Author: Sharon Manssen

A fantasy fan since being read 'The Hobbit' by her father at the fireside at the age of six, she has been an avid bookworm her entire life. When the idea for her current trilogy popped into her head, there was never any doubt that it would be in the fantasy genre. Unfortunately, real life gets in the way, and writing has to fit around her full-time job at a global engineering consultancy and family life (husband and two young adult children). It took ten years to pen her first book, Medar, which was a finalist for the Tom Fitzgibbon Award in 2015 and was published in 2017. Her second book, Tyrelia was nominated in the Young Adult Fiction category in the 2019 Sir Julius Vogel Awards. Her third book, Golden City, is due out in 2021.

Finally! First Amazon royalty!

Sharon Manssen

After advertising on Amazon since April 2019 (16 months ago) I have FINALLY received my first royalty payment!

The top chart is book sales. The only sales I made prior to starting to advertise on Amazon were when I launched my first 2 e-books on Amazon: June 2018 for Medar and April 2019 for Tyrelia. Each sale represents around $2 royalty.

The bottom chart is Kindle page reads. I only realised that my books weren’t signed up to Kindle unlimited in Feb 2020. This has turned out to make more money per book than e-book sales. I might make $7 off a book, when it only costs $4 to purchase.

Anyhow, when I started to sell books, I read the Amazon royalty conditions, and saw that I had to wait 60 days after the sale to get the royalties. But even after the 60 days, no royalty. Then I discovered that I had to earn US$100 royalties, before they would pay out anything (for a wireless transfer – if I had an account in the US they’d pay out straight away). I had made sales on Amazon platforms in the US, Australia and the UK. I added up that I’d made $100 across all the platforms and eagerly waited 60 days after that to get my royalties. No payment. THEN I found out that, oh no, I had to make the $100 on a single platform!

So, finally, after launching Golden City, I made the $100 threshold on the US platform. Hurrah! But given that I’ve only got $3 on the UK and $17 on the Australian platforms, looks like it might be a while before those land in my account 🙂

Book 1 Medar – published August 2017. Click here to purchase.

Book 2 Tyrelia – published March 2019. Click here to purchase.

Book 3 Golden City – published November 2020. Click here to purchase.

I need your pre-orders

Sharon Manssen

Pre-order here https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GJYT9WD

Here’s how it works. I need as many pre-orders as possible, so that when my book ‘goes live’, all those pre-orders count as a sale on a single day. The more sales I get on a single day, the higher my amazon ranking. I might even get to Number 1 – which means that I get a ‘badge’ and Amazon’s algorithms are more likely to promote my book.

So your small investment of $2 could really help boost my sales long-term. Thanks in advance!