how to buy my books

And now, for some amusing numbers!

I released the current, second edition of Faerie Blood into the wild in June of 2012. Up through May of 2014, I had a total of 335 sales over all for the book. My previous best sales month had been July 2012, pretty much right after I released the book, and January 2013, when I ran a $2.99 sale that got some signalboosting from fellow Carina authors.

Kicking the price down to 99 cents, though, has meant that in June and July of this year so far, I have had a total of 167 sales. A few of those were in early June, before I launched the sale. So it’s more like 160 sales as a direct result of the current low price.

June 2014 is my new record sales month, on the strength of the initial spike once I kicked the price on Faerie Blood down. June scored 97 sales. We’re now eight days into July, and July is well and thoroughly in second place but coming up steadily, with the current tally at 70 sales. At my current rough rate of sales (I’m seeing 2-4 a day coming in right now, mostly from Amazon), it’s reasonable to expect July may pass June.

Overall this means that roughly 33 percent of my current sales numbers are from this sale alone. NEAT.

And if I can get another 160 sales or so before the end of the month, I will DOUBLE the lifetime sales total for the book. If you want to help me make that happen, remember, signalboost! Signalboost! Signalboost!

Amazon sales are certainly welcome but I encourage signalboosting in particular to everywhere else I’m selling the book as well. B&N has clocked in so far with a total of 19 sales, iBooks has 3, Kobo has 5, and Google Play has 8. Smashwords so far is the only place where I’m selling Faerie Blood that hasn’t yet joined this party.

(I would be PARTICULARLY happy if more Kobo sales showed up. Because one, I love that Kobo has partnered up with indie booksellers. Two, they are a Force in Canada and I do love me some Canada. And three, they recently implemented a shopping cart on their site. The lack of a shopping cart on major ebook-selling sites has driven me spare for ages, and now that Kobo finally went and built one, I would love to see people filling it up. Ideally, with my stuff! But with other stuff as well. Reward them for their coding efforts!)

MEANWHILE: I’ve seen only a few confirmed sales of Valor of the Healer showing up as a result of the sale–but as I’ve previously mentioned, those numbers are much harder for me to track. The first wave of any really interesting numbers should be showing up for me by the end of this week! Still, though, the Valor sale needs your love as much as the Faerie Blood one! MORE, even, because it’s not lasting as long! Only 9 days left before Valor returns to its previous price!

It’s the morning of July 1st, and I’m delighted to report that I’m now sitting at 97 total sales of Faerie Blood for the month of June 2014. iBooks and Google Play were both lagging behind on updating their numbers, and some of the transactions at Amazon and Kobo didn’t finish processing until this morning–so they’re going to count as July numbers. This is my current final tally for June, though:

• Amazon: 74 (US, UK, DE, and CA, mostly US sales)
• Barnes and Noble: 11 (all US)
• Kobo: 2
• iBooks: 1
• Google Play: 8 (one pre-sale, the rest after the sale started; mix of US and CA)
• Smashwords: 1 (pre-sale)

And before the sale actually started, these were the numbers I had for June beforehand:

• Smashwords: 1
• Google Play: 1

And as of this writing, I’ve already got 11 sales for July transactions–most of which were rolled over from yesterday as they hadn’t been fully processed yet. But so far this morning’s starting off well!

And as you can see, the sale is so far making a world of difference. Faerie Blood is blazing up the Amazon rankings, climbing out of the six-digit pit it’d been languishing in, and currently (as of this writing) parked at… well. Let’s let a screencap do the talking, shall we? This was taken as of last night around midnight:

This Fails to Suck

It’s already been proposed to me that I might want to keep the 99 cent price point. It’s way too early for me to make that call–but it’s going to be real interesting to see how the numbers behave as we head into July. I’ve now, in the last 24 hours, completely blown away my previous monthly and one-day sales counts for this book. If this trend continues, July’s numbers might get truly crazytalk.

MEANWHILE! I do not unfortunately have access to direct sales numbers for Valor of the Healer, so I can’t track that book nearly as well as I can Faerie Blood. I do, however, use NovelRank.com to get an approximation of how my books are behaving on Amazon, and as of last night around midnight, this is what NovelRank showed me about Valor.

This Likewise Also Fails to Suck

I’ve been seeing the book’s ranking over on B&N go up, too. No budging yet on Kobo, as near as I can tell. And I won’t see any real numbers until later this week, when the portal Harlequin provides its authors gets updated with the weekly numbers. More bulletins on this as events warrant.

ALSO: I’ve been seeing quite a few folks tweet for me, or signal-boost on Facebook or Google+. Many, MANY thanks to you all. And if you’re a new person coming in to check me out because of seeing either of my books on sale, greetings to you! Grab a chair and raise a jar, and I hope you enjoy my work!

One new reader who found me on Twitter certainly did, anyway. Speaking of things that don’t suck, I know I’ve managed to please a reader when she forgets to feed her dog!

So into this book I forgot to feed my dog. He done brought his dish to me @annathepiper #faerieblood #stretchbreak

— Krystal A. Smith (@AuthorKASmith) June 30, 2014

Hang on, you guys. July promises to be a bumpy ride!