Modern Evil Press – Page 3

Numbers for Q4/2012

Again, I don’t feel like making a thorough posting of all the numbers – but if you’re interested, you’re welcome to email me and I’ll share them all with you. I have an exhausting number of numbers about my books. With regard to free downloads, Q4 was a big uptick over Q3 and for the audiobooks, a massive increase over Q4 last year – not so for eBooks, which had a major spike last fall due to a couple of inbound links. For the quarter I’m looking at a total of 142,888 podiobook episode downloads, from probably about 8.8k complete title downloads. There were also 3,582 free eBook downloads last quarter, which is more than Q3 but less than Q1, Q2, and less than half of Q4 of 2011.

My only new books in 2012 were Sophia and Emily. They were made available in hardback and eBooks in May, and as podiobooks in the last week of October. In eight months as both free and paid eBooks, they were downloaded a total of 333 times, combined. Of that, 21 copies of the Sophia eBook were purchased and 8 copies of the Emily eBook were purchased; they each had around 150 free downloads. In about 9 weeks on Podiobooks.com/iTunes, Sophia had a total of 19,702 episode downloads (probably about 681 complete copies) and Emily had a total of 16,005 episode downloads (probably about 591 complete copies). That’s 4x as many copies of the free audiobook downloaded in about 1/4 the time. Also interesting is that instead of a 20% to 50% attrition rate after the first episode (people who download 1 episode and no others), which is the range my other books tend to float in, Sophia and Emily are looking at attrition rates in the 66% to 75% range. Up to about three out of every four people who listen to the first 15 minutes of either book decide not to listen to a minute more. Still the complete-title download numbers are bigger than for all but a few of my oldest titles, so they’re off to a good start, even if they are reviled by most who give them a try.

(It occurs to me now what this may be: I wrote these books and designed the marketing around them to try to appeal to the greatest possible audience. I was aiming for something which would appeal to mainstream audiences, genre audiences, teen audiences, Christian audiences, et cetera. They’re relatively easy to describe, they’ve got great covers, and they’re some of my most readable text to date. I was trying to reach a wider audience. Anyway, what I’m thinking I might be seeing here is that the surface stuff, the cover, description/blurb, genre, et cetera is, in fact, reaching a wider audience than I normally reach. More people are trying it. But my books are still only appreciated by the same narrow audience I had, before, and the rest are rejecting it. The marketing works, but the books aren’t as mainstream/readable as I’d hoped. They’re just … more of what I always write. sigh.)

But you probably want to hear about money, right? Well, I seem to have forgotten to add up the numbers for the quarter separately for you, so here’s the numbers for the year: I sold 106 eBooks (down 20% from 2011) and my cut of those sales was $243.49 (down 9% from 2011), which means I sold fewer eBooks but made more money per eBook – and that with my steadily-dropping-eBooks-prices; people want to pay more for eBooks. I sold 71 physical books directly and 9 books wholesale via LSI (80 books is a 308% increase over 2011) and earned $1742.96 revenue (a 360% increase over 2011) from those sales. I also had 6 Podiobooks donations made to my books, with my cut totalling $31.10. Additionally I sold 22 pieces of art for $1,170 (although my records show $450 of that is still owed me, so it’s money earned in an accounting sense, but not in a “money in my account” way), most of it at discounts as deep as 90% off, to try to get rid of as much of my old stuff as possible. That comes to a total of $3187.55 revenue from [art + books].

That means this is the first year I made more from books than from art. It represents a 260% increase in book revenue, a 20% drop in art revenue, and a 143% overall increase over 2011’s [art + book] revenues. (2011 was an increase over 2010, and 2008-2010 were all in the $1.5k-$1.7k range) Since the beginning of 2008 (which is when I started doing this full time) I’ve earned $10,259.18 in revenue from [art + books], 31% of which is from 2012. My business was profitable (on paper) last year, but came out meaningfully ahead, this year. I’m way behind, over the course of the last 5 years (or the last 10+, if you want to go all the way back to when I started publishing & selling art), but as I said when I started doing this full time in 2008, I’m in this for the long haul. Grow a little at a time. Figuring out how to grow my profits without needing to grow my audience has been a big part of the last five years’ journey. According to my accounting software, at this rate I’ll actually have “retained earnings” some time in the next 3-5 years.

Of course, I don’t have an premium hardback limited edition book to try to sell at Phoenix Comicon, this year, which is where I made more than half of this year’s revenue (about 80% of my book revenue). At best I expect to have one new paperback. Maybe also paperback versions of Sophia and Emily if I catch an optimistic streak between now and April, but considering I’ve only moved 2 copies of the hardcover (and only earned $68 from the eBooks) in the last 7 months… probably not. Possibly a new anthology, but only if I get a whole mess of submissions in the next 60 days; I fully expect that project to drag on all year, maybe longer. The year should still be profitable, barring the purchase of a new computer, simply by keeping expenses within the realm of what I know my books actually earn.

One more point worth noting, which bubbled up out of the numbers: Putting some of my short stories up for free on iTunes and Smashwords for 60 days related directly to an increase in the number of free downloads of the corresponding (free) short story collections on my website, and via Podiobooks.com. Maybe they got one story for free and came to my site to get the rest. Wish they’d tried one for free and decided to spend money, too. Ah, well. Maybe they’ll like my stories enough to become fans, and will buy things later, right?

Now accepting submissions for an anthology

I’ve been thinking, off and on, about doing this for the last 6-18 months or so. I’ve just updated the Submission Rules page at modernevil.com though, so I guess I’m going to try to make this thing happen. With any luck, the 20th (or so) book I publish will be an anthology of mostly/all other people’s work. If the first one works out, and authors continue to submit, additional publications will follow.

My ideal would be for the anthology to include a short novel (20k to 45k words), one or two long short stories (7,500 to 20k words each), two to five short stories (1k to 7,500 words each), three to eight flash stories (under 1k words each), and a whole mess of very short things: six word stories, poetry, haiku, probably at least five and up to a couple dozen such very short works. (Actually, I’m open to longer (epic?) poetry, but it would fit into one of the other length categories.) This would bring the book to about 250-350 pages, and I could price it at about $12.99 for paper and audio versions and $6.99 for the eBook.

I’d eventually like to release it under Creative Commons and for free, but depending on the attitudes of the authors might compromise and not put out the free versions until everyone’s paid at least a little (i.e.: at the projected $1500 earned level). Philosophically, it just doesn’t make sense to me not to offer a free version for those who are either unable to pay or too unethical to pay. I’ve long-since lost my illusions about a free audio version bearing any relation to eventual paid purchases, or free eBooks being good marketing, except in the sense that some fraction of a percent of downloaders will become fans – and it’s a good thing that “as a good marketing technique” was never the reason I released my work for free.

“What genre of work are you looking for,” you may ask, “what theme?” Right now I haven’t specified one. If you’ve read my work and think I’d like to publish yours, submit it. “How should I format my submission? Double-spaced? Some specific font?” Look, if you know the standard formats, great, use them. If you don’t, just be sure your work is readable and in a universal format. Worst-case, I’ll copy/paste it into a new file and format it myself; I’d have to do that to publish it, anyway. If you send me unreadable, inaccessible garbage, keep in mind no one will publish you until you get that part figured out on your own.

I’m rambling, already? I’m not even 500 words into this post, and I’m rambling? I guess this is part of why I’m launching this project now: I’m taking some time off from writing my own stories to focus on some other projects (art, mainly, for now). I’d rather be reading and editing other people’s work, right now, than trying to write my own – at least until my mind gets a few of its current kinks worked out. Let me try to finish covering the bases of this project:

Why I can’t just pay authors up-front for their work: I don’t want to have the whole thing hanging on a successful Kickstarter, and paying $0.05/word makes a book-length anthology cost me around $3k-$5k. I don’t have $3k in my business to invest in that sort of gamble, right now, and I’ve never had a title earn more than even $1,500 in total revenue (before expenses!) so it would be a ridiculous risk to make such an investment. If the eBook/digital-audiobook earn enough to cover the setup costs (about $100) for a print version, I can afford to put up the money to have the first 50 copies printed (for direct sales, about a $400 investment). I could even then sell paper copies to the authors at cost, for them to hand-sell for their own profit (above and beyond the maybe-payouts of $0.05/word).

Unfortunately, even paying a paltry $0.01/word would cost me another $800-$1,500 (depending on lengths) … so as I’ve outlined on the Submissions page, I’m planning on paying authors as the anthology’s sales reach various earnings targets. If it earns $500, I can pay the novelist $0.01/word. If it reaches $1,500 I can pay everyone $0.01/word – and I’d still be up to $400 in the hole, myself, at that point. If it earns $3k I should be able to pay the short story authors the other $0.04/word their stories are worth, and if it reaches $5k I’d be able to pay the novelist their remaining $0.04/word. Now, for some people $5k in earnings for a title (about 1,000 copies, if I can price them to earn an average of $5/copy – I’m projecting $12.99/paper and $6.99/eBook) is easy to reach. For me, that’s more copies than all the copies of all the books/ebooks/shorts/audiobooks I’ve ever sold, put together, and it’s more money than all the revenue from all my combined book sales, as well.

So chances are, the novelist would never get their big payout. And the short story contributors probably won’t get their big payout either, and might never get paid at all. Heck, even the novelist might not get their initial payout, based on my past sales of short story collections.

On the other hand, with 12+ authors promoting the anthology, with their paychecks depending on it, perhaps it would do better than my own books do – I’m only one person, and I hate marketing and am uncomfortable with blatant promotion; imagine what a dozen or more people, some of whom might not be uncomfortable with promotion/marketing, could accomplish. Perhaps it’ll pass 1k sales quickly, and I’ll actually make some money in the end.

Realistically, unless this thing passes those big numbers (1k sales, over $5k earnings), this project represents a net “loss” of both time and money for me. I’m not doing it to make money for myself. I’m doing it because it’s something I think might be worth doing. Because it sounds interesting to me. Because I think it will be a good use of my time, even if it never earns me anything but grief. And because I’m me, I know that if the first one goes over those numbers, I won’t be taking money for myself – I’ll be reinvesting it. That’ll pay for advance payments to authors for the next release, and the next one.

So if you’ve a short story, or flash fiction, that you think I’d like, or you’ve read my stuff and think you can write something I’ll like, go ahead. Submit. Or if you wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo, and already have edited out the worst of it and found it to be too short, perhaps when you finish editing it you’ll have something the perfect length to submit as a short novel. Or perhaps you think you can write a particularly good six word story. Or you’re a poet. Or whatever. If you’ve read my work and think I’d like yours, submit it. Unless you’re just looking for a big payday; that may never happen. But a moderate one just might.

$0.99 eBook sale

I’ve just put six (or so) titles on sale for $0.99 apiece at all major eBook retailers. Find all the relevant links here. These are the titles I’ve had at $2.99 for most/all of this year which, as I stated recently, saw only diminishing sales at their reduced prices. Instead of simply continuing the experiment for the full year, I’ve decided to see whether somehow $0.99 is a “magic price” that, with a little more marketing, can transform my sales. The sale runs through the end of the year. (I reckon to catch those post-Christmas, new eReader, eBook buys, eh?) If sales volumes actually do anything interesting, I may extend the reduced prices indefinitely.

So: If you’ve been putting off buying my eBooks because $2.99 was just too much money, or if you downloaded them for free before but can spare a buck apiece for them, go buy them now. If you know people who you think might try a new author at a price like $0.99, please, send them my way. Tweet about it. Share it on Facebook.

This sale includes all of my most-popular titles (by sales volume), including both of my latest novels, Sophia and Emily, my zombie novel Cheating, Death and my zombie/christmas short story Last Christmas. It also includes my collection of hard SciFi short stories, Time, emiT, and Time Again – and for the duration of the sale I’ve also made the individually-available short stories from that collection free at select retailers. (i.e.: The ones that will let me make eBooks free.) Finally, it includes Yoshira Marbel’s poetry collection, Unspecified, and the Amazon Kindle Select “exclusive”, Untrue Tales… Book One.

DNGR, NaNo’12, timing

So, November arrived. I decided to start my NaNoWriMo efforts with the Death Noodle Glitterfairy Robot Saga novel I already had ~19k words written on. I’m not sure I care whether I actually hit 50k new words during the month; it depends on how quickly I’m able to finish this novel (tentatively titled Deep Noodling), and what else I decide to write during the month. I’m “cheating”, in that my “official” word count on the NaNo site includes the words I wrote back in June – though I am also keeping track (for myself) how many actually new words I’ve written each day. As of right now, in the early hours of day 4, I’m behind. I was meant to be at 5k new words by midnight, but I barely wrote anything yesterday (a bit after midnight last night), so I’m only at ~3774 new words. By the end of the day today I’m meant to be at 6,666 words – which means I need ~3k words, or about 4 hours of good effort. (just under 3 hours, if things go amazingly well) Weekends, I suspect, will not be good for my progress at writing. Too many other things to do, not to mention a wife not participating this year (since she’s doing much more important work), makes weekdays during the day -and late nights- the best times to get any work done. I’m hoping the coming week proves fruitful; it wouldn’t surprise me to be closing in on the end of Deep Noodling by this time next week. (It also wouldn’t surprise me to be coming back here to make a post about how poorly things had been going, and that I wasn’t expecting to do more than barely finish the thing by the end of the month. Depends on brain chemistry, et cetera.)

My latest thought on timing: If things go well, I may be able to adapt the schedule I drew up for creating the Tentacle Trilogy, but bumped up two or three months, to allow me to complete my research and do NaNoWriMo – aside from perhaps not being a skilled illustrator, and not ever having attempted to develop a game all the way to being print-ready, there was nothing too difficult about the timeline I developed, in and of itself. This would mean the books couldn’t be ready in time for PHXCC’13, but perhaps I could launch the Kickstarter for the whole thing just before Comicon, and direct the crowds there to the active fundraiser. Like, “Here’s what I have this year (looks like probably Never Let the Right One Go and Deep Noodling paperbacks), and if you want to see my latest project, you can pre-order it online now! Tentacles! Steampunk! Go!” And/Or somehow also accept funds/preorders in person, since people like spending their money at cons; the funds raised that way wouldn’t be reflected in the official fundraising total, but could certainly be reflected in the totals for the stretch goals.

Anyway, there’s ~500 words written which probably ought to have been invested in my novel. If you’re doing NaNoWriMo this year, good luck to you! If you’re eagerly anticipating my latest project, comment (or email me); I’m copy/pasting the DNGR novel into a Google Doc as I finish each chapter, so you can read it as I write it, if you like, I just need to know your Google-y email address, so I can give you permission.

Q3 Numbers, NaNoDecisions, and taking risks

Looking back, I see I didn’t make a proper numbers post for Q2, this year. This post is also a couple of weeks later than it ought to have been. Meh. Q2 looked a lot like Q1, except for a spike in Podiobooks downloads for the last few days of June. eBook downloads continued their gradual descent from the highs they’d hit after being linked to by some “free eBooks” listing sites last year. Q3 looks a bit odd, but in understandable ways.

For example, that spike in podiobook downloads coincides with the launch of Apple’s new Podcasts app for iOS – separating podcasts out of iTunes and improving visibility and ease of use for a lot of the people who wanted to listen to podcasts and podcast audio fiction. That spike actually turned out to be a new baseline level of downloads – until Podiobooks.com went down completely for a little while, torn apart by malicious, hacking spammers. All Podiobooks.com titles were de-listed from iTunes for a week or two while they rebuilt the site. When things were back online, many of my titles’ downloads continued at rates higher than they’d been prior to the launch of the standalone Podcasts app, but none of them were near the levels they were at before being temporarily de-listed, and some of them went right back down to their pre-Podcasts-app trickles. Oh, well. Easy come, easy go.

Without listing out all the totals of all the downloads for each title across multiple formats (I’ll gladly share the numbers with you if you’re interested, just ask me), here are some highlights: 124,867 total Podiobooks downloads (across all titles) for Q3, which compares favorably with ~35k in Q2, ~27k in Q1, and ~151k in all of 2011. The final episodes of the various books were downloaded a total of 9,015 times in Q3, so that’s probably the maximum number of new people who have heard an entire book, though if everyone who finished one of my books also downloaded all my other available titles it might have been as few as 693 different people downloading those 9k books – which is to say the number of new listeners my books found in Q3 via the Podiobooks feeds was somewhere in the range from 693 to 9,015. Not taking in to account things like repeated downloads or other errors, of course. Still, 124k downloads in Q3 represents fully 17% of the 731,086 total downloads (as of end-of-Q3’2012) I’ve had via Podiobooks.com over the years; hopefully the coming months will bring a steady flow of downloads and an increase in orders of the for-purchase versions of my stories. Podiobooks.com added up all the donations from all my titles for Q1 through Q3 into one payout, and my cut of the 2 donations came out to a total of $10.46; for the purposes of this post, we’ll consider them both to be Q3 donations.

eBooks did not see that dramatic up-tick. In fact, they saw the continued decline of downloads I’ve been witnessing since last fall. My eBooks were downloaded a total of 2,705 times in Q3, and only 11 of those were purchases. (This compares with 4,689/24 in Q2 and 4,992/36 in Q1.) Those purchases netted me $26.90, and the most popular title was Sophia. Alternatively, there were only 40 or 45 copies of Emily or Sophia (respectively) downloaded (in all of Q3) including the purchased and the free copies; aside from my own poetry, they are my least-popular free eBooks. (The Sophia Podiobook has been available for less than a week and has been downloaded my more than twice as many people as the eBook was downloaded in Q3. I am confident both eBooks would be downloaded more if I made them available in PDF.) Alternatively, I sold 2 Never Let the Right One Go hardbacks in Q3, earning $70. That makes a total of 15 “book sales” for Q3, earning $107.36.

Oh, and for those of you who haven’t put two and two together: Lowering prices, adjusting eBook prices down, down, down, hasn’t helped sales at all. I’ve been lowering my eBook prices the more copies they’ve sold and the more money they’ve earned, and my sales volume has gone right down with them. As an experiment, I’m thinking of putting my “floored” eBooks (those which have already earned out their expenses) “on sale” at $0.99 for November and December, rather than holding them at $2.99 for the remainder of the year, just to see what happens. Either way (barring some miraculous turn of events where my eBooks suddenly start selling thousands of copies a month at $0.99 apiece) I plan to raise all my prices back to reasonable and appropriate levels at the start of 2013, and to give up the the pricing experiment we began nearly a year ago. For the nth time (at least 3 major experiments I can recall, and several shorter or less-rigorous ones) I’ve shown that lowering my prices reduces my sales. (Not just less money, but fewer copies sold -by far- every time.) I don’t think I’ll be messing with prices in this way again any time soon. Lower prices is not, apparently, what my readers want. Continue reading Q3 Numbers, NaNoDecisions, and taking risks