Your eBooks Aren’t Selling? Welcome to the Club!

I was looking at something on Amazon today and I noticed that I now have four pages of books. You get twelve books for each page, so that means I’ve got at least thirty-six books.

I’ve actually got thirty-nine up there right now, so it’ll take me another nine books to get five pages on Amazon.

Woo-hoo!

So what?

Well, having five pages of books on Amazon is a pretty nice feeling, but honestly, most of them are about as useful as doorstops in the desert. See, I’m damn good at writing books that don’t sell.

Writing Books That Don’t Sell

Yep, it’s no secret, and I’m not ashamed of it. I’d much rather have dozens of books that don’t sell than just one book that doesn’t sell. But that’s just me. At least with more books you have more options. I think it’d get pretty tiring to worry over the same old book all the time. I, on the other hand, can worry about dozens.

Take my five latest Amazon books. All of these books have yet to sell a copy:

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Alright, that’s a little misleading. One of those books I just put out yesterday and another last Monday. In fact, the oldest book on that list right there is Bilingual Teaching, and I put that out on April 1.

So I’ve gone six weeks without selling a copy of that book. Oh well. I was extremely happy to see someone in the UK bought SEO & 80s Movies, which as been out since April 25. That made my day seeing that!

Writing Books That Sell Poorly

We’ve seen the books that haven’t sold a single copy since their release in the past six weeks. How about books that have sold a copy, but haven’t sold one since the time of the dinosaurs? Yeah, I’ve got plenty of those as well, and here are six of them:

It’s probably best to start at the bottom of that list. You’ll notice on your Amazon pages that the first book is usually the one selling the most. Books further down sell the least. It’s easy to see a book with no sales because it’ll have no ranking, like this:

No Ranking on Amazon = No Sales

For Sales Rankings, the Lower the Number the Better. This Rank is for English Last, and it's bad.

You’ll notice on your Amazon pages that the first book is usually the one selling the most. Books further down sell the least. That book English Last is my worst title, and hasn’t sold a copy since November, and just eight copies in total since its release last August.

That’s not to say it’s not selling. On other retailers it does alright. It sold a copy on Barnes & Noble in April and another on Apple in March. It’s just that those two poor reviews on Amazon kind of kill it. Oh well, I’ve got plenty of books, and I’d rather use my energy churning out another than pulling my hair out over some review that only has about two minutes of thought put into it.

The other books aren’t nearly as bad. Tarot Card Killer had a single sale in February and might do better when I get the print version out next week. The State of Qin also sold a copy in February and Visit My Site, Bitch sold five. (Maybe that title wasn’t the best idea, huh)?

Write to the Top actually sold a copy last month, while Room 223 languishes in obscurity in Kindle Worlds (where sales reporting is shit), but I do know it got three sales in February.

Why Writing Books That Don’t Sell Is Good

So how can you turn a seeming negative into a positive? 

• I guess one way is to figure that one day those books will sell. 
  


• Another way to look at it is that people will be saved from your sub-par work. 
  


• No chance for a negative review is another silver lining you might want to latch onto.
  


• And realizing most people can’t read past a high school level is another.
  

Regardless of what way you choose to deal with the stigma of being an author that doesn’t sell, I wish you luck. 

I really have no major advice other than to write another book. I’d tell you to do some marketing but I know you’re about as poor as I am and don’t have the money for that tomfoolery. 

So go roll the dice again and put another one out – maybe you’ll get lucky this time.

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