Kevin got his first check from Amazon recently. There’s been some heated discussion on the internet of late, about e-book pricing and the Kindle vs the iPad and the future of digital publishing and so forth, and since I’m kind of just sitting around waiting for the printers to call, I thought I would share with you some actual real-world data.
(Is data something the internet likes? I can’t tell. There’s a lot of excitement around pie charts and Venn diagrams, but facts seem to be held in very low regard. It’s hard to credit.)
But so. Kevin’s first books were available for the Kindle in September 2009. From September 2009 through December 2009 here’s what he sold:
- Twelve Times Lost: 1
- Touch Anything Except Me: 4
- Fever Dream Ghost Book: 4
- The Location Scout: 5
- How I Learned To Love You From So Far Away: 20
34 copies total. Keep in mind these were all “priced to move” at $1.99 or less, loss-leaders in the long-term business of kfan llc, if you will.
What Amazon grossed from these sales: $53.66
What Kevin netted: $18.90
(What Kevin shared with me: $0, but even I can hardly blame him. This dollar amount would be particularly attractive to someone who still buys CDs.)
Ways to interpret the data:
- No way am I getting a raise anytime soon
- The real fight will be over ownership of the means of conveyance, not the physical vessel for the e-book
- I should try to get a job at Apple
Anyways there you are, a peek beneath the dataskirts. Oops, that caught your attention, didn’t it, internet. I googled “LOLcat Upskirt” to find a funny picture to post at the end here, but that turned out to be quite the rabbithole.
