A Very Small Fish Jumping Into a Very Big Pond
- Thread starter M. H. Lee
- Start date
Thanks for the updates. There are so many things to do when it comes to self-publishing, it's nice to see what works and what doesn't for people. I envy your high number of pieces published. I'm scared to finish even just one. You inspire me. Thank you for that.
Thanks guys for the responses. I was clearly in that oh-so-writerly phase of "no one likes me, everyone hates, I'm going to eat a worm." (The weird little things we carry with us from childhood...)
Anyway. Figured I'd circle back with December numbers so I could flesh out the comment I made about advertising. In December I grossed approximately $820. My best month ever. BUT...I paid about $550 for various advertising to get there. I ran 2 countdown deals, 1 99 cent sale on a non-fiction book that was wide, and 1 freebie run on a KU title. That cost about $125. The rest was AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) ads. Now, I'll say right now the effectiveness of those ads is going down as more and more people discover them so what I'm saying now may not be valid for much longer, but I've had much more success leaving my books at full-price ($4.99 for the most part) and running those ads than I ever have with 99 cent promos.
I ran AMS ads across over 20 different titles and saw movement on pretty much all of them although not all were profitable. Even the ones that lost money still were pretty close to breakeven, though.
My most profitable title was the one with the most genre-appropriate and professional cover. It also happens to be the one I put the most push behind so there's a chicken and egg issue here.
For that title, in December I spent $278 on AMS advertising on book 1 and $4 on advertising book 2. That resulted in 48 ebook sales, about 22,000 page reads, and 14 paperback sales of book 1. I also had 20 ebook sales , about 7,500 page reads, and 5 paperback sales of book 2. I grossed about $450 across the two titles for a profit of about $170.
It would be lovely if I could scale that and spend $2,000 and net $1,200 in profit, but AMS doesn't seem to work that way. When I had a budget of $5/day I was maxing out that budget some days. When I raised my budget, Amazon didn't spend all of it and at one point seemed to stop spending it. I've had a few ads I've run for these titles and one ad will have 200,000 impressions on an author name and the next will only get 50 impressions on that same author name at the same bid. So if there's a formula to crack that lets you have unlimited placement and ad spend on your books, I have yet to do so.
But I have to say I'm much happier with being able to consistently and steadily sell a book at full price over months (I've had some of these ads running since May, only decided to push the limits on them last month) than I am discounting that book to 99 cents and getting a blast of sales at a 35% payout then going back to zero sales and obscurity a few days later.
As a comparison, I had a countdown deal on one of my romance novels in early December. Because it was a romance, the advertising cost me about $60 and I ended up with only 24 sales on that title and then it sank back to no sales in a day or two. Granted, I've used that advertiser more than once for that book so it could just be that I've tapped out that particular list, but...it just isn't worth it to me anymore to run those kinds of promos. It's too much of a crap shoot trying to find advertising options that consistently pay for themselves.
At least with AMS I can shut them down after a week or two if they're not working. Or limit the damage with my daily budget amount. (You can spend as little as $1/day although there's an issue there about if you're getting sufficient visibility if you go that low.)
Unfortunately, I'm already seeing people talking about using AMS for permafree titles or 99 cent titles so I'm sure the well will dry up at some point for my $4.99 titles. Until it does, though, that's going to be one of my go-to options. That and the Kobo monthly promos that only charge you money if you get actual sales and where I've seen some pretty good return as well.
Anyway. Figured I'd circle back with December numbers so I could flesh out the comment I made about advertising. In December I grossed approximately $820. My best month ever. BUT...I paid about $550 for various advertising to get there. I ran 2 countdown deals, 1 99 cent sale on a non-fiction book that was wide, and 1 freebie run on a KU title. That cost about $125. The rest was AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) ads. Now, I'll say right now the effectiveness of those ads is going down as more and more people discover them so what I'm saying now may not be valid for much longer, but I've had much more success leaving my books at full-price ($4.99 for the most part) and running those ads than I ever have with 99 cent promos.
I ran AMS ads across over 20 different titles and saw movement on pretty much all of them although not all were profitable. Even the ones that lost money still were pretty close to breakeven, though.
My most profitable title was the one with the most genre-appropriate and professional cover. It also happens to be the one I put the most push behind so there's a chicken and egg issue here.
For that title, in December I spent $278 on AMS advertising on book 1 and $4 on advertising book 2. That resulted in 48 ebook sales, about 22,000 page reads, and 14 paperback sales of book 1. I also had 20 ebook sales , about 7,500 page reads, and 5 paperback sales of book 2. I grossed about $450 across the two titles for a profit of about $170.
It would be lovely if I could scale that and spend $2,000 and net $1,200 in profit, but AMS doesn't seem to work that way. When I had a budget of $5/day I was maxing out that budget some days. When I raised my budget, Amazon didn't spend all of it and at one point seemed to stop spending it. I've had a few ads I've run for these titles and one ad will have 200,000 impressions on an author name and the next will only get 50 impressions on that same author name at the same bid. So if there's a formula to crack that lets you have unlimited placement and ad spend on your books, I have yet to do so.
But I have to say I'm much happier with being able to consistently and steadily sell a book at full price over months (I've had some of these ads running since May, only decided to push the limits on them last month) than I am discounting that book to 99 cents and getting a blast of sales at a 35% payout then going back to zero sales and obscurity a few days later.
As a comparison, I had a countdown deal on one of my romance novels in early December. Because it was a romance, the advertising cost me about $60 and I ended up with only 24 sales on that title and then it sank back to no sales in a day or two. Granted, I've used that advertiser more than once for that book so it could just be that I've tapped out that particular list, but...it just isn't worth it to me anymore to run those kinds of promos. It's too much of a crap shoot trying to find advertising options that consistently pay for themselves.
At least with AMS I can shut them down after a week or two if they're not working. Or limit the damage with my daily budget amount. (You can spend as little as $1/day although there's an issue there about if you're getting sufficient visibility if you go that low.)
Unfortunately, I'm already seeing people talking about using AMS for permafree titles or 99 cent titles so I'm sure the well will dry up at some point for my $4.99 titles. Until it does, though, that's going to be one of my go-to options. That and the Kobo monthly promos that only charge you money if you get actual sales and where I've seen some pretty good return as well.
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Thanks! Probably one of the hardest parts of this writing gig is comparing yourself to others and wondering why you aren't doing better.
So a little update...
I got my first Bookbub in January! It wasn't life-changing because it was in a smaller category and international-only, but it was nice to get one and returned about three times what it cost between sales of book 1 and book 2. It was a 99 cent one and the book had good reviews but not a ton of them, so all I can say is you never know and might as well submit and try to get one. I'm hoping I can get a U.S. one closer to when book 3 releases. That could be a game changer.
In the meantime I've actually upped the price on those books to $6.99 instead of $4.99 because I noticed with the authors I was targeting for my AMS ads that their books were priced at $6.99, $7.99, or even higher. So far, I'm pretty pleased. I have ten sales at that price in the last eleven days. Since book 3 isn't going to be out for a few months still, that's a nice steady result that keeps me motivated but doesn't make me worry I'm going to lose those readers by not having the whole series out for them to go on to. (I'm also seeing sales of book 2 at that price but hard to tell if those are the same readers that are buying book 1 at that price or the Bookbub readers buying the second in series. I suspect it's book 1 readers buying book 2 and I'll need to run a promo on Book 2 to catch those Bookbub readers for book 2.) I wouldn't be getting those Book 1 sales though without the AMS ads driving the traffic.
I'm also experimenting with FB ads. I did one of those mailing list promos last year and ended up with a list of 5,000 names, but couldn't get a mailing list provider to let me load it due to high risk of unsubscribes, so instead I decided to create a look-alike audience using the addresses as the template. I don't actually expect a lot of sales off the ad due to the price, but it's more that "seven times to a sale" idea. Let them see the cover, see the tagline, know it's out there and then when I do run a 99 cent sale on it later, maybe they'll be primed to buy. I was able to use BB CPC and FB ads to complement my Bookbub ad in January, so it can work but was a little pricey. I think I spent $50 for about 35 sales or so. (Compare that to $50 on the BB ad itself that generated about 200 sales.)
I also get to do my first writer talk at a local library. They reached out to a writer's group I'm a member of looking for writers willing to do talks. I gave them a bunch of ideas and they were interested in a number of them, so we'll start with one next month, see how it goes, and continue from there.
I'm also finally going to move to using Vellum for ebook formatting from just uploading Word files everywhere. I put some of my 99 cent titles up through Pronoun instead of Amazon (better payout, but they have some kinks to work out so not recommended for your whole catalog) and liked the look of the fancy formatting so decided I should do that on more of my titles. Also, I have an issue with some of my non-fiction titles that makes D2D not feasible as a conversion option. I was using Kobo's formatting but it's kicking out a few errors now that keep me from listing on Overdrive, so...time to level up.
Other than that, just trying to up my writing volume. I have a list of things I'd like to write this year that totals to 645,000 words. Not sure I'll hit them all, but the closer I can get to that number, the better off I'll be. I know I need to cut back on the number of pen names and focus on one, maybe two, but...well. Seems I'm just going to have to be on the slow burn path to success because I can't seem to do it. My to-write list has titles for six of my eight pen names on it. Sigh.
It's too many, honestly. Four are for romance and they're separated based on heat level and length (shorts vs. novels), two are for very different types of non-fiction that aren't easily combined, and two are for very different types of fantasy. It's what happens when the world doesn't force you to pick a path and stick to it. Not recommended for the newer writer. Too hard to keep momentum in that many directions at once.
I keep debating myself on whether I should have a pen-name. For the most part, I write adult SFF, but I also write MG and YA SFF from time to time. It's difficult to decide whether I should get a pen-name for my stuff for younger readers or whether it would be more beneficial to keep everything under one name.
I tend not to get too "adult" in my adult SFF. There's minor language and fade-to-black sex scenes, so I'm not too worried about younger readers finding anything too objectionable in it.
You might want to consider an "open" pen name where your readers know both are you but you use a variation on your name to brand it. Iain Banks did this. He published under Iain Banks as well as Iain M. Banks. I know a number of other authors who've done the same successfully. Some by just using variations on their name and some by using two entirely different names but blogging and having a website that covers both names.
My romance pen names are done that way. I don't see much crossover between the names because what they write is so different but the possibility is there for readers who want to cross over. I'd expect your YA readers would want to read your adult stuff if they're anything like I was as a teen SFF reader.
My romance pen names are done that way. I don't see much crossover between the names because what they write is so different but the possibility is there for readers who want to cross over. I'd expect your YA readers would want to read your adult stuff if they're anything like I was as a teen SFF reader.
That was the same thought I had. I'd want people to cross over between my titles (YA readers reading up and adult readers reading down because they just enjoy YA and MG). A lot of my adult stuff has YA crossover appeal as well. It just doesn't fit neatly within the YA category. Some of my main characters are teenagers. Others are much older. (Like you see in a lot of adult fantasy especially.)
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Just a little update since I'm stuck on writing my latest novel which means I turn to data crunching. Yesterday I broke down my sales by type (novel, short story, and non-fiction) and by genre. I posted a blog about it but not sure there was much of import to anyone but me. Today I broke everything out by year.
What I thought was worth sharing is that last year I had five titles that made over $300 for me and that only one of those titles was actually published in 2016. Also, all four of the ones published in prior years did better in 2016 than they had in 2015. Which is all to say that just because a book doesn't launch well doesn't mean it won't do well or at least better later.
Two of those had done well at launch in 2014 (by my standards) and so I just kept advertising them. One got a big boost from going into audio. And the other I think got a big boost from the release of book 2 in the series. And three of the four benefited from my finding AMS and running ads on a steady basis at full-price.
I'm also continuing my $6.99 experiment with the fantasy novels under a pen name. The books are wide but pretty much only selling on Amazon at this point. I've sold a total of 68 copies at that price since Feb 1, which makes me pretty happy. I just wish I could find an AMS equivalent for foreign markets or other vendors. 7 of those are overseas sales (including Japan!) so the Facebook ads I've been running might be doing a little something, too.
As always I'm struggling with focusing in on just one or two pen names. I seem completely incapable of it. (I think this is where being trade pubbed would help me. Contractual deadlines fit my worker bee mentality better than this complete freedom to do what I feel like when I feel like it. Or, at least, the illusion that that's what I can do. My dwindling bank balance argues that if I don't want to go back to an office job I need to shift my thinking.)
What I thought was worth sharing is that last year I had five titles that made over $300 for me and that only one of those titles was actually published in 2016. Also, all four of the ones published in prior years did better in 2016 than they had in 2015. Which is all to say that just because a book doesn't launch well doesn't mean it won't do well or at least better later.
Two of those had done well at launch in 2014 (by my standards) and so I just kept advertising them. One got a big boost from going into audio. And the other I think got a big boost from the release of book 2 in the series. And three of the four benefited from my finding AMS and running ads on a steady basis at full-price.
I'm also continuing my $6.99 experiment with the fantasy novels under a pen name. The books are wide but pretty much only selling on Amazon at this point. I've sold a total of 68 copies at that price since Feb 1, which makes me pretty happy. I just wish I could find an AMS equivalent for foreign markets or other vendors. 7 of those are overseas sales (including Japan!) so the Facebook ads I've been running might be doing a little something, too.
As always I'm struggling with focusing in on just one or two pen names. I seem completely incapable of it. (I think this is where being trade pubbed would help me. Contractual deadlines fit my worker bee mentality better than this complete freedom to do what I feel like when I feel like it. Or, at least, the illusion that that's what I can do. My dwindling bank balance argues that if I don't want to go back to an office job I need to shift my thinking.)
Wow, six months since my last update...
I'm making slow but steady progress. Just closed out my third $1,000+ month in a row. (And my only three $1,000+ months ever.) Unfortunately, to reach those levels required a pretty heavy advertising spend, almost all on AMS ads, but I think I'll be net $500 or so for August. Not pay the bills money yet, which is my ultimate goal, but better than a year ago where I didn't even gross $500.
Interestingly, even though I published book three in the fantasy trilogy in June, my biggest seller the last three months has been my standalone romance novel that I published in 2014 and that now has a related but also standalone sequel. I ran a free promo on it in May. It was in KU during the free run so got a nice rank boost that I was able to sustain for three months, although I think that's coming to an end now. In the last 90 days I sold 228 copies at $4.99 and had 286,000 page reads, so it was good while it lasted.
The fantasy trilogy is coming out of KU in about a week and then I'll do some promo on it in October. Book 3 has sold 68 copies so far and had 33,000 page reads. About half of those sales have been at $5.99 or $6.99. Hopefully keeping it at that price will make it easier to get a Bookbub when I'm wide again, although no guarantees. (I have hopes since I had the international one in January that they'll take me for a U.S. one, but you never know.) If so I'll go with 99 cents, $3.99, $3.99 and let it ride until it dies out.
I consolidated a bunch of my pen names into one web site (mlhumphrey.com) because I was tired of keeping them separate and I'd also kind of given away three of them in my presenter bio for RMFW, which is next week. I've been going to the conference for years, but this will be my first year as a presenter. I'm doing three presentations. Fingers crossed I'm not talking to an empty room since two of the topics are pretty niche. (Anyone who'll be there, drop by and say hi. I think I'm also hosting a table at the dinner on Friday night but that isn't confirmed yet.)
What else? I did Taos Toolbox in June. A little trade pub, critique, and sci-fi focused for my tastes, but I think long-term it will have been good to go for the people I met if nothing else. (Although I took my dog with me so didn't socialize as much as I'd hoped to. But no way I would board her for two weeks.)
While I try to figure out what fiction to write next I've been working on a ton of non-fiction. I'm hoping to publish five new titles in the next week. If anyone was ever wanting to learn how to use Excel to support your writing, you might want to drop by my non-fiction title page after the 9th or so. (Four of the titles involved Excel and two involve writing.)
That's about it. Just chugging along living the 80/20 rule (that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your titles) and hoping I can someday find a way to scale my advertising so I'm earning enough from my writing to pay the bills. Of course, writing the next novel is probably the best thing I could do...
I'm making slow but steady progress. Just closed out my third $1,000+ month in a row. (And my only three $1,000+ months ever.) Unfortunately, to reach those levels required a pretty heavy advertising spend, almost all on AMS ads, but I think I'll be net $500 or so for August. Not pay the bills money yet, which is my ultimate goal, but better than a year ago where I didn't even gross $500.
Interestingly, even though I published book three in the fantasy trilogy in June, my biggest seller the last three months has been my standalone romance novel that I published in 2014 and that now has a related but also standalone sequel. I ran a free promo on it in May. It was in KU during the free run so got a nice rank boost that I was able to sustain for three months, although I think that's coming to an end now. In the last 90 days I sold 228 copies at $4.99 and had 286,000 page reads, so it was good while it lasted.
The fantasy trilogy is coming out of KU in about a week and then I'll do some promo on it in October. Book 3 has sold 68 copies so far and had 33,000 page reads. About half of those sales have been at $5.99 or $6.99. Hopefully keeping it at that price will make it easier to get a Bookbub when I'm wide again, although no guarantees. (I have hopes since I had the international one in January that they'll take me for a U.S. one, but you never know.) If so I'll go with 99 cents, $3.99, $3.99 and let it ride until it dies out.
I consolidated a bunch of my pen names into one web site (mlhumphrey.com) because I was tired of keeping them separate and I'd also kind of given away three of them in my presenter bio for RMFW, which is next week. I've been going to the conference for years, but this will be my first year as a presenter. I'm doing three presentations. Fingers crossed I'm not talking to an empty room since two of the topics are pretty niche. (Anyone who'll be there, drop by and say hi. I think I'm also hosting a table at the dinner on Friday night but that isn't confirmed yet.)
What else? I did Taos Toolbox in June. A little trade pub, critique, and sci-fi focused for my tastes, but I think long-term it will have been good to go for the people I met if nothing else. (Although I took my dog with me so didn't socialize as much as I'd hoped to. But no way I would board her for two weeks.)
While I try to figure out what fiction to write next I've been working on a ton of non-fiction. I'm hoping to publish five new titles in the next week. If anyone was ever wanting to learn how to use Excel to support your writing, you might want to drop by my non-fiction title page after the 9th or so. (Four of the titles involved Excel and two involve writing.)
That's about it. Just chugging along living the 80/20 rule (that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your titles) and hoping I can someday find a way to scale my advertising so I'm earning enough from my writing to pay the bills. Of course, writing the next novel is probably the best thing I could do...
Sounds like you're doing pretty well. So far, I'm still operating at a loss, but that's about what I expected. I've only been published for two months. I've done a little marketing push, but not a ton. I'd rather wait until I have more books out to really get going with marketing. I have a low-budget AMS add going right now. It's difficult to determine its effectiveness since you can't see what the KU results are.
I'm waiting on a sale day where I hope to net up to $75 in 3 hours. It may not seem like much, but it will be my first sales of any boom. I've been self publishing for a while but never made any serious effort for a profit.
I'd like to run my own ad campaign at lower cost. I have some ideas.
1. Local newspaper
2. Word of mouth from online sharing
3. Facebook author posts
4. YouTube
5. Blogs
6. Newsletter
7. Facebook groups and pages
Maybe with these ideas I can avoid paying for PPC Google ads or Facebook marketing, or Amazon promotions. I'd like to build a brand and I would dip into my cost to do so, but I don't want to pay for direct ads. I want media and attractive websites, clothing, artwork or anything that will improve how my book is viewed by readers.
I'd like to run my own ad campaign at lower cost. I have some ideas.
1. Local newspaper
2. Word of mouth from online sharing
3. Facebook author posts
4. YouTube
5. Blogs
6. Newsletter
7. Facebook groups and pages
Maybe with these ideas I can avoid paying for PPC Google ads or Facebook marketing, or Amazon promotions. I'd like to build a brand and I would dip into my cost to do so, but I don't want to pay for direct ads. I want media and attractive websites, clothing, artwork or anything that will improve how my book is viewed by readers.
All in, my fantasy series is still in negative numbers because of the cost of the covers. The nicer the product you create up front the longer it potentially takes to earn that back. (Some manage to take off right away, but not most.) And I think it's a good plan to hold off on marketing until you have more books out. I like to think I'm a good enough writer that readers will read what's available from me if they like the first one, but not so good that they'll wait months or years for the next title. So the later in the process I acquire the reader the more money I make off of them.
But it's awfully hard to have those slow months while you're building your catalog. I kept sort of hoping I'd have a title just skyrocket on release. Problem there would've been trying to then capitalize on that momentum which I probably would've stumbled at so I'm on the slow but steady path instead.
I have a calculation I do to estimate KU results on my AMS ads. Basically, I look at what proportion of my "sales" are paid vs. KU (using full-read equivalents which Andrew Seiple mentioned calculating as KU sales in his thread) and then use that to guesstimate how many KU full-read equivalents I probably had for each sale that was reported on my AMS dashboard. It isn't perfect, but sometimes those KU reads are the difference between thinking an ad is profitable and not. I like AMS because I can run them on a full-price book and every single day.
I've run many promos where I would've been thrilled to net $75. I think there may only be a handful I've run that have actually done that in a short period of time, Bookbub being the most obvious one.
On your list of things to try, a lot of it is just time spent, right? So on one hand, sure, why not see if you can make it work. I know someone who developed a really strong Twitter following before they published their first book and did amazing because of that. But they had to sink a lot of hours into developing that following. So the other question is, how much time do you want to take from writing the next book to develop all of that?
I'd also say, be careful that you're actually talking to an audience who will buy your books. Early on I blogged daily, but when I finally published 99% of my blog followers didn't turn into people who bought my fiction. It was still useful for me because I recorded what I was learning about writing, but it wasn't a way to develop readers. And lots of FB groups and pages are authors trying to sell one another on their books. It usually doesn't work.
PPC and other standard advertising approaches exist because they do work. Then again, you never know when you'll find that one thing that no one else has thought of that'll take off. Just don't discount too readily what has in fact worked well for a number of people.
Sorry for the delayed response. I was frantically trying to get those Excel guides done and realizing how much I hate formatting non-fiction in Vellum, especially when it involves images.
Nope. Never read anything by Tim Feriss, but I think that 80/20 thing is pretty widespread at this point. I know I've stumbled across it a handful of times in different contexts. (I'm an econ major with an MBA with involvement in the financial services industry, so it's possible my contexts are non-standard.)
September was a down month for me compared to June/July/August, but still an up month compared to the months before that. A big part of the reason is that I let my fantasy series roll out of KU at the beginning of the month and my romance novels roll out a couple days ago. That makes AMS ads much less effective since Amazon doesn't show whether a book is in KU or not in the ad itself so you pay for clicks from people who think they can maybe borrow the book but aren't willing to buy it. (Especially at $6.99 which is where the fantasy novels were priced all month.) I didn't run any sort of promo either so they basically rolled out wide and didn't sell a copy but that's because part of what I was doing in September was leading up to promo this month.
As soon as the fantasy series was wide, I applied for a Bookbub and got an international one in fantasy. That promo is running now. The books in the series are 99 cents/$3.99/$3.99 from a normal price of $6.99. I had an ENT ad yesterday, BookBarbarian today, Ebookaroo (I think) on Friday, am participating in Patty Jansen's promo over the weekend (which at least one other author on these boards is in as well) and then an international-only Bookbub in Fantasy on the 8th.
ENT was good for 34 sales on Amazon of book 1 and 13 sales of the other books in the series, so it's paid for itself already off of the sellthrough. And I have high hopes for the Bookbub. They estimate 550 sales from it and my January one in YA did better than their estimate. We shall see...If not I'm trying a new promo site next month that's theoretically really strong.
Waiting to hear back if I can land a Bookbub on the romance novel. It's currently at 99 reviews on Goodreads, but the average is around 3.7 so I don't know. They never took an interest in it when it was in KU and I wanted to do a free run.
My other huge news is that two of the Excel guides I published last month will be in the NaNoWriMo bundle put out by Storybundle. It's awesome to be sharing a "TOC" with the likes of Joanna Penn, Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kevin J. Anderson, Mike Resnick and all the others in the bundle. Until it actually went live I kept wondering if something would go wrong and I wouldn't be included after all. (Impostor syndrome is so fun.) If you're into writing books or an Excel nerd like me, check it out: https://storybundle.com/nano Thirteen books for writers for only $15 and you can donate to charity at the same time.
On the writing side, I have one more non-fiction title to edit (on ACX, which was my most successful presentation at the conference last month) and then it's time to turn back to fiction for a while. Still not 100% sure what I'm writing next, but I think I'm going to start a new YA fantasy series inspired in part by Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar novels and probably sneak a small-town second-chance coming-home romance novel in between the first and second drafts of that novel.
As soon as the fantasy series was wide, I applied for a Bookbub and got an international one in fantasy. That promo is running now. The books in the series are 99 cents/$3.99/$3.99 from a normal price of $6.99. I had an ENT ad yesterday, BookBarbarian today, Ebookaroo (I think) on Friday, am participating in Patty Jansen's promo over the weekend (which at least one other author on these boards is in as well) and then an international-only Bookbub in Fantasy on the 8th.
ENT was good for 34 sales on Amazon of book 1 and 13 sales of the other books in the series, so it's paid for itself already off of the sellthrough. And I have high hopes for the Bookbub. They estimate 550 sales from it and my January one in YA did better than their estimate. We shall see...If not I'm trying a new promo site next month that's theoretically really strong.
Waiting to hear back if I can land a Bookbub on the romance novel. It's currently at 99 reviews on Goodreads, but the average is around 3.7 so I don't know. They never took an interest in it when it was in KU and I wanted to do a free run.
My other huge news is that two of the Excel guides I published last month will be in the NaNoWriMo bundle put out by Storybundle. It's awesome to be sharing a "TOC" with the likes of Joanna Penn, Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kevin J. Anderson, Mike Resnick and all the others in the bundle. Until it actually went live I kept wondering if something would go wrong and I wouldn't be included after all. (Impostor syndrome is so fun.) If you're into writing books or an Excel nerd like me, check it out: https://storybundle.com/nano Thirteen books for writers for only $15 and you can donate to charity at the same time.
On the writing side, I have one more non-fiction title to edit (on ACX, which was my most successful presentation at the conference last month) and then it's time to turn back to fiction for a while. Still not 100% sure what I'm writing next, but I think I'm going to start a new YA fantasy series inspired in part by Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar novels and probably sneak a small-town second-chance coming-home romance novel in between the first and second drafts of that novel.
While I was logged in to answer a post in another thread...
The Bookbub over the weekend was just okay. It broke even but I didn't hit the 550 average sales. Google is delayed reporting, but not by that many copies. So, yay, profitable promo, but boo, not as good as their average performance. (One of the hardest parts of this gig is the comparing your progress to others and failing to see what you've accomplished simply because others have accomplished more.)
And that StoryBundle is probably the best thing I've ever done writing-wise. We're only one week in and I'd be thrilled with all of it even if it ended today. I think this particular bundle is probably a stronger one than average because of the tie-in to Nano and some of the names involved, but it's definitely been the highlight of my year to be included.
The Bookbub over the weekend was just okay. It broke even but I didn't hit the 550 average sales. Google is delayed reporting, but not by that many copies. So, yay, profitable promo, but boo, not as good as their average performance. (One of the hardest parts of this gig is the comparing your progress to others and failing to see what you've accomplished simply because others have accomplished more.)
And that StoryBundle is probably the best thing I've ever done writing-wise. We're only one week in and I'd be thrilled with all of it even if it ended today. I think this particular bundle is probably a stronger one than average because of the tie-in to Nano and some of the names involved, but it's definitely been the highlight of my year to be included.
Year-end update:
2017 was my first five-figure year, so yay! Low end of five-figures but still nice to see the progress and to know I would've been there even without the StoryBundle (although that was very nice as well). Profit-wise I wasn't quite at five-figures although I was profitable.
I took a really good writing course through Margie Lawson's website called Write Better Faster that helped me come to terms with the type of writer I am, which is someone who is going to keep doing a variety of different things and will never focus in on just one series under one name so I just have to accept that it may take me longer to get where I want to go.
In terms of cash earned, my romance series did the best thanks to AMS and releasing book 2, but my fantasy series was close behind thanks to two international-only Bookbubs and the release of book 3. Behind that were the titles in the StoryBundle (they're parts of different series) and my Excel Essentials titles that aren't writing-related but just cover the basics of working in Excel. I also saw nice audio revenue from one of my dating for men titles and one of my romance serials. All told I had income across 70 different titles but 8 accounted for the bulk of it.
For 2018 I'm hoping to release a new fantasy series that'll be more to market but still true to brand and I think I'm going to do video versions of some of my non-fiction titles. I also want to try to get a U.S. Bookbub on the existing fantasy series and am going to experiment with having all of my romance titles in KU. (I find with AMS and romance titles that having them in KU really makes a difference.) I'm also experimenting with not having my M.H. Lee short stories available on Amazon so I can price them at 49 cents each on Google. I'll probably deviate from my writing plan by March, but as long as I'm writing and publishing I consider that a win.
2017 was my first five-figure year, so yay! Low end of five-figures but still nice to see the progress and to know I would've been there even without the StoryBundle (although that was very nice as well). Profit-wise I wasn't quite at five-figures although I was profitable.
I took a really good writing course through Margie Lawson's website called Write Better Faster that helped me come to terms with the type of writer I am, which is someone who is going to keep doing a variety of different things and will never focus in on just one series under one name so I just have to accept that it may take me longer to get where I want to go.
In terms of cash earned, my romance series did the best thanks to AMS and releasing book 2, but my fantasy series was close behind thanks to two international-only Bookbubs and the release of book 3. Behind that were the titles in the StoryBundle (they're parts of different series) and my Excel Essentials titles that aren't writing-related but just cover the basics of working in Excel. I also saw nice audio revenue from one of my dating for men titles and one of my romance serials. All told I had income across 70 different titles but 8 accounted for the bulk of it.
For 2018 I'm hoping to release a new fantasy series that'll be more to market but still true to brand and I think I'm going to do video versions of some of my non-fiction titles. I also want to try to get a U.S. Bookbub on the existing fantasy series and am going to experiment with having all of my romance titles in KU. (I find with AMS and romance titles that having them in KU really makes a difference.) I'm also experimenting with not having my M.H. Lee short stories available on Amazon so I can price them at 49 cents each on Google. I'll probably deviate from my writing plan by March, but as long as I'm writing and publishing I consider that a win.
Congrats on hitting the five-figure threshold! It's interesting to see your path--which is unique with the different pen names, genres, and quantity of material you have out.
When you say you want to do video versions of your nonfiction work, are you talking about YouTube tutorials?
I have a lot of questions, but I think I'll take the time to re-read through your thread first, to see if they've already been answered.
Best of luck in the New Year!
When you say you want to do video versions of your nonfiction work, are you talking about YouTube tutorials?
I have a lot of questions, but I think I'll take the time to re-read through your thread first, to see if they've already been answered.
Best of luck in the New Year!
Congrats on hitting the five-figure threshold! It's interesting to see your path--which is unique with the different pen names, genres, and quantity of material you have out.
When you say you want to do video versions of your nonfiction work, are you talking about YouTube tutorials?
I have a lot of questions, but I think I'll take the time to re-read through your thread first, to see if they've already been answered.
Best of luck in the New Year!
Thanks! Yeah, I definitely haven't taken the quickest path to my destination, but I suspect I would've hated focusing on one series so it's what I personally had to do. And still a long ways to go to be where I need to be to make this work long-term.
I had thought about YouTube videos or using Teachable, but right now I'm thinking I'll do the videos as courses on Udemy. Once they're recorded they could go up anywhere, but Udemy is free and I'm not clear on how to actually earn money on YouTube. The Excel guides lend themselves to a video format because even with screenshots it's just not the same as saying, "See right here where my mouse is, this is what you need to click." And nice thing is I already have the material and topics outlined because I did the books.
Hey, there, just wanted to pop in and offer very belated congrats on the nonfiction bundle you were part of. Those are some very recognizable names! Of course, the overall sales are quite an accomplishment as well. And to think we knew you back when you were still one of us little guys...
Hey, there, just wanted to pop in and offer very belated congrats on the nonfiction bundle you were part of. Those are some very recognizable names! Of course, the overall sales are quite an accomplishment as well. And to think we knew you back when you were still one of us little guys...
Thanks! It was a great opportunity and gave me my best month ever and made two titles I hadn't thought would do much turn out to be nicely profitable by my standards. And I don't know if it was the bundle, some early sales to friends who have a thing for Excel, AMS or some magical combination of all three but Excel for Beginners, which wasn't in the bundle but which I wrote because I wrote the two books in the bundle has done very well for me every since. (Over 300 copies sold just last month!) I still have a looong ways to go on all of this, but it's nice to finally be seeing some real results after four years of this.