I’m back here despite everything because I have numbers and is not worried about sharing them.
At this point (latest royalty statement for November 2023), these are the number of copies I have sold:
Fallen Hero: Rebirth - 55 899
Fallen Hero: Retribution - 23 532
So yeah, I know Sera has outsold me like hell, but some of the estimated numbers that have been thrown around in here are just guesstimates. Also, I would estimate that between 1/4 and 1/2 books are sold during sales, both the initial discount and later campaigns which means a smaller price that’s on the cover. Rebirth in particular was priced very low at the start to generate sales, it is more expensive now than it has been in the past.
If my royalties were doubled, I still would not have enough monthly income to write full-time (only income in the household). Neither would my advances towards my other work (comics), and neither would the sales there once the books come out in 2024 (very low royaties). Not sure how my other project will sell, there’s 50% royalties there, but we are two people writing, and the sales are much, much lower. In short, my Patreon is the one that allows me to write full-time right now and probably in the foreseeable future.
I would love higher royalties. Don’t get me wrong there. But I have no insight into CoG/HG budgets, overheads or their future plans. For me, what is more important is that choicescript gets the updates that have been hinted (checkpoint saves) and I’m very happy we now have people working on that. What’s even more important is company stability and growth, getting a higher profile, more sales and more books. The Vampire books is a big step in the right direction for visibility.
Of course, giving authors good deals is part of that, to balance the lure of self-publishing. Exactly how good those deals should be, I don’t know enough to say. Or speculate about. I can only speak of what I know from my own situation.
EDIT: Sales for GPSO was 4127 for Retribution, and for iOS it was 5083. Think those two are the omnibus stats for the two phone systems. If you wanna run your ratings numbers with real sales.