How Many Copies Have I Sold?

Prefer to listen? Press play to hear this post read byAvree Kelly Clark

19:37

A question I am often asked is: How many books have you sold?

The final result may be surprising . . .

Since hitting 1,400 copies on December 19, 2024, I honestly had stopped counting because it was after such time that I began delving into the research for what was to be my next book—which is All Manner of Evil coming out this August 4!!

So back on December 19, 2024, I shared the news on my socials that my book had sold 1,400 copies in 14 MONTHS!! (Averaging 100 books a month!)

I had hit 1,000 COPIES by May 23, 2024, where I shared a social media post saying:

I'm astounded that I have beaten my goal of reaching 1,000 copies sold in time for the eight-month anniversary this June 4!! THANK YOU to EVERYONE who purchased a copy of Malice Aforethought for themself and/or a friend to help me reach this incredible milestone!! Authors would be NOTHING without readers!!

So, it's been SEVENTEEN months since I last tracked my sales . . .

I know that sales have dropped off to where I'm getting steadily 2-5 Amazon sales a month, I wanna say. Some months have been as much as 10 since that time. I had thought that so few sales a month indicated poor performance, but imagine my surprise when I've heard from fellow authors that their book stopped selling ANY copies after four months. That made me feel so thoughtless for being disappointed when I still have sales coming in after nearly three years.

Google, too, made me feel a little better with this result: For a self-published or older indie title, selling 2-5 copies a month is a solid baseline. It proves your book has a steady, organic audience. While it won’t yield massive profits, earning consistent passive income without heavy advertising indicates your story has lasting appeal. 

OKAY, I'LL TAKE IT!!

Keep in mind, this doesn't even reflect the many hundreds of times my book has been lended through the library or shared between friends and coworkers. I was even told by a local library that my book was on par with Hannah's The Women for borrows!

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So, I decided to do the math of hunting down my total sales from October 4, 2023, through May 2026. I've sold 740 books through Amazon! I next calculated my total books sold through IngramSpark (which fulfills orders from places such as indie bookstores, B&N, and Target), and I sold 534 books in that same amount of time!

I next had to calculate how many books I've sold myself, in person—500 COPIES!!

For a GRAND TOTAL of 1,774 books!!!

So, doing a bit more math, that means I've sold 374 books in the last seventeen months, averaging 22 books a month!! Granted, a good portion of those have been at recent book fairs. ;)

So that brings me to answering another burning question readers have . . .

IS SELLING NEARLY 1,800 COPIES GOOD?

Let's ask Google!

Is selling 1800 copies of a self-published debut book good?

The answer: Selling 1,800 copies of a self-published book is an exceptional achievement. Most self-published books sell fewer than 250 copies in their entire lifetime. Reaching nearly 2,000 sales puts your book in the top tier of indie publishing, outperforming many books from traditional publishers as well.

BY THE NUMBERS

• The Averages: The average lifetime sales for a self-published book are typically under 250 to 1,000 copies.

• The Milestones: Even traditionally published debut authors often consider selling 2,000 copies a major milestone.

• The Top 1%: Selling over 1,000 copies is a benchmark that puts you far ahead the vast majority of independent titles.

  
  

SEVERAL FACTORS MAKE THIS MILESTONE IMPRESSIVE

• Outselling the Industry: The typical traditionally published debut novel sells less than 2,000 copies across its entire lifespan. Matching that as an indie author—who lacks a major publishing house's marketing budget and distribution network—is a massive win.

• Building an Audience: A debut is rarely a massive moneymaker on its own. Reaching 1,800 readers means you have successfully built a dedicated initial audience, which is the most critical asset for your author career. 

• The "Backlist" Advantage: If you plan to write more books, those 1,800 readers are now part of your fan base. When you release your next book, a percentage of these readers will buy it, creating momentum for your entire catalog.

• Traditional Publisher Interest: If you ever want to pitch to a traditional publisher, having already sold 1,800 copies on your own proves you know how to market and reach an audience. Agents and publishers generally take notice when indie authors cross the 1,000–2,000 sales threshold. 

• Profitability: 1,800 sales means you likely made a solid financial return on your initial editing, formatting, and cover design cost. (Fortunately, I served as my own editor and did the formatting myself using Vellum. Learn how much it did cost me to publish my first book below . . .)

• Audience Building: Selling 1,800 copies without a pre-existing audience is a massive achievement. It means your book's cover, blurb, and writing successfully attracted readers.

I next wanted to search something else using Google . . .

How common is selling 1800 copies of a self-published debut novel?

Selling 1,800 copies of a self-published debut novel is highly successful and uncommon. The average self-published book sells about 250 copies in its lifetime, and over 90% sell fewer than 100-200 copies. Reaching 1,800 sales places your debut in the upper echelon of indie publishing.

The Top Tier (1,500+): Achieving this places your book well above the industry average. In traditional publishing, the lifetime average for a debut novel is about 3,000 copies, making your self-published milestone impressive.

HOW DID I ACHIEVE THIS ACCORDING TO GOOGLE?

According to Google, it says: Authors who reach this number usually do so through aggressive marketing, a dedicated social medial following, or publishing multiple books to drive "read-through" sales.

Nope, nope, and nope.

Let's break down what Google means by these three things:

1. Aggressive marketing: Sustaining 1,800 sales usually requires active participation in platforms like Amazon Ads, BookBub, or a strong social media following . . . I had none of those things.

2. A dedicated social media following . . . I, to this day, have a very humble following on social media. But, perhaps, they are dedicated. ;)

3. The "Read-Through" Rate: The debut novel is often the first in a series, meaning those 1,800 buyers subsequently purchased later books in the sequence . . . that would also be a no since I write stand alone titles. ;)

SO HOW DID I ACTUALLY ACHIEVE THIS?

Well, to answer as truthfully as I can, I believe a few factors went into seeing these numbers . . .

1. THE LOCAL ANGLE! I hadn't realized that in writing a local-interest story about a historic murder that that would make my life MUCH easier in promoting the book around New Hampshire, which brings me to . . .

2. WORD OF MOUTH!! If you read my previous blog post titled A Dream Come True! you will learn just how fast and far my debut novel spread. I even had a 50 State Challenge on my socials, which I managed to reach all 50 states just shy of SIX MONTHS!!

   
   

   

3. BELIEF in my book helped me in convincing people to take a chance on my passion project, and soon it was the READERS who continued to share and promote the story with everyone they knew or thought would be interested.

4. PASSION for my story that this self-professed introvert was willing to do all sorts of in-person presentations, fairs, and meet and greets to get this story into readers hands. It has paid off!

5. FACEBOOK! Social media, especially those who shared in public and private groups and pages. It all started when I posted in a local Pembroke group about writing the story of Josie Langmaid, and Pembrokians showed up for me in a BIG way. Learn all about it in my blog post A Dream Come True! Another particularly incredible post shared in Forgotten New Hampshire Facebook group resulted in more than 40 sales in two days!!

   
   

Another thing worth noting is how one prices their book, especially as a debut author. I went against much advice and decided to price my book competitively to encourage readers taking a chance on my book, since I was an unknown and untried author. Where this hurt me was in receiving compensation, especially for consignment arrangements. However, I'm playing the long game here. I knew I'd have to spend some to make some.

A place where my pricing has helped me is at book fairs—when, oftentimes, my large 400-page historical fiction is priced much lower at $15 than what many fellow self-published authors set for a price . . . OVER $20 and usually closer to $25. In some instances $26 or $27 for a 200-page paperback fiction or memoir. I learned their reason was because they didn't believe their book would sell many copies, and so wanted to make more of a profit on what they did sell. I then explained that my reason for pricing a book below $20 was to encourage MORE sales.

This brings me to yet another common question I receive, especially from fellow authors . . . 

WHAT IS MY IDEA OF SUCCESS?

Honestly, I told myself that I would be super happy just to sell 500 copies. I was also hoping to earn back what it cost me to publish the book. The total cost to publish my first book came to a grand total of $1,773 for cover design, interior maps, proofreading, ISBNs, BookFunnel ARCs, and Copyright. If you include my one-time purchase of my formatting software, Vellum, it comes to $2,023.

Next, I would have been happy to have earned back what it cost me to market and promote the book, which consisted of numerous things I wish I never did and that I wouldn't do again. This included responding to Instagram promotion solicitations, which of course was a scam. Being a brand new author I thought placing my book in various publications with a promotional or ad placement would help get my book noticed, but it really didn't.

I spent hundreds of dollars submitting to various independent book awards. I'm so grateful to the Eric Hoffer Awards for recognizing my book, Malice Aforethought, with the First Horizon Award for outstanding debut novel and first place in the mystery/crime category!! I did also spend a pretty penny on an editorial review, which I absolutely loved, but not sure the $225 price tag was worth it.

Then there were the Goodreads giveaways, for which I ran two. For $119 I ran a 100 ebook giveaway that got somewhere around 1,700 entries. When that giveaway ended, I spent another $119 to run a giveaway for ten paperback copies—this got around 5,700 entries. This meant that my book was now on ALL of these readers' virtual shelves! Then there was the cost of shipping out the ten copies to the winners, which for the book and shipping cost me close to $140. Full disclosure: I only got one review each from an ebook giveaway winner and a paperback winner.

I intend to do an ebook giveaway for future books, but it may be some time before I ever do a physical copy giveaway since I was out $260 for only one review—though, it was a TERRIFIC review!! ;)

So how much did I spend on marketing and promotion?

$1,983!!!

So to know if I even earned back the cost to publish and promote my book, I had to search compensation reports from Amazon and IngramSpark. Full transparency, since I think people assume that authors pocket the entire price paid for a book—and boy they are VERY wrong—I get less than $3 for both paperback and hardcover copies sold through Ingram and Amazon. I do get 70% of the sale price for ebooks, so that is where the real profit is made believe it or not, even though my book is priced less than $10.

Calculating personal sales income is a lot more challenging because for about 120 of them I covered the cost of shipping, so that ate into my profits some; providing copies to bookstores on consignment got me around $2 or less per copy for more than 200 of those copies; and then I always sold my one book at a $2 discount in person to help save people some money.

But if you count just my copies sold through Amazon and IngramSpark, those sales COMPLETELY covered my publishing and marketing/promotion costs with a small profit!! That means the money I earned on personal sales was profit turned around to be used in ordering more books for more events, replenishing business cards, promotional bookmarks, and covering annual subscriptions for things such as my author website, domain names, Canva, stamps.com for a time, etc.

My book sales and freelance gigs have been keeping me in funds to cover the cost of researching my books, for things such as newspapers.com, ancestry sites, and numerous books on topics—some of them rare.

I hope you enjoyed yet another glimpse behind the curtain to know how lucrative or not it is to be an author. This is why I tell people not to get into writing for any reason but PASSION to share a particular story with the world!

But keep in mind, the more books you write . . . the more your backlist will begin to work for you. The idea being that if someone discovers you at some point in the future and likes you . . . they very well might shop your backlist. So those older titles have great earning potential beyond their initial cost to publish and promote!

Until next time . . .