Business Post: Ancillary Results of Print Distribution (Patreon)

Alright, I told you guys I'd talk a little about trad pub distribution. And I will, especially about the process and the like, but I wanted to make this post which is going to be patreon only (since it shows numbers) about the advantage of print distribution.

Right. So, rather than talk endlessly...

Here you go! Ingram Spark's sales report.

I don't think I need to say anything, do I? You can see the huge jump in sales (chart 2 and 3) that came from having print distribution. 2025 saw a drop because A Thousand Li books 1-3 disappeared off Ingram, and so sales dropped because of that.

At the same time, the Hidden Dishes continues to tick along making print sales and so does Immortal Connections. In fact, over the year, Immortal Connections is my bestselling work at 57 books sold via Ingram.

This is basically all bookstores NOT including Amazon. This means books going into libraries, bookstores and more.

A huge change, and one that I expect might only continue to rise as readers find the books and love them. It's why we've done some minor changes in things including putting prices on the Nameless Restaurant and Life in the North and more.

I don't do returns mostly (except the Hidden Dishes series) because it's a terrible idea, so mostly, they're sales.

However, for all that... well... here's another set of statistics.

Yeah, that's only 300+ books or so, not the 460+ books I sold, but you can see how little I actually earn per book.

Mind you, I'm not complaining (much). Print costs have to be paid for, distribution costs have to be paid and the booksellers need to be paid too. It just means that on average, we're looking at making roughly CDN$4.50. Or USD$3.29.

And that's mostly because people are buying hardcovers, which we earn more on. Paperbacks like with Hidden Dishes earns us around USD$2 or so each.

So what? Is having A Thousand Li in stores the reason why we have so many books being purchased by bookstores and libraries?

Maybe.

There's also the huge growth in print books and fans from Dungeon Crawler Carl and what Aethon is doing. Bookstores are likely looking for more print books, and since mine are around online, they're easy enough to pick out.

With my other books from Ace present, it might seem like a good way for bookstores to get additional LitRPG onto the shelves.

As with most things, its hard to find an exact cause but I would bet it's a combination of all three helping to goose print sales along. Will it grow?

I'm hoping so, but it's hard to tell. As more books from Aethon and other publishers hit the shelves, it's possible that my sales will drop off because things like Life in the North and the entire System Apocalypse series are not as prominent.

The only thing we can do is to keep pushing.

That does raise the question if it'd be worthwhile sending a mass e-mail to bookstores, introducing my other series. We shall see.

Not like I don't have enough work to do.

Anyway, thoughts?