erotic romance sales figures (please forward/pass on)
PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE :) I've finally decided to bite the bullet and try to compile sales figures for erotic romance epublishers. I am interested in developing anonymous information about sales figures for erotic romance books. Basically I would ask for your sales per book for whichever of these categories is available (you can send the first month figure, and update the data later): * first month (or quarter if this is how the publisher pays), * first year, * and total (when the book ends its contract). Each contributor would be given a random letter code to identify themself if they want to update the data. But in my records no names would ever be listed, or stored in any place. The averaged figures would be made available on the EREC site ( http://www.veinglory.com/P4.html ) and figures would be based on at least 5 books from at least 3 authors. I know some authors prefer to keep this info totally private but a similar scheme seemed to work here: http://brendahiatt.com/ (see the 'Show me the Money' section). I would like to expand on this information and ficus upon erotic romance epublishers. If you want to you can email me directly at my personal email address of veinglory AT gmail.com with the subject line 'sales'.

Em- I'm curoius about something here. What about authors whose work hasn't run through the end of their contract yet? I mean, some e-pubs have 7 year contracts, so that's quite awhile before they could share info, if they're so inclined. Would you be able to work in data without the overall pay out?

You may want to check Piers Anthony's site, too. He does reveal some sales information in his updates.

I have been keeping an eye on several places and realise all of these plans, including mine, will have some pretty big limitations, errors and biasses. But hopefully it can still be informative and relatively fair? I don't require full data (I must clarify that), so people can submit info as soon as they have the 1st month's data. The point of giving each person a code name is to allow them to update me with more data on that book later withou having a record of their identity. Technically an ebook might remain available forever so I think the 1st month or year data is best. But eventually I want to bring in print publishing where the end of contract amount is the most salient figure. I should also say I am sticking to novella length and above.

Are you looking for information from epubs that publish erotic romance as well as other things, or just from people with books that *are* erotic romance?

So long at the book (which may be an anthology) is erotic romance and novella-length or longer (as defined by the publisher) I would like to include it. Of course if a publisher has few ER titles the author will be more easily identifiable as having participated. And it may take longer to get enough participants to list that publisher.

I think this is a great idea and hope you get lots and lots of info. :) Nothing like this is ever completely objective but it should give all of us at least some chance of comparing and contrasing....

Yes, the caveat here is 'please don't hate me' ;) It's all on the honor system :)

I have data for 24 books but not quite enough to post on any one publisher (at least 5 books from at least 3 authors). So please, open up those spreadsheet and donate your data today!

I want to help! But the only books I have figures on at all have no ER content. :P :)

LOL, the thought is appreciated. Feel free to forward the message to anyone who might be interested.

I could *really* use just a few more reports, I have 5 publishers where one more would be enough to post a figure! I would really apprciate it if anyone could blog this.

You may want to note that Phaze received a positive report on Piers' site recently. Thanks. :) I'll need to resend my survey. We've made a number of changes since the last one.

Great, I was watching that. I am also thinking of dropping the Pier Anthony listing entirely. I have seen houses I know are fine bombed with bad reports. They then sit for months before the site is next updated. On one occassion I know for sure it was just someone trolling.