Today marks six months since my very first book, The Anne Boleyn Collection, went live on Amazon.com and what an amazing six months it has been. I wanted to share my story with you to inspire you and to show you what can be done with some hard work and perseverance.
First, let me tell you a little about myself and my book projects…
I’m a non-fiction writer and my two books, published in February and April 2012, are both about Queen Anne Boleyn. I’m writing, therefore, for a very niche market. I’m also not an academic historian, I’m a researcher and blogger. I’m unique in the history world in my style of writing, I believe, because I present real history, based on the primary sources, but in a conversational style; that means I’m writing for a niche within a niche. I’m not writing for the masses, my target market is actually quite small when compared, for example, to thriller authors or romance authors.
I didn’t even bother taking my two book projects to a publisher because I knew that they would be deemed as “not commercially viable”, I just decided on self-publishing. Small niche, unknown author, not an academic historian… It was all bad news, but the good news was that I had been blogging for three years and my website had become known in the online Tudor history world. I therefore had a platform, a following who should, hopefully, be interested in my published work. It was all a complete unknown, though, and I had no clue how my first book would be received, particularly as it was a collection of blog articles (re-worked and with some new material added).
I decided to aim for sales of 100 per month and 1000 for my first year. I felt that these targets were realistic and do-able.
I’m now going to share my progress. Here are my monthly sales figures rounded to the nearest hundred and not including borrows or free downloads, just hard sales.
February
The Anne Boleyn Collection went live for sale as a Kindle edition on 17th February and as a paperback a few days later.
Number of titles: 1
Price: $2.99 Kindle, $12.99 paperback
Sales: 600
March
Number of titles: 1
Price: $2.99 Kindle, $12.99 paperback
Sales: 2400
April
My second book, The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown, went live for sale on Amazon on 27th April 2012 so was only for sale for 4 days of this month.
Number of titles: 2
Price: Both $2.99 Kindle, $12.99 and $11.99 paperback
Sales: 1400
May
Number of titles: 2
Price: Both $2.99 Kindle, $12.99 and $11.99 paperback
Sales: 4500
June
Number of titles: 2
Price: Both $2.99 Kindle, $12.99 and $11.99 paperback
Sales: 4000
July
On 27th July my third title, Interviews with Indie Authors: Top Tips from Successful Self-Published Authors, went live on Amazon, but Tim and I didn’t launch it until 31st July.
Number of titles: 3
Price: All $2.99 Kindle, one at $12.99, one at $11.99 and the other at $10.07 paperback – The Fall of Anne Boleyn was reduced to $10.07 from $11.99 by Amazon due to price matching.
Sales: 2900
Sales up to 16th August 2012
Number of titles: 3
Price: 2 at $2.99 and one reduced to $0.99 as a special Amazon Kindle promotion. Paperback – one at $12.99, one at $11.99 and the other at $10.07.
Sales: 1st August to 16th August: 5100
6 Months Grand Total
20,900 sales, not including free downloads or borrows.
My Anne Boleyn books have also been No. 1 best-sellers in their genre.
My Thoughts
Well, I know that I don’t compare to the likes of Bella Andre and CJ Lyons who are selling over a hundred thousand books per month, but am I happy with 20,900? Of course I am. My target was 1000 in my first year and I’ve sold nearly 21,000 in six months, so I am ecstatic! Over the moon! Bouncing off the wall and ceiling!
But it’s not just about sales, I’m also loving hearing from readers on a daily basis. It makes my day to receive an email from someone thanking me for my work. It’s an amazing feeling to know that your book is out there and being enjoyed.
What’s My Secret?
As I have said before, I don’t have a secret, a magic recipe or a quick fix to share with you, but here is what I did:
- I blogged regularly – Over the past three years, I have blogged at least three times a week on my Tudor history blog. The accidental outcome of this was that I built a platform, a following who enjoyed my writing.
- I built a list – I offered freebies to people who subscribed to my website and so had a list of emails to send news of my books to.
- I used social media to share my blog posts, to communicate with people and to spread news – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Goodreads etc.
- I wrote quality books – I wrote the books I knew that my followers would want to read and I got them professionally copy-edited and hired a graphic artist for the covers.
- I made my books available on Amazon – Amazon is the giant in the book retail world so I listed my books on Amazon. I actually published them via CreateSpace and Amazon KDP.
- I marketed my books – I blogged about them, shared release information via social media, added them to book sites such as Goodreads, LibraryThing etc., I made use of KDP select to run free promotions, I did competitions and giveaways, I did virtual book tours on Tudor history blogs… You name it!
- I communicated with my readers and potential readers – I answered emails from readers, I replied to comments on my blog, I replied to tweets and posts etc. I engaged with my readers.
- I built relationships with other bloggers and authors in the Tudor history world – By the time I released my first book, I had lots of friends and contacts who were more than happy to spread the news about my book.
- I kept writing and publishing!
- I kept my integrity – I didn’t spam people and I didn’t leave fake reviews on my books. I believe that we reap what we sow.
- I treated my writing and publishing as a business – I re-invested some of the royalties I earned in my business by spending money on advertising on book sites.
- I learned from other authors and read books on self-publishing, writing and marketing.
- I gave – I gave free information, I did free promos, I did giveaways and I was giving of my time and information. I love answering people’s questions and giving people advice.
- Pricing – I chose to price my books low to give readers a great deal and also to encourage people to take a chance on me. My books took a few years of research, a lot of hard work and I also spent money on the cover designs and editing, but an author cannot expect readers to shoulder this cost.
In short, I worked hard.
There is no short-cut to success and self-publishing is certainly not a “get rich quick” scheme, but you can succeed if you are willing to work hard, learn from your mistakes, learn from others and help others. It’s a steep learning curve and I learn something new every day. I don’t know what’s round the corner for me, but the last six months have been amazing and I am continuing to work hard on my writing. If I can make a success of this, then you can, and I hope that my experience and the figures I have shared here will motivate and inspire you.
You can find out more about me and my books on my Amazon Author page – Claire Ridgway Author – and please do check out my other blog posts here and also the resources section.
If you have a self-publishing success story you want to share then please contact me via our Contact page.
I’m a writer. ( period/full stop). That’s a statement, it’s what I do for a living, but actually it’s more than a career or job, it’s a way of life and I never stop learning. Successful writers, or those who want to be successful, need to look at what they do as a living and breathing ‘thing’, as something that needs nurturing, feeding and improving on a regular basis.
According to a BBC News report, “For every 100 print books sold through the site, Amazon said it sold 114 titles for its Kindle e-reader device” and the average Kindle owner is buying four times more books than they did before they bought their Kindle device.
I’ve just been reading an excellent blog post by a fellow author about reader responsibilities. She believes that just as authors have the responsibility to write a quality book, readers have the responsibility to:
Journalist Nick Cohen writes of how Leather boasted at the recent “Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival” that he uses false identities to create buzz when his books are first released. Cohen quotes Leather as saying, “As soon as my book is out I’m on Facebook and Twitter several times a day talking about it. I’ll go on to several forums, the well-known forums, and post there under my name and under various other names and various other characters. You build up this whole network of characters who talk about your books and sometimes have conversations with yourself.” He goes on to accuse Leather of creating “sockpuppet” Twitter accounts in the names of authors who have criticised his books to undermine them and bully them.
