Summer sales and the dog days

The talk among the indie authors that I have been following for a little while is that the summer months are pretty lean. Sales slow, sometimes to a trickle. It's not something that happens just to indie authors, either. The entire publishing world slows down in the summer. That's why I was trying to keep my head up when sales for July were non-existent early on.

The first week of the month went by and I hadn't sold any books. It was OK. I've had slow starts to months before. The second week passed with no sales and I tried to tell myself that it was OK. The summer is slow. But, to be honest, I was starting to worry. Had I tapped out my market? Had everyone who was interested in buying a copy of my book already bought one? I felt like most of the copies I'd sold up to that point had been the equivalent of hand sales in a bookstore. Someone had met me online somewhere and decided they either liked me well enough that they wanted to support me with a purchase, or they liked what I'd said about Chasing Filthy Lucre and they wanted to buy it. Either way, my sales required some interaction with me. And that's all fine, but at some point if you aren't meeting dozens of new people every day you'll eventually run out of people to buy your book.

I mentioned my sales drought on Twitter and someone who's been following me for a while bought a copy. I didn't care if it was a pity purchase. It was something. Then, just a few minutes later, my mother-in-law bought a copy through Smashwords. So two sales in a matter of minutes. That's great, and if it ended there then I was happy. At least I wasn't shutout for a month. But it didn't end there. I've continued to sell about a copy a day since then and right now July is turning into a pretty average month. Not a record-setter, although it could be if sales pick up and we can get more than one a day to close the month. But July won't be my worst month ever. It will land somewhere in the middle of months, and, after the way it started, I'm perfectly happy with that.

I have some more thoughts about July and sales, but I'll save those for next week. This post has already gone on too long. I'll leave you with links to places you can purchase Chasing Filthy Lucre, you know, in case you wanted to help turn July into a record breaker.

Click here for Amazon or Amazon UK
Click here for Barnes and Noble
Click here for Smashwords