The Los Angeles Times reports that Barnes & Noble is now selling more ebooks than paper ones at their online store.
Customers bought or downloaded nearly 1 million e-books on Christmas Day alone, the company said in a press release.
The Nook e-reader has become a bestseller, according to the bookseller. The Nook Color, introduced two months before Christmas, was the company's No. 1 selling holiday gift item, according to the company release.
Maybe so, but sales of my books on the Nook have been lousy…about 75 copies in December. On the other hand, this has been my best month ever on the Kindle. I've sold 800 copies of THE WALK as of today (nearly 20,000 total since I launched the ebook in June 2009) and I'm looking to earn $5000 in royalties this month from all of my out-of-print work.
Congrats, Lee! Glad to hear you’re doing so well with your ebooks. 🙂
So you are at the right place, at the right time, but the sales aren’t happening on the Nook for some reason we don’t yet know.
Two things come to mind: one, are there reviews of your book on the Nook as there are on the Kindle? If not, they should be added to see what the result is. If so, different favorable reviews should be tried. It is possible that a differnt demographic surfs the Nook that does not surf the Kindle. Two, it may be profitable to advertise. If Nook readers like a magazine, than an ad might bring in a lot of readers, something like, “bestselling author of the Monk series announces a new novel, etc.” Ads in newspapers don’t work because they only stay in front of the reader for a part of an hour, but ads in magazines stay in front of the reader for parts of a month.
In any case, there is no reason to be discouraged. If something isn’t working yet, it will later as adjustments are made. 75 sales on the Nook: that’s a good start! It’s 75 on the way to 7,500 a month! The total number of ebook sales is the key since it indicates future growth.
Amazon played the same “…on Christmas Day!” trick last year. Of course online bookstores sold more ebooks than paper books on Christmas Day. People get an ereader on Christmas and buy (“or download” for free, as the report implies) something to try it out. Few people will sign on to bn.com on Christmas Day to buy a paper book they’ll receive a few days later though.
Whether the press release actually said anything beyond Christmas Day is hard to say since the article summarizing it is a bit unclear.
Anyway, happy new year Lee!