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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Stats for the YA eBook Exclusives and eBooks for Under a Buck

The SJS DIRECT YA eBook exclusive series on Smashwords was a huge success. Over the course of the campaign, I increased the exposure of my books to a national and international audience, and increased sales in retail on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Stats on the Summer YA eBook exclusive series (5/30/11-8/31/11):

Isis: Trial of The Goddess-156 downloads
The Sneakers-150 downloads
Isis -142 downloads
All About Nikki The Fabulous First Season-139 downloads
Baptism of Blood- 99 downloads
The Saga of MastiKatious-77 downloads

Isis: Trial of the Goddess was the most downloaded and read eBook in the campaign. The Sneakers was #2 and to my surprise Isis was #3 getting a record 142 downloads of the free edition in two weeks!
The Isis prequels Saga of MastiKatious and Baptism of Blood also performed strongly. Baptism of Blood has close to 100 readers and saga has close to 80 readers. I had four titles go over 100 downloads!

While the Isis saga was the most downloaded I was happy to see how popular All About Nikki is becoming. The three episode sneak preview eBook had the most likes on Facebook.

And the All About Nikki sneak preview had the most sales of all the YA eBook exclusives. Even though the book was free on Smashwords, a lot of people liked the story so much they were eager to pay 99 cents to download the sneak preview to their Nooks and Kindles.

The results of the YA eBook exclusive campaign had some indirect results. The biggest surprise for me was the reception I got in the international marketplace. I didn’t think African-American fiction would garner any interest in foreign markets, but there seems to be a growing audience for my work there.
All About Nikki was extremely popular in foreign markets, especially in the UK and Australia where the sneak preview eBook picked up a majority of its Kindle and Nook sales. And The Sneakers was a big hit in Germany and Australia.

The eBooks for Under a Buck campaign was also very successful. As a result of the promotion, my books got increased exposure in national and international markets.

In the eBooks for Under a Buck Campaign, The Temptation of John Haynes was the top-selling title.
All About Marilyn also was #2 in eBook sales overall. While Marilyn sold eBooks in the U.S., it sold more copies in international marketplaces like the UK, Australia and Germany. Like Nikki, Marilyn is a story that’s growing an audience here and abroad.
Isis saw sales from the campaign early on. But when I gave it away there was a surge of downloads and likes on Facebook on Isis and Isis related titles.

I’m very pleased with the results of both campaigns. For a guy who produced books on a shoestring, and only used blogger, twitter and Facebook for promotion I feel I made a strong impact in the eBook marketplace.

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