You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 15

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Royalties0331-947

This was my best month of Kindle sales since I began this venture in June. This month I sold about 1360 books and made about $975 (click on the image for a larger view of my royalty statement as of 9:47 pm, March 31st)

I sold 575 copies of THE WALK, earning $420, which is actually slightly down from February, when I sold 573 copies in 28 days, but it's still my best-selling title.

My friend Joe Konrath, who did amazingly well this month, strongly urged me to drop my new covers for MY GUN HAS BULLETS and BEYOND THE BEYOND because he felt they were the reason my sales weren't so good. So I took his advice and temporarily restored the original covers. The result? MY GUN sold 167 copies in February with the new cover (or roughly six copies a day) and sold 204 this month (or roughly seven copies a day) with the old cover. BEYOND sold 85 copies this month (about 3-a-day) and sold 73 this month (about 2 copies a day). My take? It's a wash. Even so, I'm thinking about creating two new covers for the books and seeing what happens. 

Joe also suggested that if I dropped the Jack Webb cover for THREE WAYS TO DIE and replaced it with something bolder, I would see sales go up. Last month, I sold 140 copies of THREE WAYS, or 5-a-day. This month, with the new cover, I sold 201 books, or 6.5 copies a day. My take? It's up, and I like the new cover better anyway, so I'm sticking with the change.

The spike in sales this month came from releasing the Kindle edition of THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE mid-month, priced a $2.99, a dollar more than my other books. I sold 160 copies, earning $166.95. What's encouraging about this is that I earned more selling 160 copies of BADGE than I did selling 204 copies of MY GUN, which was priced a dollar less. It tells me that raising my prices to $2.99 across the board in July to take advantage of Amazon's new royalty rate may actually increase my profits rather than reduce them.

I also started offering "preview chapters" of Joe's books THE LIST and SUCKERS in THE WALK and MY GUN HAS BULLETS (and he did the same for me) in an experiment to see if the cross-polination/cross-promotion gooses our sales. But it's way too early to judge how that test is working.

But I've accepted a challenge and a little wager from my buddy Joe, who is proposing a radical approach to boosting sales of my VIGILANTE novels. I'll tell you more about that development later…but it should be very interesting, as well as a lot of fun.

UPDATE: Romance writer Ellen Fisher shares her Kindle royalty report and her sales experience.

More of Me

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There's a new interview with me up on the Cinema & Fiction blog. Here's an excerpt:

Mystery, crime and detectives are a recurring element in your writing. What do you find so appealing about this type of writing?

I guess on a basic level, the great thing about mysteries is they have a lot of conflict and forward momentum. The story is driven by a need to solve the mystery — that gives you somewhere to go, a ticking clock, and built-in conflict. 

You have written for TV and written novels. What do you think are some of the major possibilities and limitations of these different forms of writing?

As you say, they are very different kinds of writing. In scripts you have to show, not tell. Character and story have to be revealed only through action and dialogue. A screenplay is a blueprint, a working document for other professionals, like costume designers, location managers, and of course actors and directors. A book is very different. You can go into people's heads to tell stories and reveal character. You have to set the scene in great detail all the time. You are the director, the location manager, the actor and the director. You're creating a complete world with no limitations all by yourself. That can be exciting and daunting at the same time. I've encountered many screenwriters who simply can't write a book and many authors cannot write scripts. I've only met a few who can do both. They are different ways of telling a story and also different ways of thinking of story. 

Derringer Finalists

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The finalists for the Derringer Award, honoring excellence in short stories, have been announced and it's great to see so many of my friends on the list. Congratulations to you all!

 FLASH
"And Here's To You, Mrs. Edwardson," by Hamilton Waymire
Submitted by Kai Wehmeier
Published in the webzine *Big Pulp*, November 23, 2009

"Awake" by David Dean
Submitted by Art Taylor
Published in EQMM, July 2009

"Gutterball" by Stephen D. Rogers
Submitted by Stephen D. Rogers
Published in Woman's World Magazine, Sep 7, 2009

"The Right Track" by R.T. Lawton
Submitted by R.T. Lawton
Published in Woman's World Magazine, 10/26/09

"Unplanned" by Libby Cudmore
Submitted by Libby Cudmore 
Published in Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers, August 2009

SHORT
"Identity Theft" by Robert Weibezahl
Submitted by Robert Weibezahl
Published in Beat to a Pulp, March 2009

"The Biography of Stoop the Thief" by Steven Torres
Submitted by Steven Torres
Published in Uncage Me!, July 2009

"The Hard Sell" by Jay Stringer
Submitted by Beat to a Pulp
Published in Beat to a Pulp, 2009

"The Right to Remain Silent" by Debbi Mack
Submitted by Debbi Mack
Published in Back Alley Webzine, August 2009

"Twas the Night" by Anita Page
Submitted by Anita Page
Published in The Gift of Murder, 2009

LONG
"A Stab in the Heart" by Twist Phelan
Submitted by Twist Phelan
Published in EQMM, February

"Famous Last Words" by Doug Allyn
Submitted by Larry Chavis
Published in EQMM, November

"Regarding Certain Occurrences in a Cottage at the Garden of Allah" by Robert S. Levinson
Submitted by Robert S.Levinson
Published in AHMM, November

"Snow of Bloedkoppie" by Berhard Jaumann (translated from the German by Mary Tannert)
Submitted by Richard Posner
Published in EQMM, August

"The Shipbreaker" by Mike Wiecek
Submitted by EQMM
Published in EQMM, March/April

NOVELETTE
"Adjuncts Anonymous" by B.K. Stevens
Submitted by Bonnie K. Stevens
Published in EQMM, June

"Julius Katz" by Dave Zeltserman
Submitted by EQMM
Published in EQMM, September/October

"The Last Drop" by R.W. Kerrigan
Submitted by EQMM
Published in EQMM, February

"The Pirate's Debt" by Toni L.P. Kelner
Submitted by Toni L.P. Kelner
Published in EQMM, August

"Uncle Brick and Jimmy Kills" by Allan Leverone
Submitted by Allan Leverone
Published in Mysterical-E

Me Down Under

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Elizabeth Farrelly of the Sydney Daily Herald is a frustrated Kindler. Whenever she goes searching for books, she gets sent to people like me…and my Mom.

You can't search alphabetically, and much as Amazon vaunts its relationship with publishers you can't get Pete Dexter or Tim Winton or A.A. Gill and if you search Carl Hiaasen you get three Lee Goldberg westerns and a self-helper called Active Senior Living.

I don't think I've written any westerns (besides bits of MR. MONK IN TROUBLE), but it's still nice that she remember me in the midst of her Kindle woes.

The Mail I Get

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I need your invaluable expert advice. I'm going to pitch to a network in several weeks. It's my first time doing this so while I have the treatment ready, how would I present and package the actual treatment in terms of putting each copy in binders, have covers on each copy, etc. Thanks Lee.

I never do anything fancy. I just print out the pitch, black-and-white, no fancy graphics or fonts, with a cover page that has the title and byline centered, and the date and my contact info (or agent, or studio, depending on the auspices the meeting was arranged under) in the lower right. I staple the upper, left hand corner of the document and turn it in.

Wideman on Lulu

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There's been a lot of hype and talk over the last few days about National Book Award finalist John Edgar Wideman self-publishing his latest collection with Lulu as the inaugural author in their VIP Publishing Program. But what has been left out of the discussion, at least until the Los Angeles Times story today, is that his son Daniel is a Senior Product Manager with Lulu, which explains a lot about how they snagged the acclaimed author. My guess is that Wideman got his books published for free, or at a very low rate, in return for allowing Lulu to use him to publicize and market their new (and pricey) VIP Publishing service, which is aimed directly at previously published authors. But you will notice that none of the Lulu blogs, interviews or press materials mentions Wideman's personal connection to the company and any role that may have played in his decision to go with them.