First, let me give a heartfelt thank you to everyone who supported me this month by buying my books. 🙏 This is by far the best sales month I've ever had or expect to have at least until I release book 3 of the Prophecies of Zarune.
Background information – Relentless Blades (RB) has been out
for a little over a year, and Ashbound Oaths (AO) released on 11/18/25. I had
the AO cover reveal on 10/8/25. I had SFFinsiders.com assist with that. They
are fantastic at collaborating with indie authors to present high quality cover
reveals. That was also the day I began taking pre-orders and began my personal
marketing campaign. When I say ‘personal’ it means that I did all promoting. No
paid ads of any kind.
Prior to the 11/18/25 AO release here were my book sales and
eBook pricing:
RB ($2.99) – 3 sales
AO ($1.49) – 35 pre-sales (again, all my own personal
marketing)
I rarely use paid ads, but for this release month I decided
to try a few. My strategy was to discount RB (eBook) to drive sales to that
book in the hope people will like it and then buy AO later. I set a Kindle
Countdown promotion, so RB was priced at $.99 from 11/18 – 11/24. I kept AO at
$1.49 as I felt that was already a very low price for a 465 page book.
I chose the following paid, 1-day advertisements, with
pricing and RB sales for each day.
Robin Reads – date 11/21 - $60 – 4 sales
Book Barbarian – date 11/22 - $40 – 20 sales
Fussy Librarian – date 11/23 - $18 – 10 sales
Results – I paid $118 for 34 “potential” sales. I say
potential because I was also consistently marketing myself during that stretch,
so some of the sales could have come from my marketing and not paid ads. At
this point, I consider the ads a failure. I hoped for many more sales. Now, it’s
possible it may still payoff down the road if all 34 people end of buying AO at
anything close to regular price, but for now I’m not impressed. For context, a
$.99 eBook sale only nets the author about $.65 in royalties when on a KDP
countdown promotion.
However, I urge you to scrutinize the numbers. My results do
not mean they will be the same for you for a variety of reasons. The first of
course is different books. But there are many others: choice of promotional
month, and choice of promotional days of the week being two major factors. In
hindsight I would have had the sales coincide with Black Friday rather than
ending right before Black Friday really begins. I’m also not sure November was
the best month to have the sales, although I’m not really sure.
Final November numbers (Amazon):
AO – 65 (35 preorders, 30 after) sales which was 60 eBooks
and 5 Print
RB – 50 sales which was 48 eBooks and 2 print
*I had 1 AO sale through Barnes and Noble and 2 through
Ingram Spark as well in November.
It’s important to note that there was not a day in November
where I did not promote one or both books personally through various social
media platforms. I used X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Threads. Most days I
promoted at least twice on many platforms. Advertisements consisted of messages
with pictures of the book, pictures of me with the books and videos.
In summary, I was thrilled with the sales but already feel
the momentum waning. As I type this, I have no sales or KDP Page reads to
report today (11/30) and had no sales yesterday, although I had some KDP page
reads. This will likely be my last transparency post for a while. I’m not
saying I’ll never do another but will be cutting back on them.
During the discourse around transparency posts last week, many
people pointed out that transparency posts can come off as unprofessional and
as a form of bragging. The unprofessional point stuck with me. You don’t see
the literary titans posting their monthly sales figures. It’s like the great
Barry Sanders who just handed the ball to the ref when he scored a touchdown;
act like you’ve been there. When (or if) I do make more transparency posts I
will try to include metrics again.
Then why did I make this post? For three reasons. The first
is that I am so thrilled with the sales that I had to share. The second is because
I said I’d make this post last week, and the third is my hope that the details
I presented may inspire other indie authors or at least provide them with some
context and information they may find useful for their own marketing. I
especially feel that context is important. Numbers without context are too
easily manipulated and misinterpreted.
Thank you all again who have supported me, and I hope you
found this interesting and valuable. Now, go buy RB and AO. 😀
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