Number-crunching - sales figures

[julesjones]

Number-crunching time, as US tax deadline approaches. I thought it might be useful to post sales figures for my books. The numbers here are the total sales from when the book first went on sale to the end of the calendar year cited. Which means you can get the per year figures for 2009 and 2010 with a bit of subtracting, if you're so inclined.

from 1st day on sale until end of	2008	2009	2010
Black Leather Rose	774	922	995
Buildup 1: Mindscan	1304	1466	1554
Buildup 2: Pulling Strings	711	857	918
Dolphin Dreams	1739	2151	2352
Lord and Master	1510	1839	2057
L&M 2: Taking Work Home	648	1020	1201
Promises To Keep	1002	1119	1200
Spindrift	659	801	858
Spindrift 2: Ship to Shore	419	480	510

Other items of interest -- sales direct from the publisher's website have dropped to a trickle, which is not surprising as all of these books have been out for at least two years - the last release I had was in August 2008, before The Day Job Ate My Brain. But over the last 18 months I keep seeing new sales coming in as they add titles to reseller's lists. The really interesting one is that Dolphin Dreams is doing well on Amazon, and having had three months' figures now (Jan-March), it has gone up each month. I'll be interested to see if that's a fluke, or if it reflects increasing Kindle ownership.

Comments

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

Nice figures, especially Dolphin Dreams and the Lord & Master duology. :)

[julesjones]

Thank you. :-)

Dolphin Dreams is a weird one -- it outsells everything else, and always has done. Reactions to it tend to be split between "OMG you have to read this" and "OMG stay away", the latter usually but not always about the shapeshifter sex -- there's also a strong contingent of dislikers who simply think it's glacially paced and boring as hell.

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

I didn't expect to like Dolphin Dreams as much as I did, not quite sure why, but Lord & Master are still my favourites. Hmmm, I really do owe you an e-mail. ;)

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

That's pretty impressive. Guesstimating that the average sales per title per year is in the region of 1,000 copies, that's total sales of about 27,000.

[julesjones]

No, that's not per year, that's total since it went on sale -- so per year is subtract one column from the next.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

And reading what you wrote originally more carefully, I now see that you had already made that point quite clearly. Sorry!

So total sales look to be about 10-12000.

[julesjones]

I've edited the table to make it clearer to anyone who simply glances at that first before reading the text. Yes, of the ones above (which is basically the ones that are solo-authored and still in print), there were around 10-11k total. Which isn't enough to live on, but isn't bad going for small press, especially given that I haven't had any new titles out to help drive backlist sales.

[sheenaghpugh]

I cherish the fact that though I am not a character in a Jeeves & Wooster novel, I actually know the author of the novel Spindrift. Though I don't suppose lady Violet's and yours had much in common!