Since I'm not marketing anything at the moment, I thought today would be a good time to wrap-up what went on with this year's marketing.
Obviously, with the day-job for the first five months, no marketing was accomplished. I sold 9 books January thru May, which is better than nothing but not by much. Once I 'retired' again, I got to work. Okay, so I didn't 'get to work' per se. I started doing stuff to see if I could generate some sales. Thus June and July were still pretty slow.
Here's how the last 7 months of 2024 played out...
June and July... I gave away 134 books and sold 4 for a whopping $9.42.
August went way better. I gave away 179 books and sold 13.01, pulling in $13.29 for that one month.
September wasn't that great. I gave away 169, but only sold 7.51 and made $6.21.
October was a bust for actually making money, but I moved a lot of books. 247 given away, but only 2.56 sold for $3.89. November was pretty much the same - loads moved but less than $3 earned.
December, on the other hand, has been better. I gave away more books - a whopping 284, as a matter of fact - but I'm seeing pages reads and purchases from my previous marketing efforts. Of course, it's not much in the scheme of things and the actual sales side. I've sold about 12 books for just under $18.
All in all, I've sold almost twice as many books this year as last year for nearly three times as much money. Woot. Okay, so the money didn't even reach $100, but you have to take whatever wins comes your way sometimes, eh?
And all of that without spending a dime on advertising, which makes it all pure profit. Woot. Sure, I gave away 1250 books in 2024. Of course that hurts my capitalist heart. But sometimes you have to give a little to get a little.
I don't know what this next year will bring with regard to sales and marketing. More of the same? Keep whipping out the freebies and pimping the books in FB posts, plus some paid ads? Time will tell. I also hope to publish more books and get those sales going again. To that end, I'm getting closer to having the second Duke Noble book published by the end of January / early February. Then I'll work on the third. Or maybe I'll take a break and work on the next Shroudlands book. We'll see.
Anyway, I hope you found this post interesting. If you have any questions about the actual marketing, feel free to ask. Or if you're not sure about asking, search the blog for the term 'marketing' and read all the posts I've done on that subject.
Have a great day. And remember... START TODAY.
I feel your frustration! Getting a new book out will help. And hopefully, people who grabbed all those books--either free or through KU will result in future sales in your various series and KU page reads! My sales have averaged about $20 a month from the 'Zon with $3-400 quarterly sales from HQN, and anywhere from $2 to $20 a month from D2D.
ReplyDeleteHopefully, the economy will rebound and since both of us had something of a writing hiatus, we'll start to get our names and "wares" out into the public square again. I can't not write so I'll keep doing it despite the odds.
Here's cheering for a more profitable 2025 for us all!