publishing – Page 17 – Teel McClanahan

Numbers for May, 2010, including PHXComicon

May was an interesting month. Technically, May 2010 is my best sales month, ever. For art, for books, the best, ever. Which is awesome. Before I get to the awesome parts, here’s the normal stuff, the (mostly-) free: In May I sold 1 copy of Dragons’ Truth for kindle, netting $2.28. As I mentioned a couple months ago, I put up a Smashwords coupon code so people can get Cheating, Death for free (instead of direct links to download the eBook files, which I have for all my other free eBooks). In May 2 people took advantage of that. I’ll detail paper book sales later.

Here are the eBook and Podiobook download numbers (including above eBooks estimates), as usual giving the total of eBook downloads, the total of Podiobook downloads, and the more-accurate (re: # of people who dl’d a full book) total downloads of the final episodes of each Podiobook, as: eBook/total-PB/final-PB

Lost and Not Found: 65 / 1342 / 61
Dragons’ Truth: 133 / 934 / 102
Forget What You Can’t Remember: 102 / 3032 / 90
Untrue Tales… Book One: 91 / 3771 / 332
Untrue Tales… Book Two: 89 / 3493 / 247
Untrue Tales… Book Three: 93 / 1841 / 159
Cheating, Death: 2 / 3176 / 229
Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / 909 / 89
Total for all titles: 575 / 17,589 / 1,220
Total YTD: 2,595 / 109,990 / 7,800
Total all-time: 11,017 / 290,091 / 18,919

What this looks like, in case you didn’t just look at April’s numbers, is a slight drop in dl rates of most of the Podiobooks and a slight increase in most of the dl rates of the eBooks. The Untrue Tales… Book One & Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut Podiobooks held steady, and the Lost and Not Found eBook dropped off. I can guess the latter is because the Director’s Cut is quite visible on modernevil.com, and is new on Podiobooks.com. It also looks like I’ve probably (in the last couple days) passed the 30,000 downloads point (across eBooks & “finished” Podiobooks, for 8+ distinct books), which is a nice-looking round number. I’ll probably also pass 300,000 Podiobooks episodes downloaded some time this month. Not anywhere near Scott Sigler’s numbers, or Nathan Lowell’s, but numbers I’m pretty happy with.

I have a new Podiobook launching in a couple of days; the short story collection More Lost Memories, which has been out a year and a half in paperback and all but one story of which has already run on the Modern Evil Podcast. It’ll run for the next couple of months and then I’ll start running the audio version of Time, emiT, and Time Again there. (TeaTA begins on MEPod in 3 weeks.) Each new Podiobook means the “Total all-time” numbers just go up faster and faster, both simply because there are more episodes to be downloaded, but also because (generally) people who try one are likely to try all the others, and the more they like them the more likely they are to share them.

Moving on to actual sales: First, you already know about the great success I had with my first attempt at a Kickstarter fundraiser. The fundraiser ended (and the pledges were transfered to me) on May 15th. The big pledge is $500 and I’m counting it as art sales (since the $500 reward level included ‘everything below’ and a single piece of original art, and the ‘everything below’ reward level was much lower at only $150). I’ve never made $500+ in art sales in a single month. (Even if you want to only count $350 toward art, since the other rewards are all related to the book, I haven’t made $350+ in art sales in a single month since moving back to Phoenix in ’04. (My records for sales in Pine are … effectively non-existent.)) Best art sales month, ever.

My other two backers pledged $15 each for copies of the TeaTA paperback & a chapbook & eBook. That’s $30 for 2 (or six, if you want to count them that way) books.

Also in May (last weekend) was the Phoenix Comicon 2010, at which I was a ‘Small Press’ exhibitor. I had all my books with me, prominently breaking them up into genres (heh) of ‘Science Fiction’, ‘Fantasy’, ‘Horror’, and ‘Poetry’ (in the back corner). I also had the little zombie I’d crocheted, priced at $55, as a sort of mascot to sit next to the stacks of Cheating, Death. The zombie sold Saturday, along with a copy of the book, which was awesome. (The zombie sale counts as art, bring the total art sales for May to $555, by the way.) Here are my total sales (all paperback, except where noted):

Lost and Not Found: 0 / $0
Dragons’ Truth: 4 / $49
Dragons’ Truth MP3 CD: 1 / $13
Forget What You Can’t Remember: 5 / $70
More Lost Memories: 0 / $0
MLM/Pay Attention chapbook: 1 / $2
Untrue Tales… Book One: 1 / $12
Untrue Tales… Book Two: 0 / $0
Untrue Tales… Book Three: 0 / $0
Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 (combined): 8 / $200
Cheating, Death: 6 (plus 2 given away, 1 to Wil Wheaton) / $55
Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 1 / $10
Total Comicon book sales: 27 / $411

I have never had $411 in book sales in a single month before. Actually, with the sale of another copy of LaNF-DC prior to Comicon, the TeaTA sales, wholesale sales of 3 books (2 Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 (combined) & 1 Cheating, Death; $14.82 total net) and eBook sales, my total book sales for the month were $468.10. Best book sales month, ever, and it compares pretty favorably with the total book sales I reported on this blog for the whole of 2009 ($503.39). I suppose I’d better sign up for a table at the 2011 Phoenix Comicon.

Two very successful projects came to fruition in May, and they pretty fairly secure profitability for Modern Evil Press for the remainder of the year, barring unforeseen expenses (or, if/when I return to the Art Walk this Fall, even worse sales than before). More importantly, they give me hope for the ongoing financial viability of Modern Evil Press. Thirty-four books doesn’t come close to the sales volume most other authors and publishers would consider “successful” for a month’s work. It does exceed the goal I set last time I bothered trying to set a sales goal; that if I could sell at least one thing per day, on average, Modern Evil Press would be financially viable, and more than successful. Since I’m not planning on doing any in-person sales for the next 3-4 months, I expect much lower sales numbers for a while. Still, I believe I’m on the right track, and things are looking good.

Book giveaway for Time, emiT, and Time Again

As you’ve seen, the fundraiser for publishing Time, emiT, and Time Again was successful. My most generous backer also had an excellent seed of an idea for a new story, so I’m mulling that around and developing an entire world from it for some small glimpse of the idea to be shown through my words. (That ended up being an awkward sentence…) I’ve painted the cover image. I’ve done most of the edits for all the (as-yet-written) stories, put them together and sent them to my Beta Readers. (We’ll see how many send anything back… If you’d like to offer your assistance & haven’t already received a copy, please just ask and I’ll be glad to add you as a Beta Reader.) I’ve assigned ISBNs for the print and eBook editions of the book. I’ve added the book over at Goodreads.com, and as of today, I’m doing a giveaway there.

Enter for your chance to win one of nine (9) copies of Time, emiT, and Time Again.

In order to do that, I had to set a publication date. I usually play by ear and… well, I haven’t written the final story yet, so there’s got to be some flexibility there, but this time I’m trying to do things with a bit more than the usual padding. So the ‘official’ publication date is June 30, 2010. Which is when the contest at Goodreads ends. Enter today!

Continue reading Book giveaway for Time, emiT, and Time Again

last day to pledge

Today is the last day to pledge toward my Kickstarter fundraiser for the creation and publication of Time, emiT, and Time Again. If you have been waiting to pledge, wait no longer. Time is running out!

In about 20 hours, the widget here will change from counting down the hours to saying I was “successful.” Which is awesome. For an attempt to try to raise funds to cover publishing costs by selling art, it has been a success. As you may already know, if you have looked at this kickstarter project’s progress at any time in the last 44 days, I actually surpassed my funding goal on day 1. I had two pledges on the first day, one for the “signed paperback, plus” level, at $15, and one for the “painting and everything else” level – at $500. Then last night my sister pledged another $15 – which I appreciate; she’s certainly my most loyal and supportive reader, always helping with editing and then buying the books she’s already read anyway. She has a full collection of every book I’ve published.

What I find troubling/frustrating is that in the time from the first day to the last, my project received no other pledges. I recognize that this may be, in part, because when they went to the page it said I’d already surpassed my $300 funding goal, having $515 in pledges from day one. I further recognize that it means that only 3 people (so far) considered this to be a good way to pre-order this book, and support the project. Maybe I didn’t sell it well enough. Maybe people aren’t interested in time/love stories, sci-fi stories, or it’s the “short stories and essays” part that’s throwing them off. I don’t know. But I tried.

My furthest-reaching campaign was via podcast. I created an ad and had it inserted into 5 of my audiobooks over at Podiobooks.com. I realize it was a little long, at a full minute, and that the same ad played before every single episode of each book, so that some people may have gotten into the habit of skipping past it… I’m going to work on refining my advertising attempts in the future, I assure you. (Literally days after I submitted my ad plan to Evo, he sent out guides to the entire PB authors community explaining how to do better than I did – not mentioning me, just … basically, it felt like a response, addressing a laundry list of things I did “wrong”.) Still, the ad was attached to somewhere in the neighborhood of 19k+ episodes of my books. At a minimum (if there was 100% overlap of readers between books) around 475 people downloaded at least one episode with the ad, based on the stats I have, and perhaps more than 1650 listeners heard it. On my own podcast, the promo itself was downloaded another 50 or 60 times by itself, and I’ve mentioned it in four or five other episodes, to try to remind my readers about it. Now, since the first 2 pledges came before the ad started running, and the other pledge was from my sister, I know that advertising this on my podcasts has had a 0% response rate.

Hundreds of people visited this blog, over a thousand people follow me on twitter, I have another couple hundred ‘friends’ on facebook, and I’ve tried not to mention the fundraiser too often but I’ve certainly mentioned it plenty of times in the last 6 weeks. The backer that wasn’t my sister (and wasn’t for the painting – that guy is a patron who funds lots of kickstarter projects) came from someone who saw it on Facebook, so that was semi-successful. But blogging, twittering, podcasting, talking about it at parties to my longtime friends, and the rest of it seems to have drawn no interest.

I don’t know what else to do that I can afford to do. Yes, it was “successful” in that I reached the goal amount and will be able to print the book without going further into debt. Yes, this book will be profitable before the first copy is printed and sold, and will continue to be profitable just about forever (because while I’m not great at business, I at least know how to subtract). Yes, that’s wonderful and I’m grateful, and I’m looking forward to being able to continue using the sell-art-to-publish-books model in the future. I think it’s great.

Still, I wish I had a broader (paying) readership. People who were so looking forward to my next book that they’d be willing to pay $15 for a signed copy (or $1 for the eBook! Seriously!). I’ve had at least 6100 people download at least one of my eBooks or audiobooks (and perhaps as many as 28,000 people) in the last couple years. I know those aren’t “big” numbers, those certainly aren’t “big publishing” numbers, but if 1% of 6100 people had been willing to pay $15 for my next book I’d have had triple the amount currently pledged and could publish my next few books without worry. If one-tenth of one percent of 6100 people had pledged, I’d have had twice as many pledges as I do now.

It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that people just aren’t interested in reading (or paying for) the books I’m authoring.

I suppose I’ll just have to keep working on it. Keep trying to be a better and better author. Keep trying to find new readers and new listeners, hopefully some who can afford to pay a few dollars a year to buy my books. Keep coming up with effective ways to keep profitable if/when that doesn’t happen. Persevere.

Numbers for April, 2010

I don’t yet have final numbers from Amazon re: kindle eBook sales, but as of yesterday afternoon (ie: a few hours from the end of the month) I had sold two copies of Cheating, Death for a net of ~$3.50 (ignoring that someone bought & returned a copy of the Lost and Not Found eBook – how/why do you return an eBook? Seriously?). No sales via Smashwords (though apparently it can take several months to get numbers from sales through their distribution channels (ie: B&N, Sony, Kobo, Apple), so I may have made sales in the last several months of which I am unaware), no wholesale paperback sales. Sold 1 paperback copy of Dragons’ Truth directly (via modernevil.com) yesterday, for $12.99. Sold no art. Total income from sales for the period was thus $16.49 (on a cash basis).

Lost and Not Found: 81 / 1488 / 71
Dragons’ Truth: 90 / 1149 / 111
Forget What You Can’t Remember: 96 / 3029 / 90
Untrue Tales… Book One: 69 / 3961 / 354
Untrue Tales… Book Two: 60 / 4241 / 327
Untrue Tales… Book Three: 70 / 2320 / 214
Cheating, Death: 2 / 4042 / 304
Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / 806 / 97
Total for all titles: 468 / 20,230 / 1471
Total YTD: 2020 / 92,401 / 6580
Total all-time: 10,442 / 272,502 / 17,699

Starting late in the month, I put a code to download Cheating, Death for free from Smashwords on its eBook page at modernevil.com – for my other books, I’ve downloaded or created the various free versions of the eBook and put them right on the page, which is where the above download numbers come from; this is an experiment to see if people will go through the extra couple of steps to get the book from Smashwords for free. So far: no. None. Maybe next month. LaNF:DC eBook is still pay-only.

multiplatform release of Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut

Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut. Today was a big day for this book. I received my initial order of paperback copies (50 copies, seen at right, click = big) from my printer, Amazon got it online with full Search Inside / Look Inside, and it went live as a complete audiobook at Podiobooks.com. It’s been available for several months as an eBook from Smashwords (which distributes it along with my other eBooks to the eBook stores of Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, and now Apple’s iBookstore), and I already ran it on the Modern Evil Podcast. It got its first book blogger “review” (admittedly from my wife) last night.

I’m sending a copy or two of the paperback to the patron-of-the-arts who purchased the painting I created for its cover. I’m sending a copy to the Library of Congress. (I might supposed to be sending 3…? But my actual paperwork just asks for one.) I’d love to send YOU a copy for review (in your preferred format, paperback, eBook, or audiobook) if you’d be interested in reading and reviewing it. Book bloggers are preferred, but if you’ll review it on Amazon & Smashwords I’d be glad to provide a copy of the eBook to just about anyone. If you’re a fan of audiobooks, you can get it right now for free from Podiobooks.com – I’d appreciate a review there and, if you can take the few minutes to copy/paste it, on the iTunes Music Store as well.

Go here for more information about Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut. (Updated just now.)

Comment here, or email me at teel@modernevil.com, or send me a request on twitter @modernevil, and I’ll get you a copy.