Hey folks! I thought I'd do a quick little look at how my self-published KDP book has done over the last 6 months. I know a few of you were interested in that information, so I hope you find this informative!
So far, to date, I've sold 42 copies via Amazon, which isn't too bad! As expected, sales were highest over the month directly following release (which is also when I did the most talking about it and advertising).
We're down to about 2-3 sales per month now, which is honestly still amazing to me. Worldbuilding is a very niche hobby to begin with and I'm far from an expert on anything so every single time I get anyone interested in it at all I'm a little shocked!
I should note here that I also have had several batches of at-printing-cost author copies sent to me, and through direct sales I've sold an additional about 30 books. Which gives a grand total of 72 books that I wrote just out there floating around in the world. That's wild!
As you can see, the majority of these are Print editions, with 31 out of the 42 copies sold being physical print books and only 11 being an ebook variety. This makes sense to me as prompts just feel like something you'd want a physical book for - every time I've had prompts in an ebook, I find it annoying to use. Maybe that's just me though. I guess we'll see as time passes - the ebook was available later so perhaps it just needs time to overtake physical.
On the finance side, these 42 sales translate to:
$239.72 CAD. Not bad! I spent about $60-$70 on the cover art, and otherwise had no initial costs so it has more than paid for itself. I've been trying to keep track of these as they get deposited so I can earmark those funds for additional costs for my next book which will require formal editing/proofreading/etc.
As far as marketplace distribution, I find it interesting that a few copies have sold in places like Japan:
It's pretty neat to see that my silly little book has covered so much distance! I definitely didn't expect that.
As far as ratings and reviews goes, I've had so far 3 folks rate the book, and two leave comments. I suspect these are all close friends and family, so now that it's been out in the wild I'm hoping to see a few more ratings come in so I can get a better feel for how useful folks find it.
That's it for me today! If you feel like checking it out, you can find it here, but no pressure. Everything is expensive and the world is a hellscape right now so it's all good!