I almost missed it, but September 5 marks the one year anniversary of our German language e-book program.
A year ago, we launched our German e-book with two titles as an experiment. The experiment was successful and by now our catalogue of German language stories has grown to five with more to come.
Over the past year, German language books have accounted for 24.8 percent of all books sold by Pegasus Pulp, i.e. approximately a quarter. Der Kuss des Richtschwertes is our most successful German title by a large margin, followed by Unter der Knute, Kurierdienst (which sells better in German than in English), Reiche Beute and finally Honigtopf.
The breakdown of sales channels is as follows:
Amazon Germany: 73%
Kobo: 11%
Amazon.com: 6.5%
XinXii: 5%
Apple: 3%
Casa del Libro: 1.5%
The main takeaway here is not just that German books sell, but that they also sell outside Germany. For example, the German language Kobo sales are split between Germany, Switzerland, the UK and Belgium. The Amazon.com sales almost certainly went to readers outside Germany as well. And Casa del Libro is a Spanish e-book store.
The other takeaway is that I should really translate more of my existing books into German, since there obviously is a market for them. However, the translations compete with the writing of new fiction for my limited time. Indeed, I mostly did the translations when I found myself unable to write new fiction. However, of late I haven’t felt blocked very often, which is a very good thing – except for those who want more German fiction.
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