My children's book sales are down 28%
Accounting for the past 12 months, AI optimization, and Amazon ads
Before we dig into sales, here’s a couple recent articles about my work!
The Michigan SCBWI newsletter, The Mitten, featured an article on my work: Writer Spotlight: Darcy Pattison
The Children’s Book Council featured a profile of my publishing company, Mims House Books Profile.
This weekend, I did some accounting for the past 12 months and realized that my children’s book sales are down on average 28%. Not good.
Let’s talk about what is happening and why. And what I plan to do about it.
First, this accounting is ONLY for sales on Amazon and Ingram combined.
Because I market wide (not exclusive to Amazon), I’m still fine for the year. Overall, my sales through special orders is up, ebooks on reading apps are holding steady, and I’ve had a lucrative 9-book foreign rights sale. So, overall, my income is fine at this point in the year. And I’m planning a Kickstarter for PUBLISH: Find Surprising Success Self-Publishing Your Children’s Book starting on September 15, which I hope will do well. (The link is coming soon!) I’m still on track to have a successful year.
But it’s troubling that Ingram/Amazon sales are down. And by so much. 28% is huge!
What could be causing that?
Seasonal Sales Cycle
I started the accounting because I wanted to look at my sales history to see if there are seasonal differences in sales. Here’s my chart of average sales/month from January 2020 to June 2025.
As you can see January and October are the lowest months. January makes sense because it’s right after Christmas spending. After a push to get school started in the fall, October is another slump.
May is historically my best month, partly because of bulk orders. This is when schools/education programs purchase books for kids to read during the summer (1435 copies), for summer literacy programs (500 copies), or targeted summer camps (1000 copies). These sales usually come through Ingram or through special orders from MimsHouseBooks.com (my company).
That puts March, August and December as the biggest volume of sales. I think March, April and May are big months because schools need to end the year well, the school year is winding down, budgets need to be spent, and educators are planning for summer reading and education camps. August is the classic back-to-school bump, and December is obviously Christmas.
When monthly sales drop, it helps to know these trends to you can decide when to make corrections on your marketing efforts.
Troubleshooting Poor Sales
So, I started looking at the seasonal variations, but I realized that May was WAY down on sales for my books. I didn’t have any of those bulk purchases that propped up May in past years. Looking farther, I realized that the last twelve months have been down consistently. What was going on?
Of course, I’m just guessing here, but I think at least four things are going on.
First, the political situation from June 2024 to May 2025 has been a lot of ups and downs. Some authors insist that election years always result in lower sales, and certainly the first four months of the new administration have been turbulent. The possible closing of the Department of Education may have indirect impacts. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a federal agency that funds libraries and museums, has been significantly changed by recent budget cuts and staffing changes. Again, it’s impossible to draw a direct correlation to my book sales. More important, there’s nothing concrete I can do about these situations. They will have to play themselves out, and I’ll have to deal with the results.
Some schools/educators have switched from bulk sales on Ingram/Amazon to special orders on my website. That’s a good thing. My website, with its connection to Lulu printing, now acts as a warehouse for my company. When I have a bulk order, Lulu can fill the order within 10-14 days. The pricing means I can offer an attractive discount.
In the past year, I’ve cut back drastically on Amazon advertising. I did this partly because so many campaigns were running barely even, and I concluded they were marginal. But maybe that constant appearance in ads has a halo effect on sales? This is something I can work on immediately! I like conclusions that allow for solid concrete steps, and this is one of those. When I stop an ad on Amazon, I never delete or archive it. Instead, I just pause the ad. That means I can go back and start some of the ads that performed well before. I’ll need to monitor closely to make sure they come back to life and produce this time around, too. I’ll try that for a week or so and slowly start to add in new ads.
While I’m at it, I’ll check the metadata/keywords on each book, read up on new approaches to Amazon ads, and so on. In other words, I’ll stop ignoring them for a while and see if anything helps.
Finally, I wonder if AI search is starting to replace Google search for book discovery. It’s coming! It’s time to look at AI Optimization for Book Discovery.
For years, I’ve studied and worked on search engine optimization, trying to make sure that my website(s), blog posts, and social media presence are optimized for the ways in which search engines looked for information. Keywords, title tags, bios, and rankings on the search engines were important.
For example, on IndieKidsBooks.com blog, I’ve had over 50,000 readers since January. Of those, 57% came from emails sent to subscribers! (Thanks for reading and subscribing!)
After subscribers, 22% of readers come from Google. The search engine ranks a couple of my posts high, but this one gets the most traffic, “What fonts for children’s books?” Traffic from Google does convert into subscribers and readers for the blog, so the Search Engine Optimization has worked! So far.
What fonts for children's books?
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What fonts should you use for the cover and interior of your children’s books? What size?
14% of readers come direct, which means 7% are from referrals (Thanks for referring IndieKidsBooks.com!)
AI Optimization may not be the major factor in blog traffic or book sales/book discovery over the last twelve months, but it’s coming. The Author Media Podcast with Thomas Umstattd, Jr. recently did a podcast, “AI Optimization for Authors.” It’s the first solid information I’ve seen on the subject, but you’ll see this topic become the subject of debate in the coming year. Umstattd says to focus on a couple things as searches transitions from search engines to AIs. Because AIs can’t scrape data from big sites such as Amazon and Facebook, your humble website will become important again. He suggests that you focus on metadata, something I also preach here, here, and here.
Umstattd also suggests that you provide a dedicated webpage for each book on your site, including extra information such as teacher’s guides, coloring pages, interviews, and so on.
Another recommendation is to focus on Goodreads. This surprised me because, of course, Goodreads is owned by Amazon. But Umstattd says his research showed that most search engines use Goodreads as a source, quoting the number of reviews on the site and so on.
For me, AI Optimization will become a long term goal for the next year. Since I have a Shopify store at MimsHouseBooks.com, I haven’t put book pages on DarcyPattison.com. But it might be a great time to do that. I’ve kept reviews going on Goodreads, but it may be time to read new tutorials. I wonder if getting a book into a Goodreads suggested reading list is important? Something to research.
Slow Sales?
I don’t know which—if any—of the above is actually causing slower sales on my books for the past twelve months. I’m focusing on the things under my control: Amazon ads and AI Optimization.
Finally, let me recommend that you go wide on your book sales. I don’t put all my hopes in Amazon, or even on the combo of Amazon and Ingram. I’ve slowly developed special orders through MimsHouseBooks, my books are on children’s reading apps, and I’m always looking for translations. Currently, those alternatives will help keep my income stable for the year. And I’m always on the lookout for more distribution!
So, have you recently asked ChatGpt, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or CoPilot to recommend books? Did you use their recommendations and either purchase or check out the books? Are YOU starting to use AI search?