Finding My Way - Dallionz's Self-Publishing Thread

Dallionz

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Okay, I'll post the statistics for all three days of my free 3-day promotion of Finding Hope:

Day One - 10/28/15
I did not have any paid advertising. The book was picked up by:
ebookasaurus
ebooklister.net

Finding Hope - Free downloads: 1,485
Finding Peace - Sales at full price ($2.99): 8
Finding Courage - Sales at full price ($2.99): 14
Calming the Storm - Sales at full price ($2.99): 3
Pages Read: 10,238

Day Two - 10/29/15
I paid for a BookBub ad and it ran under Christian fiction.
I didn't find any place else that picked the book up for this day.

Finding Hope - Free downloads: 24,006
Finding Peace - Sales at full price ($2.99): 160
Finding Courage - Sales at full price ($2.99): 113
Calming the Storm - Sales at full price ($2.99): 3
Pages Read: 8,661

Day Three - 10/30/15

No paid ads for today
Christian Kindle News picked Finding Hope up and did a nice ad on it

Finding Hope - Free downloads: 3,937
Finding Peace - Sales at full price ($2.99): 36
Finding Courage - Sales at full price ($2.99): 30
Calming the Storm - Sales at full price ($2.99): 3
Pages Read: 18,964

As of this morning, all three books in the series are in the top 100 for Religious Romance.

Here are the rankings of all the books:
Finding Hope (Love's Compass Book 2)

#1,925 in Kindle books store (paid) 1,923 ranks today (updated hourly)



Finding Peace (Love's Compass Book 1)

#1,506 in Kindle books store (paid) 826 ranks today (updated hourly)



Finding Courage (Love's Compass Book 3)

#1,797 in Kindle books store (paid) 750 ranks today (updated hourly)



Calming the Storm (A Christian Romance Novel)

#18,401 in Kindle books store (paid) 1,516 ranks today (updated hourly)


 

M. H. Lee

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Wow, that's awesome! Congrats! Hope it leads to some long-term traction as those 30,000 people read their way through the whole series.
 

AgathaChristieFan

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Congratulations on your success! It's nice to see you're doing well with buying ads. I always hear mixed results if it works or not. After reading your SP diary, I'll start an ad budget and give it a shot. It couldn't hurt to try. :)
 

RightHoJeeves

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Can I ask - through Amazon/Kindle/KU does "pages read" mean anything other than how many pages people have read? As in does it translate to dollars or something else?
 

WriterBN

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Can I ask - through Amazon/Kindle/KU does "pages read" mean anything other than how many pages people have read? As in does it translate to dollars or something else?

If your book is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, you get paid per page read for readers who are part of KU, in addition to regular sales. The rate is variable (and, starting in November, varies by country as well). The latest US rate was $0.0049 per page.
 

RightHoJeeves

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If your book is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, you get paid per page read for readers who are part of KU, in addition to regular sales. The rate is variable (and, starting in November, varies by country as well). The latest US rate was $0.0049 per page.

I see. So if a KU reader purchases the ebook, then reads 400 pages, the author gets the $3 (or whatever) from the book sale and 400*$0.005?
 

M. H. Lee

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I see. So if a KU reader purchases the ebook, then reads 400 pages, the author gets the $3 (or whatever) from the book sale and 400*$0.005?

No. You either sell the book and get paid the percentage of the list price or the book is borrowed and you get paid for however many pages the reader reads. If they read 500 pages you get about $2.50.
 

ASeiple

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Now, here's a question I've never been sure about...

If a KU subscriber re-reads your book, do you get paid for those pages as well? Or is it first read only?

I'm assuming it's first read only...
 

RightHoJeeves

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No. You either sell the book and get paid the percentage of the list price or the book is borrowed and you get paid for however many pages the reader reads. If they read 500 pages you get about $2.50.

Now I understand, thanks :)
 

ASeiple

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It's first read only. That's specified somewhere in the KU terms, but I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment :)

Ah, okay. So from our perspective, the readers are getting it at a pretty good discount.

Well, that's fine! The limit of 10 KU books on their reader means that there's still pretty good odds that if they like it, they'll buy it through the regular store later. So in essence, not only do we draw in people who might not otherwise get the e-book, we also stand a chance of double-dipping...

Many thanks. Yeah, I'm definitely starting to like this program.
 

Dallionz

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Congratulations on your success! It's nice to see you're doing well with buying ads. I always hear mixed results if it works or not. After reading your SP diary, I'll start an ad budget and give it a shot. It couldn't hurt to try. :)


Thank you very much! It's definitely worth doing at least the once. I've had some ads that didn't pay off but you don't know if you don't try!
 

WriterBN

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The limit of 10 KU books on their reader means that there's still pretty good odds that if they like it, they'll buy it through the regular store later. So in essence, not only do we draw in people who might not otherwise get the e-book, we also stand a chance of double-dipping..

I don't think KU readers will buy a book later if they've already read it. In my experience, there are two groups of readers: voracious readers with KU who borrow and don't buy; and more "moderate" readers who don't have KU and hence buy, not borrow.
 

AgathaChristieFan

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To be honest, if I was enrolled in KU, I'd be one of those readers who borrowed and didn't buy. Same as if I read a book from the library--I won't buy it later. It's very seldom that I re-read books unless they're classics or anything Agatha Christie.
 

ASeiple

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I dunno. Yeah, there's gonna be plenty of readers that borrow and don't buy. But on the other hand, there's going to be a few who like it well enough to pick it up permanently. Whether or not the percentage is significant, I couldn't say.

Reading habits differ. I regularly hit the library, and sometimes check out the same books two or three times over the years as the mood strikes. Or buy a book after I've read it for free, because I know it'll be a reread a few years later.

Hell, there's a couple of books that I found by buying them on kindle, then being so impressed I picked up the print version.

But I'm probably a minority...
 

Dallionz

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I generally re-read maybe one in fifteen books. But I have been known to buy the paperback versions of books I just loved - especially if written by a fellow independently published author. I have a bookshelf specifically for them. :)

But yeah, I think most people who enroll in KU will borrow a book before they'll buy (even if the book's free).
 

Dallionz

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I put Finding Peace (book 1 in my series) on sale for $0.99 for the next four days.

I didn't advertise at all in November or December and boy my sales are feeling it!

I have an ad scheduled with Round Robin for tomorrow. It'll be the first time I've advertised with them so we'll see how it goes.

Then I just finished the fourth book in the series and it'll come out probably early in February. I'm torn on what to do with it. Normally, I put my books up for pre-sale for $0.99 and then run an ENT ad the week they come out.

This time I'm considering leaving it at $2.99 and hoping for a BookBub ad for the third book and that'll really boost those pre-sales.

So I'll probably wait until I hear back from BB to set up the pre-sale so I know which price to go with. At least I'll be able to do that!
 

CathleenT

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Thanks for sharing! Honestly, I feel so lost when it comes to promotion, other than my blog. It's wonderful to hear about what's working and what isn't. :)
 

Dallionz

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Thanks for sharing! Honestly, I feel so lost when it comes to promotion, other than my blog. It's wonderful to hear about what's working and what isn't. :)

I'm glad this helps! Promoting is very overwhelming, that's for sure! I think ENT is usually a pretty sure bet. I've only heard of a handful of people who didn't at least make their money back. And as far as I'm concerned, if I can break even on the day of the promotion (or even the day after), I consider it a success!
 

Dallionz

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My Robin Reads ad ran yesterday. I needed to sell 44 copies of Finding Peace in order to break even and I sold 80 with another 5 copies of other books at full price. I'm happy with those results and will advertise with them in the future. I'm glad to have another option!

So right now, here are the places that I will advertise with regularly:

ENT
Faithful Reads
Robin Reads
BookBub (when they accept them lol)
 

Dallionz

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The bump from the Robin Reads ad didn't last long. I have another ad scheduled with them for Finding Hope on the 29th.

I also submitted Finding Courage to BookBub this afternoon. We'll see what happens with that.
 
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WriterBN

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Did you mean Robin Reads? I checked them out but they don't mention pricing anywhere on the site. That's a huge turn-off for me.
 

Dallionz

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Did you mean Robin Reads? I checked them out but they don't mention pricing anywhere on the site. That's a huge turn-off for me.

Yes, Robin Reads. Thank you - I went back and corrected that. If you click on the Robin Reads Authors and the genre you're submitting, it'll tell you how much. It's $15 for SciFi, Fantasy, Horror, and Dystopia and $30 for everything else.