Ellora’s Cave: Sales Figures For December 2007
January 23, 2008
The EREC site has a post I think should be read by every eBook Writer out there.
Ellora’s Cave released some very helpful information regarding average sales for the month of December 2007. This is so relevant to a eBook Writer and so helpful in making sense of what type of sales being published by a Top Shelf ePublisher can provide.
In summary Ellora’s Cave (Not any subsidiary imprints but just Ellora’s Cave alone) released 414 new titles in December 2007 and sold 74,000 e-copies total (including back list titles) in December 2007.
Further comments made by Raelene Gorlinsky, ECPI showed other interesting sales patterns…
First-month sales for a new ebook ranged from a couple hundred to over 3000, with the average being 850-900.
When an author has a new title release, it generally causes an increase in sales of their older titles. ESPECIALLY for series books. For example, a series book released a year ago may be chugging along selling nicely 15 to 25 e-copies a month. Then when a new book in that series is released, the older book will jump to maybe 70-100 e-copies for that month.
Sure this promotes certain ePublishers willing to make this information public. In fact I hope Ellora’s Cave attracts a ton of submissions by just showing their Bottom Line of only one month. Maybe other ePublishers will go public also with valid sales figures. My feeling is ePublishers should encourage and promote more open discussions like this since there are so many scam artists out there misrepresenting themselves, the current ePublishing Standards and hurting or ripping off writers.
Sorry if that upsets people but I think the numerous examples from 2007 alone prove my point.
Tags: Ellora's Cave, ePublishers, Sales Figures
It would be nice to put this 100sales in a year figure to rest. Well at least from the major players.
I’d love to see this honesty from other epublishers. But I doubt it’ll take off…
:(
What makes you all believe these figures are the truth? EC is a privately held company - until someone has a copy of their tax return I won’t believe any figures they give out .Just for example, when Tina Engler (head of EC) was on MMontel William’s show last year, she claimed EC would make 10 million dollars in 2006. If that is true then Raylene is lying. If Raylene is telling the truth, then Tina was lying.
I don’t trust these figure.
Quite simply…
There is no reason to have said a dang word. None.
First, No other ePublisher has bothered to ever state these types of things about their bottom line.
Second, These numbers can be checked against the experiences of the authors that write for them who I believe are honest so these numbers do reflect something easily verified by the authors themselves.
Those authors are more than free to post here if they wish. Even better, why not ask a few yourself?
Instead of debating their motivation for stating these numbers.
I think the figures are true because they match the figures I have direct from multiple authors. In fact these figures are a little lower than what the authors are anonymously reporting but the two are close enough to confirm each other.
Possibly all of these dozen or so people are lying to me for some weird reason, but I have trouble being that paranoid.
heck, if EC really made 10 million in 2006 lots of us are in the wrong business.
I can’t comment on the larger EC business figures, but as an author (and not an EC one at that) the individual figures quoted are entirely possible based on my personal experience.
The figures are true and frankly, if they weren’t you’d hear about it.
I have four books with EC and I’ll vouch for those numbers. Although my first month sales are fairly close to Raelene’s average, my backlist sales are well above her figures of 15 to 25 copies per month.
Unless I’ve missed something in another post somewhere, none of the numbers in Raelene’s comments give anything useful in comparing to Tina’s estimate of $10M. I see no need to accuse anyone of lying.
These figures are accurate. I have not discussed sales with other EC authors, so can only speak for myself. These are the numbers I was quoted when I signed with EC, and they have always rung true. Remember, there will always be authors who fall below or rise above the range, but for the most part I think most EC authors will fit within these figures.
And a word about Raelene: she is my editor and I have never had cause to doubt her word. When she gives you facts and numbers, they are accurate and true to the best of her knowledge. She is a very savvy businesswoman, true, but she is also a straight shooter.
Sam
They gave ball park figures when you signed? That’s great. I wish more presses took that approach. A good many seem to refuse to answer those questions which can sell authors up either for disappointment or guilt that they sold less than they expected because didn’t ‘promo’ enough.
good point made - it would be interesting if other publishers would be as honest with their authors and state their average sales.
like that’d ever happen.
*sighs*