Breaching the Plateau

 I noticed a disturbing trend with books I released in the last quarter of 2021.  Every single one there would be two big days early from the pre-orders and release of the newsletter and other social media posts.  After that, sales just dropped off the table.  Seriously.

This is my last release:  Grandpa Got Run Over By a Reindeer (& Then Swapped):

And here's the sales for Swapping Mall in its first week:

And Swapsgiving:

And From Boss to Goth:

And Swapoween:

And Swap, Swap, & Away!

And with the KDP Beta I did The Exclusive:

I pretty much had to stop there because you can only do 90 days, but I think you get the point.  There's basically a core of 25-30 people apparently who buy my books and after that...almost nothing.  Just the occasional sale.

Swap, Swap, & Away! and Swapoween were both pretty limp with not many sales even on preorders or after sending the newsletter.  From Boss to Goth had big numbers the first two days because I cut the price to 99 cents, in large part because there's a cookie scene at the end to help set up the Kindle Vella story, so I thought if I cut the price, more people might read it and look for the Kindle Vella story...which did not happen.  I guess that strategy only works for Marvel.

On the regular KDP you can only go back 90 days but the Beta lets you go back to the start of 2018.  Looking at the first few books from that year, it was pretty much the same thing:  a couple days with more sales and then just dropping off to occasional sales.  Makes me wonder why it took so long to notice.

The thing is, the ratings for these books at the end of last year are not bad, most in the 4-4 1/2 star range.  And the daily sales are not really far off what they usually are most of the time.  There are other days when I get a bunch of sales, and days when I struggle to sell 1.

The sad thing is when I notice days where Second Chance and Last Chance--books from almost 9 years ago--outsell a lot of these newer ones.  The Chances Are series has had a lot more longevity than any of my other books, including Where You Belong, which had a lot of sales the first year or so but then fizzled to nothing by 2017.  I'm not sure if it's because they're in the thrillers category or because the first one is perma-free or because they're longer books.  Though longer books like Swapnado or Reunion if anything sold fewer the first few days than some of these shorter ones.

So I really have no explanations.  It's just sad to think I'm basically writing for 25-30 people...and however many read it on Kindle Unlimited.  I try to look on the positive side and say at least someone is reading it, but it's kind of disheartening to realize none of the different things I've tried in almost 4 years has really mattered much.  I probably could have just taken the same story, changed the title, cover, and names and just rereleased it over and over and who'd be the wiser? SMH.

There, that's pretty insecure, isn't it?