publishing – Page 19 – Teel McClanahan

Jan/Feb numbers – eBooks, podcasts, money

I had intended to make a post in the first week or so of February with the numbers for January, but somehow kept putting it off until February was nearly over. Last night I managed to notice it was a new month within only a couple of days of its start, and put together most of the numbers, even tweeting some of them. But Twitter isn’t the place for a lot of information to be displayed, so here’s a post. Podiobooks are difficult to gauge, so I’m including the inflated total episodes downloaded (“total”) and the more-likely-accurate number of times the final chapter/episode was downloaded (“done”). (*=only available free by request, no requests made in this period=all paid)

Lost and Not Found – eBook: 85 dl’s in Jan. (2 paid), 82 dl’s in Feb.
Lost and Not Found – Podiobook: 2885 total/138 done in Jan., 1991 total/88 done in Feb.
Dragons’ Truth – eBook: 103 dl’s in Jan., 92 dl’s in Feb.
Dragons’ Truth – Podiobook: 1929 total/228 done in Jan., 1243 total/124 done in Feb.
Forget What You Can’t Remember – eBook: 98 dl’s in Jan. (1 paid), 79 dl’s in Feb.
Forget What You Can’t Remember – Podiobook: 5890 total/186 done in Jan., 4649 total/144 done in Feb.
Untrue Tales… Book One – eBook: 94 dl’s in Jan., 93 dl’s in Feb. (1 paid)
Untrue Tales… Book One – Podiobook: 4078 total/337 done in Jan., 3907 total/354 done in Feb.
Untrue Tales… Book Two – eBook: 66 dl’s in Jan., 84 dl’s in Feb.
Untrue Tales… Book Two – Podiobook: 4220 total/344 done in Jan., 4232 total/357 done in Feb.
Untrue Tales… Book Three – eBook: 121 dl’s in Jan, 67 dl’s in Feb.
Untrue Tales… Book Three – Podiobook: 3050 total/274 done in Jan., 1607 total/155 done in Feb.
Cheating, Death – eBook*: 0 dl’s in Jan., 1 dl in Feb.
Cheating, Death – Podiobook: 8853 total/687 done in Jan., 4758 total/358 done in Feb.
More Lost Memories – full eBook*: 0 dl’s in Jan., 1 dl in Feb.
More Lost Memories – individual story eBooks*: 1 dl in Jan., 4 dl’s in Feb.
Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – eBook*: 0 dl’s in Jan., 1 dl in Feb.

Total eBook downloads: 568 in Jan., 504 in Feb.
Total paid eBook downloads: 4 in Jan., 8 in Feb.
Total Podiobooks downloads: 30,905 in Jan., 22,387 in Feb.
Total Podiobooks “finished”: 2194 in Jan., 1991 in Feb.

Getting month-to-month stats for the Modern Evil Podcast is basically impossible at this point, but I from looking at the stats I do have, I can estimate that between 40 and 60 people are actively subscribed to the feed. Older episodes of the Modern Evil Podcast keep getting downloaded though, currently at a rate of roughly four times a week, each… which is a totally inaccurate way to state that, since it seems that what happens is that every once in a while someone finds the feed & downloads 50+ back-episodes, all at once. Anyway, there’s the download numbers for electronic versions. Now, here’s the numbers for paper versions, plus revenue figures for paper books, for art, and for eBooks: (Podiobooks donations are paid out quarterly, so YTD PB income is $0 AFAIK.)

I had ZERO direct sales of books and art in January, and ZERO wholesale sales of paper books.
eBooks sold in January: 4
My cut from eBooks sales in Jan.: $7.70
Total gross income for January: $7.70

Mini-paintings sold in Feb.: 4
Income from art in Feb.: $45
Chapbooks sold in Feb.: 7
Paperbacks sold in Feb.: 1 direct (W1kV2), 2 wholesale (C,D & UTFBF1-3), 1 sent to reviewer (FWYCR)
Income from paper book sales in Feb: $32.63
eBooks sold in Feb.: 8
My cut from eBooks sales in Feb.: $9.73
Total from book sales in Feb.: $42.36
Total gross income for February: $87.36

Not great, but by not going to Tools of Change this year, I’m way, way ahead in terms of net income versus last year, even without sales in January. I’ll be at the Phoestival (read: Phoenix First Fridays Art Walk Block Party, on Roosevelt between Central and 7th Street from 6PM to 11PM) this week, and I’ll be showing/selling my art during Art Detour on Saturday outside Eye Lounge (5th St. & Roosevelt from 9AM to ~5PM), so hopefully I’ll be able to make some sales there.

eBook downloads are up again, after an off year in 2009. February wasn’t as good as January, but it was also 3 days shorter… though that doesn’t account for the actual level of dropoff in total downloads, or the opposite experience in sales. These numbers bring the total number of my podcast episodes downloaded (PB+MEPod, all time) to 264,615 (YTD: 53,292) with the total number of “final” episodes downloaded from Podiobooks.com (a more accurate number, I think) to 14,893 (YTD: 3,774), and the total number of eBook downloads from modernevil.com to 9,494 (YTD: 1,072). Total number of books sold (eBooks+paperbacks+chapbooks+giveaways) YTD is 23. One way to read that is to say that for each person who has downloaded a free copy of one of my books this year, less than one in two hundred of them decided to pay. And I think that’s more than enough numbers for now.

Numbers for 2009 (and 2008)

I’ve spent the last few days gathering numbers and putting them into a spreadsheet. Now I’m going to take a few of them and try to communicate them to you here. The numbers come from several places, representing podcast downloads, eBook downloads, and sales of books and of art. Since I didn’t make a post about it for 2008’s numbers, I’ll probably include some of them as well, for comparison. I’ll try not to turn this post into a spreadsheet, just numbers, but will try to make it more like my usual rambles.

To begin, a snapshot of right now. As of 1/1/2010, I have 13 titles in some form of publication or other. 5 standalone novels, 2 poetry journals, 2 short story collections, 3 books in the Untrue Tales… series and a single edition containing those 3 books. One of the novels (the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut) is currently only available as an eBook. One of the short story collections (Time, emiT, and Time Again) isn’t yet finished, but I’ve released one of the short stories that will be contained in it as a standalone chapbook. The 3 individual Untrue Tales… books aren’t technically “in print”, though I have a few copies, printed by Cafepress & sans ISBN. I am not counting The Vintage Collection, though it is another book I’ve put together, had printed, and sold at one time. (I plan to edit and re-release it at a later date.) Seven of my books are available as podcast audiobooks, and all but the poetry is available as eBooks. Continue reading Numbers for 2009 (and 2008)

unsolved problem of scale, re: books

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, now, and don’t yet have an “answer” or “solution” to the problem. Lots of people are thinking of this as-yet-unsolved problem (from a variety of points of view, almost none of them identical to how I’m about to phrase it), and depending on whose interests they have in mind, they’re positing a variety of solutions… well, most of them aren’t positing solutions to the problem, as much as ignoring the problem, denying the problem, and trying to get readers to pretend the problem doesn’t exist.

Let me try to put the problem in terms of its scale:

A dedicated reader (of which there are few) will probably read around 3000 books in their entire life. (1 book a week for 60 years is 3120 books… some people may read faster or live longer, but not by much.)
A more average reader will probably read around 1000 books in their lifetime. (1 book a month for 60 years is only 720 books…)
Many adults (perhaps as much as 40% of literate adults) will read less than 1 book a year, and fewer than 50 books in their life.
In the US in 2008 over 75,000 publishers published over half a million new books, averaging over 1500 new titles per day, every day.

To restate: There are more new books being published every day than the average reader will read in their entire life. Continue reading unsolved problem of scale, re: books

“new” book: Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut

I’m becoming more free, more liberated in how I think about and how I operate my publishing company. So Monday morning when I saw yet another review of Lost and Not Found which seemed to have misunderstood the entire point of the book and to have interpreted the heart of the book to be a mis-step and an incoherent disappointment… I realized that instead of just thinking about releasing an alternate edition of the book, it was fully within my power to actually release it.

So I took some time on Monday and put together a quick “Director’s Cut” that had all the love story and fantasy adventure that had ended up being the last third of Lost and Not Found, cut out the few scenes that had connected it further to the confusing-and-irrelevant characters-who-get-found-and-forgotten, and re-attached the part of the story that goes to Skythia (released earlier this year as a short story in More Lost Memories). I wrote a few words about why I was creating the Director’s Cut, put them up on modernevil.com. I wrote a quick marketing summary so I could put the book up for sale as an eBook on Smashwords. Whoosh, from frustration at people misunderstanding my book to publishing a version of the book that those frustrated people would hate outright, in the space of an afternoon.

Yesterday I sketched for a while & then painted an image for the cover. I’ve been thinking about doing this with other books (have you seen the covers of More Lost Memories and Cheating, Death?) and I’ve finally decided to do it with the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: I’ve put the painting I did for the cover art up for sale at a price that will allow me to fund a paperback release of the book. If you buy the art, I’ll make the book available on paper. ((Alternatively, if I can get, say, 25 people to pre-order a paper copy, I’ll make the book available on paper.)) Otherwise, it’s going to remain available only in formats that cost me nothing to make available: eBook (and probably audiobook, later this year, especially since I’ve already recorded most of it).

I’m thinking of trying this with some of my future books: Release them as an eBook and if 1) enough eBook copies sell or 2) the original painting for the cover sells or 3) enough people are willing to pre-order then I’ll put out a print edition. Because realistically, right now, I’m not even breaking even on the publishing costs. I sell too-few copies. I’m not saying this is permanent/final, especially since I sell a lot more paper copies by hand (and make more money per copy) than I sell eBooks, but I figure it’s worth a try. It’s my publishing company, I can do what I want, right? The only rules to follow are my own.

So, here’s the brief marketing summary I wrote for Smashwords:

A non-traditional story; no real conflict, no struggle, no antagonist, and -some would say- no plot. A love story of fantastic proportions, of two people who realize that the less-than-comfortable normalcy they’d felt responsible to is the only thing keeping them from achieving true bliss. With a faerie, titans, a two-headed monster, a flying city, amazing museums, unusual time mechanics, & more.

And here’s the page-or-so I wrote “About the Director’s Cut”:

Lost and Not Found was the first look at the storybook universe expanded upon in Forget What You Can’t Remember, More Lost Memories, and Cheating, Death. This “Director’s Cut” of Lost and Not Found comes closer to my original intent, and to the original first draft of my 2002 NaNoWriMo novel, originally released in limited edition under the title Forlorn. Forlorn was written in the final 8 days of November, after a similar ordeal to the fictional one presented in Lost and Not Found.

In response to the criticism and feedback from a very vocal and adamant subset of the people who read Forlorn, and based on advise about what “all” fiction “needs” I spent the following year trying to find ways to give the story I’d written in Forlorn things like conflict, character arcs, and a three-act structure. I ended up cutting Skythia out completely, and writing a significant amount about the writer’s life and the journey toward the heart of the story, which I’ve always believed starts with the word ‘Forlorn.’

I released the First Edition of that expanded, “fixed” book as Lost and Not Found in 2004, and I’ve been receiving two kinds of feedback from readers in the five years since then: One group of people liked the book right up until the word ‘Forlorn.’ This group thinks the rest of the book is a “wrong turn”, and they were disappointed by it. The other group of people typically don’t even remember what happened in the book before the word ‘Forlorn.’ They understood the heart of the story to be the same thing I did, and they loved it.

This “Director’s Cut” of Lost and Not Found is bound to divide readers in the same way, though I expect to a more significant extreme. The people who would have been disappointed by the end of Lost and Not Found will be disappointed by this entire book. The people who would have loved the end of Lost and Not Found will probably love this entire book. And I, increasingly emboldened to do what I want to do with my books and with my publishing company, love the idea of releasing a Director’s Cut of the book, one that I prefer and that I think my true audience will prefer.

statistics, perspective, perseverance

I’ve been seeing a bit more of statistics hitting the web lately, with regard to different independent authors’ successes at finding audiences and making money online. There is only a tiny percentage of people who are comfortable revealing such statistics, but as more and more authors begin to use the internet to get their words in front of people, the pool grows and -with it- the number of numbers available. I have considered, now and again, posting my own statistics. My numbers. My facts and figures. Sometimes I have given a few numbers. Here and there. I’m still considering it.

All these numbers, they’ve helped me get a bit of perspective on my own numbers. Working in a near-vacuum, it’s been very difficult to tell whether my numbers were good or bad. Whether they painted an average picture, or a below average one. Whether my struggle was a result of the medium, its newness, and the fractional nature of the cutting-edge (it is, by definition, not mainstream) – or whether my struggle has been a result of some failure on my part. The more numbers I see, the more clear it is to me that I am -at least in part- to blame.

(This may be my severe depression talking.)

I am aware I am not even trying to write fiction with mass-appeal. I’m not trying to write like other authors. I’m not trying to fit into any particular genre or genres. I do things with my books that no one sees, no one notices, no one thinks about (or if they do, no one mentions – and those I’ve asked are oblivious), and while I’m doing unseen things I require readers to carefully parse sentences and to consider meanings, just to get through the books. I use “big” words, uncommon words, and I use them in long sentences to express complex concepts. I am aware that I am not writing easy books, or books for everyone. It’s my fault I write this way. I’m to blame.

It’s also a choice. I didn’t choose to be an author because I thought writing would be a good way to make a living, or because I thought I’d be good at cutting off a slice of the multi-billion-dollar worldwide publishing market. I chose to try to find a way to make money selling my books because I know I’m an author, and because I’d rather be doing something that comes naturally than struggling just to survive every day. (2007 was the soul-crushing, creativity-wrecking breaking point – I was still writing, but could barely manage to write more than a haiku’s length at once, and it was mostly about how painful working my corporate desk job was: I published it anyway, it’s Worth 1k.) … and though the struggle still exists (in fighting with a world that still expects me to pay the bills in months when people aren’t buying what I’m selling, and in fighting the traditional publishing world, and in fighting my own severe aversion to business and marketing), it is significantly less here, and distant. Continue reading statistics, perspective, perseverance