Eighth Income Report – November 2013

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.

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November 2013 was a roller coaster! No, it was a rocket ship!

The promo of Learn to Read with Great Speed finished on 3rd. The next day I sold 2 books. The day after, 3 books; on the 6th of November I sold 2 again. Never ever before had I such a streak.

On the 5th of November my speed reading book received a brilliant, honest review from a speed reading expert.

Do you remember my remark from August’s report about the sales record? On the 7th of November this record was beaten. I sold 7 books in one day!!! Six of them were the copies of the speed reading book. It took off. It definitely did.

I was a bit overwhelmed by success. I didn’t expect it. Well, I paid $35 to promote the book, but I really didn’t set my expectations too high.

For 19 days straight I was selling at least one book every day. In the whole of November I had only 2 days with no sales. I was superstoked.

Lesson:
The reviews break or make the books. I received a favorable review from an expert quite fast and I see this as a main factor of this book’s success. Even now, a year after publishing the first version of the book, this review stands at the top of all my reviews and is indicated as the most helpful.

I sent the reviewer a thank you email and he replied. We exchanged a couple messages and it resulted in the whole blog post.

Japan

Browsing through the sales reports, I discovered that I had access to reports from other markets. I was shocked to discover that my book was selling quite well in Japan! One of the sites which posted info about the free promo must have a big Japanese audience. The book was downloaded 144 times during the promo. I sold 39 copies of it in Japan in November; more than I have ever sold in one month on one market in the past.

I checked my Japanese book’s page and discovered (after employing Google translate) that my book was #1 in Study Guides, Reading Skills & Education, and 15 in the whole English Kindle store in Japan:

Lesson:
Brace yourself for surprises when publishing digitally. You never know what will happen.

Another very fateful event was connected with the book’s ugly cover. As I mentioned in the previous report, this time the cover was made exactly in accordance with my guidelines—for the first time, mind you.

And it was a disaster. I have almost no aesthetic sense. I posted the info about the free promo in Pat’s First Kindle Book group on Facebook and one of moderators, Hynek Palatin, took pity on me. On his own initiative, he made covers for all three of my books. I was able to switch the ugly cover just before transition from free to paid. It was another big factor in this release success. And I think it was a life-saving, turn-around point for my publishing venture.

After receiving these covers I committed myself deeply to interaction in that Facebook group and it bore fruits with time.

New promo
Encouraged by the results, and with the new, shiny cover, I organized another free promo of my fitness book. I advertised it almost exclusively on Facebook and didn’t spend a dime on it. Later on I published on my blog, a detailed post about those promos, and described my results.

Considering the humble means, the promo of the fitness book was a success—939 downloads, the most I have ever got during a free promo. The sales didn’t skyrocket afterwards, but they at least moved forward. I sold 5 copies in the last 6 days of November. Up until the free promo I sold just 17 copies within about four months.

Lesson:
Your books are judged by their covers. I didn’t change the content of the book even a bit. The sole difference lay in the new cover Hynek so generously presented to me.

Editing
Another thing happened at the beginning of November. On the 7th of November, a guy in 1st Pat’s Kindle Book group announced he was starting his editing business and offered free editing services to the first 5 willing authors. As my proofreader’s progress was very slow due to her family and health situations I jumped at this occasion. I sent him my rough draft of the time management book. On the 24th of November the first version of Master your Time in 10 Minutes a Day was procured. I sent the sample to my previous proofreader and she was impressed. It was the first time that my book really sounded American.

JOY
Wow, wow, WOW!!! My heart leaped with joy. November was a breakthrough for me. I beat my daily sales record a few times. On the 8th of November I sold 18 copies including 12 in Japan. On 28th I broke 100 sales a month on Amazon.com for the first time ever. My average sales jumped from 1 a day to over 5 a day.

What a nice feeling to see reviews not just from my friends and observe that my books actually sell. All three of them!

Lessons:

• #1. Enjoy your small victories. Because it was a SMALL victory. The royalties summed up to about 1.5% of my day job salary, they barely exceeded the cost of the advertisement of my promo. What happened in November sustained me for the next couple of months of hard work.
• #2. Track the right metrics. I track my sales daily. That’s how you get such detailed reports with a one year delay. If you track, for example, only the number of reviews then it is really hard to experience any joy. Before August 2014 I sold a few thousand copies of my books, I gave away about 20k—and the feedback? I think less than 80 reviews and a quarter of those were from my friends.
• Writing

The whole of November I wrote content for my blog, articles, reviews a monster guest post for Firepole Marketing … and not a word about a new book. I had two manuscripts ready in the queue and I let that dim my senses. I was working on the parenting book with my proofreader.

It was a big mistake. It took me almost two months to finish another book and it resulted in a five month long break between the releases of books #5 and #6. It was a frustrating period when I could only observe how my sales dwindled to almost nothing.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income: zero.

No money transfer equals to no profits in my eyes. I would receive November’s royalties in January 2014.

A virtual income: $36.96

Moral: It takes time and even more time than you think. More than half a year passed and my income was still deep in the red.

Cost: $19, Aweber services (aff. link).

Net result: -$19

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Previous Income Report: October 2013 || Next Income Report: December 2013