Before I tried publishing on All Romance Ebooks, I’d heard different things about the site. First of all, I knew it was a site with a high volume of traffic and decent promotional opportunities. When I checked into it and found out how many formats I’d have to get my book into, and what it cost to have that work done, I put it on the back burner. When I got back to researching it, I found I could make the most popular formats (PDF, ePub & PRC/Mobi) myself, with free downloaded software called Calibre and a little blog reading about how other authors had accomplished it.
On December 1st, I uploaded my two novellas to All Romance Ebooks. There’s an option to discount your work for a period of two weeks. I took it, discounting them 50 percent. Then when the discount went away the week before Christmas, I went back in and discounted them again. Since publishing on that site, I’ve sold four times as many books there as on Amazon Kindle. That may say something about what I’m doing wrong on Amazon…but it also says there are opportunities beyond Amazon. The discounting also helped out (it’s impossible to tell how much), because it landed my books pretty high up on the “Hot Deals” page of the site, which made them much more visible.
Now let me tell you something about my two published novellas. They’re hot. Too sexy for many readers, I’ve heard. But many readers on All Romance Ebooks are seeking, and buying, hot books.
I’m going to quote a few numbers from the recent 2011 Trend Analysis from All Romance Ebooks:
- Talk about traffic: All Romance Ebooks now gets about 5.8 million hits per month.
- 89 percent of All Romance Ebooks sales are purchases by women.
- 97 percent of the books sold are rated three “flames” or higher — in other words, it’s the sexy stuff that sells.
- In terms of which romance sub-genres owned the biggest piece of the pie in 2011, the top 10 are = Erotica, Vampires/Werewolves/Shapeshifters, Gay Fiction, Paranormal, Contemporary, Sci-fi/Fantasy, Multiple Partners, Interracial, Historical, Time-travel, Drama, and BDSM.
How about you? Have you published to All Romance Ebooks? How has the experience been compared with other major retailers?
I’ve had a totally different experience. When I first uploaded my books to All Romance, I sold a few. But after about a month, sales tanked. I’ve sold ONE book in December. On the other hand, I’ve sold about 1,000 books on Amazon in December, and that’s one of my slower months this year. Weird, huh? But I think a huge factor in this is that your books have a higher heat level than mine. Your love scenes are much more graphic. That’s what All Romance readers are looking for, I think. I’m glad you’re having success at All Romance.
My philosophy is you can’t have your books in too many venues. It was a lot more trouble to publish on All Romance because of having to convert the books, but even for a few sales, it’s worth it for the exposure.
Calibre is great, isn’t it?
Are you allowed to upload short stories? Or is it just books? I don’t put a high heat in my books, but the short stories have a little sizzle. 🙂