Zero Sales Since June 2023

 

Updated cover for U-1215 Smashwords version

Sales for U-1215 has become zero since June of this year. It's strange because I had consistent sales almost every month prior to this.

Quarterly sales of U-1215 from 2016 to 2023

I don't know what happened so I sent off an inquiry to Smashwords. They said that it's probably due to a "long tail distribution." What's that?

A long tail distribution is a type of statistical distribution that seems to explain what probably happened to my book.

A book may do very well at the beginning but over time, will start to slump, meaning sales will start to slow down. There may be many reasons why this happens so I won't try to give examples. Eventually, sales drops to a much lower level than at the start and it may drop down to zero or stay at a low level indefinitely.

If a book is very well written, sales may increase sharply and then plateau after some time. In this case the vertical part of the long tail refers to increase in sales rather than the total sales.

I'm not sure if this is the case with U-1215. If you look at the quarterly sales chart, sales started to increase in 2018 and did very well during the pandemic years (2020-2022). In 2022 it seemed as if the sales volume was starting to go down but in the first half of 2023, sales spiked (much to my delight) and suddenly dropped to zero (much to my disappointment).

Yesterday, in a bid to try and solve the problem, I changed the cover of U-1215 (Smashwords edition) to see if that will restore sales. 

The last sale was in June 2023. It's almost December 2023 and the sales report is still zero. Is this a long tail distribution phenomena? I have no idea. (".)

Update 08 Feb 2024: 

In December, I received a notification that I had a sale, six months after the last, and received $2.05 in my Paypal account. There have been no other sales since then. I need to write another novel but I'm not getting any ideas at the moment. (".)

Scam Alert! Film Adaptation Proposal

 

This would have been a perfect start to a day...if this were true.

I received this email today and, I have to admit, it got me excited...for a while. What author wouldn't be, right? You get an email from someone claiming to be from a film/television production company and proposing to turn your book into a film or television series. Wow! Hollywood, here I come!

As I read through the email, red flags started to wave. The first paragraph says it's from Rhiley Roads and yet, the email address is from Adam Mckay, the CEO of Hyperobject Industry. Furthermore, the email address uses a gmail extension. Curious. Shouldn't an official email come from a corporate email address?

I checked out Hyperobject Industries. It's a legit company run by Adam McKay and they've produced several movies and television series on Netflix. This email, however, uses the words "Hyperobject Industry" instead of "Hyperobject Industries." When you're representing a company, you can't afford to make mistakes like that.

I don't know how these companies work. Do they really read someone's book and just contact them offering to convert the book into a movie?

They also want to pitch the book at a Producer's Pitch Event in January 2024. I checked for the event and found a Hollywood Pitch Festival scheduled for December 2023. I don't know if this is the same or is it a different event.

The final red flag is that they want ME to make the synopsis, loglines, film treatment, and screenplay. That's not something an ordinary author would know how to make. Therefore, they propose to hire professional screen writers to do it for me. Guess who pays for those? Yup, me!

If they really wanted to make a film adaptation of my book, they would contact me properly and they would propose to pay me, not me pay them.

Still, getting a legit offer would be nice. I just have to remember to be realistic and wary of scam artists like this one. (",)