First, let me give a heartfelt thank you to everyone whosupported me this month by buying my books. 🙏 This is by far the bestsales month I've ever had or expect to have at least until I release book 3 ofthe Prophecies of Zarune.

Background information – Relentless Blades (RB) has been outfor a little over a year, and Ashbound Oaths (AO) released on 11/18/25. I hadthe AO cover reveal on 10/8/25. I had SFFinsiders.com assist with that. Theyare fantastic at collaborating with indie authors to present high quality coverreveals. That was also the day I began taking pre-orders and began my personalmarketing campaign. When I say ‘personal’ it means that I did all promoting. Nopaid ads of any kind.

Prior to the 11/18/25 AO release here were my book sales andeBook pricing:

RB ($2.99) – 3 sales

AO ($1.49) – 35 pre-sales (again, all my own personalmarketing)

I rarely use paid ads, but for this release month I decidedto try a few. My strategy was to discount RB (eBook) to drive sales to thatbook in the hope people will like it and then buy AO later. I set a KindleCountdown promotion, so RB was priced at $.99 from 11/18 – 11/24. I kept AO at$1.49 as I felt that was already a very low price for a 465 page book.

I chose the following paid, 1-day advertisements, withpricing and RB sales for each day.

Robin Reads – date 11/21 - $60 – 4 sales

Book Barbarian – date 11/22 - $40 – 20 sales

Fussy Librarian – date 11/23 - $18 – 10 sales

Results – I paid $118 for 34 “potential” sales. I saypotential because I was also consistently marketing myself during that stretch,so some of the sales could have come from my marketing and not paid ads. Atthis point, I consider the ads a failure. I hoped for many more sales. Now, it’spossible it may still payoff down the road if all 34 people end of buying AO atanything close to regular price, but for now I’m not impressed. For context, a$.99 eBook sale only nets the author about $.65 in royalties when on a KDPcountdown promotion.

However, I urge you to scrutinize the numbers. My results donot mean they will be the same for you for a variety of reasons. The first ofcourse is different books. But there are many others: choice of promotionalmonth, and choice of promotional days of the week being two major factors. Inhindsight I would have had the sales coincide with Black Friday rather thanending right before Black Friday really begins. I’m also not sure November wasthe best month to have the sales, although I’m not really sure.

Final November numbers (Amazon):

AO – 65 (35 preorders, 30 after) sales which was 60 eBooksand 5 Print

RB – 50 sales which was 48 eBooks and 2 print

*I had 1 AO sale through Barnes and Noble and 2 throughIngram Spark as well in November.

It’s important to note that there was not a day in Novemberwhere I did not promote one or both books personally through various socialmedia platforms. I used X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Threads. Most days Ipromoted at least twice on many platforms. Advertisements consisted of messageswith pictures of the book, pictures of me with the books and videos.

In summary, I was thrilled with the sales but already feelthe momentum waning. As I type this, I have no sales or KDP Page reads toreport today (11/30) and had no sales yesterday, although I had some KDP pagereads. This will likely be my last transparency post for a while. I’m notsaying I’ll never do another but will be cutting back on them.

During the discourse around transparency posts last week, manypeople pointed out that transparency posts can come off as unprofessional andas a form of bragging. The unprofessional point stuck with me. You don’t seethe literary titans posting their monthly sales figures. It’s like the greatBarry Sanders who just handed the ball to the ref when he scored a touchdown;act like you’ve been there. When (or if) I do make more transparency posts Iwill try to include metrics again.

Then why did I make this post? For three reasons. The firstis that I am so thrilled with the sales that I had to share. The second is becauseI said I’d make this post last week, and the third is my hope that the detailsI presented may inspire other indie authors or at least provide them with somecontext and information they may find useful for their own marketing. Iespecially feel that context is important. Numbers without context are tooeasily manipulated and misinterpreted.

Thank you all again who have supported me, and I hope youfound this interesting and valuable. Now, go buy RB and AO. 😀