Like many writers, I like it when people read my stuff. I like it even more
when they buy my stuff, because that gets me one step closer to retiring to the
life of Gentleman Author.
(There used to be a thing called Gentleman Farmer. I suspect that means
sitting on your front porch while someone else does the actual work.)
My goal, coming into 2022, was to sell an average of one book a day. It
doesn't seem like much: Just 365 books in a year. But according to the experts,
the average book sells a grand total of 300-500 books, depending on
circumstances such as whether they're self or traditionally published. It takes
only 3,000 sales to get on the Wall Street Journal best-seller list, if that
gives you an idea. And yet, according to my research, over eight billion new
books are published every year.
I might be a little off on that number. But it's a lot. (The actual number
is estimated to be between 2-4 million a year.)
That average of a book a day seemed like a good goal, and I succeeded. But
that's not the whole story. I have four books on Amazon Ads, which takes a
great deal of work to balance out sales and costs, and in that I did not
succeed. In other words, I spent more money than I made. Anyone will tell you
that's not a sustainable business model, unless you're the government.
The other thing is that it's hard for an author to tell how many copies
they've actually sold. Confusing authors seems to be a dearly loved tradition
in the publishing industry. I spent quite some time totaling mine up, and in
the end I came up with 539 sales in 2022.
But.
First, that's not the final number, because I still haven't gotten quarterly
and biannual royalty reports from a few of my publishers.
Second, while that's pretty good for one book, my
sales were divided over eleven books. My biggest single seller was the romantic
comedy Coming Attractions. Some of those weren't sales at all, but a
giveaway over the holidays.
My second biggest seller was the humorous history book Hoosier
Hysterical: How the West Became the Midwest Without Moving At All.
Everybody seems to love this book, and that came as a surprise because,
although I have three history books, I consider myself more of a fiction
writer.
But now I'm wondering if I shouldn't write something else of the same
nature. Humor, history, trivia ... but about what? Hopefully something that
gives me an excuse to travel around, like Hoosier Hysterical did.
So, what's my next goal? I figure that should be to sell at least one
book every day. That's not the same: Yes, I sold over 500 in 2022, but some days
I'd sell ten or twelve, and other days none at all. Due to illness and injury
we didn't get
Storm Chaser and
The Notorious Ian Grant reissued
as planned, so when they come back out at a lower price that should help, some.
Meanwhile, I've got other books to sell, write, and dazzle agents and
publishers with, so the work continues. (I submitted to agents, publishers, and
fiction magazines 375 times in 2022.)
Oh, you didn't know the writing business was work? Well, there you go.
You can find the aforementioned books here:
http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark
R Hunter"
Remember: Every time you don't buy a book, the Plain States get another
blizzard. Spare the plows.
