On 13th June 2014 I published my first fiction book: part one of a planned four book series titled The Great Scottish Land Grab. Published solely as an ebook through Amazon KDP, I fully intended to cash in on the hype surrounding the rapidly approaching referendum on Scottish independence.
This post is intended as an analysis of what worked and what failed as I attempted to market my first ebook.
Here’s the high level sales figures:
Total downloads:
The Great Scottish Land Grab Book One …. 227
The Great Scottish Land Grab Book Two …. 58
The Great Scottish Land Grab Book Three .. 56
Total sales receipts:
The Great Scottish Land Grab Book One …. £33.66
The Great Scottish Land Grab Book Two …. £74.75
The Great Scottish Land Grab Book Three .. £73.29
All these numbers are up to the end of May 2017, effectively three years worth of sales.
Somewhere during editing book two I realised that I would only manage to write three books before the referendum and so books three and four became one book.
On 24th September 2014, I released the full trilogy as a complete novel.
Total downloads:
The Great Scottish Land Grab …. 43
Total sales receipts:
The Great Scottish Land Grab …. £87.93
So, in total, in three years I’ve sold 384 books and made £269.63 from these ebooks.
I confess that at times it has been extremely depressing to know how few copies I’ve sold in a three year period. However, I’ve had a large number of readers contact me to tell me how much they enjoyed the story. I enjoyed writing the book and even enjoyed the rush of trying to market it at the time. It has been a worthwhile learning experience and I was able to go on to write a much better second novel in Fallen Warriors.
And I’ve gained knowledge about how not to market a book which does seem to be helping as I concentrate on Fallen Warriors. Tomorrow I’m going to look at some of the lessons I’m still trying to learn and apply.
