Some notes on selling anthologies for a year…

As you might remember (ha), I’m the publisher of The Crimson Pact series of anthologies.  Volume One came out a bit over a year ago, so I actually have a nice little graph to show some interesting things about sales.

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So there’s some pretty obvious trends going on here.  Each volume so far (data above is just for volumes one and two, aggregated from all digital sales) has spiked in sales shortly after release.  That’s not a surprise.  Nor is the bump during the last quarter of 2011 – though our sales were higher in November and the first part of December.  Not quite sure what’s up with that.

The first interesting thing is the increase of sales during the summer convention season as folks promoted the books.  It definitely increased interest among consumers.

Second, notice that sales of volume one track almost exactly the sales of volume two upon its release.  Pretty powerful evidence that later releases from a series impact sales of earlier releases.

I don’t think that was new readers just buying all of the series at once.  There’s a second, smaller bump in volume two’s sales in early November, and again in first quarter 2012 where the shape of sales diverge.

My suspicion is that these folks heard about the series with the release of volume two, picked up volume one, and later purchased volume two.

While there’s a lot of sound and fury out there about digital sales, I think having some evidence really, really helps.  So here’s your takeaway:

Your sales of one book do not stand alone.  Continuing to put out content – especially that is related to other material – has a measurable impact on all your sales.