It all starts with sales reported to me from Lulu.com.  In order to keep the price of my book affordable, I opted for a lower royalty, just 67 cents per copy sold through a distribution channel outside of Lulu.  Here are the total copies sold through Lulu and the total money I made from each as of June 8, 2009.

Lulu:

23 copies sold through distribution channels – Amazon  (67 cents each x 23 = $15.41)

2 copies sold through UK distribution channels (67 cents each x 2 = $1.34)

3 Ebook downloads direct from Lulu ($4.00 each x 3 = $12.00)

1 print copy sold direct from Lulu ($3.86)

That’s a total of $32.61 earned direct from Lulu.com the first year.

Sad, isn’t it?  Not really.  Obviously, I sold more copies through Amazon than I did direct from Lulu. Perhaps I could have done more promotion.  Perhaps I could have directed more people to Lulu instead of Amazon to increase my earnings per copy.  However, the majority of readers are more likely to buy through a site they know and trust, such as B&N or Amazon, rather than buying direct from my Lulu bookstore.  Had I never once mentioned the book was available on Amazon, and had I only directed people to Lulu, maybe my earnings would be better…maybe not.

But don’t frown.  That’s just Lulu.  Let’s take a look at Kindle E-reader sales for the year.  For the sake of price changes, discounts, and the various number of copies sold per month, I’ll just show you how many copies sold each month and then give you the grand total of my earnings from Kindle alone.

Amazon Kindle:

June 2008: zero copies sold

July 2008: 2 copies sold

August 2008: 23 copies sold

September 2008: 25 copies sold

October 2008: 25 copies sold

November 2008: 29 copies sold

December 2008: 22 copies sold ( December/January show a decline in sales probably due to the holidays.)

January 2009: 17 copies sold

February 2009: 24 copies sold

March 2009: 73 copies sold (Release of Kindle 2)

April 2009: 33 copies sold

May 2009: 43 copies sold

June 2009: 7 copies sold as of June 8th

Grand total earned from all Kindle sales: $1044.80.  Not too shabby.

I invested in a total number of 30 author copies.  The majority of those copies were given away to friends and family or included in marketing kits.  I did sell five copies to coworkers and through the Amazon Marketplace at $10.00 each.

Total earned from direct author sales: $50.00

Last, we have sales through Smashwords.  A total of 23 copies have been downloaded since I published the book here back on February 18th, 2009.  However, I’d like to point out that I used Smashwords mainly as a marketing tool to help gain Amazon reviews.  Here, my book was offered for free in exchange for an Amazon review.  I only gained royalties from three sales totaling $5.81.  I have not yet been paid for these sales since Smashwords has a minimum requirement of $25.00 in earnings before they pay out.

This brings my total earnings across the board to a total of $1133.22.

That’s a far stretch from being able to afford my cost of living for one year.  Not really even enough for one month.  It is 3 car payments though; it’s even enough to pay my utility bill for 16 months.  As I reported in my last diary entry, almost all of this money was invested in marketing and review copies. But I have no debt as far as this project goes, which is more than some self-published authors can say.

Now, let’s take a quick look at reviews.

To date, I have 10 reviews on Amazon. Nine are from people I have never met face to face.  That’s important because reviews from friends and family are nice, but they are always going to be positive. The first review came from an Amazon Top 500 Reviewer who I sent a review copy to.  Three of the reviews were a result of my free Smashwords Ebook give away. And two of the reviews were cross posted from other review sites. My current Amazon rank is at 1.2 million, but has been as high as 101,000 although it fell fast. My current rank on the Kindle is 104,705.

My first review outside of Amazon came from Rainbow Reviews.  I was sorely disappointed in this review, not because it only gave me three stars, but because the quality of the review itself is horrible.  The reviewer just reposted my book blurb, then pointed out three paragraphs he liked and wrapped up the review with two sentences which pretty much anyone could have come up with just by reading a few pages.  Thankfully, this review was not cross posted to Amazon.

The second came from Floyd M. Orr at PODBRAM.    Floyd cross posted a version of the review to Amazon for me.  I have to admit its a nice critical and well rounded review, just as a review should be.

The last review I received outside of Amazon was from Cheryl Anne Gardner at PodPeep. Cheryl was the first to really point out a lot of my subliminal underlying tones of the book and to really embrace the humorous aspect of the story. Cheryl also cross posted the review to Amazon for me.

And this is where my year ends.  It’s certainly not where my story ends.  Like I said in my last post, this is a good place to end the diary even though my journey as an author is far from over.  I’m not going to recap my mistakes or what I’ve learned from this diary.  I’ll leave those things up to you to find out for yourself in all my previous posts. I have no philosophical words of wisdom to share with you. The diary speaks for itself. I’ll still be sharing news and thoughts about self-publishing in general from time to time on LLBR, but this is where the POD Diary comes to a close.

What’s next for me, you ask?  Well, I’ve often referred to myself as a literary medium.  There’s always another character or storyline in my head waiting to be born, usually several at a time actually.  I’ll still be promoting my book and seeking out reviews, and checking my Amazon rank every other day, and wait eagerly for more Kindle royalties, but it’s time to put my focus into something new.  Another story, another character is calling and I’ve ignored the messages long enough.

For the readers out there who took time to read my book, I thank you.  And for the writers out there who have followed my diary this past year for information or inspiration, I say to you what I say to every author I encounter who takes the self-publishing path:

Don’t give up!

Occasionally, I’ll check my sales rank over at Aaron Shepard’s Sales Rank Express.  This site only presents the basic information you can already find on Amazon’s product page, but it’s quicker sometimes than navigating through Amazon, finding your book, and scrolling down to the product description, and also not getting distracted by ads or by surfing for things you want to buy like I usually do when I go to Amazon.

Rankforest is a free site that will track your book over time if you want to see how the numbers fluctuate.  The free service part will update every 4 hours for you.

RankTracer is also another that has come highly recommended to me, but a three month track of your book will cost you $6.00 here. Books & Writers will do the same thing for two books for just $10 a year.

If you aren’t concerned with how much your sales rank changes by hour, then I suggest checking your book’s page once a day either in the morning or the evening and write down that number on a calendar every day.  Note when there’s a big spike in the number.  Did someone review your book around that time?  Did you post a comment on a blog or website the day before? Note the spikes in sales over time and what might have caused them.

Some authors have tried to affect their sales rank by holding a buying promotion.  Whether it works or not, I don’t know but this is where you email or contact as many people as you can and request them to buy your book from Amazon on a certain date and at a certain time.  The spike in sales will definitely affect the sales rank, but you have to consider that not everyone might purchase your book at that specific date and time.  If you ask everyone who did participate to email you back and let you know they bought your book, you might be able to better obtain an exact number as to how many copies sold during your promotion and helped you achieve whatever rank you earned that day.

Check out these numbers from Rampant Techpress.  Supposedly, a major publisher tracked 25 of their books over a six month period and compared Amazon sales rank to the number of books they sold.

Amazon        Actual
Sale Rank     Books Sold per week
———     —————–
75-100         250-275/wk
100-200        225-249/wk
200-300        150-200/wk
450-750         75-100/wk
750-3,000        40-75/wk
3,000-9,000      15-20/wk
10,000+            1-5/wk

Morris Rosenthal, author of Print-on-Demand Book Publishing, has a slightly different opinion and reports the following figures…

So, why are we obsessed with our Amazon Sales Rank?  Well, no matter what the number may be, if the number is rising it means a sale, which means a royalty payment in the end.  It might not be much of a payment, but keeping your book at a higher sales rank definitely increases exposure, which hopefully increases sales and increases money in your pocket.

While I’m certainly flattered and appreciate Mark taking the time to read the diary and write such a nice article about it, I was taken aback by the following comment: “Without a doubt, you have to admire both Yarbrough’s persistence and good nature. On the other hand, in many ways his story is a perfect example of working hard as opposed to efficiently.”

If you read the POD Diary, deep into the heart of it you’ll find me spending lots of time on getting the book cover just right and ordering review copies to edit the book in hand.  Mark believes I could have worked more “efficiently” by sourcing the work out to third parties.  If I had access to vast amounts of cash up front to fund this project, I probably would have paid someone to create the book cover, edit the book, and design a book trailer.  Or maybe I would have taken advantage of all of the other extra services Lulu offers at a hefty fee.  But as I point out in my reply to Mark, working efficiently doesn’t just mean saving time.  It also means being economical.  Here’s part of my reply…

The word “efficiently” is defined as performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least amount of time and effort. It is also defined as being satisfactory and economical to use. So, self-publishing basically comes down to time vs. economics based on these definitions. I admit…I did spend a lot of time on this project. I’m still spending time on it now 4 months after publication of this book. Self-publishing has been a learning experience and maybe I did waste time by editing the book my-self or designing the cover my-self. But I saved money by doing it…yes…my-self. I consider that economical at best. And so, that is efficient enough for me.

In comparing this project to the amount of money I spent on self-publishing my first book vs. the results in sales, I intentionally wanted to keep my expenses low.  For readers, the diary points out lots of good options for doing just this.  I bought a ton of nice marketing materials through VistaPrint at very low prices.  Some of my materials were free from Cafepress.  My largest investment was the BookCoverPro program, but I made back my cost and made a profit from it after offering my services to other Lulu’ers who were seeking affordable help with their book covers.  It doesn’t get more efficient than that!

Of course, my book still has flaws.  There are things I’d go back and change immediately.  Maybe some of the glitches could have been prevented had I hired professional help, but would it increase sales of the book?  Probably no more than the number of copies and downloads I’ve sold to date.

I’ve listened to lots of self-published authors who have contacted me since the conception of this review blog, and their biggest disappointment in choosing to use POD is a lack of sales.  Outside of a handful of friends and family members, no stranger ever buys their book.  And so, they give up.  They don’t have time or money (or hope) to invest in marketing their book to a larger audience.  They think that having their book in Lulu’s bookstore is enough, but we all know it isn’t.

I’m not a bestselling author, but I have embraced the notion that even one reader is a true gem.  Sure, I’d love to sell my books by the thousands and climb the best selling charts.  That’s something I still dream about.  But for now, I’ll take that handful of readers who have bought or downloaded one of my books and given me a review on Amazon.  I’ll take that best friend who went to his local bookstore and ordered a copy.  I’ll take the free copies I gave to my own mother and sister as keepsakes.  A lack of sales and bestselling numbers doesn’t break my heart. After all, the worst thing that could ever happen to a book is for no one to ever read it.

And so, with that said, that’s the reason I created this blog in the first place: to give Lulu authors one single moment to shine, to know that someone took the time to read their book, to have a chance in the spotlight and to get some praise and some feedback.   Because when it’s all said and done, that’s the best feeling in the world for an author.  And at a 46 cent profit per copy of my own book, at the end of the day my own reader’s praise is all I have to show for it.  It’s all I need right now.  And that’s efficient enough for me.

The POD Diary is one person’s experience.  I’m not a pro at this.  I admit my mistakes.  Sure, there are things I could have done better.  If I was perfect at it, I’d be running my own self-publishing company rather than writing about self-publishing my own book.  SELF is a big part of the equation, and if any other author reads my diary and can take away from it hints, tips, or things to avoid which overall makes their self-publishing (there’s that word again) journey a better experience for them, then the diary has served it’s purpose.

You can read Mark’s full article and my reply here.

Most of us have things in our lives that we can obsess on. In fact, ask any teenage girl and she’ll immediately tell you that her nose it too big or too small, she has too many freckles or not enough, that her eyebrows are too thin or too bushy; the possible list is endless. We can spend hours agonizing and obsessing over features that the rest of the world doesn’t even notice.

In Stealing Wishes, Shannon Yarbrough takes us inside the mind of 32 year old, self-diagnosed, obsessive-compulsive, Blaine, who is a picture taking coffee barista. This light romantic comedy is told in an introspective, narrative style and the reader is drawn into Blaine’s world as he wakes up each morning at 5:32, sets his alarm for 16 minutes later to allow time for a shower and shave, and then sets the alarm for the next 16 minute increment to allow time for eating breakfast. As you might have guessed, one of Blaine’s obsessions surrounds the number 32, the number of his apartment, his current age, as well as multiples of 32, and how he relates everything possible to this number.

Blaine loves his job as a coffee barista, because it allows him to control his environment by organizing all of the items and to set up routines for each type of drink ordered. The off work hours are spent with his camera, taking pictures of people he doesn’t know and putting them in photo albums. They are his memories of moments in his life. His best friend, Sallie, is also his boss, and since they are both single, they frequently go out bar or restaurant hopping together. This all changes when Sallie meets Charlie, they become a couple and then set Blaine up on a blind date with Charlie’s friend Edward.

One of the few things that Blaine and Edward have in common is their enjoyment of the writings of Christopher Isherwood. Will that be enough to sustain the relationship? The park that Blaine frequents on a regular, almost daily basis, is Bachardy park which is exactly 32 blocks from the coffee shop where Blaine works. Since author Christopher Isherwoood had a high-profile, openly gay relationship with Don Bachardy from early 1953 through Isherwood’s death in 1986, it is just one more way in which the life and writings of Christopher Isherwood influence this book.

While not being my usual genre, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Stealing Wishes as it provides a glimpse of a lifestyle outside of my own. It shows modern day relationships as you only learn the first name of any of the characters. The theme of the book is universal as we all contemplate at one time or other what love is, and struggle with the intricacies of relationships, whether gay, hetero, or both.

At the beginning of the book, Blaine tells the readers, “I am a camera (too).” Stealing Wishes represents the word snapshot of the moments of Blaine’s life.

I came across a highly recommended site called Book Cover Pro. Has anyone else used this? It’s amazing! It even comes with templates where you just add the text, images, and choose colors. Done! It’s $167.00 dollars to download it to your desktop. I guess I stimulated the economy a bit more, because I decided to buy it. Called Mom to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day while the download was taking place, and by 7pm Sunday night I was playing around with full wrap-around book covers.

Total investment in this POD project so far: $212.35

In October, Amazon.com announced its ABNA contest to find the next breakthrough novel. I decided to polish my finished book and submit it as an entry. I made it into the contest, but was cut in the second round in January of this year.

So, there I sat with a finished novel. In December, I finished the second project I had started. Now…TWO finished novels! I got an idea on how to improve the first one, so I began rewriting and editing it again! I began shopping them to publishers and agents. I sent the first one out less because I thought the second one would appeal to a wider market. Rejections began to roll in. But I really wanted to publish that first novel, now entitled Stealing Wishes, because I had put so much time and effort into it. So, I have since decided to use Lulu to do it.

This page will serve as a diary of my publishing process to hopefully be a good resource for others who frequent this site often and may be looking for suggestions or advice. Feel free to ask questions or make comments, or share your own ideas if you have them.

Here’s where we are so far…

Three weeks ago: I began formatting my Word document manuscript to a 6×9 page size. I changed the margins and added page numbers. I added the blank pages at the beginning and end like you find in regular novels, and which Lulu requires for ISBN assignment. I added a copyright page (also required), a title page, and a dedication page..consulting other traditional books I own for alignment suggestions and for what the copyright page should say.

I added necessary pages so that my chapters always begin on the right side. I’ve noticed some traditional books do this and some don’t. Some more recent titles I looked at go straight through with no blank pages, chapters starting on the left or the right. But I did find some with blank pages so that the chapters always begin on the right. Any thoughts? I like the right side format so I went with that. I also “fully aligned” my words so I have that crisp straight line down the right page. I also added a picture to appear on my title page between the title and my name.

Two weeks ago: I started a new project on Lulu.com but kept it private. I uploaded my manuscript and examined the created PDF file to see if it was to my liking. It was, so I began working on a book cover.

The Book Cover: For the idea I had in mind, I grabbed a camera and set up a photo shoot using props I wanted on the cover. These were old photos, a cup of coffee, and some lose change. After several snapshots and different angles, I uploaded my photos to my computer and chose the best one. I played with color variation a bit, using Adobe Photoshop Manager, and finally had something I liked.

Using the Paint program on my computer, I created a 7×10 file which would serve as my cover. The reason for the slightly larger size is for the bleed over when you start creating your cover on Lulu. I chose a blue background for the entire cover, then I stretched my photo across the middle from the left edge to the right. After choosing a font and size, I typed my title across the top and centered it between the top of the book cover and the image, and then did the same with my name below the image. After a few adjustments, I had a nice cover. Well, I thought it looked nice. Keep reading.

I quickly uploaded it to Lulu and then used Lulu’s cover design to do the spine and the back cover. I chose a slightly different shade of blue for the spine. I put the title and my name in white, and chose not to print the Lulu logo on the spine. For the back cover, I used Lulu to color the back cover all black. Then in white, I typed in my blurb description of the book. I could not find a way to make it fully aligned down the right side for a nice crisp straight line. If anyone knows how to do this, let us know. I even tried typing my blurb in Word and doing a full alignment, and then copied and pasted it into the Lulu screen, but it didn’t work. Oh well, this would not be my final product anyway, so I left it as is for now.

The Sample Copy: After a few minor adjustments and some spell checking, I ordered a sample copy on Saturday, May 3rd. My cost for the book was $9.99. Shipping was $7.44 for Priority Mail. The book shipped from New York on Tuesday, the 6th, and arrived at my home in St. Louis, Missouri, on Thursday the 8th. Wow! Excellent shipping time! (Note: Media Mail would have been cheaper, but would have also taken a few days longer to receive. Also, Lulu does not offer any tracking for media mail, so if the package is lost in transit, you are out of luck.)

No, I didn’t have to buy a sample copy, but I believe it helps to have the book in hand to get a feel for it. How is it going to look to the reader? It really helps to step away from the monitor and spend time with the book during this process, so I highly recommend taking the time and money to do this. I spent $1.99 on some red ink pens so I could immediately begin revising the text which is what I am still doing at this time.

The Book Cover: I hate it. The lettering on the cover is fuzzy. My photo looks great and the quality is excellent, except there is an orange shine in the top corner, which probably came from a vase which was sitting on the table where I photographed the image. There’s also a glare in the bottom right corner which I didn’t notice before, and the collage placement of my photographs is not very good on the top right side. Back to the drawing board.

The Interior: Wow! The inside looks great. The gutter, that space down the middle between the pages, is a little tight and I found myself having to open the book wider to be able to read it. So, I’ll have to fix that margin. Also, the page number at the bottom is too close to the text. I will bump it down. I also think the top margin is too wide, so it may need to be adjusted as well. I am still currently reading the text, but so far, my spelling and grammatical errors have not been too bad. My red ink pens are getting some use though!

Marketing Investments: Yay! My economic stimulus package arrived via direct deposit on May 6th. I’m using most of it to pay bills, but I decided to treat myself to a few helpful books I’ve been wanting. They are: Jeremy Robinson’s POD People and Janet Elaine Smith’s Promo Paks. I immediately began reading POD People and highlighting ideas in it. It has been a great motivator. I even posted about it in LLBR as being a valuable resource. Total investment: $25.93. I haven’t read Janet’s book yet, but I will post more about it when I do. By the way, just an aside that doesn’t really matter but Jeremy’s book contains spelling and grammar mistakes. See…no one is perfect!