# Has anyone's else's Amazon sales flatlined?



## GWakeling (Mar 23, 2012)

I was just wondering if anyone else's Amazon sales have flat-lined this month because mine have gone. Over the past few months I've been building steadily, only a couple more each month, but moving upwards. I've done nothing different this month and I've only sold ONE book. And, that ONE book was the sequel, hence no ones even started the series.

I've practically given up and am just working on my new WIP's instead, but it does frustrate me a little because I have no idea why everything's died. Hmpf!

Geoff


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

The first week of the month was great and then it dropped off a cliff. The odd part is we are still doing great on B&N. Usually B&N is half the Amazon sales. The last week it's been about double Amz.


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## GWakeling (Mar 23, 2012)

Katie Elle said:


> The first week of the month was great and then it dropped off a cliff. The odd part is we are still doing great on B&N. Usually B&N is half the Amazon sales. The last week it's been about double Amz.


Unfortunately I can't access PubIt because I'm in the UK, but I do go through Smashwords and have been seeing positive movement in my B&N listing. So, I must be making sales there...with absolutely NO advertising, and yet Amazon sales have fallen, as you mentioned, off that virtual cliff!


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## Fredster (Apr 11, 2011)

My sales flatlined near the end of last month, and were completely dead for the first several days of this month. That's when I realized a couple of my books were in 'draft mode' and fixed that, and also added them back to Select. Within 3 days, I'd picked up 5 more sales, but zero since. Completely dead.

I'm about to finish another book, though, and should have it out in the next week or so. With luck, maybe it'll act as a defib for me.


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## Catana (Mar 27, 2012)

September turned out to be my best month yet, then sales died completely. I've had two sales so far, one of them returned the same day. Almost makes me want to give up writing. (Not really.)


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## Tracy Falbe (Jul 4, 2010)

My September sales were slower after my sales had been steadily climbing all summer, but I figured it was just a normal fluctuation. But then I noticed that my free downloads were down in Sept. Those have always been consistently in the 400 to 500 range each month for 2 years. My free samples are essential for driving sales. Then in Oct. the free downloads plunged by about 80 percent, so sales are seriously dropping off. The only thing I can speculate is that Amazon is not showing my free ebooks nearly as often as before. The system probably is retaliating against my free ebooks because they are price matching other stores instead of free through kdp select. 

(During this time I did not get any horrible reviews either, so that doesn't explain it.)

Basically this sucks for me. However, sales at other stores seem to be holding steady or improving and I've been getting more emails from happy readers. I guess I just can't count on much money from Amazon anymore. 

My free downloads and sales in the UK have been OK though, so maybe I'll take off a bit there to make up for whatever is causing my sudden ostracism in the US.


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## Lyndawrites (Aug 7, 2011)

Yup, dead calm.

I had a brilliant August following a Select free promo, a rerally good September and now? I've sold 5 so far this month in the UK and on 3 on dot com.


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## GWakeling (Mar 23, 2012)

I'm so conflicted! Whilst I'm heartened to hear that I'm not alone, it sucks big time for all of us! I wonder what they've done over at Amazon - if anything - to have made these changes suddenly occur. I was just beginning to think that my novels were gaining a small amount of steam and then, WHAM, nothing.


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## ETS PRESS (Nov 4, 2011)

My sales have been pitiful. Each Sunday my monthly report gets smaller and smaller. Thank heavens for my other venue with has tripled in sales for the last three years.


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## Martin Perry (Aug 2, 2011)

I'd throw my hat in. Very good couple of months but now it's at less than 50% of last month.

Is it seasonal? Is it the algorithms? Meh - I say just roll with it.


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## Thomas Watson (Mar 8, 2012)

tkkenyon said:


> Maybe everyone in the US is paying attention to the election ?
> 
> It makes my face itch.


Politics does that to me, too. 

I've come to the conclusion that the only way to explain ebook sales fluctuations would involve an application of Chaos Theory. And good luck with that!


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

Same thing here. In fact, I came looking for a thread with this subject because I figured I wasn't alone. The weird thing is my books' rankings are fluctuating as usual, but there are no sales reflected in the reports? Could there be another reporting glitch?


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## GWakeling (Mar 23, 2012)

Darn it, whilst it would suck for me to be the only one, I'm sorry your guys are all having difficulties too. I suppose we just have to carry on writing and hope that one of our works hits the big time whilst the others flatline in the background.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

Thanks for the comfort, though some would call it dubious, that I am not alone.  I'm thinking of having a friend change my KDP password for me and not change it back for a week. Even though I should tell him to make it a fortnight.


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## MeiLinMiranda (Feb 17, 2011)

Dead dead dead.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

This is my worst month ever.


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## Ian Fraser (Mar 8, 2011)

My US sales across the board abruptly went over the proverbial cliff - yet oddly, things started picking up for the first time ever in the UK. Now, some weeks on, sales are slowly beginning to trickle in again from the US - but nothing like they used to be, whereas the UK continues to increase. Not sure what to make of it... 

I suspect, judging from the various threads on people's sales this last month or so, that Amazon tweaked something, and a lot of people got caught in the ripple effects. I guess all one can do is hold on for the ride.


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## Ilyria Moon (May 14, 2011)

Pretty much flatlined this month. And without blowing my own trumpet too much, Swallow's a great read! I was toying with rewriting my blurb, but if other are having crappy sales this month...


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## GWakeling (Mar 23, 2012)

Ilyria Moon said:


> I was toying with rewriting my blurb, but if other are having crappy sales this month...


This is exactly what I did for Inside Evil the other day. I wish there was a way to tell page hits....I don't know whether no ones seeing me, or no ones buying me. Hence I decided to change-up the blurb in case it was the latter. No change to sales as yet.....


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

GWakeling said:


> I was just wondering if anyone else's Amazon sales have flat-lined this month because mine have gone. Over the past few months I've been building steadily, only a couple more each month, but moving upwards. I've done nothing different this month and I've only sold ONE book. And, that ONE book was the sequel, hence no ones even started the series.
> 
> I've practically given up and am just working on my new WIP's instead, but it does frustrate me a little because I have no idea why everything's died. Hmpf!
> 
> Geoff


Did you used to have alsobots on book one? Right now all I'm seeing is also-vieweds.


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## GWakeling (Mar 23, 2012)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> Did you used to have alsobots on book one? Right now all I'm seeing is also-vieweds.


To be honest, I've never quite grasped what alsobots are....so I supposed I've never had them!


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## Jeroen Steenbeeke (Feb 3, 2012)

My one sale on Amazon this month was a co-worker who already read the first book. Then again, going from 2 sales/month to 1 sale/month isn't that big of a drop.


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## Ilyria Moon (May 14, 2011)

I think a big part of my problem is I'm not doing a good enough job of marketing. In the two years since it's been out, I've only had 3 returns and I've had steady sales. This past two months have been dire, though.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

GWakeling said:


> To be honest, I've never quite grasped what alsobots are....so I supposed I've never had them!


It's the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section of a product page. I was just thinking if you used to have these, but no longer do, that could (at least help) explain why things have gone dead.


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

Our increasing numbers have slowed though not flat-lined - however, that might well be down to the fact that we are fairly new to the market (launched late June), whereas most of you will have reached a point where sales are pretty consistent and therefore, more accurately judged,trend-wise.

Average sales per day:

July - 7
August - 17
September - 30
October - 35

Good luck
Joe


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## 60169 (May 18, 2012)

Things have been really odd for me with Amazon, which is my only outlet other than my own sales since I'm in Select.

A lot of my sales story mirrors what else I've read in this thread. I was really happy with my sales in September. They exceeded what I thought I could likely get with a first book/no platform author, with 100+ books sold.

Then, things _picked up_ the first week of October. Fat city!

Then I hit a wall. Since last Monday, KDP hasn't shown a single sale for me, although Createspace has shown three books sold.

Here's the weird thing, though: The book was hanging out in the 40-50,000 ranking pretty consistently. Then, as no sales registered, I started the natural drift downward. After five days of no sales, it was at 200k. I get that, but here's where it got weird. On Friday, my ranking ticked up a bit, but no sales registered. Yesterday, I jumped clear back up to 48,000, but no sales registered. Today, I'm clear back down to 147k.

I didn't expect my sales rank to jump like a yo yo when I'm not registering any sales.

I'm trying to counter this with a big three day free push next week, Thursday through Saturday. Wish me luck, and I wish all of you who have struggled too the same!


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## Laura Lond (Nov 6, 2010)

Amazon has definitely done something that has killed my sales. I had books that were steady sellers, nothing huge but I could count on a certain number per month. Now they are dead, not moving at all. I probably wouldn't have sold anything if it wasn't for a recent free run and another book currently on a free promo. Still, the results are pitiful compared from what free runs used to do before.

It's hard not to get frustrated. It seems like as soon as I achieve _something_, Amazon kicks me in the shins and I'm back to nothing, having to start all over again.


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## Ilyria Moon (May 14, 2011)

jljarvis said:


> No. Everything's fine.


Haha 

Yes, I wonder why the 'Customers Who Bought This Also Bought...' has gone? I even changed my tags, in case that was at fault. Then I gave up.

Best of sales, everyone!


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## Vegasgyrl007 (May 11, 2011)

I have toyed with blurbs, advertised and done everything I can just to keep my sales numbers afloat but this has been a tough month no matter how I slice it or dice it. I can only hope November will be better (especially after the 6th when the Presidential election will be OVER).


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## Elissa Drake (Sep 28, 2012)

For someone new to the game, this is very discouraging.    Hoping it's only temporary and sales pick up for everyone.


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## Incognita (Apr 3, 2011)

Ilyria Moon said:


> Yes, I wonder why the 'Customers Who Bought This Also Bought...' has gone? I even changed my tags, in case that was at fault. Then I gave up.
> 
> Best of sales, everyone!


All of my alsobots are still in place, and they seem pretty relevant. I wonder why some people aren't seeing theirs?

Even so, I echo Vegasgyrl007 and hope things get better after the dust from the elections settles. I have a new title coming out in November but I'm not going to release it until the middle of the month, just to be safe.


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## Fredster (Apr 11, 2011)

Obviously I just need to keep complaining. Since I posted this morning--after close to a week with no sales--I had a sale and a borrow of my novel.


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

My sales have been tripling every month (or at least come close to tripling) since I first published in July. My October sales started off great. I made 24 sales and 3 borrows in the first few days of the month and then everything just stopped. I managed to get 3 sales between last night and this morning, but that's it. I don't know what happened, but it's not good.


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## David Kazzie (Sep 16, 2010)

Yup. 

After my post-KDP Select burst earlier in 2012, my sales steadily declined (and hugely so). then for three straight months (June-August), sales started to increase, and I thought the bleeding had stopped. Then in October, they absolutely crashed. 

I'm on pace for my worst month ever -- worse than even before I joined KDP Select. 

When it blew up in January, sales exceeded my wildest expectations, so I can't be too upset. I want to hug it and say, "that'll do, pig. That'll do."


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## TJHudson (Jul 9, 2012)

Yes, I was slowly growing, but that growth has now stopped.

However, this is what I'm just going to concentrate on -



GWakeling said:


> am just working on my new WIP's instead,


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## ChadMck (Feb 25, 2011)

I don't think I've had a sale at all this weekend. In July I was averaging 12 books a day, this months average is at about 6.5 (probably lower due to the weekend). Interestingly my friend who designs iPhone apps was complaining to me about her app sales being in the gutter as well. I'm trying not to let it get to me. I'd like to think I'm in this for the long haul, and 3 months of sales really isn't a long time when considering the next 10 years.

My original intention was to buy a beach house after jumping in the pile of money I made from Amazon. I think I'll have to put that on hold for awhile, unless anyone wants to be my roomie?


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

My sales have been flat this month, but over the past few days, the rate has just started to tick upwards again. Too soon to determine if it's a trend, but the improvement is welcome!


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

I had a so-so promo on one of my books Sept 28th, and despite that, everything's been in a freefall the last few weeks.

I've noticed an increase in bile on the forums, so I think it's affecting everyone.


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## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

Barely a pulse.  I'm releasing a new book in 2-3 weeks and HOPE that revives things a bit.


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## Reeve_Thomas (Aug 9, 2012)

I was beginning to think it was just me and I'd be seeing the Brown Bar of Satan for the entire month. Sold 4 yesterday. 

Too bad I'm still in the red on advertising.  

Meh, paid ads don't seem to be worth it. 

I have a few ads coming up that I've already paid for ... so I guess we'll see how those go. 

All I can do is work on the next book. The next book. The next book.


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

My new method is going to be to write a novella a month while working on several new novels. I'm hoping that with a bunch of quality novellas and a few full-length novels each year, my library of books will start to boost my sales. I'm also going to pump out more adult-themed stuff each week for a potential increase in money. I wrote two of those shorts last week, and I'm working on another one this week as soon as my next novella, Trapped, is finished (tonight, I hope. 5,000 words of revision to go!)


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## Lisa J. Yarde (Jul 15, 2010)

Pretty much on life support right now. I'm trying not to care so much and focus on revising the next. It's not really working.


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## AnnetteL (Jul 14, 2010)

Wow. Glad to hear I'm not the only one. At this rate, October's sales will be maybe half of what they usually are. 

But I'm part of a new Romance anthology that launched this month, and its sales are pretty good. Go figure.


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

Down about 30% on average. Still hitting close to 35 copies a day, but if I break 1000 copies this month, I'll be surprised. They've messed with something over there.


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## Cheryl Douglas (Dec 7, 2011)

For me, June was dismal, July was fantastic, August was good, September was better than June, and October will be better than September.  Basically, I'm just releasing more books and holding out for the holiday season.


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

Something weird happened to me a minute ago. I made my first sale to France.  

That makes 4 sales in 24 hours. Maybe things will start picking up again. Either way, I agree with Mr. Kittrell. It seems as though something has been tinkered with. 

On a side note (and not to jack the thread), I picked up your first book, Brian. I can't wait to check it out as soon as I get some free time from class. Your books look right up my alley.


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## GWakeling (Mar 23, 2012)

David Scroggins said:


> On a side note (and not to jack the thread), I picked up your first book, Brian. I can't wait to check it out as soon as I get some free time from class. Your books look right up my alley.


Hijack away...there's enough doom and gloom here to last a lifetime!


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## cdvsmx5 (May 23, 2012)

Amazon is notorious for it's silence.  However, there is much to be read between these lines.

"We sell the hardware at our cost, so it's break-even on the hardware," Bezos told the BBC on Thursday. "We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices. After you buy a Kindle Fire HD you may use it to buy books, games, movies and so on. So that continuing relationship with the customer is where we hope to make money over time."


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## T. B. Crattie (Aug 6, 2012)

Well, I'm afraid Mr. Bezos is not making much money from my "product" at the moment.


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## Jaci Byrne (Dec 28, 2011)

I am blown away by the sheer number of free books on offer these days, not to mention the number of sites promoting freebies. So, one would wonder, why, if readers get loads of emails every single day offering free downloads of eBooks, would anyone actually purchase a book. When I first went free with KDP Select, less than a year ago, I advertised on the handful of sites I could find on the net. Yesterday I went free for three days as I wanted to promote my latest novel, Penny Lane (and get visibility which was the end result last time). I contacted thirty sites offering freebies, and too-many-to-count sites on Facebook and Twitter. I think we Amazonians are now caught in a vicious circle.
Any thoughts?


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## That one girl (Apr 12, 2011)

I had a mildly successful promo September 25th (2,000 copies of book one and 5,600 copies of book two given away), which has sustained sales for the past three weeks. I'm down to about 18 books sold a day now, but I expect to hit a cliff soon. 

Good thing I released another book under my erotica pen name two days ago and already snagged a couple of positive reviews. I've sold 21 copies of the new erotic short so far, and it also bumped sales on book one in that series, so it's nice not to be totally reliant on free promos and such. 

ENT was supposed to feature No Shelter today, but I think our lines got crossed because it didn't show up. Hopefully, they'll remedy that and feature it sometime this week.


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

David Scroggins said:


> Something weird happened to me a minute ago. I made my first sale to France.
> 
> That makes 4 sales in 24 hours. Maybe things will start picking up again. Either way, I agree with Mr. Kittrell. It seems as though something has been tinkered with.
> 
> On a side note (and not to jack the thread), I picked up your first book, Brian. I can't wait to check it out as soon as I get some free time from class. Your books look right up my alley.


I have had every reaction imaginable so far. So, I hope you enjoy it.  if you meant a different Brian, I still hope you enjoy it. LOL


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

BrianKittrell said:


> I have had every reaction imaginable so far. So, I hope you enjoy it.  if you meant a different Brian, I still hope you enjoy it. LOL


I was talking about you.


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

David Scroggins said:


> I was talking about you.


Ah, okay. Thank you. I know we have a handful of Brians of late.


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## morgan_n (Oct 21, 2011)

I've been stuck for about 2 weeks on a plateau at about the 10,000 Amazon rank for sales of my only consistent seller, _Since Tomorrow_. I don't think it's anything about the time of year, or anything about Amazon, but simply the fact that I don't have any ads running. I'm just relying on Twitter, which brings in a steady but low number of sales. I expect to see changes in November, when I have a sidebar ad running all month on Kindle Book Review.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Jaci Byrne said:


> I am blown away by the sheer number of free books on offer these days, not to mention the number of sites promoting freebies. So, one would wonder, why, if readers get loads of emails every single day offering free downloads of eBooks, would anyone actually purchase a book.


Yes, it seems one must give away a thousand books to sell five. Evidence is anecdotal but when I mention this concern I get beaten up 

What I don't get is how Amazon allows freebies. They don't make money off that, as far as I can tell. I don't mean the five giveaway days they allow via KPD select, which seem reasonable, but when people game the system for price match. Just seems weird to me that a retailer would be happy about that. 
Does anyone know what their stand is on that?


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Quiss said:


> What I don't get is how Amazon allows freebies. They don't make money off that, as far as I can tell. I don't mean the five giveaway days they allow via KPD select, which seem reasonable, but when people game the system for price match. Just seems weird to me that a retailer would be happy about that.
> Does anyone know what their stand is on that?


I think the fact that they do price match to free hints that they realize it actually tends to promote paid sales. They would have very little incentive to give something away for free if doing so did not increase sales.

If a series is selling slowly, price-matching the first book to free causes them to lose those sales. But the freebie often stimulates sales of the next in the series and beyond, which makes up for those few lost sales and often causes many times more sales than the series enjoyed before.


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

Quiss said:


> What I don't get is how Amazon allows freebies. They don't make money off that, as far as I can tell. I don't mean the five giveaway days they allow via KPD select, which seem reasonable, but when people game the system for price match. Just seems weird to me that a retailer would be happy about that.
> Does anyone know what their stand is on that?


They charge outrageous amounts for data delivery, basically.

Say they sell a 1 MB eBook. That costs about $0.20 in delivery charges right off the top.

Amazon's S3 service is (retail): 
Storage: 1 TB / month:	$0.125 per GB
Transfer: Up to 10 TB / month: $0.120 per GB

So, *retail* (in other words, what they charge other people to use the storage for files) is 12 cents per gigabyte, and about 13 cents per gigabyte to transfer.

1000 eBooks at 1 MB in file size fit in that space (1 GB).

They make at least 20,000 cents ($200) in transfer fees on that amount of space and transfer. So, effectively, they can give away 1000 eBooks of equal size and still pay for the service with one sale based on the *retail* rates for bandwidth and storage. And if they give away too many? Well, they still make at least 30% of the royalty to balance things out.

It's probably more like half of the cost for them, but I went off the retail amounts because that's what is available/public.

They could get away with giving away 5,000 or more eBooks per sale. And they aren't anywhere close to giving away a few billion per month yet, I don't think.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Quiss said:


> Yes, it seems one must give away a thousand books to sell five. Evidence is anecdotal but when I mention this concern I get beaten up
> 
> What I don't get is how Amazon allows freebies. They don't make money off that, as far as I can tell. I don't mean the five giveaway days they allow via KPD select, which seem reasonable, but when people game the system for price match. Just seems weird to me that a retailer would be happy about that.
> Does anyone know what their stand is on that?


They allow it at their discretion. Heck, there's even a column in the sales reports specifically for it.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

BrianKittrell said:


> They charge outrageous amounts for data delivery, basically.


Thanks. That's not something I'd thought of. Geepers.


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

Quiss said:


> Yes, it seems one must give away a thousand books to sell five. Evidence is anecdotal but when I mention this concern I get beaten up
> 
> What I don't get is how Amazon allows freebies. They don't make money off that, as far as I can tell. I don't mean the five giveaway days they allow via KPD select, which seem reasonable, but when people game the system for price match. Just seems weird to me that a retailer would be happy about that.
> Does anyone know what their stand is on that?


Amazon's goal is to dominate the eBook market. Freebies give them an ace up their sleeve that print competitors simply can't compete with. It costs a few to several dollars each paper book given away. It costs fractions of a cent for Amazon to give away a free book, and the more free books they give away, the more likely they will have a satisfied customer of their Kindle models. That means that when the next Kindle comes out, their customers are more likely to repeat purchases of Kindle hardware.

We are a culture that pays 300 dollars for a new phone but gripe about a 0.99 app purchase. The same goes for book devices. For the hardware, the majority expects to get free quality entertainment. We're playing into that. No one should feel sorry for Amazon. Free books are a selling point for their kindles.

As for the algorithms, I was looking over the paid top 100 this weekend, and I was a little bit worried about the composition. Usually, self-publishers have dozens of genre fiction titles (not just romance genres) within the top 100. But recently, other than a few big names like Hugh, it seems mostly just romance genres from self publishers, and fewer than usual. It's probably due to a small tweak of the algorithms. I'm not going to be too paranoid about it right now, but I think it's definitely worth watching the trend.

P.S. I've picked up Brian's zombie goodness too


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

Quiss said:


> Thanks. That's not something I'd thought of. Geepers.


hehe Don't worry about Amazon. They won't be losing money on their ventures.  They've been in the game far too long for that.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

I may be wrong in saying that the slump appears to be Select-related. I've only ever had middling post-freebie sales success with my promo runs. I was never part of the great ebook bonanza, and I've seen my sales increase slowly but steadily. I take comfort from the fact that those people who bought my books actually bought them because the books looked good, not because of some promo effect. I think that is the only way to build lasting sales.

You are the selling point. Amazon... is just a venue.


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## Laura Lond (Nov 6, 2010)

Jaci Byrne said:


> I am blown away by the sheer number of free books on offer these days, not to mention the number of sites promoting freebies. So, one would wonder, why, if readers get loads of emails every single day offering free downloads of eBooks, would anyone actually purchase a book. When I first went free with KDP Select, less than a year ago, I advertised on the handful of sites I could find on the net. Yesterday I went free for three days as I wanted to promote my latest novel, Penny Lane (and get visibility which was the end result last time). I contacted thirty sites offering freebies, and too-many-to-count sites on Facebook and Twitter. I think we Amazonians are now caught in a vicious circle.
> Any thoughts?


Yes, free seems to have lost some of its power (okay, maybe a lot of its power, LOL); it only seems to continue to work, with varying results, for books 1 in series / trilogies. People taste the first book, like it, and buy the rest. A post-free sales bump for a standalone book no longer happens, or happens very rarely.

I think Amazon certainly sees that and might do something about it. Judging by their history, that "something" is likely to hurt small fish like myself. _[Sigh]_ We'll see.


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## Marilyn Peake (Aug 8, 2011)

Oh, wow, I'm so glad I stopped over here tonight. The past two months, my Kindle sales have fallen off a cliff.    My sales had been increasing, I had been selling books every day, and my free downloads usually made it into the thousands. Then - wham! - starting last month, my sales and free download numbers plummeted. I've only sold a few books this month, and my free downloads are also fairly low. So sorry so many of you are also experiencing a drop in sales.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

BrianKittrell said:


> They charge outrageous amounts for data delivery, basically.


Um, Brian? You're forgetting the 'Whispernet', cellphone-data side of things. _That's_ why they charge per MB. Not the website end of things.

Go look at what AT&T or Verizon charge per MB of cellular data, and re-run those numbers. (Hint: Overseas AT&T rates are $30/120MB. Yes, *MB*.) They still make money, natch, but an order of magnitude or two less than what using the AWS prices suggest.


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

Please take heart, everyone. I'm convinced thousands of our one-click sales have been caught in an evil Amazon spam filter.   I foresee a massive disgorgement of sales any day now. Any day now. Any day...


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

George Berger said:


> Um, Brian? You're forgetting the 'Whispernet', cellphone-data side of things. _That's_ why they charge per MB. Not the website end of things.
> 
> Go look at what AT&T or Verizon charge per MB of cellular data, and re-run those numbers. (Hint: Overseas AT&T rates are $30/120MB. Yes, *MB*.) They still make money, natch, but an order of magnitude or two less than what using the AWS prices suggest.


Ah, true. For the wireless devices without Wifi, of course, they're making less. However, they charge the maximum rate regardless of medium; Kindle for PC? $0.20. iPad on a Wifi network? $0.20. Cell phone or whispernet? $0.20.

_--Brian, $0.20_


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## JGreen20 (Jul 10, 2012)

tkkenyon said:


> Maybe everyone in the US is paying attention to the election ?


This month they pay attention to the election, in September they were focused on kids going back to school after the summer, in August... it was just August, in July the Olympic Games, etc.

People always have something else to focus on, besides buying books.

Whether those events affect or not to overall sales, it really doesn't matter. The only thing we can do is to keep writing and publishing.


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## Colin H (Oct 21, 2011)

Saw a decline in September with October continuing the downward trend. I increased prices from $2.99 to $3.99 in July and was thinking this might be the reason. However other posts make me think it might not be the price rise and I should wait a little longer to see if sales pick up before changing. Have just released a new novel and hope this might stimulate sales.


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## 60911 (Jun 13, 2012)

Looking at my sales ranks compared to sales, I've seen downward movement on both versus last month but nothing unexpexted and nothing outrageous (on Amazon, I've actually seen a significant rise in sales on B&N). It looks to me like sales are just down, period, over September, for everyone, trad and indie, but my highest title is only ranked about 4500 right now, so my scope of the numbers is hardly complete.


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## Kwalker (Aug 23, 2012)

I must be an abnormality. I'm avoiding TV like the plague because I'm so tired of seeing political ads. The same crap over and over. I've been reading more this month than I have in a while.


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## Kenneth Rosenberg (Dec 3, 2010)

Add me to the list of people whose sales have tanked. I had a free run with one of my books to finish out September. It led to two sales and one borrow so far this month. My other two books have had a combined sale of one copy. So I've made $8 this month. I wrote about it on my blog today, and what the causes might be. Piracy (unlikely to be a big cause), a glut of self-pubbed material drowning us all out (maybe partly responsible), a glut of free books causing readers to expect their content to be free (again, partly responsible), and Amazon tweaking their algorithms (probably the most likely suspect).

I think the bottom line is that people are still reading e-books, but for whatever reason they don't seem to be reading ours all of a sudden. Or at least not buying them. No doubt this is a little disturbing. Here's the link to the blog post, for anyone who wants to check it out:

http://kennethrosenberg.blogspot.com/


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## Dave Dutton (Sep 23, 2011)

I used to sell loads of my How to Be a Crafty Cruiser book in the States as well as UK but it seems now to be mainly UK based sales which remain reasonably steady. Sold a few of my Book of Famous Oddballs in USA this month but that's about it for now. Here's hoping.


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## David Adams (Jan 2, 2012)

Sales picked up over the last couple of days, which is good because they were rubbish before. Here's hoping it continues.


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

On a positive note, I've sold two of the Spanish translations of the first book... in the US store. So, it will probably be 35% sales, but something's better than nothing.


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## Guest (Oct 15, 2012)

Sales definitely flatlined. Am under heavy orders to caffeinate to keep optimistic view and to prevent me from hitting delete button on upcoming works. 

Have no idea what's going on, but am keeping the faith that the books will find their market.


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

Trapped is now publishing on Kindle (finally!) and should be up in a few more hours. I hope that will give me a few sales. I think I'm going to stop writing my quirky dark fantasy books and concentrate more on paranormal / horror, psychological thrillers and that sort of thing.


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## Dave Adams (Apr 25, 2012)

October has been terrible. 4 sales in the last week...which was a big win after 0 through 10/8.


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## Coral Moore (Nov 29, 2009)

September was abysmal for me on Amazon, one of my worst months ever there, but so far (fingers crossed) October looks to have bounced back. 

B&N, interestingly enough, is exactly the opposite. September was okay, but October is starting out dead.


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## Laura Lond (Nov 6, 2010)

WPotocki said:


> Am under heavy orders to caffeinate to keep optimistic view and to prevent me from hitting delete button on upcoming works.


No deleting!! Get those books out and on the battlefield!


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## Accord64 (Mar 12, 2012)

I launched a new book last week and feel like it came out a stillborn.  Now that I've read through this topic, maybe I'm not such a terrible writer as I thought I was a few minutes ago?


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## Guest (Oct 15, 2012)

Laura Lond said:


> No deleting!! Get those books out and on the battlefield!


LOL!

http://youtu.be/CjY_uSSncQw

If I were really clever, I'd do my own version of the above. Something like, "Indie Is A Battlefield!"


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## NS (Jul 8, 2011)

I had zero sales in two days. That's the first time since I started to publish.


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## ChadMck (Feb 25, 2011)

Natasha A. Salnikova said:


> I had zero sales in two days. That's the first time since I started to publish.


Yeah the same thing happened to me! Grumble grumble grumble!


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

My novella sold 2 copies on launch day, which helped. It has since frozen stiff, so I'm trying out a free select promotion. They usually work for me, although I am depressed to say that it only has 120 free downloads so far. A few of my other titles started selling a few copies over the last 2 days, so thankfully I'm not totally dead in the water now. Let's all just hope that it starts picking up a little more.


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## Laura Lond (Nov 6, 2010)

Things seem to have picked up a little. Just a little. Which is better than nothing.


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## Isabelking (Jan 16, 2012)

I had a great month in August. My first week of September was good. Then my sales suddenly, very abruptly plummeted. I had one big bestseller that was selling 40-70 copies a day on Amazon and 10-20 a day on Amazon UK throughout August that abruptly dropped in sales, to the point where these days it sells about 1 to 8 copies a day.  My other good sellers - 300 to 500 copies a month - have died down to a few dozen a month.

So, in September and this month, I'm averaging about 40-50 percent of what I earned in August. I released 4 new books, too. More books...less sales.

All I can do is hope for that Christmas sales boom I've heard about.  And keep writing more stories and experimenting in more genres.


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## DRMarvello (Dec 3, 2011)

I had a great August and September. October is not as good, but still better than the 0 month I had in May.

I figure we can't expect sales to be consistent no matter what we do. The book environment is constantly changing. Over 1,000 Kindle books were released in the past 30 days in the fantasy genre alone. I think it was over 50K for all genres. All it takes is for a small percentage of those books to catch on and the landscape at the top of the rankings changes completely. That has a ripple effect all the way down the line (to where I am).

I don't think promotion helps much, honestly. It's hard for a single campaign to stimulate enough conversion to really make a difference. Getting one sale will bump you from the 100K-plus range up into the 50K range, but it gets incrementally harder to make any headway from there. Amazon doesn't put you into the recommendation lists reliably until your sales *consistently* stay above a certain ranking. (My WAG is that ranking is right around 25K--that's where sales seem to beget sales.)

I'm now convinced that writing an excellent book that your readers will tell their friends about is the first requirement for decent sales. The second requirement is that your metadata must do a good job of representing what a wonderful book you've written. The metadata lets readers know your book is the right book for them, and your book's content gets them excited enough to tell their friends about it. Virality is King.


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## Nova_Implosion (Jul 20, 2012)

Accord64 said:


> I launched a new book last week and feel like it came out a stillborn.


I'm sorry, but this made me laugh  I know the feeling, too!


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## StephenEngland (Nov 2, 2011)

The surprise to me is not that giveaways have reached the point of diminishing returns. . .but that there were people who DIDN'T see that coming.  
I'm happy to never have climbed aboard the KDP Select bandwagon.


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## Adam Kisiel (Jun 20, 2011)

Relax, and remember that self-publishing is a long-term thing. Who knows where you will be in one year.

Best of luck,

Adam


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## Isabelking (Jan 16, 2012)

Believe it or not, despite the fact that my sales are in their second full month of suckitude, I'm very optimistic.  Yes, things are bad right now, but this business can be very seasonal.

I've gotten a number of five star reviews, I've had a couple of readers go so far as to contact me and ask me for sequels, and I've had some very positive comments on my writing - under both of my pen names. I have already had several months where I earned what I'd always dreamed of earning.

Then after the first week of September, my sales plunged to half what they were, and never came back.

But I still believe that if I keep putting out books, experimenting with different genres and pen names, and doing what I did before, that my sales will continue to grow.


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## LeonardDHilleyII (May 23, 2011)

Mine have steadily increased each month, but I still cannot see anything on the UK reports.  Anyone know if the UK still doesn't report their sales?


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

LeonardDHilleyII said:


> Mine have steadily increased each month, but I still cannot see anything on the UK reports. Anyone know if the UK still doesn't report their sales?


I had a sale, a few hours ago, after a long period of zero, nada, zilch... but for me the UK is down by a lot compared to other months.


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## NS (Jul 8, 2011)

tkkenyon said:


> Picked up a few sales overnight. Maybe that'll break the curse.
> 
> It is disturbing how much my mood and sense of worth are tied to anonymous strangers buying my cheap books.
> 
> TK Kenyon


Yep. I know that feeling. 
Sales don't pick up and since my three bestselling books in Russian were blocked two days ago for Russian content, they (sales) look pathetic.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

Yes, me too. My sales have been bad since August for no reason. But then I read this:

http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2012/10/amazon-remains-mum-on-authors-fears-of-book-sales-skimming/


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## Ian Fraser (Mar 8, 2011)

Susanne OLeary said:


> Yes, me too. My sales have been bad since August for no reason. But then I read this:
> 
> http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2012/10/amazon-remains-mum-on-authors-fears-of-book-sales-skimming/


The article does give me the odd cold shiver, because I think my US sales started to stutter around that date, and then gradually come to a grinding halt by month end, much lower than usual.

I'm just lucky that UK sales - for absolutely no reason that I can see - have picked up the slack for this month. I may as well not have any titles up on Amazon US for all the good its doing me now. And that's across 17 assorted novels, novellas, short stories, and plays. Previously I was enjoying a few daily sales across the various titles.

Like the other folks have said, all I can do is work feverishly toward releasing the next book(s) - and hope that whatever Amazon did, isn't going to continue.

Its almost as if a switch was thrown somewhere deep inside Amazon - and those who got caught by it - their sales essentially hit a brick wall.


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## Consuelo Saah Baehr (Aug 27, 2010)

Amazon U.S. has been slow but Amazon U.K. is eerily bad.  One title that used to sell hundreds every month and at one time was on the Daily Mail most downloaded e-book list has had  9 sales so far in Oct. Oddly the slow sales began the month I liberated all my titles from Select.  Waaa Waaa. I want e-publishing to be an unhampered, untampered opportunity.


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## LT Ville (Apr 17, 2011)

My sales have been about the same. I only have two books that actually sale though. The rest might sale a copy or two. For my top sellers, things are looking okay this month. I'm afraid the slow down might hit me soon too. I hope not. I'm barely making enough to pay a few bills. I can't leave my day job unless I improve on that.


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## Ian Fraser (Mar 8, 2011)

Hmm, my slow sales _also_ came after my books got out of the KDP Select program - and I chose not to continue...

It was actually the slow sales that made me put some titles _back_ into the Select program, figuring I had nothing to lose. I wonder if there's a connection?

Have other 'slow/no sales' folks also recently come out of the Select program? Now this would be a creepy conspiracy theory. 
*looks for tin foil for hat*


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## Dave Dutton (Sep 23, 2011)

Neither my USA nor UK sales figures have moved for about 10 days now and I usually sell at least a few a day. Createspace books are selling as nornal. It could be that I'm not selling any Kindle books but in view of what other authors have said, it's a worrying niggle. I sincerely hope things get back to normal soon for all our sakes.


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## H. S. St. Ours (Mar 24, 2012)

Sales tanked after removing my books from Select. Of course, it could be that my 4- and 5-star-reviewed books aren't very good. Or that people have stopped buying ebooks. Or that I should just shut up about it and get the next darn book in the series finished and out the door. Think I'll do that last thing.


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## Consuelo Saah Baehr (Aug 27, 2010)

H.S. 

Besides your fabulous name, your suggestion that we should just shut up about slow sales and keep writing is annoyingly good.


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## Nicole Ciacchella (May 21, 2012)

I personally don't think there's any sort of Select connection.  The Eye of the Beholder was out of the Select program when I had my best-ever month on Amazon, and the only reason I decided to go back into Select was because my sales were so anemic on other outlets--I think I may already have more borrows this month alone than I had sales over a two-three month period on B&N and Kobo.  

Anyway, after re-enrolling The Eye in Select, my sales tanked.  They're recovering now, but the cliff I plunged off happened after reupping with Select.


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## GWakeling (Mar 23, 2012)

Susanne OLeary said:


> Yes, me too. My sales have been bad since August for no reason. But then I read this:
> 
> http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2012/10/amazon-remains-mum-on-authors-fears-of-book-sales-skimming/


That link freaks me the hell out! Why is it happening to so many people? Why since the start of September 14th? And, why are Amazon seemingly not acknowledging it? I'm very glad I'm not in Select right about now, because my iBooks and B&N sales are starting to outdo Amazon!


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## 25803 (Oct 24, 2010)

I've been watching my numbers slowly get worse since mid-September. The last big algo tinkering Amazon did was in mid-March and now I'm wondering if they are on a 6 month schedule for revamping their algo calculations.

In mid-March the biggest change was to how free books were calculated once the books returned to the paid list. It's not clear what this latest change (if there was one) impacted, but with so many authors reporting slower sales, I'm thinking Amazon must have changed something. I've had a few recent releases, but they, too, have slowed in sales, so I don't think it's some favoritism toward recent releases. It might be as simple as a more frequent updating of the also-boughts listings. It would have to be a change that's not easy to see (like the one in March). It could be a favoritism for higher priced books possibly (like 4.99 and higher?).

Does anyone have any ideas or do you think I'm mistaken? If it were the election or the glut of books, my rankings would have stayed more consistent than they have because it would have affected everyone. So I'm bumfuzzled.


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## Joebruno999 (Oct 20, 2010)

My Amazon sales have increased this month; by almost 25 percent.

Late last month, I enrolled seven of my non-fiction mobster books in KDP Select. I removed everything from Smashwords, except a novel I wrote three years ago, which I have listed for free.

I was never doing much on the Smashwords sites like Sony, Apple and Barnesandnoble; peanuts compared to what I always did on Amazon.

So I went all in on Amazon and the results are very good for me. The free giveaways help, and also the borrows, for which authors get around two bucks a loan.

This might only hold only  for non-fiction books. I'm not sure.

But I doubt I'll ever list any of my new books on any site except Amazon.


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## Isabelking (Jan 16, 2012)

We were discussing that blog post on another forum.

I too have suffered the horrible sales drop that started after the first week of September. I had a great month in July, an even better month in August when I was selling about 200-250 books a day, and now I sell about 80 to 100 books a day. That's a big drop. I know writers who were making $3000 a day who are now making $1000. Yeah, you could say boo hoo, only $1000 a day, but - really - their sales are now 1/3 of what they were before!!!

But - unless Amazon is deliberately stealing our sales, and honestly, I reaaaaly don't believe they'd risk doing that - then if my sales drop, and all these other writers sales drop, that would mean that Amazon is making way less money because they only make money from us when they sell more books, right?

Unless they changed the algorythms in a way that a whole new crop of writers or books were selling a lot more, and were simply taking the place of all the other people who got shoved down by the algorythm change. If that were the case, I think we'd be hearing more people speaking up about it, don't you?

It's possible that sales just suck in September and October. I've only been selling since late April so I don't have any seasonal data yet. 

My B&N sales are 50 percent of what they were in August as well.


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

I, too, had a crash that started about mid-September and never let up. The past three weeks have shown zero sales across five titles. I had one hardback sale and one out-of-print sale. Just started a 10-day blog tour this morning and made one sale already. So I'm watching my rank and sales through this tour and announcing all kinds of give-aways. At worst I was good for 2 to 3 sales a week; granted I'm new and have only one self-pubbed titles out--the rest are trade.


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## StephanieHurt (Aug 24, 2012)

I have noticed the same thing. My sales were doing fairly decent in America and the UK and now zilch. The month started good, then nothing. What's weird is I was put out through Amazon on authors to check out on Wednesday and still nothing. My sales at Barnes & Noble and Apple have done well. It's very weird. At least I'm not the only one having this problem.


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## WG McCabe (Oct 13, 2012)

As someone who is about to start publishing I have to say all of this stuff is making me just excited as some excited thing.


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## jimkukral (Oct 31, 2011)

Honestly I believe it's the US election. My sales, in other stuff besides books, for over 10-years always drop during the 60-days leading up to the election. People are just confused and pre-occupied. There's so much uncertainty in the air now as with every election in the last 15-years or so. People just don't know what to think or what to expect, so they just shut down.

That's my unscientific opinion.

FYI, my sales have started back to normal this week (which blows my theory above). In fact, better than ever. It was dead slow all Sept and first half of Oct.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

This is why I'm probably packing it in soon:










I'll probably still put out a book a year, dabble in my free time, but it's just not viable as a business, so I'm not going to push myself anymore. I'll write some words of some stories I love, a few words a week, and that'll be fine.


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## MJWare (Jun 25, 2010)

Dalya said:


> This is why I'm probably packing it in soon:
> 
> I'll probably still put out a book a year, dabble in my free time, but it's just not viable as a business, so I'm not going to push myself anymore. I'll write some words of some stories I love, a few words a week, and that'll be fine.


Wow, hate to see you go Dalya. I suspect, if you do decide to stop, you'll get drawn back in sooner or later--probably sooner (that's what always happens to me).

Honestly, I don't mean to sound like an elitist, but a big shake up might just be what we need to get rid of the 'get rich quick' folks.
I have no problem with people writing because it seems like a great way to get rich quick--we live in a free society after all. But eventually people who became authors just to make a quick buck will pack up and move on to the next big thing--that will make things easier for the rest of us.

For the record, I don't think Dalya or most KB members fall into that category.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Dalya, is the graph sales or rankings? I was looking at my ranking charts of my books for the last year or so, and I have spikes like yours, but sales never really nosedived, they just from really good to just okay, but never terrible (by my standards). This month has been almost terrible. I put out a new book last week and while sales have been okay, I've pretty much hand sold every one of them by emailing people who have emailed me about my books. I don't think I've had any new readers to the series. I won't be quitting, but just a few months ago, I was excited that I would soon be part-time at my day job so I could write faster, but now I'm wondering if I made a big mistake.


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## H.M. Ward (May 16, 2012)

One thing is for certain - epublishing isnt static. As soon as I figured out something that worked, Amazon changed things and I had to start over. It's not the kind of thing where I can sit back and watch my royalties pile up, not that I'd be against that, but things just haven't worked that way for me.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

September 2012 was the first month since November 2011 (and October 2012 looks set to be the second) when I failed to sell at least ten non-goat-related ebooks on Amazon - and in terms of total numbers sold, my worst since September 2011.

Put another way, since July 2011, and excluding the goat thing, my Amazon sales have been less than the number of ebooks I had for sale in that month _twice_ - September 2011, and September 2012.

And now, probably, October 2012, too.

FWIW, I did hit 350 lifetime non-goat-related ebook sales on Amazon this month, though... After twenty-seven months and 11 titles. Yay...?


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## JimC1946 (Aug 6, 2009)

I don't know if it's related to the issues being discussed in this thread, but until about three months ago, my one book, _Recollections_, was consistently selling about 50 Kindle copies a month. Since then it's more like 20-25 a month.


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

Not to freak anyone out or anything, but I've been doing this since Jan '11, and NOVEMBER was even worse last year than October, which was bad enough.  This year, I'm looking at the same pattern--after Labor Day, things go from good to bad to worse.


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## 60911 (Jun 13, 2012)

You guys are scaring/depressing the hell outta me. Guess I better enjoy these personally awesome sales and income months while they last.


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## jimkukral (Oct 31, 2011)

Never quit! Just keep writing and testing. We will prevail long term.


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

jimkukral said:


> Never quit! Just keep writing and testing. We will prevail long term.


The best advice.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

MaryMcDonald said:


> Dalya, is the graph sales or rankings? I was looking at my ranking charts of my books for the last year or so, and I have spikes like yours, but sales never really nosedived, they just from really good to just okay, but never terrible (by my standards). This month has been almost terrible. I put out a new book last week and while sales have been okay, I've pretty much hand sold every one of them by emailing people who have emailed me about my books. I don't think I've had any new readers to the series. I won't be quitting, but just a few months ago, I was excited that I would soon be part-time at my day job so I could write faster, but now I'm wondering if I made a big mistake.


Oh, it's my sales. I've screwed up in a lot of ways. Wrote the wrong things, didn't start a series of the right things. I even put out a novel under another pen name, for commercial women's lit, yet it won't do anything if I don't pump out a title a month.

Meh, it is what it is. I wanted to write some books, and I did. I'm happy with what I've written. The business aspect has been disappointing, but I think many of us are in that little boat! I don't think I'm on the verge of breaking out. Not by miles. I'm going to try some other things, because I'm too old to spend years and years toiling at something that ain't workin'. Gotta try new things.


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## soyfrank (Feb 2, 2011)

I haven't sold anything since August. Not one.


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## portiadacosta (Feb 28, 2011)

I don't think the US election would be responsible for cutting my UK sales in half... unless, for some reason, UK erotic romance readers are also passionately interested in American politics.


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## Isabelking (Jan 16, 2012)

portiadacosta said:


> I don't think the US election would be responsible for cutting my UK sales in half... unless, for some reason, UK erotic romance readers are also passionately interested in American politics.


Very good point, Portia. And my UK sales are also cut in half.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Isabelking said:


> Very good point, Portia. And my UK sales are also cut in half.


Half of nothing is still nothing 

However, the UK people who are no longer buying on Amazon are buying on Kobo.


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## portiadacosta (Feb 28, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> Half of nothing is still nothing
> 
> However, the UK people who are no longer buying on Amazon are buying on Kobo.


Yes, WHS/Kobo are making a big push here, and people may also be holding back from buying on Amazon, waiting for the appearance of the Nook later this month. Not sure whether the general public will know much about the forthcoming appearance of the Nook, as I haven't shopped in any of the outlets that are going to sell it... but I'm sure there's advance publicity for it, to whip up interest. And writers will know about it... and writers buy a lot of books themselves! 

I'm not selling much on Kobo yet, but it's definitely starting to increase. In fact all the outlets I sell to through Smashwords are improving... which means all is not lost if Amazon sales decline!


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## Flopstick (Jul 19, 2011)

I, too, am down about 50% since mid-September on Amazon. (SW continues to just be worthless.) Does Amazon have its sales data audited? It really, really should do.


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## Jill James (May 8, 2011)

I'm selling sporatically (as usual) at all places but Amazon. On Amazon I sold on Oct. 2-3 and nothing since.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

jimkukral said:


> Never quit! Just keep writing and testing. We will prevail long term.


I just don't buy this anymore. I think quitting a name or a series could be a good thing. And just writing isn't enough.

That is why I'm changing my name to Steve King and writing Corrie. ( kidding )


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Same here. Nothing on Amazon a time ago. But honestly I don't really care about Amazon anymore. I have plenty retailers, eighteen plus, so if I don't sell on one, which is my least favorite and the most unreliable of all, where the sales report are far away from any sort of reality, I won't shred any tears. The only reason that I won't pull out my books from this overhyped American junkyard is that I won't punish my readers, because they love this unreliable company, which love to manipulate and fake sales reports.

However I have another guess why people don't buy books these days; their Kindles are filled with $0.99 and Free books. And this is the aftermath. Why should anyone buy your books if most of you give it away for free?


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

There have been two or three threads recently about sales having stopped, or fallen off a cliff, since early September. Has anyone here found their sales to improve after early September by deciding to opt for KDP Select? (I am not inquiring about earlier Select results, just those who are trying to deal with the big drop after the first week of September.)


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

I saw one person say that sales didn't plunge until after they put a book into Select.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

BrianKittrell said:


> I saw one person say that sales didn't plunge until after they put a book into Select.


That was me. Mostly it was because I was no longer getting revenue anywhere else and the book wasn't doing well on Amazon by itself.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Same here. Nothing on Amazon a time ago. But honestly I don't really care about Amazon anymore. I have plenty retailers, eighteen plus, so if I don't sell on one, which is my least favorite and the most unreliable of all, where the sales report are far away from any sort of reality, I won't shred any tears. The only reason that I won't pull out my books from this overhyped American junkyard is that I won't punish my readers, because they love this unreliable company, which love to manipulate and fake sales reports.
> 
> However I have another guess why people don't buy books these days; their Kindles are filled with $0.99 and Free books. And this is the aftermath. Why should anyone buy your books if most of you give it away for free?


How come the people that give away the most books, *sell* the most books?


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> How come the people that give away the most books, *sell* the most books?


Here is a hint; giving away something for free is not equal with selling, my dear. If you multiply ten thousand with zero, it's still zero.

And because of these free runs most of the Kindle users has 2000+ books. Why should they buy more books if their Kindle is larger than the national library?


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Here is a hint; giving away something for free is not equal with selling, my dear. If you multiply ten thousand with zero, it's still zero.


Here is a hint: I know the difference between giving away and selling, my dear.

People who give away the most also *SELL IN EXCHANGE FOR MONEY* the most.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Here is a hint: I know the difference between giving away and selling, my dear.
> 
> People who give away the most also *SELL IN EXCHANGE FOR MONEY* the most.


I know, my dear. But actually those sales never cover your free runs. Of course you may look the bright side. You gave away 10k books and then you sold 100 units. But if your book is just $0.99 and you give away 10k, in that case you spent $9990 for advertisement. Now if you sell 100 books after that, congratulations; your balance is "minus $9955" (As you have to calculate with 35% per sold unit.). So I don't really call these free runs as a successful business as your sales after that doesn't cover your theoretical advertisement budget, which is maybe the most expensive on this planet. And if your book is $2.99 or $5.99, calculate with that instead of $0.99. How much is that for advertisment? Somewhere between $29k and 59k? Pretty large budget for advertisement just to then sell 100+ books with a royalty of an average 35%. 70% if you dare to sell your book for more than $2.99.


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## MeiLinMiranda (Feb 17, 2011)

I'm no fan of Select, but I do know this: you can't equate a free download with a lost purchase. Chances are good the downloader wouldn't have bought the book--chances are good that it won't even get read as a free download sitting around on someone's Kindle. So how do we calculate how much "money" was "spent?"


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> I know, my dear. But actually those sales never cover your free runs.


Please talk about things you understand.

You would not sell those books without the free run proving the high listing on the popular list. Nice try, though.


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Here is a hint: I know the difference between giving away and selling, my dear.
> 
> People who give away the most also *SELL IN EXCHANGE FOR MONEY* the most.


Don't feed the animals. lol


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

BrianKittrell said:


> Don't feed the animals. lol


I'm done!


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

MeiLinMiranda said:


> I'm no fan of Select, but I do know this: you can't equate a free download with a lost purchase. Chances are good the downloader wouldn't have bought the book--chances are good that it won't even get read as a free download sitting around on someone's Kindle. So how do we calculate how much "money" was "spent?"


Actually every free download is a lost customer. I also met with this scenario when I made a free run. Few dear readers told that they just wanted to buy the book for $8.88 at the end of the month, and then I just made their life a bit easier as they got the book for free. Now calculate this number with 10-15 people and that's already about $75-100 minus. Of course they'll buy the second and the third volume, but those books are already in different budget. Every free download is one customer minus. Of course we have 7 billion human type creature on this spinning ball, but a lost paying customer is still minus in the balance.



Krista D. Ball said:


> Please talk about things you understand.
> 
> You would not sell those books without the free run proving the high listing on the popular list. Nice try, though.


Actually with the exception of my shortest story I'm capable to sell my books for much more than $0.99 (Amazon is a dear exception as there I can't sell anything even for $0.99. Amazon is my black sheep.). I don't have bestselling sales, true, but I already made much more with these sales than what you would make with about thousand $0.99 sales. So maybe, just maybe I know what about I'm talking. And my income is clearly in the plus as I don't have this aforementioned hypothetical advertisement budget as I don't really give away my books for free.



BrianKittrell said:


> Don't feed the animals. lol


Manners, Brian. Get some manners, pretty please.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Guardian said:


> I know, my dear. But actually those sales never cover your free runs. Of course you may look the bright side. You gave away 10k books and then you sold 100 units. But if your book is just $0.99 and you give away 10k, in that case you spent $9990 for advertisement. Now if you sell 100 books after that, congratulations; your balance is "minus $9955" (As you have to calculate with 35% per sold unit.). So I don't really call these free runs as a successful business as your sales after that doesn't cover your theoretical advertisement budget, which is maybe the most expensive on this planet. And if your book is $2.99 or $5.99, calculate with that instead of $0.99. How much is that for advertisment? Somewhere between $29k and 59k? Pretty large budget for advertisement just to then sell 100+ books with a royalty of an average 35%. 70% if you dare to sell your book for more than $2.99.


This is tommy rot. My figures show that well over 50% of people who download my first FREE book, go on to buy the entire series. At an extremely generous royalty rate of 70%, that's a pretty wise investment on my part - especially considering that allowing people to download the first one for free hasn't actually cost me ANYTHING!


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Alondo said:


> This is tommy rot. My figures show that well over 50% of people who download my first FREE book, go on to buy the entire series. At an extremely generous royalty rate of 70%, that's a pretty wise investment on my part - especially considering that allowing people to download the first one for free hasn't actually cost me ANYTHING!


I don't know what a tommy rot is, but it is going to be a phrase of the week!


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Alondo said:


> This is tommy rot. My figures show that well over 50% of people who download my first FREE book, go on to buy the entire series. At an extremely generous royalty rate of 70%, that's a pretty wise investment on my part - especially considering that allowing people to download the first one for free hasn't actually cost me ANYTHING!


Yeah, it's a long term investment, no one denied that. But if you're a business man, you calculate every free unit as an actual minus (As it's a minus in the reality, regardless it doesn't cost you anything, just a minus sale.). Every unit given away for free is a minus on royalty price. And giving away 10k+ books to then sell 100 or maybe 500+, it's a pretty bad investment, even if its a long term investment as the actual sold numbers always must be higher than the number of units what you use for advertisements. If it's not, your book is actually free in the reality, but there are hundred fools who have paid for a book, what was otherwise free for ten thousand. And after that it's not a successful business at all, regardless how you're polishing the numbers or how you look at them.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Actually every free download is a lost customer.


Well in my case, 59% of my free downloads produce new PAYING customers. Go ahead, explain that.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Alondo said:


> Well in my case, 59% of my free downloads produce new PAYING customers. Go ahead, explain that.


See above.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> I don't know what a tommy rot is, but it is going to be a phrase of the week!


"Tommy rot" is a very British phrase. It's nicer than saying "c**p"


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## nigel p bird (Feb 4, 2011)

a little reassured by the thread that at least it's not just me.  upwards and onwards all.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Alondo said:


> Well in my case, 59% of my free downloads produce new PAYING customers. Go ahead, explain that.


Cost-benefit wise, it's comparable to grocery stores who hire someone to give out those little sample cups of frozen foods they're cooking right there.

So let's say Book 1 is 0.99, Book 2 is 2.99, Book 3 is 2.99 and you give away 10,000 Book 1.

Guardian would have you say you've lost $3500. However, if you were not selling at all, you weren't earning that to begin with. But, hey, let's say you did lose $3500.

Using your 59% ration, you've made:

2.99 x 70% * 5900 = $12,348 x 2 books = $24, 697

So hey, you still made a lot of money.

Either way I cook the books, it still works.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

True. But Book 2 and Book 3 is a different budget already. Of course, $24k sounds good, Krista, but if you split it to three books and three years (One year per book.), it doesn't sound that well already. And it's highly unlikely that all 100% of that 59% will buy both books (Count bravely with 25-40% of that 59% instead.). The problem is that theoretically you would be right. Only theoretically. But unfortunately from business perspective, when the number of free units is about 200%+ higher than the sold units, it's already not a successful business. And as we've sees on this board that plenty times that they gave away more than 30k... and how many sales they had after that? 50-100? Some of them had 10 sales, no more. So, it's a very-very bad investment.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Yeah, it's a long term investment, no one denied that. But if you're a business man, you calculate every free unit as an actual minus (As it's a minus in the reality, regardless it doesn't cost you anything, just a minus sale.). Every unit given away for free is a minus on royalty price. And giving away 10k+ books to then sell 100 or maybe 500+, it's a pretty bad investment, even if its a long term investment as the actual sold numbers always must be higher than the number of units what you use for advertisements. If it's not, your book is actually free in the reality, but there are hundred fools who have paid for a book, what was otherwise free for ten thousand. And after that it's not a successful business at all, regardless how you're polishing the numbers or how you look at them.


(Puts arm round shoulder). Look mate. My books were 2.99 each and I was selling virtually nothing. I made the first one free and put the price of the other two up to 3.99. Sales started to shoot up immediately. Then I made a trilogy out of the first three and put it out at 6.99, and they shot up ever farther. As a result, I have sold (SOLD, not given away), tens of thousands of copies. Now go ahead and tell me that my marketing strategy is wrong...if you've done better than me, that is. If you haven't, then perhaps you would care to tell me why I should pay any attention to your "advice"?


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Cost-benefit wise, it's comparable to grocery stores who hire someone to give out those little sample cups of frozen foods they're cooking right there.
> 
> So let's say Book 1 is 0.99, Book 2 is 2.99, Book 3 is 2.99 and you give away 10,000 Book 1.
> 
> ...


It sure worked for me - actually I've done way better than even your figures would suggest


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Guardian said:


> True. But Book 2 and Book 3 is a different budget already. Of course, $24k sounds good, Krista, but if you split it to three books and three years (One year per book.), it doesn't sound that well already. And it's highly unlikely that all 100% of that 59% will buy both books (Count bravely with 25-40% of that 59% instead.). The problem is that theoretically you would be right. Only theoretically. But unfortunately from business perspective, when the number of free units is about 200%+ higher than the sold units, it's already not a successful business. And as we've sees on this board that plenty times that they gave away more than 30k... and how many sales they had after that? 50-100? Some of them had 10 sales, no more. So, it's a very-very bad investment.


Sorry, but you're dead wrong - again. All of these sales were in 10 MONTHS, not three years. And the 59% IS based on those who go on to buy the next two books - I know that because the vast majority buy the whole Trilogy. And again, I've sold not 50-100. but tens of thousands. Still think making a book free on Amazon is a losing enterprise? I think my bank manager would disagree with you!


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Cost-benefit wise, it's comparable to grocery stores who hire someone to give out those little sample cups of frozen foods they're cooking right there.
> 
> So let's say Book 1 is 0.99, Book 2 is 2.99, Book 3 is 2.99 and you give away 10,000 Book 1.
> 
> ...


Get out of here with your logic and clear-headed thinking. I'm so tired of hearing about facts and truth that I can just scream. Thankfully, someone else was good enough to come by and give us a full dose of conspiracy, inaccuracy, doubt, and confusion. We need more of that around here, Krista. Gosh, get with the program.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Alondo said:


> Well as Romney recently said to Obama, "I've been in business 25 years, and I've no idea what you're talking about".
> 
> (Puts arm round shoulder). Look mate. My books were 2.99 each and I was selling virtually nothing. I made the first one free and put the price of the other two to 3.99. Sales started to shoot up immediately. Then I made a trilogy out of the first three and put it out a 6.99, and they shot up ever farther. As a result, I have sold (SOLD, not given away), tens of thousands of copies. Now go ahead and tell me that my marketing strategy is wrong...if you've done better than me, that is. If you haven't, then perhaps you would care to tell me why I should pay any attention to your "advice"?


I'm in a promo this week. It's a group thing and I believe I'm paying like $7 or something for my share.

*Krista = -$7.00 No venti soy latte with an extra shot for her.

I lowered my price on 2 books (plus included a short story) == all at 99 cents.

*Krista = instead of selling 8 copies at 2.99/99/99 (earning ~$6.00), she is selling at 99/99/99. She is a bad, bad woman.

Since the promo started Friday, I've sold 45. So I've made about $15.75.

*Krista does crazy math and $15.75-7.00 = $8.75. Krista can now buy latte, a banana loaf bread, AND still have popular list algo in her favour for when she raises her prices at the end of the promo.

Huzzah! The people rejoice.

*In case there are the 99 cent naysayers, I have created threads on KB discussing how my blogging book does poorly on 99 cents. however, I did it this time because it's in a promo (normally, it would never sell this well at that price). Also, there are plenty of threads of me discussing how Spirits Rising does.not.sell.at.all.no.matter.what. Finally, the 3rd is a short story. 99 cent is really the best price for it.


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## AJCooper (Sep 9, 2012)

My sales haven't flat lined. They've slowed (sort of) but only compared to September numbers. Compared to prior months they're fine, thanks to audiobooks. I'm not sweating it, anyway -- I'll write no matter what, so I can let sales build at a tortoise's pace.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

BrianKittrell said:


> We need more of that around here, Krista. Gosh, get with the program.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Alondo said:


> (Puts arm round shoulder). Look mate. My books were 2.99 each and I was selling virtually nothing. I made the first one free and put the price of the other two to 3.99. Sales started to shoot up immediately. Then I made a trilogy out of the first three and put it out a 6.99, and they shot up ever farther. As a result, I have sold (SOLD, not given away), tens of thousands of copies. Now go ahead and tell me that my marketing strategy is wrong...if you've done better than me, that is. If you haven't, then perhaps you would care to tell me why I should pay any attention to your "advice"?


Look mate. #1, I don't really care who is listening to my advice. #2, Do you know what is the problem with that claimed tens of thousand sold copies? That I don't believe it. In that case you would be much more successful than most mainstream authors and a lot of people would heard about you. And looking around on various sites, checking the number of reviews and few other numbers doesn't mirroring this claim. Maybe I'm wrong, but numbers rarely lie.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

You are very right. Alondo's numbers do not lie:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,911 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Fantasy > Anthologies
#3 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > Anthologies
#23 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Anthologies

***

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,392 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Fantasy > Anthologies
#9 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > Anthologies
#43 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Anthologies

***

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,222 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > Anthologies
#6 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > Series
#8 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Fantasy > Series

***

Yeah, I think he really is selling as good as he says.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

BTW - congratz Alondo! I remember you in the beginning being down about your low sales. Now look at you!!


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> You are very right. Alondo's numbers do not lie:


I don't care what Amazon rank says. If a book sells well at one place, it sells well elsewhere. Yet his book has not a single review trace on Smashwords, Sony, Kobo, etc, etc... Heck, even I have much more reviews at those places. So, what Amazon says is one thing. But as you know, I don't trust anything Amazon as it's rarely mirroring the truth. Hype and truth is two different thing. And as we've seen lately authors who usually hyping Amazon has plenty fake reviews and other statistics on Amazon and Goodreads, but their books doesn't sell elsewhere at all, and no one heard about them either.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Look mate. #1, I don't really care who is listening to my advice. #2, Do you know what is the problem with that claimed tens of thousand sold copies? That I don't believe it. In that case you would be much more successful than most mainstream authors and a lot of people would heard about you. And looking around on various sites, checking the number of reviews and few other numbers doesn't mirroring this claim. Maybe I'm wrong, but numbers rarely lie.


#1 Then why are you bothering to give it? #2 I can assure you that I am not lying. What I have told you is the God's-honest truth. If your "numbers" tell you otherwise, then your numbers are wrong, pure and simple. But if you want to continue in your belief that free downloads are a bad business investment, then I am quite content to see you float off to the land of blissful ignorance.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Alondo said:


> Sorry, but you're dead wrong - again. All of these sales were in 10 MONTHS, not three years. And the 59% IS based on those who go on to buy the next two books - I know that because the vast majority buy the whole Trilogy. And again, I've sold not 50-100. but tens of thousands. Still think making a book free on Amazon is a losing enterprise? I think my bank manager would disagree with you!


Congratulations with being in the top ten on two best-seller lists for fantasy and series. I'm hoping mine will get set free soon on Amazon.

You won't be able to convince the "free is a bad thing" crowd. Usually it didn't work for them the way it works for us.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> If a book sells well at one place, it sells well elsewhere.


No, it doesn't. My trad and self-pub royalty statements consistently back this up.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> You are very right. Alondo's numbers do not lie:
> 
> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,911 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
> #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Fantasy > Anthologies
> ...


Actually Krista, I was doing way better that this, until Ammy yanked my best seller for three days in August without notice, due to the great copyright fiasco. I've had to claw my way back up from there, but my fourth book is out in a few days, so I'm hoping that will give the series a real boost!


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Congratulations with being in the top ten on two best-seller lists for fantasy and series. I'm hoping mine will get set free soon on Amazon.
> 
> You won't be able to convince the "free is a bad thing" crowd. Usually it didn't work for them the way it works for us.


I'd actually put myself in the anti-free group, because I rarely use it. But, still, it works for many people! Just because *I* don't use it does not mean it doesn't work!


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> No, it doesn't. My trad and self-pub royalty statements consistently back this up.


Well, plenty indie says otherwise and experience different (Humble me included.). If their book have sales on Amazon, they have sales elsewhere. Only those ones have no sales elsewhere who usually hyping Amazon, and only Amazon, like a walking billboard.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Alondo said:


> Well as Romney recently said to Obama in that first debate, "I've been in business 25 years, and I've no idea what you're talking about".
> 
> (Puts arm round shoulder). Look mate. My books were 2.99 each and I was selling virtually nothing. I made the first one free and put the price of the other two up to 3.99. Sales started to shoot up immediately. Then I made a trilogy out of the first three and put it out at 6.99, and they shot up ever farther. As a result, I have sold (SOLD, not given away), tens of thousands of copies. Now go ahead and tell me that my marketing strategy is wrong...if you've done better than me, that is. If you haven't, then perhaps you would care to tell me why I should pay any attention to your "advice"?


I just wanted to jump in here and say congratulations to Alondo. I *know* he has sold as many as he's claimed, because I've been watching his books and his ranks. He's done phenomenally well. And no, you don't have to sell well everywhere to be selling.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Well, plenty indie says otherwise and experience different (Humble me included.). If their book have sales on Amazon, they have sales elsewhere. Only those ones has no sales elsewhere who usually hyping Amazon, and only Amazon, like a walking billboard.


I don't sell well on Amazon. I have sales other places, though. Some people do not. I have one book that continues to do well on ARe. Nothing else I have other there does. My blogging book does fairly OK on Amazon. It doesn't do well elsewhere anymore (it used to).

You seem to have trouble with people being more successful than you are. Why is that?


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Guardian said:


> I don't care what Amazon rank says. If a book sells well at one place, it sells well elsewhere. Yet his book has not a single review trace on Smashwords, Sony, Kobo, etc, etc... Heck, even I have much more reviews at those places. So, what Amazon says is one thing. But as you know, I don't trust anything Amazon as it's rarely mirroring the truth. Hype and truth is two different thing. And as we've seen lately authors who usually hyping Amazon has plenty fake reviews and other statistics on Amazon and Goodreads, but their books doesn't sell elsewhere at all, and no one heard about them either.


I sell some on Apple and Nook, but I don't actively promote there. I'm not on kobo - haven't been able to figure their system out. I don't do a lot of social networking - too busy writing. If no-one's heard about me, I can live with that, as I'm making a decent living. Judging by those who contact me through my website, my readers seem pretty happy, and that's all I care about, really.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> BTW - congratz Alondo! I remember you in the beginning being down about your low sales. Now look at you!!


Yeah, those days seem a long way behind me now, Krista. Victorine was a big help in the early days - some of my success I owe to the suggestions I got from her blog. I really recommend it!


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> I don't sell well on Amazon. I have sales other places, though. Some people do not. I have one book that continues to do well on ARe. Nothing else I have other there does. My blogging book does fairly OK on Amazon. It doesn't do well elsewhere anymore (it used to).
> 
> You seem to have trouble with people being more successful than you are. Why is that?


Krista. I have no trouble with people being more successful than humble me. It's not a race and I'm successful on my own way, in my tiny puddle. But I don't like liars in general, when everything they claim has no true background at all and everything they claim sounds as a bad advertisement instead (Go only with Amazon. Use only Kindle Select and sell your book for free. If you don't have sales, write more and more and publish via Kindle Select. Give away your books for free on Amazon. If your sales flatline don't care about it, because Amazon never lie. If people claim they've bought your book, they lie, not Amazon is faking the statistics, etc, etc...). People love to be blind and naive, love to trust in the words of inbuilt hypers, but I'm not one of them. I also know these tricks.

Brian. Friendly advice; still get some manners. You have a new born child and you'll have to teach it to him sooner or later. So practice it. It won't hurt.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Congratulations with being in the top ten on two best-seller lists for fantasy and series. I'm hoping mine will get set free soon on Amazon.
> 
> You won't be able to convince the "free is a bad thing" crowd. Usually it didn't work for them the way it works for us.


I thought that my experience would provide a more positive perspective but you're right - some people just prefer to sit in a corner and be miserable!


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## Rusty Bigfoot (Jul 6, 2011)

I occasionally go free with one of my shorter collections of short stories that sell between .99 and 2.99.

My logic is that people who don't normally read my genre will pick them up and enjoy them. I always see an increase in sales of my other books after I go free.

So why again is this a bad business model? I bet most of those people wouldn't even know my books existed if they hadn't found them free. I've had reviews saying they enjoyed the stories and will now buy more and would never have guessed they would enjoy them but got them for free.

My good friend Chinle Miller writes mysteries and went free with the first of her series, The Ghost Rock Cafe. That kickstarted the series and it's now selling, not in huge numbers, but at least is selling. People who read the first one go on to read the others. Seems like a good business model to me.

I think some people are working off the old retail model that you're actually giving away product that has a shelf value, but ebooks are a new world. Giving one away costs you nothing and will generate sales if the person who read it would never have read it unless it was free.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> But I don't like liars in general,


Good, because no one is lying to you in this discussion.



> when everything they claim has no true background at all and everything they claim sounds as a bad advertisement instead (Go only with Amazon. Use only Kindle Select and sell your book for free. If you don't have sales, write more and more and publish via Kindle Select.


I have repeatedly said what works for some doesn't work for others. However, it's still nice to try new things to see.



> If people claim they've bought your book, they lie, not Amazon is faking the statistics, etc, etc...).


You don't trust Amazon's numbers, but you trust everywhere else to be telling the truth?



> Brian. Friendly advice; still get some manners. You have a new born child and you'll have to teach it to him sooner or later. So practice it. It won't hurt.


Bringing someone's family - especially children - into a disagreement is offensive, abusive, and threatening. NEVER bring someone's children into a discussion as an attempt to control another person's behaviour.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Alondo said:


> I thought that my experience would provide a more positive perspective but you're right - some people just prefer to sit in a corner and be miserable!


It does. There are those watching this thread that are heartened by your success. I appreciate you sharing and so do others.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> It does. There are those watching this thread that are heartened by your success. I appreciate you sharing and so do others.


+1. I am so excited to hear that Alondo is doing so well. Alondo, you have always seemed like a wonderful person and I always wish wonderful people the very best of success.

I'm petty like that


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Good, because no one is lying to you in this discussion.


How do you know that? Because they say they're honest?

Maybe you heard this ancient phrase;
_You can never trust quotes on the Internet._ - Abraham Lincoln 



> I have repeatedly said what works for some doesn't work for others. However, it's still nice to try new things to see.


Yeah, I know that Krista, but if you check, always the very same people claim it's working. Always the very-very-very same. However the problem is, no one ever heard about these people outside Amazon (And when I check even their Amazon reviews, about 80% of them are full of bogus 5 stars by the first glance.).



> You don't trust Amazon's numbers, but you trust everywhere else to be telling the truth?


Let's say that I have the rightful reason to say this regarding Amazon. I always test my retailers and Amazon is not trustworthy at all.



> Bringing someone's family - especially children - into a disagreement is offensive, abusive, and threatening. NEVER bring someone's children into a discussion as an attempt to control another person's behaviour.


Cause and effect. If he doesn't watch for his behavior, I don't have to watch for my one after that. Everyone gets what gives. But unlike them, I have routine in this and go for their weakspots in the hope that they'll face with themselves and hold their offensive behavior back a bit. Trust me. If he is acting like a real adult, I'll handle him as one as well.


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## Diane Patterson (Jun 17, 2012)

I'm really kinda new to the Kindleboards but not the internet in general... where's the best place to lay in a supply of popcorn? I brought my own camp chairs.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Well, plenty indie says otherwise and experience different (Humble me included.). If their book have sales on Amazon, they have sales elsewhere. Only those ones have no sales elsewhere who usually hyping Amazon, and only Amazon, like a walking billboard.


You seem to be convinced that I'm lying. I would not do that, I assure you. I don't know why the overwhelming majority of my sales are on Amazon, but that doesn't make me a liar or a fake. I do think that some types of books sell better on some platforms than others, and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence for that. But I would not lie to my fellow authors. I have too much respect for them for that.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Diane Patterson said:


> I'm really kinda new to the Kindleboards but not the internet in general... where's the best place to lay in a supply of popcorn? I brought my own camp chairs.


I supply the cats. You're in charge of your own corn.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Victorine said:


> I just wanted to jump in here and say congratulations to Alondo. I *know* he has sold as many as he's claimed, because I've been watching his books and his ranks. He's done phenomenally well. And no, you don't have to sell well everywhere to be selling.


Hey Vicci! I just gave your blog a plug and there you are! Great to hear from you. My fourth book is out in a couple of days - then I want to work at trying to figure out Kobo. I've only been at this for just over a year, so I'm very happy with how I've done in that time, but I feel I still have an awfully long way to go, with writing AND promoting. Your suggestions sure helped though!


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Brian. Friendly advice; still get some manners.


I normally don't talk to people who don't have any clue about what they're doing (and especially not when they don't ask for help), but in your case, I'll make an exception.



> If their book have sales on Amazon, they have sales elsewhere.


Lie.



> Yet his book has not a single review trace on Smashwords, Sony, Kobo, etc, etc.


This is not proper evidence because the previous statement is a lie.



> Heck, even I have much more reviews at those places.


1 is greater than 0. If he has no reviews at other places and you have one or more, yes, you do have more. Rating this one as truthful.



> So, what Amazon says is one thing. But as you know, I don't trust anything Amazon as it's rarely mirroring the truth.


Thus, the foil hat comment. You think there's always a conspiracy against you. It's simply not the case.



> Use only Kindle Select and sell your book for free. If you don't have sales, write more and more and publish via Kindle Select. Give away your books for free on Amazon. If your sales flatline don't care about it, because Amazon never lie. If people claim they've bought your book, they lie, not Amazon is faking the statistics, etc, etc...). People love to be blind and naive, love to trust in the words of inbuilt hypers, but I'm not one of them. I also know these tricks.


Where can I get the KoolAid? Can you please reference other threads (link to them) where people are lying about their success? Can you even prove any of these claims?



Krista said:


> Bringing someone's family - especially children - into a disagreement is offensive, abusive, and threatening. NEVER bring someone's children into a discussion as an attempt to control another person's behaviour.


Don't worry about it. I can't be intimidated in such a manner. If personally, physically threatened, they would ask me, "What did you feel during the incident?"

And I would answer, "The recoil."

Beyond a personal, physical, imminent threat, it's passive aggressive internet tough-guy-ism.



> Brian. Friendly advice; still get some manners. You have a new born child and you'll have to teach it to him sooner or later. So practice it. It won't hurt.


Maybe I'll teach him my super-duper Amazon sales secrets so he can outsell writers like yourself. Maybe I'll teach him not to think everyone's out to get him all the time. Maybe I'll teach him to have a sense of humor. I dunno. Probably lots of useful stuff like that.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Yeah, I know that Krista, but if you check, always the very same people claim it's working. Always the very-very-very same. However the problem is, no one ever heard about these people outside Amazon (And when I check even their Amazon reviews, about 80% of them are full of bogus 5 stars by the first glance.).


People haven't heard of me outside of the local con scene. Who cares? I sell well there. People haven't heard of me outside of a small group of writers. Who cares? They are excited about my new writer's guide.

As for free, Spirits Rising does not sell. At all. Select has not worked for me. I'm still in it (and will renew it) because I want the free days for when I have #2 out. It worked for me (in a tiny way).

And, let me tell you, me who hates free books, sold 5 copies at full price within 36 hours of my last free period ending (I only gave away 270 copies). The previous month? I sold 2 copies of that book.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> You seem to have trouble with people being more successful than you are. Why is that?


Because their pen names aren't sufficiently ethnic sounding, I believe.

_--George, oh how I've missed the monthly press releases from The Democratic Republic of Tinfoilistan..._


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> +1. I am so excited to hear that Alondo is doing so well. Alondo, you have always seemed like a wonderful person and I always wish wonderful people the very best of success.
> 
> I'm petty like that


Well, I love what I write, and it's been such a blast building these alien worlds and getting lost in them, and then getting mail from others who get lost in them too! The sales income has really only been icing on the cake. I've actually had to form a Corporation to deal with it tax-wise - Guardian can check that if he likes, it's on a public database!


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Alondo said:


> You seem to be convinced that I'm lying. I would not do that, I assure you. I don't know why the overwhelming majority of my sales are on Amazon, but that doesn't make me a liar or a fake. I do think that some types of books sell better on some platforms than others, and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence for that. But I would not lie to my fellow authors. I have too much respect for them for that.


Sorry, but this is not about platforms. It's about a book sells or not. If a book sells on Amazon, it should have at least a minimal trace elsewhere. But yours have almost none. Smashwords, Sony, Kobo, B&N... heck, my most expensive book which sells the slowest has a better trace at these places than yours. And not because my book sells well. But because it doesn't have phantom sales and has readers, who read and review.

Brian. First, get down from the high horse or I will get you down from it by crushing the tiny crystal reality you live in. I'm not your pal that with you can speak as you want. First, I usually know what about I'm talking and this is the reason few doesn't like what I say. That's not my problem. And do you know what is the best in the so called conspiracy theory and theorists? #1, Conspiracy theorists used to be called as conspiracy theorist because they tell the incovenient truth what some doesn't want to hear as truth is shadowing their illusive world they live in. #2, I never said it's a conspiracy theory, but you guys claim it continuously, when I say what you don't want to hear. #3, I never lie because truth hurts much more in this forsaken century. It's the best weapon and I love to fight with the best weapon. So I don't have any reason to lie. And don't worry. I'm not intending to intimidate you. I just want to present that your parents forgot to teach you the basic manners and it would be good if you would realize this, kiddo. I'm patient, but others won't be. And I'm not an internet though guy. I'm the very same IRL; honest.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Brian. Friendly advice; still get some manners. You have a new born child and you'll have to teach it to him sooner or later. So practice it. It won't hurt.
[/quote]

Bringing kids into it is low, and uncalled for. An apology to Brian would be in order, I think.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Alondo said:


> Bringing kids into it is low, and uncalled for. An apology to Brian would be in order, I think.


You think, but I don't, especially as he forgot where his place is and started his mock crusade. I won't say sorry, because his parents forgot to teach him the basic manners.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> You think, but I don't, especially as he forgot where his place is and started his mock crusade.


Where is his place at?


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Where is his place at?


Everyone is equal and no one should mock others when they have a different opinion. But Brian love to speak from a high horse and mock others if someone says what he doesn't want to hear. Maybe his friends love this behavior, but I don't have to accept it. And I won't.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Rusty Bigfoot said:


> I occasionally go free with one of my shorter collections of short stories that sell between .99 and 2.99.
> 
> My logic is that people who don't normally read my genre will pick them up and enjoy them. I always see an increase in sales of my other books after I go free.
> 
> ...


Yeah, this is my philosophy too. I'm a new author - why would anyone take a chance on me? Also I write ScFi, which paradoxically has one of the most conservative readerships out there. They tend to stick with established authors, and it's a very hard market to break into. However, if you remove the biggest obstacle (price), then like as not, some people will take a chance on you. If you're any good, they'll recommend you to their friends, and suddenly you're up and running! That's what seemed to happen to me, anyway.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Where is his place at?


Brian's place: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store) 
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Lifestyle & Home > Puzzles & Games > Role Playing & Fantasy

His other paid place:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,041 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) 
#4 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Lifestyle & Home > Puzzles & Games > Role Playing & Fantasy 
#6 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Gaming


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Brian's place: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
> #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Lifestyle & Home > Puzzles & Games > Role Playing & Fantasy


OH SNAP LISA


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Brian's place: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
> #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Lifestyle & Home > Puzzles & Games > Role Playing & Fantasy


Being #1 somewhere won't give him manners and won't make him human. Even if he would be the greatest, the best author in this so colorful world, he shouldn't ride a high horse and should keep his manners. And personally until he can't show the minimal signs of basic civilized manner in a simple conversation, but just mocking others, I won't give a d*mn about his bestselling rank. And his readers won't either. That's my point, Lisa.


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## Vera Nazarian (Jul 1, 2011)

Alondo said:


> Well, I love what I write, and it's been such a blast building these alien worlds and getting lost in them, and then getting mail from others who get lost in them too! The sales income has really only been icing on the cake. I've actually had to form a Corporation to deal with it tax-wise - Guardian can check that if he likes, it's on a public database!


Alondo, just had to put aside my bowl of spectator popcorn and say, way to go! You *are* doing great and keep it up! I certainly believe you and see no reason not to.

I also see no reason to suddenly decide, after all these years of successfully dealing with Amazon and promptly getting paid, that it is some kind of lying monster that's holding back my $5 bucks. In fact, I am getting a serious ROFL out of that notion.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Being #1 somewhere won't give him manners and won't make him human. Even if he would be the greatest, the best author in this so colorful world, he shouldn't ride a high horse and should keep his manners. And personally until he can't show the minimal signs of basic civilized manners in a simple conversation, but just mocking others, I won't give a d*mn about his bestselling rank. And his readers won't either. That's my point, Lisa.


Personal attack 

His readers don't need to care about this rank, since they are too busy buying his books off Amazon.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Sorry, but this is not about platforms. It's about a book sells or not. If a book sells on Amazon, it should have at least a minimal trace elsewhere. But yours have almost none. Smashwords, Sony, Kobo, B&N... heck, my most expensive book which sells the slowest has a better trace at these places than yours. And not because my book sells well. But because it doesn't have phantom sales and has readers, who read and review.


Your "most expensive book" has one questionable review on B&N, and _no sales rank_. Alondo's most expensive Nook title has 19 reviews at B&N and a sales rank of 96,408.

Want to try again?


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Sorry, but this is not about platforms. It's about a book sells or not. If a book sells on Amazon, it should have at least a minimal trace elsewhere. But yours have almost none. Smashwords, Sony, Kobo, B&N... heck, my most expensive book which sells the slowest has a better trace at these places than yours. And not because my book sells well. But because it doesn't have phantom sales and has readers, who read and review.


I'm sorry, it may be because I'm new at this, but I don't understand the word "trace" in the context you are using it. If you mean "presence", then i just checked Barnes & Noble for the first time in ages, and my first book has 23 reviews there and 30 reviews on Goodreads, so I can't make sense of what you're saying. Are you saying you have more reviews there than me? If so, then good for you. If not, then I really don't know what you're on about.

I already explained that I'm not on kobo because I can't crack the technical thing. As far as the other platforms I haven't checked but then, so what?


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> People haven't heard of me outside of the local con scene. Who cares? I sell well there. People haven't heard of me outside of a small group of writers. Who cares? They are excited about my new writer's guide.
> 
> As for free, Spirits Rising does not sell. At all. Select has not worked for me. I'm still in it (and will renew it) because I want the free days for when I have #2 out. It worked for me (in a tiny way).
> 
> And, let me tell you, me who hates free books, sold 5 copies at full price within 36 hours of my last free period ending (I only gave away 270 copies). The previous month? I sold 2 copies of that book.


Hey, an increase is an increase, right?


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Personal attack


No, it's not a personal attack. It's called as truth. People love to mix the two, but you would see if I would make personal attacks. It has a very different style. But until this time none of my responses had any true personal attacks, just solid and inconvenient truth what people doesn't love to hear as it hurts their flowery soul.



> His readers don't need to care about this rank, since they are too busy buying his books off Amazon.


Naive dreams. He will play this only once at a wrong plce and he won't have readers anymore. I've seen many great and brilliant mind falling this way. Well, if he want to follow their example, it's his privilege. I warned him. My conscious is clear.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Being #1 somewhere won't give him manners and won't make him human.


Oh shoot, good point. Is Brian human? I've just always assumed he was. But without verifiable DNA it is open for debate.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Guardian said:


> You think, but I don't, especially as he forgot where his place is and started his mock crusade. I won't say sorry, because his parents forgot to teach him the basic manners.


Forgive me, but you're not doing yourself any favours with an attitude like that.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Alondo said:


> Hey, an increase is an increase, right?


And it helps bring in new readers to my work.


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## Vera Nazarian (Jul 1, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Being #1 somewhere won't give him manners and won't make him human.


No, it does not, Guardian.

But, have you looked at yourself recently?

1) You enter this perfectly friendly and commiserating conversation and immediately address Krista with a condescending "my dear" -- that's the point at which many of us picked up the popcorn.

2) You immediately accuse Amazon and most everyone else here of lying.

3) You belabor your point despite factual details that other people present to counter your arguments.

4) You denigrate Brian and bring the notion of children (his or hypothetical child-rearing, it does not matter, you have no right to address another adult as a child simply for disagreeing with you) into the conversation.

5) You sputter and defend your position of dubious authority with vacant platitudes. Maybe you are Number One somewhere else, but it's certainly not here.

So now, my question is -- are *you* human? Where are *your* manners?


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

George Berger said:


> Your "most expensive book" has one questionable review on B&N, and _no sales rank_. Alondo's most expensive Nook title has 19 reviews at B&N and a sales rank of 96,408.
> 
> Want to try again?


Oh, here comes Berger, my other favorite who hyped his book as a great bestseller, while only Kindleboards authors has ever reviewed it during the hype period. It was fun. As the announcer said in Starship Troopers; would you like to know more? Honestly in your place I would stay silent. But if you want to know the details regarding my B&N stuff; until June or July it was distributed via Lulu and now it is distributed via Smashwords. The primary sales was via Lulu, then as there was a glitch with the author credits, I needed to redistribute the book via Lulu (As I couldn't use the same ISBN for redistribution the B&N part was redistributed via SW.). However, now as I check since that time I had sale, one exactly, via SW/B&N as well, so I don't have a clue why it doesn't have sale rank at all. But honestly, I don't really care about it. But I can send you letters regarding this matter what I've exchanged with Lulu as their system screwed has my distribution a bit which leaded to this. And Berger, all my reviews are authentic and real. And I'm really proud of it.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Vera Nazarian said:


> 1) You enter this perfectly friendly and commiserating conversation and immediately address Krista with a condescending "my dear" -- that's the point at which many of us picked up the popcorn.


The "my dear" is a friendly title where I live. I don't have any problem with Krista, so I addressed her with it in the hope it that she will react friendly as well. But it seems the "my dear" is offensive at the other side of the ocean, so please accept my appology for this. I didn't know that.



> 2) You immediately accuse Amazon and most everyone else here of lying.


Actually, because #1, Amazon rarely tells the truth. #2, I have the very bad habit; I know when people lie.



> 3) You belabor your point despite factual details that other people present to counter your arguments.


When I have to, I tell them. No one asked for detals and I didn't want to go into it deeper as I have other things to do. I already spent more times here than what I originally planned.



> 4) You denigrate Brian and bring the notion of children (his or hypothetical child-rearing, it does not matter, you have no right to address another adult as a child simply for disagreeing with you) into the conversation.


I have every right to do that. Maybe this habit has extinct few thousand miles away, but here, if adults can't behave, you address them on the way that may help them to wake up.



> 5) You sputter and defend your position of dubious authority with vacant platitudes. Maybe you are Number One somewhere else, but it's certainly not here.


I'm not defending anything. I just state what I see or experienced.



> So now, my question is -- are *you* human? Where are *your* manners?


Yep, I'm a human and I have manners. But I won't use manners with a person who forget what manners is. Everyone gets what gives.


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Vera Nazarian said:


> Alondo, just had to put aside my bowl of spectator popcorn and say, way to go! You *are* doing great and keep it up! I certainly believe you and see no reason not to.
> 
> I also see no reason to suddenly decide, after all these years of successfully dealing with Amazon and promptly getting paid, that it is some kind of lying monster that's holding back my $5 bucks. In fact, I am getting a serious ROFL out of that notion.


All was trying to do (many posts ago) was to make the point that indies can actually make a living doing what they love. It's hard work, and the "freebie" thing is just one tool that can be useful, but I and others are living proof that it can be done.

I agree that to conclude that Amazon is a liar and a cheat is pretty ludicrous. I do think they have technical glitches from time to time, but that's a horse of a different colour. In fact, since they are running a worldwide real-time sales update system, I would be astonished if it worked perfectly all the time!


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Guardian said:


> And Berger, all my reviews are authentic and real. And I'm really proud for it.


EXCUSE ME *I* am one of the people who reviewed his book BECAUSE I LIKED IT. If you notice my account, I don't review very many KBers. I took the time to review his because I wanted to.

As for his hype period, looks like the Goat is still an Amazon Single, making 70% per sale.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> EXCUSE ME *I* am one of the people who reviewed his book BECAUSE I LIKED IT. If you notice my account, I don't review very many KBers. I took the time to review his because I wanted to.


I know that Krista, but I'm speaking about something else. Berger presumably knows it. So in his place I would stay out of this conversation.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

When my sales are flatlining, I apply these to my career:










And when that doesn't work (and it doesn't), I argue with other writers on WC!! Because that is almost as useful!!!!


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Brian's place: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
> #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Lifestyle & Home > Puzzles & Games > Role Playing & Fantasy
> 
> His other paid place:
> ...


There's another paid one in a decent spot, but it's been a slow month.



Guardian said:


> Brian. First, get down from the high horse or I will get you down from it by crushing the tiny crystal reality you live in.


Who's on the high horse, exactly? If you think you can say factually wrong things and no one is going to correct you, you've got another thing coming. This is the real world.



> I'm not your pal that with you can speak as you want.


Forgive me. I wasn't aware that it was common courtesy to tell other people how to raise their children.



> First, I usually know what about I'm talking and this is the reason few doesn't like what I say.


No, the reason people don't like what you say is because you _don't_ know what you are talking about. You would have us believe:

- Amazon is racist.
- Amazon hates international authors and sellers.
- Amazon is actively trying to destroy your sales.

That's not just wrong. It's sickening.



> That's not my problem.


When you offer an opposing viewpoint, it _becomes_ your problem. You've inserted yourself and your viewpoint into a conversation, and you are expected to defend your points.



> And do you know what is the best in the so called conspiracy theory and theorists? #1, Conspiracy theorists used to be called as conspiracy theorist because they tell the incovenient truth what some doesn't want to hear as truth is shadowing their illusive world they live in.


The inconvenient truth? What, that Amazon is actively trying to put you down? What purpose does that serve? Do you actually think Amazon is afraid of money in whatever form it comes?



> #2, I never said it's a conspiracy theory, but you guys claim it continuously, when I say what you don't want to hear.


It's because it's all the same thing. You say that Amazon's racist. You say that they hate you because you have an ethnic-sounding name. It's simply unreasonable.



> #3, I never lie because truth hurts much more in this forsaken century. It's the best weapon and I love to fight with the best weapon.


I think someone sold you the wrong weapon. You might want to get it checked out.



> So I don't have any reason to lie.


Sure you do. Everyone lies at some point. If you say that you don't lie, I'd call you a liar.



> And don't worry. I'm not intending to intimidate you.


Whew. Load off my chest.



> I just want to present that your parents forgot to teach you the basic manners and it would be good if you would realize this, kiddo.


Condescension and agism. Let me let you in on a little secret: where I come from, respect is earned. If you want politeness and respect, you'd best show some. You don't gain either by making foolish statements the likes of which you've been saying. What exactly have you done that I should bow down and offer you politeness and respect other than insult me and speak your hate message? Sorry, not going to happen.



> I'm patient, but others won't be.


Others are sensible people, too. Most people don't buy into the stuff you're shoveling.



> And I'm not an internet though guy. I'm the very same IRL; honest.


You tell people they're bad parents to their face or make comments like this about their parents IRL? People in your country must be very forgiving indeed.


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## Librarian (Aug 19, 2012)

Hey, hey. Be polite or I'll have to call Betsy or Ann.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

I'm happy for George's success with his Amazon single. I'm happy for all the authors here. (Whether they have verifiable human DNA or not.) It's hard to hit publish and wait on others' opinions on your work.

Sales are fickle and betting on which book will take off when, is like gambling. 
Instead of putting authors down, why not be happy for them? 

I'm glad Alondo  and others share their success and I get really sick of those who like to insinuate people are lying. 

What would be the point to lie?


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## Alondo (Aug 30, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Oh, here comes Berger, my other favorite who hyped his book as a great bestseller, while only Kindleboards authors has ever reviewed it during the hype period. It was fun. As the announcer said in Starship Troopers; would you like to know more? Honestly in your place I would stay silent. But if you want to know the details regarding my B&N stuff, until June or July it was distributed via Lulu and now it is distributed via Smashwords. The primary sales was via Lulu, then as there was a glitch with the author credits, I needed to redistribute the book via Lulu (As I couldn't use the same ISBN for redistribution the B&N part was redistributed via SW.). However, now as I check since that time I had sales via SW/B&N as well, so I don't have a clue why it doesn't have sale rank at all. But honestly, I don't really care about it. But I can send you letters regarding this matter what I've exchanged with Lulu as their screwed has my distribution a bit. And Berger, all my reviews are authentic and real. And I'm really proud of it.


I hate to do this, but it seems to be the only way to counter your continual accusations that I am a liar and that my sales figures are hype. Here is one month's royalty report JUST on the US site alone. Read 'em and weep.

ASIN	Transaction Type*	Units Sold	Units Refunded	Net Units Sold or Borrowed**	Percentage of Borrows***	Average List Price	Average Offer Price	Average File Size	Average Delivery Cost	Royalty
(USD) (USD) (MB) (USD) (USD)

B005BSZEX4	35%	17	0	17	N/A	3.99	N/A	N/A	N/A	23.80
B005BSZEX4	70%	142	2	140	N/A	3.99	3.99	0.73	0.11	380.80
B005BU9KJ6	Free - Price Match	1963	1	1962	N/A	0.99	N/A	N/A	N/A	0.00
B005GP8CAO	35%	18	0	18	N/A	3.99	N/A	N/A	N/A	25.20
B005GP8CAO	70%	131	4	127	N/A	3.99	3.99	1.26	0.19	337.82
B006OOC5MC	35%	837	7	830	N/A	6.99	N/A	N/A	N/A	2033.50
B006OOC5MC	70%	3665	23	3642	N/A	6.98	6.98	2.33	0.35	16914.88
Total 19716.00


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Guardian said:


> Yeah, I know that Krista, but if you check, always the very same people claim it's working. Always the very-very-very same. However the problem is, no one ever heard about these people outside Amazon (And when I check even their Amazon reviews, about 80% of them are full of bogus 5 stars by the first glance.).


Guardian, then how about these people: Jennifer Blake and Christina Skye. Both are bestselling authors in the trad pub world.

Jennifer Blake has 80+ titles that have sold 20 million+ copies in print. Go ahead - check these authors out. I'll wait. Shouldn't take too long because they have been around a while and have won many, many industry awards. They have titles that have not only been national bestsellers in the US, but international bestsellers.

Do you know who just gave away 46,000 copies of her brand-new book over the last 5 days? Jennifer Blake. If you look quick, it's #1 in the Free store on .com right now. Now why would someone who still has books in print with traditional publishers (she released a trilogy through Mira - a division of Harlequin last year, and Sourcebook's Casablanca line routinely republishes her older titles) GIVE away copies if it didn't make sense to?

_ETA: Oops, typo. That should be 30 million+ copies in print (which means "sold")._


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## Vera Nazarian (Jul 1, 2011)

Guardian said:


> The "my dear" is a friendly title where I live. I don't have any problem with Krista, so I addressed her with it in the hope it that she will react friendly as well. But it seems the "my dear" is offensive at the other side of the ocean, so please accept my appology for this. I didn't know that.


Calling a perfect stranger "my dear" is always offensive on any side of the ocean, because it is condescending. It makes the speaker come across as either ignorant or tone-deaf. And yet you do this multiple times, even after Krista echoed you with a "my dear" to show her valid displeasure -- you persist. Apparently you are done-deaf.



Guardian said:


> Actually, because #1, Amazon rarely tells the truth. #2, I have the very bad habit; I know when people lie.


Your statement in regards to Amazon needs to be backed up by facts -- where, when, and under what circumstances has Amazon not told the truth or lied -- be specific, show your work. Otherwise you may be in for legal recourse from Amazon, for potential slander.

As for you knowing when people lie, you then are psychic. Wow, I am impressed.



Guardian said:


> When I have to, I tell them. No one asked for detals and I didn't want to go into it deeper as I have other things to do. I already spent more times here than what I originally planned.


Someone is asked for details usually when serious accusations are made.



Guardian said:


> I have every right to do that. Maybe this habit has extinct few thousand miles away, but here, if adults can't behave, you address them on the way that they may help them to wake up.


Who gave you this curious right?



Guardian said:


> I'm not defending anything. I just state what I see or experienced.


You make claims without proof of your substantiations, and then act belligerent when people question your claims.



Guardian said:


> Yep, I'm a human and I have manners. But I won't use manners with a person who forget what manners is. Everyone gets what gives.


Having manners means always using them under any circumstances and with anyone. Manners are not clothes to be put on or taken off at a whim.

You have no manners.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

I want this thread to be made into a movie.


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## KBoards Admin (Nov 27, 2007)

Folks, this thread has some interesting and thoughtful posts, but is rapidly deteriorating into personal attacks. Locking the thread while we discuss in the Admin board.


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