December was my best month ever as a self-published author. I ended up bringing in close to $500 in profit from book sales on Amazon.com. Note: I’m enrolled in KDP Select so I’m only selling at Amazon exclusively now.
Ok, so I have 5 self-published books out there at the moment, all priced between $.99 and $9.95. My most expensive book is the personal branding book I co-authored with Murray Newlands at $9.95. My cheapest book is my short happy book at $.99. You can see all of my books, including the only traditionally published book “Attention!” here.
While $500 isn’t a life-changer, it’s a first step to growing my books as a business channel for me in 2012. If I do my job right, I should be able to maintain that every month this year, and hopefully increase it to at least $1,000/month. That’s the plan with more and more books coming out every month. I plan to add at least 6 more books by the end of 2012, at least.
The last thing I should mention is that the indirect sales from my books for things like consulting and training has brought in high five-figures in 2011. So yeah, $500 is not a lot for direct sales, but in this space, you don’t really write books for direct sales. It’s the residual stuff that really pays off.
Fantastic! Congrats, Jim.
Would love to know more on the price point aspect. Are your lower priced books selling better? Worse?