Saturday, March 22, 2014

Kindle: An Endangered Species in Canada?

As we near the release of Altered America, Martinus Publishing’s 4th multi-author anthology (not counting our Best of 2013 sampler), I find myself reminded of a growing peculiarity among sales figures.  Our last anthology, Veterans of the Future Wars, had a surge of initial sales, and has now fallen to a familiar trickle.  Pre-orders of Altered America have been better than any previous anthology release, and I have high hopes that Kindle sales will also be up once the book is released (for technical reasons, there is no pre-order platform for e-book sales at this time).

Looking over the entirety of Martinus Publishing’s existence, one strange figure has caught my attention, that being the lack of any Canadian Kindle sales.  Yes, of all the books Martinus has released, not a single copy has been sold to Canada (at least, not according to Amazon’s royalties reports).  There have been a few sales in the UK and in Europe, but nothing from Canada. Truly strange.

It is possible that the Canadian customers who have chosen to buy Kindle copies have done so through the regular US Amazon site somehow.  I’m not 100% sure of how that works, but when Amazon supplies royalty reports they break things down by currency sales.  USD, GBP, CAD, etc...  Thus far, not a single Kindle sale has been made in Canadian Dollars.

This comes as a bit of a surprise, considering there are Canadian authors in every single Martinus anthology to date.  We’ve sold some print copies to Canada, which leads me to wonder if the Kindle is perhaps a rare luxury item there.  Perhaps our readers in the Great White North simply prefer to get print copies over electronic versions.  Though, the Kindle versions are substantially cheaper.


Right now, I invite any Canadian with a Kindle who reads this to go pick up a Martinus title.  Prove to me that you exist.  If I could see just a few Kindle sales from Canada, I’d be thrilled, as would the many Canadian writers who have contributed works to these collections.

Martinus Titles on Amazon.ca:






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