Novel sales stats for 2012

First off, Happy New Year 2013 to everyone and a big thank you to all those out there who bought/downloaded a copy of one of my novels. I thought I’d blog again this year about how many sales/free downloads my novels had this year. My marketing/promoting consisted mostly of using Twitter, Facebook groups/pages, joining up with a couple Christian author groups to Tweet, and going to message boards. I did some giveaways for ebooks, like on Librarything, and sent some personal acquaintances/relatives paperback copies of Times of Trouble (which actually did help some with visibility), along with a little more than a handful of review copies to a couple of book bloggers, two of which actually gave me a review. I also tried blog interviews early in the year, along with the occasional paid post about my books, but overall, I’d say 99% of my sales would probably be from word-of-mouth. My sales on Barnes and Noble increased by a lot this year, up to 40-50 ebooks sold a month compared to 2 or 3 a month in 2011.  My number one seller is the United States, followed by the UK, Canada, Australia, and then everyone else, mostly Western/Northern Europe, but I did manage to get an Amazon Kindle sale from Japan, which was a borrow for Beyond the New Frontier, and 2 sales on Diesel from South Africa. This is without the updated numbers from Smashwords concerning Apple, Sony, or Diesel from December.

Here’s the numbers for each book in order of publication:

Out of Time
Kindle(ASIN B006GDO3BC): 1107
Barnes & Noble Nook: 37
Kobo, which includes WH Smith, Angus & Robertson, and Chapters Indigo: 42
Apple: 51
Sony: 4
Smashwords: 2 paid, 64 free
Paperback (ISBN:1453896961) : 8

Don’t Mess With Earth
Kindle(ASIN B005OOKZJI): 52
Nook: 39
Kobo: 2
Apple: 5
Diesel: 1
Smashwords: 2 paid, 47 free
Paperback(ISBN 978-1602643413): 2

The Usurper
Kindle(ASIN B007K9WDA4): 92 paid, 518 Select downloads (January – March)
Nook: 47
Kobo: 4
Apple: 14
Smashwords: 1 paid, 18 free
Paperback (ISBN 1453702725): 12

Shattered Earth
Kindle(ASIN B006M2U3O8) – 8 sales, unpublished it, but will bring it back this year
Nook: 48
Kobo: 20
Apple: 52
Smashwords: 1 sale, 61 free
Paperback (probably only available on Amazon, since I retired it on Createspace): 3

Dust Storm (western short story) – plagued by Smashwords’ meatgrinder, so it wasn’t published to Apple or Sony until later in the year. Sold on Kobo once I uploaded there myself.
Kindle(ASIN B006KH7H4E): 9
Nook: 7
Kobo: 1
Apple: 1
Sony: 1
Smashwords: 2 paid, 12 free

Voyager and the Aliens (sci-fi short story)
Kindle(ASIN B005NK19MU): 14
Nook: 2
Kobo: 5
Apple: 9
Diesel: 1
Smashwords: 1 paid, 27 free

New Frontier
Kindle(ASIN B006ONBPVU): 99
Nook: 58
Kobo: 2
Apple: 7
Sony: 1
Smashwords: 5 paid, 62 free
Baker & Taylor Blio: 1
Paperback (ISBN 1468119540): 18

Times of Trouble
Kindle(ASIN B0075CNFFI): 309
Nook: 343
Kobo: 1
Apple: 0
Sony: 0
Smashwords: 128 free
Paperback (ISBN-10: 1469964791) 43

Times of Trial
Kindle(ASIN B00824G5UA): 99
Nook: 120
Kobo: 3
Apple: 0
Sony (for some reason, not available on Sony): 0
Smashwords: 31 free
Paperback(ISBN-10 147745327X): 5

Final Frontier – published in October
Kindle(ASIN B009ORP5U0): 26
Nook: 22
Kobo: 0
Apple: 0
Sony: 0
Smashwords: 0
Paperback (ISBN-10: 1481192191): 0

Beyond the New Frontier – combo of New & Final Frontier, available on Amazon to borrow for free or buy for $3.99
Kindle paid(ASIN B009NVH76M): 28, KDP Select: 724, Borrows: 2
Paperback (ISBN-10: 1480185590): 1

The total equals 1694 free and 2858 paid sales. My goal for 2013 is to double the paid sales without having to rely on free giveaways as much. I’m also working on a prequel to Times of Trouble, most likely called “Times of Turmoil.” I also re-designed a whole new author website on weebly. I was using webs.com, but it was way too clunky, but Weebly seems to be pretty user-friendly. Please check it out http://cliffball-indieauthor.weebly.com when you have time (waiting for domain name transfer, so it night re-direct back to webs.com). Now, I just have to figure out how to transfer my domain name over to it.

#SampleSunday – Final Frontier, alternate history

For Sample Sunday, here is a part of Chapter 7 of Final Frontier.

A couple of hours went by before anything started happening. As McMurphy and Elders were hiding behind some boxes on the floor where Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have shot Kennedy from, both men heard a door open, with two men walking through. The man who came in first was definitely Oswald, and the second man behind him was shoving a pistol in Oswald’s back, and was carrying something large that was shaped like a rifle of some sort.

Oswald was saying, “Why me?”

“As I keep saying, we need someone who we can blame the assassination easily on. You’ve got a record of siding with the Soviets, so why not you? The federal government will blindly swallow this story hook, line, and sinker, while the Mob will get off scot-free,”

“Ruby, you know you won’t get away with this, don’t you?” Oswald nervously responded.

“Oh, stop with the bravado. We’ve got the Dallas PD in our back pocket and even some of the Secret Service, at least the ones who work for old Lyndon. This should be a piece ‘o cake. All I need from you are some fingerprints, you’ll go to a movie theater, and that’s where the police officers in our employ will pick you up. You take the fall, the Mob gets an enemy out of the way, and everyone’s happy,”

“That’s a bunch of bull. What makes you think I won’t rat you out?”

“You do and you’ll meet your maker with a couple of .38 slugs. Got it?” Ruby waved the handgun in Oswald’s face, who was clearly frightened.

“Yeah, sure. How long do we gotta wait?”

Ruby looked at his watch, and said, “Not very long. Old Lyndon had the motorcade diverted here, so it should be passing through Dealey Plaza momentarily. Once I begin shooting, you slip out of here, and go to that movie theater. No need to make it more complicated than that. Alright?” Oswald indicated he understood.

McMurphy whispered to Elders, “That’s Jack Ruby,”

“Who?”

“Oh, that’s right, you don’t know about what happened in the original timeline. Mr. Ruby there attacked Oswald at the police station after the assassination with that handgun he’s carrying. Oswald died and so did Ruby after the police took care of him. Ruby is a member of the Mob that the Kennedy’s were at odds with. Nobody really knew the whole story behind the assassination. Rumors indicated that Vice President Johnson had the Mob take Kennedy out, which is why the motorcade was diverted here and why Johnson managed to convince Kennedy to make a campaign stop in Dallas to begin with. It was supposed to be neatly wrapped up so Johnson could gain power without having to run for election. Everyone would feel sorry about Kennedy not getting a second term, so Johnson would ride the wave of sympathy to get his first full term without really trying,”

“That must’ve required a massive amount of planning. It’s a wonder that it was pulled off without anyone blowing the whistle,”

“Potential whistleblowers were taken care of, either through being paid off or through death. That was old school south Texas politics for Johnson. Now that won’t happen since we’re here. Now we wait.”

The crowd gathered around the route that President Kennedy’s motorcade was taking. Ruby set-up the sniper rifle and then told Oswald to leave, but before anything happened, McMurphy and Elders stepped out of the shadows, and McMurphy said, “Hold it right there, neither of you move,”

“What? Who are you? You’re not supposed to be here!” exclaimed a surprised Ruby.

“I give up,” Oswald responded with both hands in the air.

“Step away from the rifle, Mr. Ruby. We don’t want anyone to get hurt,”

Ruby responded by turning around, facing the window, and then ran towards it. He crashed through it, fell, and died instantly when he hit the ground. The men could hear members of the crowd reacting to seeing a man falling out of the building. Then the three heard the roar of the engines from the cars in the motorcade, which indicated they were getting the President out of there as fast as they could. McMurphy let loose a string of cuss words before saying, “Great, just great. Now we’ll have cops and Secret Service swarming this place.”

Where to buy:

Amazon US, Amazon UK, B&N Nook, Nook UK, Kobo, Apple

Or… Beyond the New Frontier, which is currently exclusive to Amazon is either free to borrow now for Prime Members or buy for $4.99. Also available in paperback currently on Amazon.

Potential novels, sequels, & other scribblings

When I started writing and publishing my works, I never thought I would publish more than maybe two novels. Well, now I’m up to eight novels, and setting to write my ninth. My goal this year was to write and publish at least two novels, and I did that, with three. I also thought I’d never write sequels or a series of novels in the same universe, but I have. I’m sure some wonder if I’m going to have any sequels to some of my older novels, and I’ve been asked, but right now, I don’t know. Here’s an update on my current novels and future works.

Out of Time It took me a long time to get this novel right, but I finally did. Anyway, I thought about writing a sequel, but at the moment, I have no idea where I’d want my time travelers to go. I did start to write something about Janet Erickson, the captain of the Einstein, but I got stuck after a page or two of writing. I have an idea of what I might want, but I’m not sure if it’s a novel length story, a novella, or a short story. If I get around to writing it out, I’ll see.

Don’t Mess With Earth – I actually sent a short story version of this in the mid-1990’s to the Writer’s of the Future contest, but got nowhere with it. I wrote a full length novel, but this is one of my stories that people either like or dislike, and I re-wrote it into a version of Shattered Earth, changing the beginning, and making the novel longer by over 25k words. I have been asked by 1 or 2 readers if I’m going to tell the story of the Ragnor after Earth destroys them for the most part, but I really don’t know. I wrote a page a year or so ago, but haven’t returned to it. We’ll see.

The Usurper – No sequel. I wrote this mostly to push buttons, and if you’ve seen some of the reviews I’ve received on Amazon, you’ll know that I did just that.

New Frontier & Final Frontier – Final Frontier is the sequel to New Frontier, so I’m not sure about another sequel. I might one day go back to Final Frontier to include a chapter or two near the end, because I glossed over what happened to the Soviet Starship Gagarin in one of the alternate timelines, but if I say more than that, it would be spoiling the story for those that haven’t read it.

My End Times Series of novels – The next novel I’m going to write is about the story of Michael Evans, starting with his grandfather, who I’ll have palling around with Hitler in WW2. The Evans’ will try to manipulate events from behind the scenes, get England to balk at giving Israel as much land as they were going to give them after the war, finance the enemies of Israel, start to interfere in American society, and have appearances by the grandparents of the main characters from Times of Trouble. How Evans finds David Collins and the Iranian, and how they manipulate events before the Tribulation. I think I’ll begin writing it in November, taking time to do a lot of research while I’m doing it, and possibly getting it finished in early 2013. I was also thinking of at least one young adult novel in the series, even though Times of Trial is kind of leaning towards that, since Greg and Laura are two of the main characters, and they’re teens, but I’ll just have to see how that works out.

As for short stories, I’ve come up with a few of those, but a lot of them are so different in genre, I don’t know if I should put those in a short story collection, but I will think about it. Next year, I want to publish at least three more novels, if possible.

New Release: Final Frontier

Final Frontier is the sequel to the novel I published last year, New Frontier. Currently available for $2.99 on Kindle(ASIN: B009ORP5U0), Smashwords, Nook, and Kobo. Also, Times of Trouble is currently going for $.99 on Kindle (ASIN:B0075CNFFI) (but is available in paperback and on other e-book platforms), and Out of Time, my time travel novel is always $.99 (on all ebook platforms). Update: all of my ebooks, but Beyond the New Frontier, are $.99 for the month on Kindle.

What it’s about:

In this sequel to New Frontier, the USS Lewis & Clark begin their search for the Soviet starship Yuri Gagarin. They find the wormhole that the Gagarin went through twelve years earlier and decide to go through it. On the other side, the crew of the Lewis & Clark find a solar system that used to be populated by aliens known as Pictorians, but they’re no longer there. Neither is the crew of the Gagarin. So, the Lewis & Clark is flown back through the wormhole to report back to Earth.

Unfortunately, something is wrong, they find themselves 30 years in the past. As they struggle to wait for their future to catch up, the crew of the Lewis & Clark make changes to certain events, but they cause unintended consequences; including making another alien species mad enough to forbid humans from traveling beyond the Sol System. Find out what happens in this conclusion of the New Frontier series.

Also available is the combined versions of both novels, which is available to borrow for free for Amazon Prime Memebers, called Beyond the New Frontier (ASIN: B009NVH76M) and is currently free until the end of Thursday, the 11th of October. Tops out at 84,779 words.

Sales for the year so far

Now that it’s June, here are my sales numbers for the year so far, from regular sales to when one of my novels was in KDP Select to free giveaways. These are all from mostly just promoting online on Twitter, Facebook, and a bunch of message boards. The novels are listed in order of publication, from 2008 to 2012.

Amazon US Kindle
Out of Time – 34
Don’t Mess With Earth – 13
The Usurper  – (regular sales) – 67
KDP Select numbers for The Usurper – 329
Shattered Earth (which I unpublished on Amazon) – 8
Voyager & The Aliens – 3
Dust Storm – 4
New Frontier – 50
Times of Trouble – 89
Times of Trial – 9

Amazon UK Kindle
Out of Time – 8
Don’t Mess With Earth – 4
The Usurper – 8
KDP Select for The Usurper – 176
Voyager & The Aliens – 1
Dust Storm – 0
Times of Trouble – 4
Times of Trial – 1

Amazon Germany
Out of Time – 1
The Usurper (KDP Select) – 4
New Frontier – 1

Amazon France
The Usurper (KDP Select) – 2

Amazon Italy
The Usurper (KDP Select) – 2

Amazon Spain
The Usurper (KDP Select) – 6

Barnes & Noble Nook, which is partially through PubIt, B&N’s publishing platform and through Smashwords
Out of Time – 17
Don’t Mess With Earth – 17
The Usurper – 15
Shattered Earth – 19
Voyager & The Aliens – 1
Dust Storm – 3
New Frontier – 12
Times of Trouble – 109
Times of Trial – 7

Apple iTunes
Out of Time – 29
Don’t Mess With Earth – 4
The Usurper – 5
Shattered Earth -25
Voyager & The Aliens – 4
New Frontier – 3
Times of Trouble (only available since May)
Times of Trial (not yet available)

Kobo
Out of Time – 10
Don’t Mess With Earth – 1
The Usurper (Kobo has yet to list it)
Shattered Earth – 8
Voyager & The Aliens – 0
New Frontier – 0
Times of Trouble (only available since May)
Times of Trial (not yet available)

Sony Reader
Out of Time – 1
Everything else – 0

Smashwords paid/giveaways
Out of Time – 1/39
Don’t Mess With Earth – 1/26
The Usurper – 0/9
Shattered Earth – 0/37
Voyager & The Aliens -0/14
Dust Storm (I unpublished it because I couldn’t get the formatting right) – 2/12
New Frontier – 5/41
Times of Trouble – 0/87
Times of Trial – 0/1

Createspace Paperbacks, all of which were sales from mostly Amazon
Out of Time – 2
The Usurper – 7
Shattered Earth – 3
New Frontier – 12
Times of Trouble – 30
Times of Trial – 0

Total between January & end of May: 1423

Overall total since 2008: 26381

I’m posting this because some writers get discouraged, but you just have to keep at it. While I don’t have the money or much in the way of resources to push my novels to greater visibility, I think I’m doing pretty well. I took The Usurper out of KDP Select because my sales were actually worse overall, and I had a grand total of 3 borrows, so I didn’t think that program was worth it. Stay tuned for the sequel to New Frontier, plus a short story anthology based on minor characters in the two End Times novels, and a novel about Michael Evans, the man-behind-the-scenes in both End Times novels.

Two new reviews

In the last week, I’ve received two new reviews for two different novels, both of which are 5 stars. The first one is for Out of Time, which is my very first novel that I published in 2008 as a total newbie, where I mistakenly used iUniverse as a publisher and spent way too much for a novel that wasn’t really ready for prime time. Two years later, I went back through it, added scenes, corrected grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and fixed dialogue. I decided to do a fresh re-publish of  it on the Kindle a little over a year ago(along with a new version of the paperback on Createspace), since the old reviews reflected all the mistakes I made in it. Now, I’ve received a new review for it:

“Compelling Time Travel Saga May 21, 2012

By James A. Anderson

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a wonderful time travel novella.

You get to go back to some famous events in American and world history: The Wounded Knee Massacre, Sinking of the Titanic, JFK’s assassination, and more with some highly original and unique alternative timelines.

This is well written and compelling, page-turning stuff. Ball poses some interesting thoughts about how government could mess up the world if it ever got its hands on such a time device. It’s fun to read about it, but let’s just hope it never happens.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story, just disappointed it ended too soon.

James A. Anderson, Author
London, Ontario Canada”

———————————

Now, here’s a new review for my latest novel, my 7th, Times of Trial. This is from a regular reader of mine who first found out about me by reading The Usurper. Since then, she’s given me very good reviews for The Usurper(which is the paperback version, the Kindle version is no longer linked to the paperback) and Times of Trouble.

“Another winner! May 18, 2012

By Dirtboy’s Girl

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book can be read on it’s own or with Times of Trouble. The scariest part of this book is that I can see it happening with the upcoming election. The author draws you into the story and never lets go. You can feel the pain of the characters and can picture yourself in the story.
We can only hope that the story doesn’t play out in real life.”

I appreciate all of the readers who have taken a chance on me and have read my novels. Thanks!

 

Next novel, Times of Trial, possible book cover

This is a possible cover to my next novel, Times of Trial, but it probably could use some tweaking or something altogether different. I could use some feedback if anyone’s willing to give me some. I would appreciate it.

  The novel is a parallel novel to Times of Trouble. A preacher and his family, the Tyler’s,  have a church that is dying in Arizona, and they take care of the remaining senior saints, including the ones in nursing homes, etc. The remaining family, the White’s, leave the same church and head to Wyoming to live in a community that was originally started by Doomsday Preppers back in the early 2000’s so they can attempt to escape the increasing persecution of Christians. Meanwhile, President Collins orders the activation of Camps across the country that will house believers who he thinks are a threat to his rule. His patron, Michael Collins, places a new man in charge in Iran, who consolidates his power and attempts to take a swipe at Israel. Israel strikes back, but the rest of the world sympathizes with Iran. The Tyler’s end up with others in a Camp in Arizona,  the White’s and the community they live in get attacked, other events happen that also occur in Times of Trouble, and Evans continues to manipulate events as the Rapture takes the Christians, and he gains ultimate power.

Interview with The Usurper / Times of Trouble author Cliff Ball

Interview with The Usurper / Times of Trouble author Cliff Ball.

March Madness – Times of Trouble featured

All the new news related to my newest novel, Times of Trouble.

Featured today as a New Release on the World Lit Cafe: http://www.worldliterarycafe.com/content/books/march-new-release

Featured on the front page of Humanmade.com: http://www.humanmade.net/books/times-of-trouble

Part of a listing of books under $5 on the Independent Author Network: http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/kindle-under-5.html

Listed here:   https://sites.google.com/site/dvwbooksorg/christian

Flurries of Words
New Christian Books Online Magazine
The Electronic Text & Literature Cloud
Iselfpub

Other places to buy:
E-Books Online
Drive Through Fiction
Songs of the Word epub version,
Songs of the Word PDF version 
Lulu ebook
Lulu hardcover

Times of Trouble, now available

In my previous post, I described what Times of Trouble is about. Here are the current locations to buy the novel on all Kindle locations, Nook, and Smashwords. It will be on Apple, Sony, etc whenever Smashwords distributes it to them. Paperback is in the process of being finished on Createspace.

ISBN-13: 978-1469964799
ISBN-10: 1469964791
BISAC: Fiction / Christian / General
Kindle ASIN: B0075CNFFI

Here are the current buy locations:

US Kindle

UK Kindle

Germany, Spain, Italy, and France Kindle

B&N Nook

Smashwords

And it is available for $2.99 in e-book form and $8.99 when the paperback is available.