope so. But there's really no way of telling.
The only thing I can say for sure is that 2011 was a pretty good year.
Here's hoping 2012 will be even better.