Will Book Sales Dry Up By The End Of The Year?

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Book sales dry up when your book is in a niche with no buyers, or a fad that spikes and fades. They do not dry up on a calendar date at the end of the year. The way to keep sales steady is to check that readers are already buying books in your niche, and that books published years ago still sell. After selling over 50,000 books, this is the most important thing I have learned. Some of my books flopped, and this is why.

What is the first reason book sales dry up?

Some niches never sell any books. Sarah, an early member of my group coaching, wrote political books about the candidates in one particular election. What happens to those sales when the election is over? That was a big mistake.

More generally, I see authors with a background in something who think, “If I put it on the market, they will buy it.” Remember “if you build it, they will come”? With books, if you write it, they will not necessarily come. If a book flops, some authors change the cover. But if there are no sales in the niche, the cover is not the problem. Those niches have no list of readers. And if you do get lucky, other marketers will watch and flood the market and out-compete you. How many books do you have to put into non-existent markets before you see that it does not work?

What is the second reason?

Fads. Look at fidget spinners. Google searches for the term peaked in mid-May 2017 and then quickly fizzled, according to Fortune. A book on them put out in 2017 might have sold for a while. Once 2018 came, nobody searched for them. A video game, a social network or a new type of fiction can do the same thing.

I remember a guy in high school who bought ten pairs of weird striped plaid pants. They were popular for a month or two, and then he was stuck with ten pairs. Avoid being stuck with ten pairs of pants, or twenty books. A YouTube commenter recently told me they had written 20 or 30 books in a genre that will never sell. They had the expertise, good covers, good descriptions and bio. But the books ranked around a million or nine hundred thousand.

How do you check there is a market?

On Amazon the sales rank shows how well a book sells. My rule of thumb is that I want books in the top 100,000 on all of Amazon, not 900,000. I use KDSpy to look at the books ranked in the categories I am considering. Then I check the publication dates. I want to see books published a year ago, or five or ten years ago, that are still in the top 100,000. That means there is an existing market, and a book written the right way can be evergreen and keep selling for years.

Publishers do this too. A store like Walmart does not stock a product unless it knows it will sell. Major publishing houses do not publish on random subjects. They publish books similar to books that already sell, or by influencers. Even influencers have launched books that flopped, because their audience was not used to buying that kind of thing in book form, though they might like it in a magazine.

When do I get paid for the sales I make?

If money looks thin at the end of the year, check the payment timing before you decide sales have dried up. KDP pays every month, approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which the sale was reported, and 90 days for Expanded Distribution (KDP payment help). A sale in December is paid around the end of February. Watch the sales report for demand, and the bank account for the delay.

What kind of book keeps selling?

Evergreen ones. Some of my books are on fads, such as a particular diet, and they died out. Others focus on human problems or on stories people want far into the future, and they keep selling. I wake up and see sales coming in on audiobooks, paperbacks and hardbacks every morning, because those books have an audience.

Not sure whether your idea has a market? In a free 25-minute discovery call we look at your niche together, and you do not even need to buy KDSpy because we can use mine. See also 3 surprising facts about Amazon, how to find success in self-publishing, how to optimize your Amazon book page and Self-Publishing 101.

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