April Numbers for Red Phoenix on Amazon

#6 Top Free Erotica

This has been a fun month as an indie author. I've seen one of my freebies, Deeper Baby!, make it to number 6 on the free erotica list (several others are in the Top 100). I also received a number of good reviews on Amazon this month, which is helping all of my books. 

For the Month of April 2012:

878 books purchased         

29,879 freebies downloaded

Best Sellers In the Month of April: (still asking you not to laugh at my numbers)

Paid -Boy Toys 104 with a tie for Amy's Choice 97 and Blissfully in Love 97
Freebies - Deeper Baby! 11,551, Thrilling Her 7301, Blissfully Snowbound 3131

During the month of April I added 3 new novelettes and 4 more of my books went FREE on Amazon (of the 22 titles I have on Amazon, 10 are free).

Quickly Moving Up

Quick Recap of Past Months:

March:
693 books purchased
27,571 freebies downloaded 

February:

298 books purchased         

12,386 freebies downloaded

What I am Learning:

• Keep the books coming. I have seen the numbers of my older books steadily go down. However, I believe the new ones are getting more notice because people recognize the name. (Brie Learns to Obey was recently published on Amazon and is quickly jumping up the ranks of paid novels.)
• You never know what will appeal to people. Books I thought would be a big hit fell flat, while others surprised me by their popularity.
• Listen to the readers and hone your work based on how they purchase and what they say in their reviews. HOWEVER, be true to yourself. The beauty as an indie eBook author is that you can write and publish what you want, even if it doesn't make big bucks. Someone out there will appreciate the uniqueness of your story and sometimes that is all the success you need.

* Note: Amazon allows for returns of eBooks. They are the only online bookstore I know of that does this. I noticed a big difference this month. Boy Toys which has done well previous months had 13 returns versus 4 in March. (Same book and I even had more sells last month). I will never know why they were returned - no one left reviews, but it was a significant jump. In total, 58 paid books were returned in April as opposed to 12 in March.  

I will update you next month to see how May pans out. I will say this, if your heart is to have your work published this is the perfect time for Indie Authors. It's a ton of fun!