Just in case you’re interested, but partially for my own record-keeping as well, here’s a rundown of 2017 in book sales (no dollar amounts, just sales numbers).
Double or Nothing was (predictably) the highest seller this year, with a total of 511 copies sold. Along with my preorders from late 2016, this brings my total copies sold up to 854. These numbers include all sales of physical books: direct sales, show sales, Amazon sales and wholesale to shops. Thankfully, the majority of these sales were direct and show sales (where I make the most money, and am able to provide more benefit to customers in the form of the free PDF downloads).
Second in sales was my Parallax booklet, which has been consistently popular to the point that I elected to print 1000 copies earlier in the year. 226 of those have sold, not counting the leftovers from the previous batch.
My printed patterns have done fairly well also, although I am cutting down the number of these that I keep in stock. Once the printed versions of Spring Willow (also included in Double or Nothing) and Parallax v0.5 (also included in the Parallax booklet) are sold out, I won’t be printing more. 147 standalone patterns have sold; the highest-selling was (as usual) the Victorian Raffia pattern.
I don’t have a total count of digital sales (Ravelry doesn’t make it easy to get that kind of summary) but I know I sold 75 copies of Double or Nothing’s PDF version (not counting the free PDF downloads for those who bought the physical book) in 2017, for a total of 121 during the life of the book.
These numbers are reasonably good if not amazing; I certainly would have been happier if the holiday season had been kinder to me. I put out ads and promoted my work in a number of different ways but could not seem to find a sweet spot where the sales generated made the ad expense worth it. I will be consulting with someone more knowledgeable than I to figure out how one could better promote a book that is a year old now. The one pattern that I have noticed is that sales are always better when I am personally present at a show or vendor booth. For this reason, I will be keeping an eye out for vending opportunities and will continue to take teaching gigs.
Speaking of which, I’ve got a repeat of last year’s double-knitting workshop at the Wayland Winter Farmers’ Market. This is newly added to my 2018 workshops, and since it’s coming up fast I figured I’d take a moment to mention it here. Last year’s workshop sold out, so if you’re in the area and interested in learning double-knitting on January 27th from 2-5pm, sign up soon. Dirty Water Dyeworks will be stocking my books and patterns there.