Well, as we reach the end of the year we also reach the end of the next royalty period for Old Pond.
This is interesting, because you will have read what I said about Old Pond versus Createspace.
Old Pond use January 1st to June 30th and then July 1st to December 31st as their two royalty periods.
For the period ending June 30th you receive your royalty statement at the end of September.
For the period ending December 31st you receive it at the end of March.
Your royalty statement should show you how many books and kindles you have sold in that 6 month period.
However, when I received my copy in September it showed absolutely nothing regarding Amazon sales.
When I questioned this I was told that apparently Amazon pay Old Pond for the total number
of their books that they sell, with no breakdown by book or authors.
Therefore, they had no figures for the sales of Vodka Cola Cowboy, through Amazon for December 2016
when it was launched on Amazon, or for the royalty period Jan - June 2017.
Now, I thought that this was a curious way to run a business where you did not know how many copies of each book you had sold.
How, then, do you know when to re-order a new print run to satisfy demand?
On the other hand, Createspace put on line each and every sale of the book, for the author’s benefit.
You therefore know, day by day how each book is selling.
As I said previously, the promotion of the book is the author’s responsibility.
Therefore it is vital to know how each book is selling so that you can reach readers who would be interested in the book.
The reason for wanting to know how many copies of Vodka Cola are sold is to compare it with “Trucking Magic” and “The Champagne Truckers”.
Basically because readers of “Vodka Cola”, who liked that one would probably be most interested to read “Champagne”, because it is a follow on to the Russian story. By not being able to know how “Vodka Cola” sold, I do not know if I am reaching people who would like “Champagne”.
Through the facebook pages for all of the books I have a bit of a loyal following who contact me telling me how much they enjoy the books.
But I would imagine that I am not reaching every possible reader. As we have said previously, writing books about truck driving is not about money. If people write truck books thinking they are going to have a million copies sold they are mistaken, But, it is about building up a bond with your readers.
So, in the general run of publishing with Old Pond, as opposed to Createspace, the knowledge of how many sales you have made is definitely better with Createspace.