Sorry, But My Books Are Not Free T-Shirt

I find nothing gets a point across then a T-shirt with a great meme. So here are two I've created to show that every author deserves to be paid for the fabulous books they produce for a voracious reading public. Perhaps I'll have them printed by Vistaprint to wear to my next book signing at Books By The Bridge event in Sydney.
Not sure which one I prefer.
Maybe I'll have them both printed up.
What if other authors would like one, as well?
Mmm ... I see these taking off!

4 Things I Learnt from Attending Supanova - A Pop Culture Expo

Let me start by saying that Supanova was amazing! Having never attended a pop culture expo before,  I had no idea what to expect, nor whether a dark urban fantasy author like me would fit in. After all, Supanova is for afficionados of comic book heroes, epic fantasy and sci-fi TV shows and movies, and gamers. Cosplayers strut around in the most incredible costumes, posing for fan photos, demonstrating their skills and taking part in re-enactments.
It's a theatrical parade and somewhere in-between are the illustrators and the authors.
So I'm happy to say, that I fit right in.

Apart from the spectacle, and the fun, what did I learn?

1. Readers attend these events to buy books, particularly paperbacks. 

As I've heard many times, most people enjoy the feel of a book and they're willing to spend their money on a series rather than on a stand-alone. I sold eleven box sets over the Supanova weekend. For a mid-list author like me, that's excellent.
Now, not having a physical box cover into which I could slot my books, I had to get creative. A pretty purple ribbon and Dantonville pen did the trick. Offering the box-set at a sizeable discount and throwing in a gift or two, proved even better.

2. Include giveaways.
Never underestimate the power of a gift. Everyone loves free merchandise, and for the occasion I'd ordered some personalised pens and a dozen mugs displaying the Dantonville logo. Then I made a range of different-coloured charm bracelets and blood-vial pendants. Excuse the pun, but they worked a charm!

3. Hand out as many business cards as you can.
Everyone who receives a card is a potential new reader and future fan. Yay! Can never have enough of them.
Keep the cards front and centre where people can easily pick them up. I included my website, Facebook author page and twitter handle on the front rather than on the back of the card, where people rarely look.
Over the next three days, I noticed an increase in the humber of visits and likes to my Facebook page, and sales of the ebook version of my books - on Amazon AU - rose as well.
Proves that people are interested. They wouldn't take a card if they weren't.

4. Not everyone is interested in signing up to a newsletter.
Many people either ignored the newsletter sheet, or were reluctant to sign up when asked. And I don't blame them. I'm an unknown quantity, and who wants to receive more spam in the email? That's why I prefer to hand out business cards. It gives people the chance to check out my website, peruse my books and decide whether they'd want to be on my mailing list, so when they do sign up, it's genuine.

Will I attend Supanova next year? Not sure. It's a lot of work setting up and dismantling, but I introduced my series to a whole bunch of new readers. That alone made it worth it. Did I make a profit? No, but I wasn't expecting to. It was nice to break even, though. Supanova was my opportunity to reach a new - and local - audience, and it worked.

My First Year's Sales as a Debut Author

I'm no maths wiz, and I hate tallying figures and doing tables, but this is exactly what I found myself doing this past week. I was curious to see how I did in my first year as a debut author, and to give other indies an idea what to expect - unless of course you're Hugh Howey or Amanda Hocking, then disregard these figures entirely.

Because I have not as yet discovered how to use the pie charts and graphs on my laptop, (yes, call me a techno-neanderthal), I've resorted to using the good-old fashioned table. My maths teacher would be proud of me.

As you can see, my first book - Bloodgifted - was published October 2013. My second book - Bloodpledge - wasn't released until May 31st. 2014, and my short story - Laura's Locket - came out February 2014. Hence the N/A in some of the columns.

I tallied all sales info from October 2013 through to the end of December 2014. It made sense to include those last two months.

These figures also include sales from all online retailers where my books are listed - Amazon, Smashwords, Apple, Kobo and Barnes & Noble.

I didn't enrol Bloodgifted into Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program until October, so I could take advantage of the lead up to the Christmas period.

Well, here it is -

                  Number of Books Sold on Amazon & Smashwords 2014

Year	Month	eBooks			Kindle Units	Free	Total
2013		Bloodgifted	Bloodpledge	Laura’s Locket	Bloodgifted	Laura’s Locket
	Oct.	39	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	39
	Nov.	18	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	18
	Dec.	16	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	16
2014	Jan.	13	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	13
	Feb.	9	N/A	6	N/A	N/A	15
	March	6	N/A	4	N/A	N/A	10
	April	4	N/A	2	N/A	N/A	6
	May	7	2	2	N/A	N/A	11
	June	24	23	4	N/A	N/A	51
	July	13	10	2	N/A	N/A	25
	August	17	14	5	N/A	N/A	36
	Sept.	19	9	6	N/A	N/A	34
	Oct.	33	9	2	15	404	59
	Nov.	66	7	N/A	20	121	93
	Dec.	18	18	3	29	N/A	68
SW		51	21			1132	72
Total		353	113	36	64	1657	566
P/bk							83
Total		353	113	36	64		649

*SW - Smashwords

*P/bk - Paperback

Total paid ebooks sold       502

Total KU units                      64

Total paperbacks                 83

Total                                  649

Total Royalty payments - $1388.44

I didn't include free units in the overall count, and kept the paid sales separate from KU units. That way I can tell what readers are preferring, and how my sales might possibly perform when I eventually pull Bloodgifted out of KDPS. 

It's nice to see paid sales exceeded KU units. 

If I deduct the November and December sales I still managed to sell 488, which is good when some sources state most indies are lucky to sell 100 books in their entire career.

As a totally unknown author, with no backlist, no fan base or publisher (and with no help from BookBub) I'm thrilled with these results. Hey, I can pay my gas and electricity bills from my royalties alone. 

Bring on 2015. 

If anyone has any questions on anything in the above table, just drop it in the comments section.