August 2011 Sales Update

August has been a nice time for me :) I started off red-hot, with sales almost everyday until the 14th. I attribute this in part to the late release of IH #5. People picked it up early August. So, ready to be wowed? ;)

My sales for August totaled 37... 148% of July!

Since I put my first book up for sale in February, I have sold 129 units. 28.68% of those were in August. My overall sales saw a 40.21% increase... not too shabby :)

I had no release this month and that hurt me. Normally I could expect around 8 sales around an IH release date from new readers and people on top of the series. Gonna have to suck up that loss :(

August has the new record for highest number of days with sales - 14/31 = 45.16%!! 11(!!) of those were on or before August 14th... which made the other 17 days of August VERY depressing :P Though, 8/37 sales (21.62%) were made in the other 3 dales of sales. Someone picked up the whole IH series so far on one day :)

August was a huge month for me because (ba da da daaaa!) I averaged 1.19 sales/day!!! Even though I only saw 14 days with sales, I had multiple sales per day :)

Smashwords accounted for 0% of my sales :( Barnes and Noble was a whopping 40.54% of my month's sales!!! That is huge, because if I only released (for example) for Kindle, I would have roughly half the sales I received! Amazon was 54.05% of sales, with Amazon UK 5.405% (How funny is that?)

Best-selling rank so far:
#1 - Cheat, 40
#2 - Liar, 24
#3 - Coward, 19
#4 - Thief, 17
#5 - Shackled, 15
#6 - Thug, 14

Onto conversions! Remember, I want at least 50% conversion, and I think 75% is great!

So, as follows:

Cheat - Liar; 40 - 24 (60%) July saw 51.61%, so that conversion rate has risen!

Liar - Coward; 24 - 19 (79.16%) Down from 81.25%. Still happy it's above the 75% mark.

Coward - Thief; 19 - 17 (89.47%) Down from 92.31%. It's hard to be unhappy about the drop when it's literally a difference of one sale.

Thief - Thug; 17 - 14 (82.35%) Up from 50% :). I mentioned last month "Thug" was slow on the uptake, so it's really started pulling it's weight more.

While my sales from episode to episode are something to be proud of, the overall conversion (from "Cheat" to the latest, "Thug") is 35%. The satisfied goal there is 50%, but I am above 25%, which makes me very grateful :)


Final Notes:
August was a rough month for me personally, but I am pleased with my sales results. If things... MANY things... hadn't popped up, I expect I'd be showing around 50 sales for the month! As it is, things happen and I am pleased with where I've gotten so far.

Maybe one day I will really be able to make a living at this :)

My July goals were 35/40/50 (achievable/happy/excitement). I met my achievable (YAY) and got about halfway to my happy goal :)

While the winter sales season will start to pick up, I am a bit worried about my own titles. After August 14th, I literally seemed to fall right off the face of the ebook planet. People forget my name or something? ;)

I'd like to set my goals, starting at 25% of my overall sales (129) but that is actually below 35! So, I have a lot of pessimism about September's sales (especially until I get another title available) but I want to do at least as well as last month...

So my goals are:
40 (achievable)
45 (happy)
50 (excitement)

How about you all? How are you doing? :)