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I wrote a YA fiction novel, created the cover and eBook myself, and submitted it to Amazon KDP and did basically no further promotion of substance. I've been se
by alanfalcon 14y ago
I wrote a YA fiction novel, created the cover and eBook myself, and submitted it to Amazon KDP and did basically no further promotion of substance. I've been selling 40 copies a week at $3 each, at roughly $2 in royalties per sale. Not amazing money, but enough that I'm happily working on my second novel—and it took less time to create the novel[1] than to create the iPhone game I made, and I've made significantly more in less time with the novel (AND without the yearly developer fees).
The book bounces around the 10-30k sales rank for eBooks and has only four reviews (all positive). The thing that most helped sales was making a POD version of the book available through CreateSpace (also Amazon) which cost me about $15 in printing and shipping fees for proof copies. Almost nobody buys the print version, but just the existence of the option seems to make the $3 eBook appear to be a better values. I'd say the existence of the print book resulted in a 3-4x increase in sales.
Clearly my case is different from that of the author of the linked article, but I figure it could be of interest to anyone who clicks that link.
[1] http://www.syncingdreams.com/2012/06/dragon-master-post-mortem-part-1.html http://www.syncingdreams.com/2012/06/dragon-master-post-mort...
- jseliger 14y ago>I wrote a YA fiction novel, This is a pet peeve, but nonetheless I'll reiterate it: you don't have to call it a "fiction novel." A "novel" is sufficient. This is the sort of thing that will make a lot of readers simply stop.
- Adaptive 14y agoYour point is correct but I'd cut the poster some slack here. I'm pretty sure the comment was referring to "YA fiction" as a category (which is almost exclusively referred to as just that, not as "YA" on its own).
- granfalloon 14y agoI really can't imagine anyone stopping after reading that.
- jseliger 14y agoI can. Take a look at Query Shark for an agent's perspective on this kind of issue: http://queryshark.blogspot.com/ http://queryshark.blogspot.com/ . See, for example, this post: http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2010/05/159.html http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2010/05/159.html .
- alanfalcon 14y agoA fair point, thanks for the advice.
- jseliger 14y agoYou're welcome. Contrary to the downvotes, I wasn't trying to be a jerk; I was trying to make a useful point.
- rprasad 14y agoAs "novel" merely refers to a long-form narrative which can either be fiction, non-fiction, or a mixture of both, a "fiction novel" is an appropriate term that properly characterizes the novel as wholly fiction. See, for example, Truman Capote, who is considered the foremost example of the "non-fiction novelist".