Tags
Amazon, e-book, Faith Hope and Trickery, Fatal Forgery, Heir Apparent, Kindle, marketing, Notes of Change, paperback, Portraits of Pretence, sales, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, Worm in the Blossom
Tomorrow is the big day – the publication of “Notes of Change”! Today, therefore, is a day of preparation and reflection. And I haven’t updated you recently on the sales of the Sam series. So here goes – the number I have sold in paperback (print-on-demand through Amazon, and through physical bookshops to which I supply stock) and in various e-formats (mostly Kindle, but occasional other formats):
| Paperback via Amazon | E-book | Paperback via physical bookshop | |
| Fatal Forgery | 290 | 954 | 145 |
| The Man in the Canary Waistcoat | 90 | 122 | 75 |
| Worm in the Blossom | 62 | 78 | 56 |
| Portraits of Pretence | 63 | 78 | 43 |
| Faith, Hope and Trickery | 49 | 46 | 26 |
| Heir Apparent | 32 | 36 | 27 |
| Totals | 586 | 1314 | 372 |
As you can see, it’s almost three-to-one in favour of e-books – which is good in some ways as the royalty for e-books is more generous than that for paperbacks. And “Fatal Forgery” is far and away the most popular title. Yes, it’s been out for longest, but I think what the figures really suggest is that not enough people like “Fatal Forgery” enough to stick with the series. That’s something I need to address – another task for the book marketing to do list (how to make sure that people know there is a whole series of lovely Sam books). To be fair to Amazon, they are very good at highlighting series: when you buy one book in a series, the others appear in a tempting carousel display. Perhaps I need to make the pricing more appealing – or investigate the possibility of a seven-title omnibus edition… (Apparently you can’t call e-books a box set, as that implies a physical box – you can, however, call it an omnibus. Like the number 27 to Clapham.)
Susan Grossey 