What Are the Real Numbers Behind $322,650?
I made a bold statement on the cover. I sold $322,650 worth of books on Amazon.com. That equals 34,605 books from March 2010 to October 2020. I didn’t do it in one launch or one year; I did it over 10 years. Continually building my library of books and increasing my sales. I have written or created over 50 original books.
My books cover music, geography, picture, self-publishing, children’s, and coloring. I call a coloring book creating a book, as opposed to writing a book. You don’t write it, but you illustrated it and put it together. It is still a book. If it has pages and a cover and you can print it or deliver it on a Kindle-like device, it is a book.
But what does $322,650 mean, how much money did I put in my pocket? $322,650 is the gross number. It is actually an estimate based on the historical sales numbers from KDP/Amazon.com. KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing. It is the self-publishing side of Amazon.com for paperback and e-books. It is free to publish on KDP and is the primary place to be for self-publishers. If you want to publish your book, you can. To learn more, go to https://kdp.amazon.com/.
Most of my sales are in paperback books. Some authors do well with e-books and some with paperback. I recommend that you release your books in both formats if possible. You don’t know what readers will want. Once you have finished a book in one format, you have the other format almost ready to go with a few adjustments. I also sell books in PDF format.
Over 2020, my Amazon royalties have been in the $1,200-$1,500/month range. My geography coloring books have sold well over the past several months with kids being home. Below are my numbers for August 1, 2020-October 30, 2020. I sell around 300-400+ books a month.
In October 2020, I sold 425 books for $1,550.50 in royalties. In the past 10 years, my royalties have added up to $108,126.68. So how did I get to say I sold $322,650? My average paperback book sells for $10.00, my average e-book sells for $2.50 on Amazon. I sell mostly paperback books. My average royalty for October 2020 was $3.60 a book.
Over the past 10 years, I have sold 31,485 paperback books and 3,120 e-books for a total of 34,605 books. Every business has a gross sales number and a profit number. My Amazon royalties are actually my profits. That is what I put in my pocket. I took the number of book sales and multiplied them times the average sales price and came up with $322,650.
I also sell books in PDF format on several websites. I use Gumroad.com to take orders and deliver the files. Gumroad is an e-commerce platform for selling digital products. It is very easy to use. Most of my sales from PDF books are from my geography coloring books. People buy them, print them out, and color. I also bundle my geography books, which push the unit price up. This makes for an average price of $7.12 for the book bundle. This is a new direction for me. I have sold 457 books for $2,739.
I encourage you to look at all avenues for selling your books. Along with Gumroad.com I also use Etsy.com. We are a global world and with PDFs, you can sell and deliver your books anywhere. It costs almost nothing to test and try. What can I do to have sales, try everything? It is a big planet with billions of customers and we are all connected.
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Excerpt from How to Sell Your Book, How I Made $322,650 and Sold 34,605 Books on Amazon, The Inside Secrets, by J. Bruce Jones. Bruce is the author of over 50 books on music, geography, children’s, coloring, and publishing. His latest book is available at Amazon and as a Downloadable PDF with bonus videos.
Available at Amazon: Paperback or eBook
Available as a Downloadable PDF with bonus videos
