How do I determine if my book is a success? What amount of book sale do I aim to attain with my book so that it becomes a bestseller? How should I manage the copies I make of the book?

Do you have the same questions in your mind? Here I will tell you each and everything regarding book sales, which will help you effectively sell your book and generate greater revenue figures.

So for starters, there’s no such number for a book to sell up to, to be declared as a success. It all depends upon the genre of your book.

For example, fiction books would tend to sell more than non-fiction books so the threshold would be different for both of them. Let us see such parameters in detail.

Genre:

Every genre has a set of readers that fancy it. It can be ten lac to a few thousand people in the circle. So to go by that you could just aim at selling the most to that many people including some newcomers obviously.

See, newcomers, always tend to explore things at a greater level so they would know what does and what doesn’t this genre has in the store for their taste.

You can also look at the current bestselling books and tend to keep that as a milestone for sale. That is when you even want a sale number. Otherwise, success can be different for people.

Sources:

There’s three main sources of book sale these days: print book, ebook, and audiobook. All of these three mediums aim to target different sets of the audience at a time.

People who have a habit of reading from physical books would prefer print books, period. People who’re accompanied comfort from digital screens would prefer an ebook any day over a print book.

Lastly, people who tend to listen to more music and podcasts would fancy listening to an audiobook for sure. So, try to mend your book into all of these three mediums to enhance the amount of audience you reach.

Promotions and Advertising:

These two are very essential in influencing your target audience as a whole. Although there are numerous ways in which these things can be done (I’m not going to dive into that), here I can give you some examples to give you an idea of how things can be done. Say for an audiobook person, you would want your book to be reviewed, talked about, or put into ads in famous podcasting networks.

This will now only make u visible to your audience but can indulge them into loyalty towards your upcoming book, perhaps. See it this way. There’s not a lot of audiobooks in the market right now. If people know that this author, is sure to give an audiobook experience to its customer, they might want to stick with you in the coming future. So with this,  you not only present to a greater audience but also form loyalty circles around.

Listings and Ranking:

Make sure you list your book on major sale platforms. Be it online or offline, your book should seem available if a customer tends to buy it. For online sales, Amazon and Flipkart have a major market share in terms of books. For offline, stores such as Crossword have a lot of outlets nationwide which could serve as a medium for increased sales too. Try to reach #1 rankings in all these platforms so that they promote your book to a greater extent.

Try to be in the “Top sold list of the week” and gather more audience.

So with these things in mind, I’ll tell you one more thing.

On the grounds of sale, more than ranking, consistency is the key to the most amount of sale. You can sell 200 books a day for a week but then 2 books in a month, later on, would drastically change how your book is perceived in the market. If you sell 50 books a day and try to keep up to that amount of sale number, you’d have sold way more books on yearend.

Let me conclude this with a final example:

You sell 1500 books in the first week and then 2 books/day, you will have sold –

• 2216 copies for Year 1.
• 730 copies for Year 2.
• 730 copies for Year 3.

The total sale would be 3676 copies at the end of Year 3.

But, you sell 800 books in the first week and then 4 books/day, you will have sold –

• 2232 copies for Year 1.
• 1460 copies for year 2
• 1460 copies for Year 3.

The total sale would be 5152 copies at the end of Year 3.

Now, assuming that you book prices at a normal ₹500, you would be making ₹7,38,000 more on the second scenario with a more consistent approach.

(Note: These figures are just used as a set of examples and may or may not carry any resemblance to real-life sale values or milestones. They are just a medium to explain consistency being an advantage to self-publishing authors.)

Authors who focus less on ranking and more on constantly reaching the appropriate people, those who will read and enjoy their work, generally have a much broader audience and more rewarding results.

To know more about selling your book, click here.