# How much did you make with your first book in the first three months?



## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

I know it's really nosy, so dont answer if you dont want to share, or feel free to be a bit vague.  I'm just really interested in how many people had quick success, and what kind of figures you would equate with success, and how long it took before you started making enough to feel it made a difference to your lives, or did it not at all?
Thanks in advance


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

It took me about three months to sell 100 copies, and the book was priced at $2.99, so that was $200-ish. No, it didn't make a huge difference--I'd wasted about $700 on promotion that didn't really help.  So I was still about $500 in the hole at that point. Things improved fairly quickly, though.

It's not a nosy question, btw. I frequently wondered the exact same thing in the beginning.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Er... nothing?

OK, I sold maybe 15 copies, but all of them way below the $100 Amazon payout threshold.


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## Hildred (Sep 9, 2012)

About 60 dollars, at 2.99. 

For an unknown author in a hard to market niche (most of my sales were word-of-mouth from my friends acting as a street team) I felt pretty good about it.


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## 60865 (Jun 11, 2012)

I've made about 100 dollars since December but I spent more on my covers and on getting a domain name.
So I don't think I'm going to meet costs for another quarter.



smreine said:


> I'd wasted about $700 on promotion that didn't really help.


Can you talk about the promotion you feel you wasted your money on?


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

I made like $10-20 a month for the first three months. And that was with two novels. It took 12 months, a third novel, and heavy use of Select before I did any better.


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## sarracannon (Apr 19, 2011)

I think it's a good question, and one a lot of people want to know the answer to. One thing I love about KB writer's cafe and being indie in general is the attitude of openness and sharing. Being open with each other creates a community of encouragement so I'm happy to share my experience with anyone who asks.

I sold 141 books in the first full month my first book was available. It was only 99 cents, so that was less than $50. I also think that was mostly friends and family buying the book. I was able to release my second book quickly and sold 1134 that second full month (Dec. 2010), but I also listed that book at 99 cents. That meant just under $400. I had similar sales the following month. So, basically, I think I made about $850 in the first three months, but that included sales of a second book. I wasn't keeping records back then, so I'm not sure how many on book one alone. Probably around the $500 mark.

It wasn't until I released my third book in late Feb. 2011 that I really started to see money that made a difference. I listed that book at $2.99 and sold 3703 books the month it released, then over 6000 the following month (March 2011). That was also the first month I started actually tracking my sales and income. I made just over $6000 that month, which was truly a dream come true. For me at the time, that was a level of success I hadn't expected to ever see.

I think I was very lucky to see such quick success. Of course, back then I was able to put the books out very quickly which really made a difference. It was also a different world 2 years ago. There is a lot more competition now, so don't feel discouraged if you don't see huge success in three or four months. It might take time, but as long as you continue to write, you'll see it grow and grow.

I actually listed out all of my sales numbers by month in a blog post a while back if you want to take a look. http://sarracannon.com/2012/09/milestone-100000-sales-the-numbers/


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

Lady_O said:


> Can you talk about the promotion you feel you wasted your money on?


Mostly sending out paperback review copies. I sent them to anyone who asked, and quite a few people who didn't--including folks in places like New Zealand. Do you know how much it costs to ship a paperback to NZ? A lot. This might not have been a problem if I was only sending stuff to major book blogs and actually got reviewed by everyone, but many times, those review copies went to bloggers without followings, and/or I received silence in reply. I also did several paperback giveaways that didn't turn into anything.

As a side note, every single person I sent stuff too (bloggers and readers alike) were pure awesomesauce. It just wasn't a good way for me to allocate money in the beginning, especially since my family had very little extra money.


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## duncolm (Dec 23, 2012)

My first book came out in mid-December. Although I felt I’d chosen a subject to fill a gap in the market I wasn’t particularly confident it would sell, and so I set a low price - £2/$3. It sold about 20 in December and 50+ in January, almost all in the UK and without much promotion. It’s a success as far as I’m concerned and if it keeps selling at this rate then it’ll be useful extra income each month.
Just wish I could think of a subject which would attract sales in the larger US market….


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## 60169 (May 18, 2012)

I think I got lucky by being in an easy to promote genre.

I made $250 the first month, $1000 the second and a little over $1200 the third. Not huge numbers, but they were encouraging to me. My price for those three months was always $4.99 and  think that really helped with the bottom line, if not the number of copies sold.


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## Sapphire (Apr 24, 2012)

$49.75.  I do believe there's room for improvement here, don't you think?


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## Nicholas Andrews (Sep 8, 2011)

DDark said:


>


You win the thread.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

Hm, in the first three months, I think I made about $4. Against like $200 in expenses, sigh.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

I sold roughly 20 copies @ $2.99 for each of my first three months, a total of just over 60 copies and about $65.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

I think I sold about 70 or 75 novels at $2.99, so I made enough for a few trips to Starbucks.


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## NicWilson (Apr 16, 2011)

Mine has only been out around 6 months. I'll put it this way, though. I have yet to make enough to make me care if the check gets here. I don't think I've been following any royalty payments at all, since it's gonna be coffee money, or maybe coffee-and-bagel money. My first novel is a fairly graphic novel with a controversial subject, so it's basically impossible to advertise it, although it seems to be getting pretty solid reviews.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

I don't mind sharing bc I wanted to know this stuff when I started. You don't have your own numbers to compare yet. So:

KISS (.99 - 11k)
Jun-11	31	$10.85 (first day Jun 22)
Jul-11	62	$21.70
Aug-11	39	$13.65
Sep-11	28	$9.80

Single Girl (1.99 - 23k)
Dec-12	45	$15.75 (first day Dec 21)
Jan-13	50	$17.50


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

Uh, about $10,000. Dec 19 2011 to March 19 2012. That's the first book only and doesn't include the second book which came out in Feb of 2012. Wish I was selling that well now.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Clements said:


> I know it's really nosy, so dont answer if you dont want to share, or feel free to be a bit vague. I'm just really interested in how many people had quick success, and what kind of figures you would equate with success, and how long it took before you started making enough to feel it made a difference to your lives, or did it not at all?
> Thanks in advance


Not much. Not enough to brag about, or even get paid all three months.

I think if you totalled it all up, I might have been able to pay for a trip to Chipotle for my wife and me... and even then, we'd have had to walk... LOL

It's gone up since then, thankfully....


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## TexasGirl (Dec 21, 2011)

My first book was Baby Dust, which I did the old-fashioned way, reviewer copies four months in advance, book launch at a bookstore, the whole shebang.

I made $1900 in the first three months. This frightened me, as I'd foolishly spent $4000 on design, editing, covers, ARCS, and mailing stuff out. My budgets are about 1/4 that now.

But a year out I've made $11,000 on it, so it all worked out in the end.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

April 2012: 19.60
May 2012: 266.78
June 2012: 357.48

But after that things went way down. I sold nine books in September, eight in October, and eleven in November. All the higher-earnings months, like May and June 2012 and January 2013, are due to Select. Nothing creates any lasting traction.


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## timskorn (Nov 7, 2012)

From Nov 2012 to Jan 2013, I made a little over $150 selling at $3.99.

I did no pre-launch promotion, and only advertised to friends and family through Facebook.  Most of my sales came in the first month, when I was averaging 1-2 sales per day.  I've heard Sci-Fi is a tough genre to sell well as a first time author, so I'm happy with how things have progressed since then.  I've since joined Goodreads and have a giveaway going right now for paperback copies, so we'll see how that translates into sales/reviews.

I don't worry too much about it now.  I'm not going to spend hours and hours trying to promote, or spend much money advertising.  I'm working on my next novel, and I'm going to try an alternate "online only" cover for ACBW just to see if it does anything for sales.  But other than that...write, publish, and then write some more. 

Edit:  Oh, and yea, when I got a $67 deposit the other day, it was definitely nice!  I wouldn't say "impactful", but I'd rather have it than not!


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

My first book was non-fiction, and I just published it four months ago. It sold about 30 copies in its first 90 days, about evenly split between Kindle copies at 7.99 each and paperback copies at 16.99 each. I make 5.56 on each Kindle copy and 6.25 on each paperback copy. It brought in about $177 in its first three months. My only expense was paying Victorine Lieske 50 for designing the cover, so I was in the black the first month, but just barely.

Heck yes I consider this a success. Even if I just made one dollar I would, as that is more than I ever made querying agents.


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## Routhwick (Apr 1, 2012)

Over its first three calendar months, my _Gadsby_ re-issue managed 43 sales in the U.S./India region and 10 in the UK overall.


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## Jennah Scott (Dec 12, 2012)

I just released my first novel at the beginning of January 2013, so I don't really have any numbers to share. But I wanted to say thanks to everyone who has shared so far. This is good information and something I've been wondering about myself.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

First three months a little over $500. I'm convinced that's only because I belong to an online community of glass workers who were all kind enough to support me right out of the gate.


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## NottiThistledore (Jan 11, 2013)

I've only been at this for a couple of weeks so far, but sales-wise I haven't made much more than the equivalent of a few cups of coffee. Although, interestingly my print sales have been equal to my ebook sales, which may be an indication that very young readers still prefer to read in print. My numbers are starting to pick up as I build an audience, but children's is a tough market--there's nowhere near the ebook demand that there is for genres such as romance or suspense.


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## evecarter (Nov 30, 2012)

A little over 2 months since I published my first book and about $1200 so far. Mostly thanks to releasing a second book, Kindle Select and twitter promotion, in that order.


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## Dan Harris (May 18, 2012)

69 copies, ebook and paperback. $191.


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## L.C. Candar (Sep 25, 2012)

I am at the start of my second month and have only short story (novelette?) out. So far, it has made about USD 40 (and gave away about 1000 free ebooks). 
But I am working hard every day and hoping that with more books and stories out, the overal sales will increase  
If not, I'll end up as a starving writer who has to eat her used teabags to save herself from scurvy.


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## Ruth Ann Nordin (Sep 24, 2010)

I started out in mid-2009 on Amazon and Smashwords.  For the first three months, I think I brought in about $10.  It took me until December 2010 before I made $140.  I was a slow starter.     Back when I started, I was told there was no viable future in self-publishing ebooks, so my expectations were low.  For me, success was seeing my book published.


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

My first book was my cozy dog mystery, and it sold 726 copies in its first 3 months at $1.99 (the first month was 2/7 on, but that's almost a full month). That was back before Amazon offered the 70% royalty, which is why it was $1.99 back then. So it made $508 on Amazon, but it's also the only one of my books that ever sold much in paper, and it made another hundred or so from Create Space copies, even though I didn't get the CS version out till a month later than the Kindle version.


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## SRecht (Oct 16, 2012)

My one and only has been out for just over three months.  I've sold about 1500 between .99 and $4.99.  Made around $2,000 so far.


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## Shayne Parkinson (Mar 19, 2010)

Let me see, it was approximately...

$0.00

I was a slow starter.


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## the quiet one (Aug 13, 2012)

For the first book, roughly $3k over the first 3 months.


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

$482.85 at the end of 3 months.  I was able to start out with 3 books though (Driven, Ielle and Ovia) and added Eanna and a 2 book Ielle/Ovia bundle the 3rd month.


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## Gaia Revane (Jan 26, 2013)

My book's only been out for two months so far, but so far I've sold about 30-40 copies -- roughly two thirds of which are ebooks and the remainder are paperbacks. This is just through online vendors though; bookstore sales aren't reported to my publisher until the end of the quarter, so I have no clue how many (if any) I've sold from through that avenue.

My book's in a popular genre at the moment (dystopian/horror) but the ebook version is priced a bit high at $4.50. I'm trying to badger my publisher to reduce it to $3.99 at least and see if it helps


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## Mathew Reuther (Jan 14, 2013)

Gaia Revane said:


> My book's only been out for two months so far, but so far I've sold about 30-40 copies -- roughly two thirds of which are ebooks and the remainder are paperbacks. This is just through online vendors though; bookstore sales aren't reported to my publisher until the end of the quarter, so I have no clue how many (if any) I've sold from through that avenue.
> 
> My book's in a popular genre at the moment (dystopian/horror) but the ebook version is priced a bit high at $4.50. I'm trying to badger my publisher to reduce it to $3.99 at least and see if it helps


High is relative.

High compared to discount publishers (self or otherwise) yes. High compared to other folks, no.


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

ajalbrinck said:


> For the first book, roughly $3k over the first 3 months.


Damn. Not a bad start there.


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## Gaia Revane (Jan 26, 2013)

Mathew Reuther said:


> High is relative.
> 
> High compared to discount publishers (self or otherwise) yes. High compared to other folks, no.


Well, my novel is only 42k words long, so not exactly something I think I'd pay $4.50 for. That said, there are people like the Big Six who are retailing novellas for ten bucks, so I suppose I shouldn't complain


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

ajalbrinck said:


> For the first book, roughly $3k over the first 3 months.


Wow! I'd realized you'd had a good start - but that's awesome. Congrats!


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## Mathew Reuther (Jan 14, 2013)

Gaia Revane said:


> Well, my novel is only 42k words long, so not exactly something I think I'd pay $4.50 for. That said, there are people like the Big Six who are retailing novellas for ten bucks, so I suppose I shouldn't complain


I sell 7.5k words for $1.49 currently. My current WIP will be $2.99 and I would be shocked if it topped 25k.

If it's a novel it's a novel. If you have a good story you have a good story.

Dribbling on for 500 pages is better than telling a taut story for 300? Nah.


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## Mainak Dhar (Mar 1, 2011)

In my first three months, I sold 354 copies and earned $160 ( at that time, most of my work was at 99 cents). Didn't break even till month 6, but the beautiful thing about ebooks is that nobody's going to take away your 'shelf space' and once you get momentum it can snowball very fast. By month 6, I had crossed 6000 copies sold in that month.


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## Bruce Blake (Feb 15, 2011)

98 books in the first three months. Didn't come close to paying for the editing.


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## 60911 (Jun 13, 2012)

$19.28. For the whole three months.

Don't worry, though. I'm doing all right now. It got better.


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## Zoe Cannon (Sep 2, 2012)

About $200 for the first three months.


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## BlankPage (Sep 23, 2012)

_Comment removed due to VS TOS 25/9/2018_


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## Raquel Lyon (Mar 3, 2012)

First published Nov 10. Total made from first three months, £20. No real increase to speak of over the last two years, but I wanted to finish the trilogy before promoting, so I was happy to let my work sit there and get the odd reader. I've learned a lot from this community, in the past six months, and have entered 2013 better prepared and with a plan. It is make or break year for me!


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

Technically, nothing.

I accrued approximately $20.29 in royalties, in total, across various outlets.  For most of that initial three month period, I only had the one novelette out priced at $2.99 ebook, $4.99 print.  I bought out my novella in the last couple of days of the third month.  My expenses were way, way higher!

I started publishing at the start of July 2012.  So far:

Total royalties across all outlets: $39.25.  
Total expenses: -$1,806.74

Balance: -$1,767.49

Most small businesses make a loss for the first three years & I consider the bulk of my expenses to be an investment.  I don't really expect to start going into profit with this until I have several novels out.  My production speed has been severely hampered by lack of sleep, but I'll get there.  The beauty of this business is that my books have my lifetime +70 years to make back the money I've spent on them.  I know that lots of people probably see those figures and think I'm insane, or that I have no idea what I'm doing - but, I assure you, there is definite method to my madness!  

The main thing I think I probably overspent on is website hosting.  I went for three years on a multi-site deal.  I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't get shut down if I wrote a recipe or something that went viral on Pinterest.  I'm paying for what I'll need in ten years rather than what I need at the moment.  I could probably have saved $100 or so by doing things differently.


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## Routhwick (Apr 1, 2012)

Zelah Meyer said:


> The beauty of this business is that my books have my lifetime +70 years to make back the money I've spent on them. I know that lots of people probably see those figures and think I'm insane, or that I have no idea what I'm doing - but, I assure you, there is definite method to my madness!


Coming from the PD side of things, I know exactly what you're discussing.


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## Cheryl Douglas (Dec 7, 2011)

I made $5791 in my first three months, but I had several books out. I've been earning a decent income since the summer, but just in the last couple of months do I feel as though I earn enough to make a significant difference in our lives. That happened when I decided to pull out of Select. B&N and iTunes have been very good to me. That one decision has more than doubled my income. It makes me sad to think about all the money I left on the table for the six months I was in Select. Oh well, live and learn.


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## TJHudson (Jul 9, 2012)

About $20. Did not meet any payment thresholds, so not sure on the exact number.


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

Routhwick said:


> Coming from the PD side of things, I know exactly what you're discussing.


Er... since I don't know what you're talking about, that might not be the case!  

I'm talking about the fact that I am looking at potential sales over the whole lifetime of my copyright (for me, and for my son after I'm gone) rather than at how many books I can sell this month. Also - that almost 50% of that money has gone on courses so that I can continue to improve as a writer (thus, an investment in myself). I haven't done any public domain publishing - so it's possible you're thinking of something else?


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## Mathew Reuther (Jan 14, 2013)

Zelah Meyer said:


> The main thing I think I probably overspent on is website hosting. I went for three years on a multi-site deal. I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't get shut down if I wrote a recipe or something that went viral on Pinterest. I'm paying for what I'll need in ten years rather than what I need at the moment. I could probably have saved $100 or so by doing things differently.


I'm tech-savvy so I generally have less issues than other people with such things, but I pay $10/domain name per year (3 of them currently) . I pay $8/month for hosting. So I'm around $130 a year. With my plan and configuration it would take an absolute avalanche of hits for a prolonged period of time to even exceed my quotas, and at that point all that happens is I get invoiced. If I'm getting that much traffic I'm assuming I'll generate SOME sales to offset that.

I'm not immune to being taken out by a surge of hits, but I have a main site that is static (which cuts down on machine load) and I use a CDN which mitigates the issue by caching and serving at locations around the globe, plus it allows people to view the pages even when my site isn't responding, as long as there is a cache. (So it works better the more hits I get, ironically.)

I actually ran across a way to manage to host a blog for free (and leverage the power of a CDN) and only pay for a domain, but the technical issues inherent weren't worth the hassle. Still, there's really no excuse for overpaying for web hosting. You can even literally, for pennies a month, pay for metered hosting. You just refill your account enough that you never really worry about big surges, because you've got the balance to take them.

(It's worth noting that the only reason I actually even pay as much as I do-I was paying less than $4 a month-is because I got a massively good deal on a hosting package upgrade, so it works out to about $5/month for the first year. My book sales actually outpaced my web hosting in January, and I've only had the site since November.)

A bit OT, but . . . well, don't overspend on hosting. Get the right amount and use it wisely. (And I'm big into making use of websites, having your own domains, etc. . . . I just think it needs to be handled wisely, particularly when still small.)


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

Since a lot of that (not all, but a lot!) doesn't make sense to me - I think I probably pay more because of the things that I can't do for myself!


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## petesortwell (Oct 13, 2012)

I sold 1100 copies of books in the first three months, not including freebies. I made about £1k


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## Mark Feggeler (Feb 7, 2011)

$40 in the first month, but I'm only on one platform so far. Will be adding others over the next 30 days, plus I have several pending reviews that should post within the next 30-60 days. If they are positive, that could make a big difference.


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

I stupidly bought a block of ten ISBNs, so I was in the hole in the first three months.


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## Anne Frasier (Oct 22, 2009)

i regret buying a block of ISBNs. I regret setting up a Lightning Source account and publishing through them. That ate up a lot of *TIME* and profit, and didn't really lead to many print sales. Booksellers told me they wouldn't carry my Lightning Source titles because they were afraid they'd been published through Amazon's Createspace. It's hard for them to tell the difference, so they boycott them all.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

1 book, 5 weeks in and made $28 all to strangers. Zero ads or promos or TW or FB. I eat up much more time than money learning new things. Put up a blogspot a couple weeks ago and amazed to see so much traffic, especially from Europe.
It is an adventure.


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## Routhwick (Apr 1, 2012)

Zelah Meyer said:


> Er... since I don't know what you're talking about, that might not be the case!
> 
> I'm talking about the fact that I am looking at potential sales over the whole lifetime of my copyright (for me, and for my son after I'm gone) rather than at how many books I can sell this month. Also - that almost 50% of that money has gone on courses so that I can continue to improve as a writer (thus, an investment in myself). I haven't done any public domain publishing - so it's possible you're thinking of something else?


The PD I'm referring to is indeed "public domain".


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## Mathew Reuther (Jan 14, 2013)

Zelah Meyer said:


> Since a lot of that (not all, but a lot!) doesn't make sense to me - I think I probably pay more because of the things that I can't do for myself!


A lot of a lot of things didn't make sense to me before I needed to teach myself to do them.


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## David Kazzie (Sep 16, 2010)

Let's see. Carry the one. Subtract out the $500 I put up for cover, formatting, light editing. 

I made jack squat! 

I grossed about $150 the first three months. 

I did not recoup my investment until the book took off in Select, more than eight months after I published it.


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## Bud Bane (Dec 8, 2012)

For as much info as I take here at KB, I always feel as though I'm not giving enough, so while my results are only partial (1 novella pub'd 7 weeks ago in mid-Dec), since I self-pub'd it as a test case for myself anyway I'm happy to share my results.

Just to preface, I approach editing with a broadsword in one hand and a battleaxe in the other. So, when I completed this story and it came in at about 16k words I knew it was a bad candidate for pitching to the mags, and felt any more chopping would disrupt the story too much. I have a virtual shelf full of similar works, so that's why I finally took the plunge with KDP to see what would come of it.

I pub'd in mid-Dec. at $2.99 with KDP Select, feeling that the price of a cup of coffee is a fair value trade for roughly an hour of entertainment, and I immediately gave it a couple days of free promo.

I had no online presence to speak of at that point. My blog had 3 posts (and fewer readers) all written about a year ago. I wasn't on any social networks. And I had no mailing list.

After starting my promo days, I ran around like crazy trying to get my freebie listed wherever I could. Few places accepted it due to the lack of advanced submissions to them, but the couple that did helped me generate a little under 1k downloads. Lesson learned on that one. Always plan your free giveaways ahead of time to get the best exposure for them.

I also ran a giveaway over at Goodreads for a couple print copies (used CreateSpace for these). Got onto a few hundred people's "to read" lists from that. No way to connect that to direct sales or actual readers, but it cost me less than $20 total, which is all I spent on the entire thing to date, so no complaints at all.

As of today, exactly 7 weeks from publishing,  I've sold about 150 copies for kindle, a dozen or so prime borrows, and a half-dozen print copy sales.

Not Earth-shattering numbers by any means, but I'm quite happy with them. Averaging roughly 3 kindle sales daily, and a print sale weekly, plus the borrows that come in, all in all it's been a very positive experience and proven (to me so far) a great alternative for stories of the novella size that I don't wish to cut down further just to place elsewhere.

The learning experience alone has been fun and fantastic. Again, with the biggest takeaway being to plan freebie days well in advance and give yourself time to contact all the freebie lists with plenty of notice for the maximum exposure.

Also, have a way for establishing connections with readers (especially the large number of freebie downloaders) setup as well. Be it a mailing list, social profiles or whatever. I realized after-the-fact that not having these things setup from day one was a major lost opportunity with a lot of readers.

Hope that's helpful.


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## vizzle (Jan 14, 2013)

In two days I've made 10 sales. Is that bad?


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## Mathew Reuther (Jan 14, 2013)

vizzle said:


> In two days I've made 10 sales. Is that bad?


No?


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

My first month, October 2010 I sold 24 copies, November a whole 8 copies, and December, at the HEIGHT of the bookselling season, I sold 16 copies.  I think it totaled about $100.  Two years later, I broke over 20,000 copies sold in a single month.  So, if things are slow, hang tough!  If I can go from 8 books a month to 20,000 books, ANYONE can.


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## HarryK (Oct 20, 2011)

KateDanley said:


> So, if things are slow, hang tough! If I can go from 8 books a month to 20,000 books, ANYONE can.


Did you do anything in particular other than just keep writing? I always find it interesting for what works for different people.


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## A. S. Warwick (Jan 14, 2011)

No idea, but only a few dollars.  Might have been enough for a burger, but that woul have been it.


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## the quiet one (Aug 13, 2012)

KateDanley said:


> My first month, October 2010 I sold 24 copies, November a whole 8 copies, and December, at the HEIGHT of the bookselling season, I sold 16 copies. I think it totaled about $100. Two years later, I broke over 20,000 copies sold in a single month. So, if things are slow, hang tough! If I can go from 8 books a month to 20,000 books, ANYONE can.


Those of us starting out need to read examples like this (and Robert's, and SM's, and yes, Hugh's) as often as we possibly can, because the daily volatility of sales/rankings/etc can drive you batty. It's a reminder to stop looking at those numbers so often and focus on continuing to improve as a writer, so that when someone does find your work, they find something great that they want to tell others about. Thanks for sharing!


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

Like a lot of folks a couple of hundred maybe. It takes time and more books.


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## GWakeling (Mar 23, 2012)

KateDanley said:


> My first month, October 2010 I sold 24 copies, November a whole 8 copies, and December, at the HEIGHT of the bookselling season, I sold 16 copies. I think it totaled about $100. Two years later, I broke over 20,000 copies sold in a single month. So, if things are slow, hang tough! If I can go from 8 books a month to 20,000 books, ANYONE can.


THIS. I'm 11 months in and sales are still only a dribble, despite bringing out more books and getting good reviews. The fact that you're doing so amazingly well now gives me optimism. I'm having a near meltdown today, so this couldn't have some sooner!!


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## vrabinec (May 19, 2011)

Sooo, what you guys are saying is that I probably should plan on quitting my job until the 4th month after I publish?


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## the quiet one (Aug 13, 2012)

vrabinec said:


> Sooo, what you guys are saying is that I probably should plan on quitting my job until the 4th month after I publish?


Nothing ventured, nothing gained...


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## L.C. Candar (Sep 25, 2012)

vrabinec said:


> Sooo, what you guys are saying is that I probably should plan on quitting my job until the 4th month after I publish?


I quit my job 4 months before I published my first story. How brave is that, eh?
(Okay, let's be honest, the job quit me XD)


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## Zoe Cannon (Sep 2, 2012)

KateDanley said:


> My first month, October 2010 I sold 24 copies, November a whole 8 copies, and December, at the HEIGHT of the bookselling season, I sold 16 copies. I think it totaled about $100. Two years later, I broke over 20,000 copies sold in a single month. So, if things are slow, hang tough! If I can go from 8 books a month to 20,000 books, ANYONE can.


Since your first three months look about like my first three months, that's quite heartening. Thank you


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

KateDanley said:


> My first month, October 2010 I sold 24 copies, November a whole 8 copies, and December, at the HEIGHT of the bookselling season, I sold 16 copies. I think it totaled about $100. Two years later, I broke over 20,000 copies sold in a single month. So, if things are slow, hang tough! If I can go from 8 books a month to 20,000 books, ANYONE can.


Wow, can I ask how many books you had published by then?


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

RobertJCrane said:


> $19.28. For the whole three months.
> 
> Don't worry, though. I'm doing all right now. It got better.


And this is the message we really need to hear!


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## Guest (May 1, 2013)

January was my first month. I sold 64 copies, made $119.87. (I had just one book out at the time.)

In February, I released my second book. Total sales went up -- 378 books, made $912.56.

In March, I released #3. Sales dipped a bit to 353, income was $735.57.

April was my best month yet. I know you asked for just three months, but April was six times better than my best month. I added my serial novel (two installments), and sold a total of 2,014 books. I haven't gotten the sales report to calculate income just yet, but I'm estimating roughly $1300 for my US sales (and I'm not even going to try estimating the rest, I'll just be pleasantly surprised when the payment shows up). 

No idea what month 5 will be like. I'm not anticipating it to be bigger than April, but if I hit a thousand sales again I'll be happy.


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## Error404 (Sep 6, 2012)

I made $158 the first three months, and then I made $115 the fourth month alone   Things are looking up


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## Mr. Coffee Snob (Jun 27, 2011)

...


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## SBJones (Jun 13, 2011)

Lets see...  I spent about $1700 getting my first book created.  This includes $250 for ISBN numbers.  About $300 on the book cover.  $310 for a print run of 50.  And several hundred dollars in setup fees, registration fees, advertising and general office supplies.

First three months Requiem was available I sold.  38 paperbacks, 12 e-books from Amazon and 6 e-books from B&N.  That brought in $602.97.  So after three months I was still about $1100 in the red.


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

About $200 on 2 books during the first 6 months. Not sure about 3 months. Only know because Uncle Sam wanted to know. Then $2500 over the next 11 months, for the same 2 books. Have 4 books out and make over $200 per week now, without Bookbub or ENT. Obviously those bump sales up nicely. I think if my first two books hadn't been completely unrelated and were in a series my sales track would've been very different.


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## Kellie Sheridan (Nov 11, 2012)

A bit of lazy math here, but I made about $310 in my first three months.


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## benji smith (Aug 21, 2012)

I made about $3700 in the first three months.


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## Moondreamer (Apr 27, 2013)

Just stumbled on this thread, and it makes me feel a litte better seeing how different everyone has been sales-wise. Seeing as our book has been out only a bit morethan a week, I don't have 3-month stats yet, but I will cherish our 15 copies sold  Cheers all!


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## RHill (Jun 9, 2012)

"Make"?   Heck, I was giving them away and forcing people to read them. Still am, actually.


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## Mark Feggeler (Feb 7, 2011)

My first book went up in January and I've made about $100 between Amazon and local bookshop sales.


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

I made around $1500 in my first three months.


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

My first self-pubbed title, *The War Gate*, made about $38 for that period. It's picked up a little, but I'm lost in a sea of titles right now and trying to find my niche. Considering that this book sat stagnant with the publisher for over a year, I consider that a win-win situation. However, I've received 9 very nice reviews--the most ever. In the past, I've published eight commercial titles and four have gone out of print. I'm really considering bringing them back to life with rewrites, added chapters and new cover art.

chris


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

I made about $1200 my first three months.


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