August Book Sales and Analysis

Sometimes, things surprise you. Like August.

See, August is back-to-school month, and sales tend to slump once we hit autumn (before peaking again during the holiday buying season). I was expecting August to be a complete disappointment... but instead, things kept trucking quietly along.

I had only one promotion scheduled, at the head of the month:  an E-Reader News ad on the 6th for Earthrise. That was all I managed, because I was way too overbooked with my own back-to-school stuff to do more. I had a nice spike of 318 downloads thanks to that. Otherwise, I just let things go. Sales of Her Instruments didn't drop off much from July, and sales of Dreamhealers were still riding the bump from the non-US Bookbub in July. Everything else in the Peltedverse hovered in the same range as from the previous month.

Sales in the rest of my oeuvre also remained about where I expected, which was nice. Not that I wouldn't love Kherishdar or the Jokka to abruptly take off, but I'm happy if they move even one book a month. It puts off my decision on whether to retire those books or not.

(The spreadsheet cells in pink this time around indicate a book launch this year, so that you can see at a glance which books got their start in 2017 and when).

No surprises in the print or audio arenas, as you can see. And while the books-per-day stat is lower than I want, it's still higher than April, May, and June. I'm still shy of my 90-ish books a day goal that I'm aiming for, but at least I'm not languishing where I was in January.

Looking at that column, really, is like looking at the power of promotional ops. February's US-territory Bookbub shoved me up to a new plateau, and while I didn't stay there, when I dropped back down I was still higher than where I started.

Patreon Analysis

And as promised, a brief note about my Patreon changes and how they affected things. Last month, I did away with almost all my patronage tiers in favor of something simpler: a $1 "access to the Patreon" tier, and a $5 "access to the chat server" tier (which previously had been the $10 reward). The $10 and $25 tiers got cut completely.

I had several goals with this. I wanted to cut costs for people who wanted to participate in the community; I wanted to remove some of the artificial barriers between people who had more money than others (so no more "they get better content than me because they're lucky enough to have more discretionary income"); I wanted to make the Patreon total less subject to fluctuation as people came and went; and I wanted to cut down on my overhead. Bonus: more people would be able to use the chat server, which is great because the chat server has been pretty amaze and needs to be shared more broadly. 

I figured this would be a win-win-win on every count except one: I expected to make a lot less money. But weirdly, after all the shuffling, that's not what happened. At least, not to the extent I expected. The first few days were kind of painful as the big pledges vanished and took my total down by chunks. But lots of people moved up from the $1 tier, and some new people joined, and by the end of it my big move only cost me $17 a month.

$17 a month! After removing the $10 and $25 pledge tiers! o_o

I admit, that was not the outcome I was expecting, but I was gratified. And I feel like things are more stable now: there's a sense of everyone being more on an equal footing, more people are able to come to the chat server, and I no longer worry that one person's changing monetary situation might cut my total down by a big sum. Losing some $1 and $5 pledges feels far more survivable compared to losing a $10 or $25 pledge.

So I count this a success. Proof, of course, will be in the forthcoming months as we see how many people join and how many stick around. But keeping my focus on "this should be affordable" feels healthier to me. Y'all are already my most dedicated fans. I don't mind y'all buying me a cup of coffee every month, but asking for more doesn't feel right.

So, that's August's sales analysis. As always, questions and comments welcome. I'll do my best to answer. :)