Well, folks, here we are!
It’s been one month now since the official release of The Phoenix Fallacy: Book I. I’ve discussed in previous posts how opaque the book industry is as a whole, and I’d like to take this opportunity to perhaps clear up the picture, if only slightly. Whether this particular Phoenix fizzles or flies is yet to be seen, but in my ongoing efforts to illuminate a small corner of the business, I wanted to post my numbers from the first month of sales.
This is an odd practice, and I feel very odd doing it. I suspect one day these numbers will become nearly meaningless – sales will stop, level out, or explode – and in any case there won’t be much point in reporting them. I couldn’t tell you if I’ve saturated my market at this point, or if I’m just getting started. While I certainly hope it is the latter, as is the case in many endeavors, there are always plenty of people, projects, and plans that fall into the former. Time will tell, but without further ado, here we go:
The easy stats:
Amazon rank at time of this writing:
#2,298 in the Kindle store – a massive improvement from my previous posting
- #28 in Books > Children’s Books > Action & Adventure
- #28 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure
- #39 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > Adventure
I believe Amazon chooses the best numbers it can find for your book at the time and posts those. Obviously, moving ‘down’ a rank is great, but moving ‘up’ a category (Books > Children’s Books > Action & Adventure) is better. I have to admit I’m extremely happy with being #28 in the Children’s Action and Adventure right now. That placement will certainly fluctuate, and I can only hope I move up as time passes (and persuade as many people as possible to read my work with my marketing efforts).
Now for the more down and dirty stats:
I’ve sold 792 books total (net sales) at the time of this writing. Books sales are based on the formula:
Total Sold + Total Borrowed – Total Returns = Net Sales
with the borrowed copies being the two week period available to Amazon Prime members. For those that don’t know, Kindle books have a seven day return period, no questions asked. I’ve already had 13 returns, so many of you still have time to dump your copy if you purchased it more recently than last Thursday!
For the month of July, there were 771 net copies sold with the period ending on midnight July 31st. There is one point of uncertainty here. The Phoenix Fallacy went on sale right at the end of June, and several copies were sold during the time before July 1st. I believe these are rolled into my July sales, but I’m not entirely sure. I will try to verify at the end of this week, based on my weekly reports.
Weekly reports (net copies sold for the week ending):
June 29th: 4
July 6th: 96
July 13th: 48
July 20th: 135
July 27: 298
Total through July 27th: 581
That puts me at 211 copies sold this week so far (weeks end at midnight on Saturday). This means I’m averaging just about 42 copies a day (which is about par for last week), or 1.75 books an hour. To break under the #2,000 number in the Kindle store, I’m going to guess I need about 2-2.5 books an hour on average. To break into the top ten (based on the rumored number of 500 copies per day sold), I will need 21 books an hour.
Trends:
Interestingly, I haven’t noticed any particular hours of the day yet where books sales tend to accelerate or slow. I’ve woken up in the morning to find more books sold during the night than most of the afternoon or morning of the day before, and vice versa. That said, I have seen a pattern emerging that suggests weekdays (namely the middle of the week Tues-Thursday), are my best sales days. Friday so far appears to be the worst.
This could mean I will fall short of my previous best this week, but I can’t say for certain. Although book sales appear to be increasing overall, I think one of the largest factors has been the positive reviews (4.8 stars out of five!) the book has garnered so far. I could be very wrong about this, and I do believe that the sales are somewhat self sustaining. Moving up the sellers list adds visibility to the book – so every sale can actually make a huge difference. One sale might be the difference between the first page of results on Amazon and the next, especially at the volumes I’m dealing with.
Going forward, I don’t know how the sales will contract or expand on a weekly basis. Will it be like a wave, with each large group of purchasers providing a boost and then a dip while they read and evaluate the book? Is ultimate success driven by reviews, sales placement, word-of-mouth, or something completely different? What is the market size? Have I already saturated my reader base?
I really don’t know, but I’m looking forward to finding out, and I hope you are too! Thanks for all your support, and please keep sharing and reviewing the book (and do it honestly, no fake 5 stars here, no matter how much they help).
All the best,
Jon
