It's that time again!
The May sales numbers are in, and the grand total is:
2,702
During the month of May, The Guardian sold 147 Amazon US copies, 1 Amazon UK copy, and 31 through Barnes and Noble, for a total of 179 ebooks, or 5.7 sales per day. This is the first time The Guardian has broken through the 100 sales a month barrier, so I'm very pleased.
Cross My Heart sold 2,380 Amazon US copies, 14 Amazon UK copies, 2 Amazon DE copies, and 127 through Barnes and Noble, for a total of 2,523 ebooks (or 81.3 sales per day).
To date, I've sold 4,186 ebooks (December-May) Each month I've sold more ebooks than all the previous months combined, and this trend continued in May.
So, let's talk about some things that happened this month. The first major setback for some Kindle authors happened around Tuesday, May 10, when Amazon dropped the prices of approximately 250 ebooks. They went from $.99 to FREE. The blogosphere was abuzz, and everyone raced to their Kindles to download these free stories. Many of these selections hit the Top 100. The rest of us saw HUGE drops in our sales numbers. I went from 87 Amazon sales that Monday to 39 on Tuesday, 34 on Wednesday, and 41 on Thursday. They bounced back quickly, though, and that Saturday I broke a sales record (114).
Moral of the story: if you see a substantial drop in sales like this, just wait it out. Give it a few days before you hit full-on panic mode.
Another glitch occurred between Tuesday, May 24, and Thursday, May 26. Sales fell to the 60s. This is when Amazon stripped the tags for ebooks (I'm thinking this was because of tag "abuse" by spammers, but have not seen this confirmed). Also, Amazon reporting was backed up thanks to the Lady GaGa album release, and many of our sales froze for several hours. They ended up trickling in as the evening progressed, but there's no real way to know my official number for those days.
Barnes and Noble continues to struggle to promote its indie authors/ebooks. They seem to be working on things, though. The page design has improved on their site, and their new "Customers Also Bought" lists are more accurate.
My two highest sales days occurred over Memorial Day Weekend (US holiday). People were obviously in their cars, buying ebooks. I blew past my previous sales record on Friday, selling 168 ebooks. On Monday I sold 135.
At any rate, it was a stellar month. I saw a pretty decent increase in The Guardian sales, the Brits decided they liked me a little more (they bought 15 ebooks total), and Germany gave me my first two sales.
I've also spent the last 36 days in the Teen Top 100 on Amazon (not just bestselling ebooks, but bestselling books, period), which just floors me.
Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who purchased a copy, left a text review and/or a rating, blogged about me, friended me on Goodreads and/or Twitter, dropped me a line to tell me how much you enjoyed my stories, told a friend. . . . You are appreciated more than you know. :)
KK
