The natural drought may be close to calling it quits here in the Texas Panhandle, thanks to rather constant water falling from the sky.
However, it appears that it’s going to be replaced by a more personal drought in regards to books sales.
After February and March’s sales increase of 2.1 a day, up from 2011’s (and January’s) average of one sale a day, April dropped down to 0.7 sales a day. This month, it’s fallen even further, to 0.33 sales per day.
Holy crap, that sucks.
A tiny comfort comes from the fact that I don’t seem to be the only indie experiencing this sales drought. Quite a few seem to be in the same boat, and many are attributing it to the free promo days of the Kindle Select program.
Readers who make remarks like “I haven’t had to buy a book in three months!” or “I’ve gotten thousands of free books and won’t ever have to buy one again!” are sort of bearing up that school of thought.
As an experiment, I decided to use another free promo day for Deadlands Hunt on May 5th. I kept an eye on it, intending to only give away 100 copies. When the reports hit 77 copies downloaded, I stopped the promotion while knowing there’d be some stragglers reported throughout the day.
End result was 109 copies downloaded, with 4 sales showing up that evening/overnight. One of which was instantly refunded, probably due to someone thinking they were getting it for free, and not wanting it unless they were.
Basically, one sale per 36.3 copies given away. Considering Deadlands Hunt needs to sell another 214 copies to finish recovering its expenses, that’s not an awesome result.
Naturally, people like free stuff, and ‘free’ has always been an advertising draw. However, I don’t think it’s working as well now as it did once upon a time.
There are varied results to free:
- Never read, and eventually tossed.
- Eventually read, and may be added to someone’s share folder for a file sharing site as extra content.
- Read and receives a 1 or 2 star rating/review (freebies are the only titles I’ve ever received less than 3 stars on).
- Read and the reader enjoys it enough to maybe leave a nice review and might even mention it to a few friends, but doesn’t return for more (possibly because of the glut of other free titles).
- It’s read, enjoyed, and hey presto! You’ve just gained a loyal reader who will buy a book here and there.
Obviously, the last two are preferable results to the first three. My freebie results seem to mainly fall into the 1, 3, and 4 range, though I probably have found a few loyal, silent readers thanks to freebies.
The thing is, I’ve sort of reached the point that giving stuff away isn’t viable, if my writing business is going to keep its nose above water. This sales drought is causing a serious setback, both mentally and financially.
I need sales – money coming in – in order to continue releasing new titles. I need sales, which are my main source of reader feedback, as motivation to put my nose to the grindstone and write until my fingers bleed.
Don’t get me wrong: I love my part-time job. However, I don’t want to use the paycheck from it to subsidize my writing biz forever.
In short, my writing business really needs to reach the point of breaking even, instead of continually sucking money from my pocket, or financially, its ability to continue will die a painful death.
I knew going in that it would take time, hard work, and a large portion of luck to make writing fiction any kind of successful pursuit. I’m not ready to give up; seriously, I’ll never be READY to give up.
Perhaps everyone is too nice to tell me that I suck at this gig. Maybe Lady Luck just never farts in my general direction.
If people aren’t being too nice, then maybe my books are just getting buried because thousands of new indie titles are being added every single month, and I truly suck at the promotion side. I’d rather walk over hot coals than spend hours screaming at people to buy my books.
Whatever it is, I wish a breakthrough would occur. My sales plus part-time job paycheck can’t stretch to cover expenses for more than one new release (which will be Discord Jones #2) this year. One or two releases a year isn’t going to cut it, not when I can (when motivated) write at least half million words per year.
It won’t cut it when I have dozens or more characters constantly screaming, fighting, and partying in my brain.
They need to get out, people. I need them to get out. They’re noisy ass neighbors.
Ah, well.
If you want to help evict my noisy, constantly partying hearty brain buddies, check out Arcane Solutions and Deadlands Hunt, or any of my other titles. A purchase, I would appreciate! 
