Trilogy launch: first week's results

I won't lie.  This past week has felt more like a month.  Launching a new book is stressful.  Launching three books at once is a nightmare.  It's one of those things I'm glad to have done but won't ever do again.  Anyway, the books have been live for a week now, so let's see what we can see.

Biggest surprise: Apple iTunes.  This retailer is almost keeping pace with Amazon on the free downloads of Clouds of Venus, and it has exceeded Amazon in paid copies of the other two books.  I didn't expect that at all.  Let's look at the numbers.

Here are the figures for all three books across all Draft2Digital outlets:

Here is the breakdown by retailer:

Yeah, Apple.  :D  I've got $12.50 in royalties due from Apple from seven paid sales.  That's net; D2D's already taken its cut.

Those two sales at Barnes & Noble are free downloads of Clouds of Venus.  Here's the interesting thing about that: the book's "overview" hasn't even appeared yet.  There's no blurb on the product page!  No reviews yet, either.  The purchasers either downloaded it on the basis of its cover alone, or they downloaded it because they were fans of my previous work.  Or maybe they're Kboarders who have seen my posts there and decided to give my book a try.

Now let's look at Amazon.  I've had over two hundred free downloads of Clouds of Venus, but fewer paid sales of the other two books:

Over time, I hope to see some sell-through as people actually get around to reading the free book they downloaded and decide to purchase the next two.  For now, though, the also-bought algorithms have kicked in, and that's good enough for one week's results.

These are all very early results, and they will probably change radically over the next few weeks.  In the long run, there's no telling how things will shake out.  But I've got a new soft spot in my heart for iTunes now.

To any of my readers who might be reading this: thanks for giving my work a chance.  I really mean it.  I appreciate you all, and I hope you'll stick with me.  Space opera is coming soon.  Sword fights, plasma rifles, space battles... all kinds of cool stuff.  So enjoy the Free Space trilogy, and I hope to see you in the Wheel of Fire.  :)