My Amazon sales for the month of December came through yesterday. While the numbers are nothing to shout about (the profit I make on each copy is somewhere between 6p and 40p) I’m pleased anyway.
There’s something about the concept of print-on-demand that I find absolutely thrilling. Somebody, somewhere, liked the idea of my book enough to bring a whole new copy into being. It’s like my own act of creation, in getting the wretched thing down in words, in miniature. Apart from The Real World sales, there are now two more copies of Speak Its Name (plus one I already knew about) and one more of A Spoke In The Wheel than there were at the end of November. (Incidentally, I’ve just noticed that the latter is down to £8.15 on Amazon.)
Ebook sales don’t feel quite the same, even though it’s the same principle: a person spends money to create a new copy. Even though I make more money off them. Even though I read plenty of ebooks myself. Part of it’s the fact that Smashwords notifies me of purchases immediately – always a delightful surprise, of course, but I also enjoy the anticipation of waiting for the report to come in to see how many paperbacks I’ve sold this month.
Part of it’s a (possibly unfounded) sense that a paperback purchase has a longer tail than an ebook. While it’s arguably easier to share an ebook than a hard copy (all you do is forward the email with the attachment), and while I’ve become more willing to buy books on the strength of seeing a recommendation on the internet, you don’t get that same thing of seeing a book on someone else’s shelves or table, picking it up, flicking through it or devouring it, borrowing it or buying your own…
A paperback copy might end up on a shelf in a charity shop or at a railway station, might be picked up by someone who’s never heard of me. Yes, part of it’s that intoxicating element of chance.
But mostly it’s knowing that several separate people have held in their hands, are perhaps reading at this very moment, books that didn’t physically exist six weeks ago. I hope they’re enjoying them.
Kathleen Jowitt 