To all those who ‘bought’ my book on Kindle, thank you. The results were… interesting.
You may not realise this, but Amazon is a ‘local’ website. If you visit www.amazon.com you will be pushed towards www.amazon.co.uk – to the extent that you cannot buy from the .com site. The .com site is for American customers; the .co.uk is what we Brits have to use. There are also seperate sites for germany, italy, spain, and france – what the rest of Europe is supposed to do, I have no idea…
Trying to get more information about my own books on the American site was difficult – I managed it, of course, but it was difficult. I had to deny who I was! I had to tell the website that I was not me, and that I was not in the UK. I got my answers, though.
Before I tell you how my book fared, I’d like to point out a couple of small things. First, of the three books I have available on Kindle, only one of them (Revelation) has sold at all; it sold only two copies, and I paid for one of them myself. The other two have never sold a single copy.   Second, there are hundreds of thousands of books available on Kindle – and the one I’ve sold two copies of is currently ranked at number 351,066 in the UK. (It is unranked in the US, as I’ve only sold in the UK.)
OK, results. (Nervous cough while waiting for the drum-roll…) Ahem. UK Sales: 30. France, Italy and Spain sales: 0. (Hate those foreigners, don’t you?) German sales: 5. (Ah, I take back that foreigners comment.)
So, 35 books sold. That’s a big improvement on pre-promotion sales, anyway. But wait… what about the US?
I’m glad you asked. I did a little better over there. Just slightly. How many? No, you don’t need to know that, just take my word for it. Would I lie to you? Honest, I did sell a couple more there.
Why do you look like you don’t believe me?
Oh okay, okay, I’ll tell you! I sold 289 copies in the US. Yes, that’s two hundred and eighty-nine, taking my total sales comfortably over the three hundred mark.
When I worked out how to check it, I found that my book had ranked higher than the 2,000 level. I know, it’s not quite top of the bestseller list, but it’s waaaaaaay better than 350,000, isn’t it?
Over 300 copies ‘sold’ in five days. In all honesty, I’d be happy to sell that many a year – especially if they were really sold, and not given away! Not that I want the money for them – at 77p a time, 300 books is little over £200, and I can spend that on one fishing rod – I just want the books to be read, appreciated… Liked.
Now, I’m just biting my nails waiting for somebody to review or even rate the book. Until I get some readers becoming ‘fans’ I’m not going to reach more potential readers/fans.
Writing the book is the easy part, I’m learning. 😕
Yippee
My first book has just been ‘published’ on the Kindle platform, and I’m quite pleased about it.
I’ve talked about Kindle before, and there is no way that I would tell you to go out and buy one – but you don’t need to. There is a free program available that allows you to read Kindle publications on your PC, and various other devices – like the ipad – can utilise the Kindle format.
The price of the book is set at the absolute minimum that was available to me – I’m not trying or expecting to make money from this. I just want my work to be read by people who don’t care about hurting my feelings. I’ve spent a lot of time working on that thing, and… well… I want it to be read.
I’d like to appeal to my family and friends – anybody who knows me personally, in fact – to not buy the book. I’d be quite happy to email you a copy if you want one.
For my readers who don’t know me personally, if you would like to buy it, you can get it from the Amazon UK website. The price at present is £1.71, and you can actually read the first five chapters or so for free.
Just for the record: Yes, I’m advertising. 😉 You caught me. I am shamelessly advertising, marketing, and promoting my book. I see no moral or ethical problems in doing so, though, as I’m doing so on my own site, and not intruding on anybody elses time or space.
Next time I publish a book, I’ll do exactly the same. I’m shameless.
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