What has been selling on Smashwords

I began publishing books on Smashwords last year, and so far I have published a total of 10 stories there (two of which were seasonal, and which I "unpublished".  They get put in the deep freeze, and I can thaw them out again as appropriate).

Out of these books, one is a complete, independent novel, Alexandra (328,000 words), three are short stories, Helen at Ballet Camp (48,000 words), Helen and the Flowershop Girl (less than 10,000 words), and Little John Finds a Friend (11,000 words).

Jane, 125,000 is a major part of another long story, which I put up for free, for no good reason, and it has been downloaded in its entirety almost 600 times (which I'm very pleased about, but of course, I have no idea whether anyone has actually read through it; that's the problem!), while Alexandra, which is the longest book I have published at Smashwords, has sold just 2 copies, at $5.99, which is on the high side.  At about 500 words a penny, it is probably not such a huge ripoff, and some of the words are pretty long!  Just kidding.

A stand-alone novella, to which I hope to write a sequel, is Prisoner (46,000 words).  I love this story very much, and I lavished a lot of care on it, and two copies have sold.  It isn't erotica, by any meaning of the word; the little sex there is in it is, I think, important to the plot.  I could probably take it out, but it would not be quite as powerful.

Then, there are two major episodes taken from Helen: Helen and Lalitha (74,000 words) and Sweet Hurricane (65,000 words), both of which are important chapters in the Helen story, but neither of them have sold a single copy!  So the story that is closest to my heart simply does not resonate with the readers.  Hurricane was the first story to get published, so there has been ample time for people to read the 40% sample.  Lalitha was published two weeks ago, and I suppose some of you are still laboring through the (enormous) 50% sample you can download for free.  I was tempted to just give it away, but in the end I priced it at $2.99, to find out whether anyone is actually reading it.  There have been eight downloads of samples, and we shall see how it goes!  No pressure, you all; please only buy it if you want to read it :)  I have a day job, and I'm comfortably off!!

My greatest loves are music, art and dance, which is why Helen is a musician, an artist, and a dancer.  A close runner-up is education, and Helen is a teacher as well, and a good one, unlike me!  I'm too impatient with kids who aren't interested; I understand that they're being forced to learn stuff they don't care about, but, well, you know, if you don't care, it is only a truly remarkable teacher who will go more than halfway with you.  But, the point is that the Helen story doesn't make sense to anyone uninterested in the world of classical music, so that is probably the biggest brake on the Helen series.

Well, thanks for enduring my rant, if you've read this far!  Happy reading!

Kay Hemlock Brown