If you aren’t aware, there are a couple authors over on the GenReality blog who are foolish brave enough to share their actual sales figures for their books. Despite my seeming little dig, which is more an indication of how I think publishing folks will respond to this practice than the value I see in sharing the data, I have great respect for these authors and what they’re trying to accomplish. In the spring of 2009, Lynn Viehl posted an actual scanned copy of the royalty statement for her NYT top twenty bestseller, Twilight Fall. Why would she do such a thing, exposing herself to the potential backlash from her publisher, her agent, and anyone else who didn’t like the idea? Because she felt it was important to let hopeful future-NYT bestsellers know what the real numbers were. My hat’s off to Lynn. This month, Sasha White posted her sales figures for a short novella published by one of the leading epublishers in the current market, Samhain Publishing. The book sat in the top ten bestselling list on mybookstoreandmore.com for three weeks. What does that mean in dollars and cents? I’ll leave it to you to read her well-written blog post HERE.

Again, my hat’s off to Sasha for having the guts to share her numbers. Most authors are very tight-lipped about their sales, for a variety of reasons. I haven’t shared any numbers, outside of reporting anonymously to Brenda Hiatt’s Show Me the Money, and I can’t really give you a reason, outside of a personal insecurity, fearing I’ll lose my readers’ respect if my sales aren’t as high as they might have expected. Perhaps it would do the opposite, I don’t know. What I will say is that there are a great many factors–which Sasha didn’t really get into–that impact an ebook’s initial sales. I thought I’d say something about those.

The  factors that will impact an ebook’s potential first-month sales include:

Current trends: Ebook trends seem a little more fluid, moving more rapidly than trends in the print market. This is based purely on my speculation, not concrete data. At any rate, books that fall within the current popular trend sell better.

The publisher: Not all ebook publishers are created equal. Some have established readers, others do not, and as an author, there are only so many readers you’re going to bring from one publisher to another if you switch.

Timing of release: Because many epubs pay monthly, that vital first month’s sales may all appear in the first check, may be split half and half between two months or may fall heavily into the second royalty check, depending upon how early/late the book released within the month. Also, having an ebook release on a holiday, or very close to one, can also impact sales.

The author’s name: To a lesser degree than the other factors above.

Direct sales vs distributors: If the bulk of the publisher’s sales come from second-tier distributors, like Fictionwise, the author will earn significantly less money from his/her book. There’s no way around it.

Blurb/cover/packaging: Sometimes a book is packaged so well, or the concept is so fresh, it sticks out from the crowd.

If the book is part of a series (first books tend to sell better than sequels, but sequels will cause a spike in backlist sales)

What doesn’t seem to impact sales to any significant degree (I’ve tried them all and seen virtually no results)

Advertising in print media

Online marketing via blog interviews, chats, yahoo group posting, etc.

Contests

There you go, some of the factors I personally know that  will (and will not) impact ebook sales. Do you have any more to add to the list?

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