Amazon book sales for Lulu self-publishers

I deliver as promised: here we are with the estimate of Amazon book sales of Lulu self-publishers. I have decided to limit my research to Amazon sales only as the information is relatively easy to get, and Amazon is Amazon anyway which means that the results are convincing - if you cannot sell a book on Amazon, then where in the world can you? Also, if a title is on Amazon, it means the author is willing to sell to the public, as opposite to some authors who have no such intention and publish just for their family, friends, etc.

I also have to mention that only Amazon knows the exact numbers of books sold, but it is possible to estimate the numbers based on public information available on Amazon.

As a sample, I looked at Amazon sales of 100 random titles published by Lulu in January 2007; they are a mix of all genres, languages, formats, etc. Now we are in July, so the sales should already gain some momentum for these books during the 6 months period.

The results of the estimate of Amazon book sales for Lulu self-publishers are as follows:

5% sell approximately one book a day
10% sell approximately one book a week
28% sell approximately one book a month
45% sold one book or two during the six months period
12% sold none...

So, as we can see approximately 57% of Lulu authors do not sell at all; we cannot consider one or two books during the half-year period as sales, agree? About 38% sell a book once a week or once a month - personally I would not consider these amounts as sales either, that estimates approximately 95% of books as non-selling. 5% as "the best selling authors" of this sample sell a book approximately once a day. How much money is “the best selling author” making with one book a day?

I agree that the sample could be more representative for 1,000 titles or better yet for all Lulu 8,000 titles currently selling on Amazon, broken into categories by genres, formats, prices, languages, etc. If one knows how to use Amazon stats, it can be done. It would be much more time consuming, but I believe the results will not differ much.

Now, is Lulu to blame? No. Whom? The authors. Or better yet, the authors' misconception of print-on-demand (POD) services. Authors often think that publishing with a POD automatically presumes selling books. Nope. Books do not sell themselves and PODs do not sell books, although some of them provide technical tools for selling as Lulu does putting their titles on Amazon.

AUTHORS SELL BOOKS! That means authors' marketing efforts and money (!) must be involved before and after the publication date. No other way to sell books for self-publishers whether they publish with a POD or another type of small press.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/olgakellen

Self-publishing questions on LinkedIn

I see there are many questions about self-publishing on LinkedIn. Many members have written a manuscript or are writing or are planning to write and want to publish it of course. Well, in today's world it is not the easiest thing to do… I keep saying that writing is a fun stuff, but publishing is a tough job…

I had been working with self-published or aspiring authors and published online articles based on my experience. My articles are on various websites, but there is one place where most of them can be found: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Olga_Kellen

So, I answer those self-publishing questions to the best of my knowledge to help people avoid mistakes that can cost them a lot in the future. I mean money and also lost copyrights and hopes, etc.

Also the questions brought me to think about some Internet Marketing research to do – to compare terms and services of actual companies with the Internet presence that help aspiring writers to become published authors. As a good marketer I have checked what has been done on the topic already. Great! There is a report on sale comparing 48 self-publishing companies. Okay, I am free from this particular problem, anybody who needs this information can google it.

Another topic that I have been thinking of is that many LinkedIn members recommend lulu.com as a self-publishing company as the upfront fees are low. But the thing is that nobody talks about SELLING books, everybody talks about publishing… The business model of self-publishing companies is based on selling books to the AUTHOR, not to the public though… They do not announce it of course.

So, I have decided to undertake a little research – how many books actually a lulu.com self-publisher can sell? I’ll let you know the results as soon as I can put them together. When it comes to sales numbers, it is getting to be difficult ;-)

http://www.linkedin.com/in/olgakellen

More LinkedIn Happenings

Here are some results of my now two month-old membership on LinkedIn.

Connections: doubled. Now I have 20+ first degree connections, under 20,000 second degree and under 2,000,000 third degree.

I haven’t started sending invites to other members out yet; I am still thinking of the best keywords to optimize my Summary and Resume to start my promotion campaign. Meanwhile I enjoy answering questions and reading other members answers, this way I make new connections too.

There is an ongoing discussion on LinkedIn – what kind of a personal network is better: large and loose or smaller and targeted? I guess there is no right or wrong here, it depends on your particular goal.

There are a large number of members, so called LIONs - they don’t prey on you to devour, but to make you a connection instead;-) It actually reads as LinkedIn Open Networkers. They have their contact info posted publicly and invite everybody to connect. Most of them are recruiters, some are consultants. Okay, maybe this is the right way for me to go? I mean to get connected with them to increase my chances to be found in case an opportunity arises… I am always on the look for a new interesting project anyway. As soon as I decide on the keywords, I’ll start expanding my network through LIONs.

Expert: I am visible now somewhere around the second page of the Experts List, with 20 to 40 questions answered every week. The champions on the top of the first page of the list answer 200+ questions a week (!) It probably means sitting in LinkedIn for 20 hours a day? They also seem to do a research to answer a question. This alone makes LinkedIn a very valuable resource. I cannot do that myself, I don’t’ have that much time…

More later

http://www.linkedin.com/in/olgakellen