Full Disclosure

April 29, 2011

I'm tired today and fairly annoyed with the publishing industry, traditional or self, so in a fit of whatever, I thought I'd expose myself.

A couple days ago I got a direct deposit from Amazon UK for all the sales of my e-books from the beginning of the year in the UK. The check was for $12.51.

Today, I got notice of a direct deposit of more or less the month's sales for my e-books (except The Fallen) from Amazon. The deposit was $129.90.

Here's the breakdown of units sold per book from 4/1/11 to 4/29/11. Yes, I'm a masochist.

Deadly By The Dozen ........................ 3

Edge.......................................................1

Freelance Writing For A Living .......1

Hot Money ........................................... 2

Monster Seeker .................................. 3

The Battle For Atlantis ..................... 14

The Devil's Pitchfork ........................ 24

The Serpent's Kiss ............................. 6

I would point out that Freelance Writing For A Living has only been up for about a week. I would also point out that the one copy sold was to me for my Kindle. I would also point out that a single sale (by the author) put the book on the #24 spot on the Amazon Kindle bestseller list for Nonfiction Reference Journalism and somewhere around #84 or so on one of the other lists. (Do not believe the significance of Amazon bestseller lists).

And because no one's around to give me 40 lashes for being a real masochist today, I would point out that since the beginning of the year I have made a total of $395.19 on e-book royalties. I made $709 in royalties for the nonfiction book I co-wrote/ghosted that came out in October.

To-date my expenses for my e-books have totaled $425. So I'll probably be into profit for this year for e-books by the end of May, although unless sales do something remarkable I don't think it's much worth bragging about.

I also know that the royalty check, such as it is, for The Fallen sales in 2010 (1/1/10 to 12/31/10) is on its way and unfortunately, once you subtract the advance and my agent's commission, the check will very similar to the amount of money I've made to-date this year on all my e-books. And I'm not quite masochistic enough to break this down further by subtracting taxes.

Anyway, for everyone who wonders about these things and are enamored by the numbers fed us by Joe Konrath, etc., I had a discussion with another writer friend of mine who also handles the e-book sales for a very successful small publisher of science fiction and fantasy, and he commented that my numbers were pretty consistent with what he saw with their 30 or 40 authors.

Lottery tickets anyone?