What I Learned in 2011: Selling Books is a Tough Business

Another thing I learned in 2011 is that selling books is a tough business.

In 2010 I self-published my book, A Day of Hope: Leading Volunteers to Make a Difference in Your Community. I worked very hard on the book for ten months and was very satisfied when it came out. However, once the book came out I quickly learned that selling books is a tough business.

Even as an unknown author I thought I would be able to sell hundreds of books, maybe even thousands. That thought turned out to be much more difficult than I thought.

After a virtual book launch, a book signing, several radio interviews, hundreds of blog posts, many tweets, and Facebook promotions I have sold about 90 books. (Watch out triple digits here I come!) Selling books has been a tough business to work.

The good news is that I don't really want to work in the "book sales business." For me my passion is to write and teach. Selling books is just one way to do that. Luckily for me I am fortunate to have a blog with readers here where I get to share my writing with over a thousand people every single month. And the best part it is free for all of you readers.

Question: What has been your experience with selling books?

Comments

[Newt Barrett]

Chistopher,
Why don't you have a Kindle version? It's easy to generate and distribute ebooks--Kindle, Nook, and iBook with www.BookBaby.com. They are very inexpensive and you keep all the royalties. You can price it so your book is very affordable and get 70% royalty; that assumes you didn't give away the rights.
We used them to do Managing Content Marketing(http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Content-Marketing-ebook/dp/B005VGMV5U/) at CMI Books.

[Christopher Scott]

Hi Newt,
Thank you for commenting and for sharing about the Kindle Book.

My book is in the iTunes Bookstore, is an eBook at Lulu.com, but it is not at the Kindle Bookstore yet. I need to do that so thank you for your input. :-)

[Jacob]

Hi there,
I am from Malaysia :)
Just found out ur blog and it's inspiring me to write a book. Keep it up with ur passion. God bless!

[Christopher Scott]

Great Jacob and good luck with your book! :-)