My down this week was that I found out that my manuscript for Golden City did not make the shortlist for the Tessa Duder category (YA) in the national Storylines competition.
My up was that, for the first time ever, I technically made more in sales than I paid in advertising on Amazon. No, hang on a sec – I just checked my dashboards to give you some numbers and one of the sales has disappeared. I take it back: I’ve consistently spent more on advertising than I’ve made off sales š We’re not talking big numbers, though. After an initial misunderstanding of how to set up my campaigns and rather big overspends for 6 months, I have now learnt how to limit my advertising costs to around $20 per month. But with only 1 or 2 sales per month, I’m only (technically) making $6. You can do the math.
I say (technically) because Amazon has not paid out a cent in royalties, due to the fact I have not signed up to ‘Amazon kdp select’ (which means I can only sell exclusively on Amazon). I will only get royalties paid out when they accumulate to over $100. So after a year of advertising on Amazon, I have spent over USD500 on advertising, made 35 sales (mostly e-books at $2.99 of which I got 30%) and theoretically earned about $75 in royalties. Hmmm, I’m not giving up my day job anytime soon. On the up side (ever the optimist!) I think I’m getting better at targeting my campaigns at the right audience, but time will tell.
