Transparency

So remember how I published a story via Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing? Well, I thought it would be fun to be transparent about this experience so that you can all see what it's like to do this.

The day I published "A Gunshot," from the time it went up on Amazon's servers until I went to bed (very) late that night, I managed to sell a grand total of... 13 copies. Thirteen copies of a $0.99 short story in one day. The next morning, one further copy sold. For the rest of that day and the entire subsequent day, not a single additional copy sold. Likewise so far today, prior to my post here.

This dip in what were already quite modest sales is, at least in part, attributable to my being away from my computer for most of the weekend and, therefore, not promoting the story as thoroughly as perhaps I should. But there is something in me that feels wrong about excessive self-promotion. As it is, on the day of the story's publication, I posted two Facebook updates, one Google+ update, and any number of tweets on Twitter, several of which were retweeted. This means, barring those people who have hidden me or filtered me out on these sites, I put my story in front of somewhere north of a thousand unique eyeballs, and only wound up with 14 sales over two days. This is... not ideal.

Now, do not get me wrong, I'm grateful for each of those fourteen sales. But as a test of this method of self-publishing, this would have to count as a failure to this point. In terms of financials, it technically costs me nothing to publish in this way, so I have already turned a profit—unlike for my book on Lulu, where I have yet to break even from associated costs of proofing, purchasing promo copies, and shipping. However, because my story's list price is only $0.99, my royalty is stuck at the 35% level rather than the 70% level that becomes an option at $2.99. SO, for those 14 sales, I have made $4.90 pre-tax, and this money will be available to me 60 days after the end of the month. Far from being a way to make a supplemental income, this scarcely qualifies as a "finding loose change in the couch"–level payday.

Where do I think this method falls down? Well, perhaps if I had a more sizable base than the ~500 or so Twitter followers, ~200 FB friends, and whichever unique people are left between Google+ and blog subscribers, I'd have found better luck. Certainly, I'm NO ONE, so it's not like I can trade on my name. I also have no official website, no ad buys—though, really, I doubt advertising would recoup its cost given the low revenue of my royalty—and no comparable pre-existing work to help speed things along. But I also think that these endeavors CAN take off even for such a low-profile person, provided they get adequate buzz and widespread sharing/retweeting/etc. I'm extremely grateful for those people who have shared a link to my story or retweeted me regarding this book. It's nice that people are willing to help. That said, out of all those Twitter followers, I had maybe six to eight people help spread the word. That's a pretty low rate-of-return considering how easy it is to reflexively click a button and retweet something, though I do understand it. People have all kinds of reasons for not sharing something; I myself sometimes skip retweeting others when I've said something funny/important that I want others to see. Anyway, perhaps greater engagement with my followers, or specifically asking the higher-profile ones for help, might have aided sales here in the early going.

There is still one trick up my sleeve. Tomorrow (Tuesday, Feb. 28th), I will be running a Free Story Day promotion. All day long, my story will be available to try for ABSOLUTELY ZERO DOLLARS to anyone with a Kindle or Kindle app. This has, for some people, been a great boon, as users are way more likely to download a free thing from an unknown author than to risk even a small sum on being disappointed by the same. Some Kindle authors have seen a tremendous boost from this method, as climbing the Kindle Top Free Books Chart increases your book's visibility and can lead to actual sales once the promotion ends. It's a gambit, but it seems a worthwhile one to try.

But if that free promotion doesn't work, I may give up on publishing via Kindle altogether. While Kindle is a low-risk distribution channel, considering that it's absolutely free to use, it has the significant drawback of being far more difficult to "design" for than, say, formatting a text document and creating a print-ready PDF. Kindle is more variable, and this variability across devices and apps makes it more difficult to ensure a consistent appearance for any document, let alone something more long-form than this simple short story. Similarly, the amount of HTML/CSS/XML I would need to learn and employ to adequately convert my book to this format would be staggering. Unless I thought there would be a significant profit potential, I'm not sure I'd complete that onerous task.

Anyway, that's an update on everything related to my experiment. As I said, I'm trying to be transparent about the whole thing... the sales, the profits, the emotions, and the ins-and-outs of trying something new. I'll probably come back and update you all on where things stand following Tuesday's FREE STORY DAY promo.