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My new Christmas book, Christmas at Castle Elrick, ( Click to buy in UK Click to buy in US ) is already in several bestselling lists which is very encouraging.
I had to go to Author Central in order to copy my mini bio and whilst there I looked at my author and sales rankings over the past two years. I was surprised to see that both were slightly above the position they were in last year.
There can only be one explanation – I'm still selling the same proportion of books as before in comparison to other writers, but as there are so many excellent Regency books available readers are not buying as many from each author as they did previously. Eighteen months ago there were probably only a couple of dozen successful Regency writers now there must be a couple of hundred.
I also think that the pool of readers isn't growing as fast as everybody expected so with more good books available each author is going to sell proportionately less.
I think we're going to have to get used to earning less from our books than we did before. I'm just happy that the fall in sales figures is not because I've become unpopular, but for the reasons stated above.
I would be really interested to know if other writers have come to the same conclusion.
Fenella J Miller
My Kindle sales have dropped considerably too, Fenella. September's sales look like being particularly dire! I personally just think there are now SO many authors publishing with KDP that it's harder than ever to grab a share of the market. x
ReplyDeleteHave you checked your rankings? If they have remained the same then this confirms what I've said. Too many books and too few readers.
ReplyDeleteWell, they're not as high as they used to be a year or two ago, that's for sure. I agree, too many books for readers to choose from.
ReplyDeleteIt's very tough, I agree. I almost effortlessly sold 36,000 copies of my first Elizabeth Moss Regency, Earl & His Tiger, back in 2011-12. Now that is a dream beyond all possibility. My Regency indie sales have dropped to a few dozen across all my titles every month. To counteract it I have diversified, as you know, and have done much better than I could have anticipated by hopping genre into romcoms. Even romcom novellas seem to do well. And now I'm trying thrillers too, and books in that genre are also big sellers if you hit it right. So while I agree that we are all having to take smaller slices of the same pie, due to sheer numbers self-publishing, I disagree that we have to put up with it. Diversify or go broke, is my approach. Though one day I expect I will run out of genres ...
ReplyDeleteVictoria, thanks for dropping by. I think you're right - write in other genres is a way forward. I might try a romcom myself. Impressed with sales of 36K - never achieved such heady heights myself.
DeleteHi Fenella, an interesting post. Thanks. A word to the wise-have you tried Booklinker, to save having two separate links to your buy sites? They give you one quick link for each of your books, so wherever in the world your reader hits the button, they get the Amazon page in their local currency. Magic, or what? ;)
ReplyDeleteChristina - not heard of this -will investigate -thanks. Just mastering the button thing - bit slow with keeping up with technical things.
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