April EBook Sales

I’ve been making a habit of posting my ebook sales figures because I know how other writers are interested in this data. I’ve done this for the past couple months and it’s time once again to examine how I did, this time over the course of April.

You may recall that in March, I posted a 46% jump in sales over the month of February. I aspired to the same jump in sales in April. Simultaneously, I’ve done some other research and seen several writers talking about how traditional print sales routinely slump in the third month and how they expected that same trend to affect ebook sales.

So without further ado, let’s get to the hard facts:

1. I sold just over 3200 ebooks in the month of April.
2. While number of ebooks sold was somewhat lower than in March, I sold more ebooks at a higher price point ($2.99) than I did in the previous month.
3. My sales for April in terms of actual dollars were 30% higher than they were in March.

This is the 3rd consecutive month I’ve posted strong gains. I am currently making more money with ebook sales than I have at any point in my entire career as a writer – minus the times I did freelance non-fiction work and also worked as a freelance advertising copywriter. And it’s been 13 years since I was fired for writing that novel on the company computers, which is when I decided to really make a-go of this writing thing.

Now, while I did not reach my goal for another 46% jump in April, a 30% jump is extremely strong in and of itself. Also, April contained a peculiarity I was unaware of. Midway through the month, I experienced a complete sales slowdown. I was terrified because without any warning whatsoever, everything ground to a screeching halt. For 2-3 days, my sales slowed to a trickle. Worried, I contacted other writers and found they were experiencing the same thing. Turns out, that April has always had this little surprise embedded in it. Could be because of tax season. Could be because of the change in weather in certain parts of the country.

But the slowdown didn’t last long. And then sales really picked up.

Better news as well: Amazon announced the launch of their German Kindle store. This was yet another platform to sell on. And while my numbers out on the German Kindle store have totaled exactly ONE ebook 🙂 I have high hopes this will be a serious channel in short order.

For May, my goals are much the same as they were at the start of last month: sell more.

THE SHEPHERD, a new Lawson novella, will be out next week. And the Lawson short story OATHBREAKER will be out soon as well. I’m very excited about the future for many reasons, and ebooks are just one of them.

And you can buy my Lawson series on the Kindle by clicking here. | Or for the Nook here.