I don’t often talk sales but I had been meaning to do a year round up post about my book sales and how they’re split over the different retailers. I think sometimes the writers amongst you like to hear about how people are doing and whether the split is anything like what you’re experiencing. I’ve always been backwards about revealing sales figures for my books but I think it’s good to talk about them sometimes. Who knows, maybe a publisher will sit up and take note if I talk about them and I’ll snag myself some fantastic publishing deal. Okay, I’m laughing at that so it’s fine if you are too.
I write paranormal romance books for the most part but I do also write science fiction romance, and the sales figures below include those books.
I sold 155000 ebooks in 2011 across my two names, Felicity Heaton and F E Heaton. That’s sales, before anyone asks, not free books. In addition to those sales, I had around 50000 copies of my free book, Reunion, downloaded. That’s downloads that I can record. It’s also on my website for free and other sources that don’t record downloads.
I’m going to break it down a little more just to be transparent about everything and give you all a clearer picture of where the sales are coming from.
2011 Total Sales:Â
- 54463 ebooks sold
- 119 paperbacks sold
Sales by Retailer:
- Amazon: 43974
- Apple: 7286
- Barnes and Noble: 1269
- Kobo: 909
- Sony: 263
- Smashwords: 113
- My website: 287
- All Romance eBooks: 203
- Fictionwise: 159
2011 Total Sales:Â
- 101570 ebooks sold
- 293 paperbacks sold
Sales by Retailer:
- Amazon: 83279
- Apple: 11474
- Barnes and Noble: 2083
- Kobo: 1727
- Sony: 1104
- Smashwords: 342
- My website: 565
- All Romance eBooks: 710
- Fictionwise: 286
Obviously my biggest retailers are Amazon for the Kindle, followed by Apple and their iBookstore / iTunes.
The percentages put Barnes and Noble very much out of contention when it comes to making me any real money or sales. They’re barely better than Kobo. So much for BNs delusion that it has 27% of the ebook market, but what else should you expect from a company who focuses on one country when the ebook market outside the US is huge. I feel certain that if Barnes and Noble opened Pubit to international authors, I could probably make a real go of it there but they don’t push ebooks other than their Pubit books, so my Smashwords books are left floundering. Sony again shows very poor performance. Most of my numbers on both BN and Sony were for free downloads of Reunion. It makes my numbers look good until I remove the free books from the equation and then I feel quite disappointed by sales at those two retailers.
Here’s a breakdown in terms of percentages by retailer to show just where all those sales are coming from and who is clearly the top dog when it comes to my total book sales across both Felicity Heaton and F E Heaton books:
- Amazon: 82% (127253 sales)
- Apple: 12% (18760 sales)
- Barnes and Noble: 2% (3352 sales)
- Kobo: 2% (2636 sales)
- Sony: 1% (1367 sales)
- Smashwords: 0% (455 sales)
- My website: 0% (852 sales)
- All Romance eBooks: 1% (913 sales – I’ve only been on ARe for Q3 and Q4)
- Fictionwise: 0% (445 sales – I stopped selling there in Q1)
In terms of individual books, my best sellers for the year were Prophecy: Child of Light, the first book in my Prophecy Trilogy and also the first book in my Vampires Realm series that I write as F E Heaton, and Her Dark Angel, the first book in my Her Angel series that I write as Felicity Heaton.
Prophecy: Child of Light sold a total of 13120 copies in 2011.
Her Dark Angel sold a total of 17847 copies in 2011.
Other books that performed well for me were Spellbound and the other two books in the Prophecy Trilogy under my F E Heaton name, and Her Fallen Angel, Her Warrior Angel and A Promise of Passion in my Felicity Heaton name.
All books in the Vampires Realm series sold over 5000 each copies in 2011.
Well, the plan for this year is to sell 250000 ebooks and hopefully bring up sales of paperbacks to over 500. At the moment, it looks possible. January was always going to be a strong month but since then things have settled to more reasonable levels of sales on Amazon at least. I can’t see the other retailers yet. I’m not witnessing the amazing boost that ebook sales experienced in 2011. Things are tailing off now and really settling down, sometimes close to where my sales were in November 2011. That’s fine though. It still means I could hit my target.
January was good though, with Prophecy: Child of Light shifting close to 2200 copies and Her Dark Angel selling just over 2600 copies on Amazon Kindle. I think I can probably sell around 20000 copies of Prophecy: Child of Light and 30000 of Her Dark Angel this year. I have to admit, that excites me. Okay, they’re on offer for $0.99 because they’re the first books in a series, but the other books are shifting impressive numbers of copies too!
My newest release, Covet, the first in my Vampire Erotic Theatre series sold over 500 copies too. Always good to start with a nice sales spurt like that. It looks set to improve on that figure in February too. I have big plans for the whole series and I’m hoping that as each new one comes out, I’ll see the same upwards trend in sales that I’ve had with the Her Angel series. The next book is out in March, so it will be interesting to see how sales go.
If you’re a writer and you have any questions, or want to know something that I haven’t bothered to mention, just leave a comment and I’ll answer it as best I can. I’ve tried to cover everything you might want to know but I might have missed something.
