Sunday, April 1, 2012

Self-Publishing Success Stories: Debra Holland

Excerpt from "2011 Sales Numbers and Other Thoughts" (from Debra Holland's blog).

What a difference a year makes! Last January 1, I'd hadn't even considered self-publishing. In fact, I had a negative view of self-published books. [. . . . ] Around February, Delle Jacobs posted her monthly self-published sales numbers to our group of friends. I was blown away.

Wild Montana Sky went live on the evening of April 28, and the next day, Starry Montana Sky followed. Of course I had hopes for some sales, but I never dreamed that they'd catch on and I'd sell so well: 27,069 (Wild Montana Sky) and 10,207 (Starry Montana Sky) for the year.


The author also broke down the sales month by month.  What's amazing is that the author did very little promotion.

TOTAL SALES

WMS 27,069

SMS 10,207

SERIES 37,272

SOD 556

ROD 243

SERIES 799

During this time, I've done very little promotion.


She recently signed with Amazon's Montlake Romance for her Montana Series.  She wrote her reasons why:  (short excerpt....click to read her whole reasoning).
2. Montlake will able to target the UK market, which I think is an untapped market for me, which I haven't cracked.  For example, currently for the month of March, I've sold 19 books in the UK and 1 in the rest of Europe. In America (on Amazon and Barnes & Noble) I've sold 8,686.

So just a little math

2011:  38,071 books sold
2012 January:  unknown
2012 Feb: unknown
2013 March: 8,705 books sold

It's safe to say this author has crossed the 50,000 books sold mark.


Highlighting some of the author's books:



Back to Main Page
Link to Top 100 Books Ranking (by genre) as rated by Readers


2 comments:

  1. Thanks for highlighting me on your page. I guess I'll have to get around to blogging about my 2012 numbers. As for the March number... it was written during the month. My total was much higher. But since I didn't stay up to see the final sales numbers, I'll have to wait until the reports for Amazon are out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for commenting and congratulations on your success.

    And thank you for sharing your sales number publicly with the whole world. I'm in the camp that believe transparency will help other writers out there.

    ReplyDelete