In Amazon terms, My Haunted Life and My Haunted Life Too are both best-sellers in their categories. While neither has earned the #1 spot in their category as of yet, they have both been in the top 10. My Haunted Life 3 is due on on Friday 23rd January so perhaps it will be the one to be number one? We will see.
I have learned a great deal through these three short kindle books actually. A lot about writing and a lot about Amazon and sales. What amazes me is how few books are needed to be in the top of a category! Having said that, you need to sell 5-6 books day in day out to stay there! Sales numbers (including free give aways) for the two books are still quite low as well. My Haunted Life is close to 300 copies and My Haunted Life Too close to 280. Those are, in truth, not huge numbers.
So has my experiment been a success or not?
On one hand a big YES. I have learned a lot as I said earlier about writing and marketing books with this experience. I think I have also broadened my audience a bit as well and I have generated some royalties – this bit is quite nice as the royalties are more than beer money for the first time in my writing career! What is more is that other books are selling well too. The Last Observer is selling so too is Astral Messages for example. In fact, for the last 2-months I have sold at least one copy of every book except the ill-fated Poems for the Little Room (Perhaps I need to rethink the title?). So, yes, overall, its been a good experiment.
On the other hand, the negatives are that actually, I have yet to sell books in the kinds of volume that, from a business perspective, makes it worthwhile. I have yet to break 500 copies of any book outside of my business titles. Thats hardly ‘best selling’ is it? Plainly, I need to keep my day job!
Despite that, this is really a hobby and a lot of fun. With a number of other projects in progress (The Lord of the Elements, The Art of Science and more Kindle books too), I have been reinvigorated by this and, if I keep at it, slowly but surely, I can see a day when, while not a household name by any means, I could retire on book royalties…..