So, it’s been over three months since I last posted, which makes this a quarterly update, I guess! Sales have continued well, if unevenly; I can’t seem to make any significant impression at Amazon although Barnes and Noble has continued to make up for it. May, in fact, was by far my best month at B/N, giving me 20% higher royalties than the previous record.
Not surprisingly, the porn—I mean, erotica—still makes the most money overall, but that’s just due to the fact that I have more titles that are straight erotica (so to speak!). The romance novels are still bringing in the most money per title, however, with one exception—last month I released an “erotic romance” which has been by far my best seller in the last several weeks. That might be because it’s new, or it might be just because people like a spicy romance now and again, or both, most likely. Considering it’s only a novella (about 22K words), I wasn’t sure what to charge for it, but I decided to try out 3.99, and sales have been doing well at a bit under 2 a day. Of course I’m not going to get rich selling two copies a day, but if I had several of those all selling two copies a day (or perhaps more by benefiting from increased visibility via more titles) then it could add up nicely. At this point I see no reason to drop the price to 2.99, and I’m certainly not going lower than that. One thing I’ve become sure of over the last year is that the .99 price point is useless, coincidentally, 99% of the time. Anyhoo, my thrillers/suspense are at the bottom of the ladder (not surprising since I only have a pair of stories from a yet-to-be-concluded novella), only surpassed (subpassed?) in their low sales by a paranormal novella from another series I haven’t finished.
The more I study what sells and what doesn’t, the surer I am that the future (for me) lies in writing romance. I make no bones about wanting to make money writing, preferably a lot of it! Thus it seems only common sense to concentrate on the best-selling genre. I honestly never—and I mean NEVER—expected to write a romance, let alone a pair of them, but once I began, it turned out to be a lot of fun. Right now I have one more historical novel that I’m planning in sort of a half-assed way which I hope to begin later this fall. I’m just about finished with a follow-up erotic romance and have a few more in the hopper, and then finally I have a series of contemporary romances that I’ve been working on as well. The biggest frustration is finding a decent cover artist. If you want to find somebody who can design a thriller, paranormal or suspense cover, they crawl out of the woodwork. I’ve found it a hell of a lot harder to find somebody who has done anything for romance—especially historical romance—that can match those from the so-called Big 6, however.
I’ve mentioned before my admiration for Ruth Ann Nordin, and I just have to say how wowed I was to watch the success of her first Regency romance over at Barnes and Noble. So here was a book that was her first try at the genre, she did the cover herself, and one day I checked its ranking to see it at #16. That’s right, SIXTEEN. On the first page of results for Nook bestsellers. Effing amazing. It’s since dropped down, but last I checked it was still well below 1000. And that’s the sort of thing I’d like to see for myself someday.
