October 2011 Short Story Sales Stats

October seemed to be a slower month.  Anyone else notice this?  I heard rumors that there was some big Amazon book sale going on but was too lazy to investigate.

Several interesting developments have happened this month.  But first, the sales report:

Amazon (US/UK/DE/FR):
    # of works:  20
    # of sales: 11

B&N:
    # of works:  20
    # of sales:  1

Ok, so the first big thing was that I made my first sale on Amazon DE this month.  W00T!!!  So it is actually possible to sell stuff there, apparently.  The Berlin Wall has finally crumbled.  France... we shall see.  I kind of want to make an invasion of Paris joke now.  But I won't.

Which leads us to the second, more interesting, thing.  My Smashwords sales report finally updated and I've not only sold more even more books on Apple but I'm also starting to pick up sales in the Kobo and Sony stores.  What annoys me is that Smashwords doesn't list the date that the sale was made.  So there's not way to place which sale is related to which month.

I believe that I first formatted everything for Smashwords distribution back in June/July of this year.  So five months later (ok, more like three months later because it took forever for my stuff to be "shipped" to all the Smashwords channels) I have accumulated 6 Apple sales, 3 Kobo and 1 Sony.  There were actually more "sales" but they were free downloads so I didn't count those.

This is significant, guys.  These numbers mean that they are going to outstrip B&N for me in terms of units sold.  Not only that, but there are untapped short story markets out there.  So if you haven't done so already, admit yourself to the Smashwords premium catalog!


Comments

  1. CoraNovember 11, 2011 at 2:07 PM

    October was a slow month for me as well. It started out alright, but then sales just stopped in the last two weeks of the month and I only sold half as many stories as in September.

    I've heard that there was an Amazon sale which started on October 17. This would fit with the time my sales just stopped. But then, I was away for a few days in late October and therefore less visible, which might have contributed to the slow sales.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MargaretNovember 11, 2011 at 4:25 PM

    Smashwords is putting out a downloadable report that does list the sale date. I stripped out all the unnecessary data and sorted by date/outlet/title. It was good information.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alain GomezNovember 11, 2011 at 6:06 PM

    I just noticed that Smashwords added the date purchased as well. Finally! This will be really useful for my November report. I'm going to start listing Kobo, Apple and Sony separately. I really think that these guys could become a significant source of income in the short story department.

    ReplyDelete

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