So, after nearly two months since my book's release, how are the sales?
The only answer I can give at this point is, I don't know.
My publisher does report royalties on a monthly basis--but they have to wait for the sales venues to send them their account statements and the money before they can report the sales and pay royalties, which can sometimes take a while, especially with places like the brick and mortar chain stores, which are known to take months to get around to sending reports and money.
Since
Blood Money released in the second half of the month of March, and wasn't available through most online sales venues until the middle of April...well, if there were sales during that first thirty-day period, I'll be happy. But I probably won't begin to find out about them until the next month or so.
And since the vast majority of my publisher's sales do come through ebook downloads, there's no easy way of tracking them. I'm not complaining. This is just the nature of the business. And with the advent of e-reading devices that people actually want to use, the market is growing, and those publishers who are already established have a nice advantage, because readers already know they put out a good product.
One potentially encouraging sign is that my book debuted on
Fictionwise a little over two weeks ago. At the beginning of its second week there, it was listed as the #5 best seller in the Mystery/Crime category. At the beginning of its third week there, it's still listed at #5, which I hope means it's selling enough copies to stay up near the top of this list, where people dropping in to look for something new to read will spot it. (With my previous publisher, the book was listed in Suspense/Thriller, and it never got all that high on the list. It was a real joy to see it at #5.) In any case, this sort of thing is pretty ephemeral. I'm going to enjoy it while it's there.
(Fictionwise is owned by Barnes & Noble, who bought them a few years ago in a bit of farsightedness. The number of formats my book is available in makes my head spin. You'll just have to look to see what's there, if you're looking for a specific format.)
I've been collecting listings for places where my book is available for order. You should be able to order in at most bookstores, but if you don't want to wait for them to get a copy in,
you can order directly from one of the online retailers which I'll list in the page at the top of the blog, or you can download the ebook from one of the other retailers, which is even faster.
Enough for now~~~
