Monday 16 May 2016

Analysing book sales

Book sales

I was doing research recently and looked at sales figures for my books breaking them down as follows:



Book (and order they came out)
Numbers sold
Younger/
older
heroine
Sexual orienta-tion
Genre
Type of story
Submissive Training (4th)
12,600 (by far my best selling book!)
Younger
MF
Contemporary, BDSM
Novella
The Submission Challenge (2nd)
5,500
Younger
MF
Contemporary, BDSM
Novella
Retraining the Sub (8th)
2,400
Younger
MF
Contemporary, BDSM
Novella
Wife for Three (7th)
2,200
Younger
MFMM
Sci-fi
Novella-novel
The Sub Who Switched (6th)
1,500
Younger
MF
Contemporary, BDSM
Novella
Just Good Friends (1st)
1,400
Younger
MF
Contemporary, mild BDSM
Novella
Collared by Wolves (11th)
1,000
Younger
MFMMM
Paranormal (werewolves), BDSM
Novel
Friendly Seduction (3rd)
640
Younger
MF
Contemporary, mild BDSM
Novella
Alien Manhunt (15th)
520
n/a as MMM
MMM
Sci-fi
Short story
Retraining the Dom (12th)
450
Older (YAY! AT LAST)
MF
Contemporary, BDSM
Novella
The Last Werewolf (10th)
440
Younger
MMF
Paranormal (werewolves), suspense
Novel
Friend or Foe (5th)
390
Younger
MF
Contemporary
Novella
Chasing Emily (9th)
330
Older
MFM
Sci-fi
Novella-novel
Marital Duties in Men for Hire (19th)
250
Younger
MF
Contemporary
anthology
BDSM Weekend (18th)
150
Older
MF
Contemporary, BDSM
Novella-novel
Bounty Hunters’ Captive (13th)
140
Younger
MFM
Sci-fi
Novella
Alien Manhunt 2 (17th)
110
n/a as MMM
MMM
Sci-fi
Short story
Kink After Dinner (16th)
105
Older
MF
Contemporary, BDSM
Short story
Torn Between Two Lovers (14th)
80
Younger
MFM
Paranormal (werewolves), BDSM
Novella-Novel
Alien Manhunt 3 (20th)
50
n/a as MMM
MMM
Sci-fi
Short story
Naughty Christmas Wishes (21st)
50
Older
MFMMM
Fantasy, mild-BDSM
Short story


So why don’t books with older heroines sell? At least mine don’t, even though I enjoy writing about the older heroine – I am in my mid 50s myself; I can relate to older heroines.

Maybe because I didn’t do an ‘older heroine’ story until I had written several others, although some more recent books have sold better and it clearly has nothing to do with the length of the book – the short stories may be at the bottom of the list but that’s because I’ve only written short stories more recently.

It could, of course, be down to the genre but they are fairly mixed in the chart. It is misleading to think that MF sells better than menage or MM when the reverse is usually true. I think it is just that ‘Submissive Training’ sold so well that the others in the two sets of trilogies that were linked, sold well on the back of that book and they were all MF.

I suspect a large part of why the older heroine stories don’t sell is due to the fact that women in their 30s-50s (who are our main readers) like to envisage themselves going through the ‘falling in love’ process all over again preferably with a tall, handsome, hunk of a man who doesn’t resemble their husband in the slightest and who is demanding sexually (possibly unlike their husbands in that respect, too! LOL)

Maybe the question really is – why does Submissive Training sell so well? Each quarter it is still the best selling of all my books and when it came out it was the number one best seller for my publisher on amazon UK for six weeks.


Part of the reason for that is it came out at the same time as FSoG – but also, I suspect, people may think they are getting a training manual when they read the title!

2 comments:

  1. Interesting article, Jen. Personally I loved Chasing Emily! 😃

    ReplyDelete