Dhewco's Diary

Windvein · Mar 27, 2016

Hi David,

You're going through what we all do. One thing I'm wondering about is--are you only on Amazon? Do you plan to go wide? If not, why not put your eBook in Kindle Select? You may make a little more money through borrows. But is your table of contents in the back of the book? Has Amazon asked you to change it? I thought that was a requirement now, though this article says it sort of is and sort of isn't. http://www.writtenwordmedia.com/2016/03/17/amazon-toc-issue-everything-you-need-to-know/ I've heard Calibre defaults the TOC to the back of the book, but I think you can change it? I'm not a Calibre user, but I believe that's the case. Anyway, I wanted to suggest Select that along with maybe setting up your Author page on Amazon. And don't fret the number of copies sold. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Dhewco · Mar 27, 2016

I'm reasonably sure it's at the front. That's what I set it to. All I know is that if you hit the tab, it shows up on the side of the kindle screen. I don't think I'm going to use Smashwords. I'm not sure if I want to do Select as I just don't know about borrows. I'm paranoid that would make it easier to pirate or something. At least, if it's only for purchase, I know that someone along the way bought it...even if they then decide to kick me in the whoha.

BTW, I got my first foreign sale. (British pounds, no less) Does anyone know how that works for Kindle? Do they convert it automatically, or is there a fee associated with it?

ASeiple · Mar 28, 2016

Eh, piracy tends to happen regardless of what you do.

Kindle automatically converts the Pounds to Dollars (Or your currency of choice) when it pays you the royalties, so no worries there.

The borrows... eh, it's your call on KU, but I found it way more useful and beneficial for me as a newbie writer than going without it. Most months it's been about 2-3 fifths my income from sales, and it's essentially free marketing. But hey, do what you want and what you're comfy with. Experiment, play around, and so long as you're not dropping money you can't afford, you're winning.

Dhewco · Mar 28, 2016

If I stop getting the occasional sales, I might change my mind. I'm set up for the higher percentage deal in sales. Can you do that and still do the borrow thing?

lizo27 · Mar 28, 2016

Dhewco said:
If I stop getting the occasional sales, I might change my mind. I'm set up for the higher percentage deal in sales. Can you do that and still do the borrow thing?

Yes. I'm doing it.

Dhewco · Mar 28, 2016

Okay, Cool...I'll give it a few more days and probably hit the button for Select. I was debating Smashwords but it seems that they're not worth much. Can I do Createspace hardcopies and still do Select?

Thanks to everyone for their advice.

David

WriterBN · Mar 28, 2016

Dhewco said:
If I stop getting the occasional sales, I might change my mind. I'm set up for the higher percentage deal in sales. Can you do that and still do the borrow thing?

The best time to be in Select is the first 90 days, so you should probably make a decision soon. Otherwise, you're essentially wasting your non-enrollment status by not being on other channels. Being in Select doesn't impact your US royalties. It actually benefits your royalties in a few countries, like India and Japan, where you would otherwise get only 35% regardless of list price.

Use D2D instead of Smashwords, if you do go wide. Much better service and support. And yes, you can do Createspace at any time even if your book is in Select, but again, the best opportunities for sales are at launch.

ASeiple · Mar 28, 2016

Yeah, I'd concur with WriterBN. My wife tried Smashwords a few years back, and the results weren't worth the trouble.

Tavia · Mar 28, 2016

Add me to the call to sign up for Select! The borrows you get will be from people who're looking to borrow books, not people who're looking to buy books, if that makes sense. So it won't cut into sales, it'll just add the option of getting page reads.

And I think I forgot to say before, but congrats on publishing! That's a cool step, and I know you've been working so hard to get to this point. You should be proud of yourself

One other thing, hitting on a point from earlier... resist the urge to get discouraged about FB friends not liking, sharing, buying, etc. The way I see it is that friends buying copies is a nice bonus, but you shouldn't be targeting them as your audience.

Dhewco · Mar 28, 2016

It's not that I target them as the audience, though. It's that I have very few people I can depend on. I don't care if they buy...that's not the point. I'm asking that they help me put out a viral ad campaign. Eventually it'd spread wide enough to result in sales. Yes, I wanted the ones who said they would to buy, but I told them that if they didn't really want to, I'd be okay. But, I have NO money for marketing and I needed to have friends share with friends until the net is cast wide. It's the only way I'll be able to get the word out. The disappointment sets in when they don't do that step.

I don't know what to think. If my posts are getting buried in their feed, I can't help that without spamming. I won't do that. So, I've given up using FB for my book. I'll probably go to mentioning it once a week and leave it at that.

I'll probably go with KU tomorrow or something. I want to sleep on it.

Thanks for the convo.

J. Tanner · Mar 28, 2016

Dhewco said:
I don't know what to think. If my posts are getting buried in their feed, I can't help that without spamming. I won't do that. So, I've given up using FB for my book. I'll probably go to mentioning it once a week and leave it at that.

You need a HUGE following for this to work. Think how many ads you see, and how many things you've bought based on those ads. Probably close to zero, right? Now think of a few hundred friends of friends seeing your book ad. It's nothing in advertising terms. Even if you're insanely optimistic on the numbers of friends, and percentages who will buy, you're talking about a book or two. It's not worth annoying your friends.

This is why the best advice about social networks is to use them as passive marketing. Send your announcement once. Don't send it again in a week. Never send it again. Instead, be interesting and social on the social network you enjoy. If you do that consistently, eventually people will be interested in YOU. And people interested in you are the people most likely to check out your page, see you wrote a book, and maybe become interested in it.

Dhewco · Mar 28, 2016

JT, I hear what you're saying. I'm saying I need to promote myself as much as possible...in the free ways. I spent the first year or so on twitter building 800 followers by interacting. I can't afford to buy banners. I can't afford anything newspaper wise. My current hometown newspaper didn't even return my email, so no fluff piece. Another paper told me to sell a hundred copies first and maybe they'd do something. The local libraries would have events, but of course I'd have to do everything (I undestand this, but it doesn't make it easier) and so that's off the table. Twitter and FB are all I have, excepting any I might drive with my comments on the various forums on this site.

I keep forgetting the reviewer sites. Not sure what to do there.

Dhewco · Mar 29, 2016

Well, I bit the bullet and enrolled in KDP select. We'll see how that goes.

WriterBN · Mar 29, 2016

Dhewco said:
Well, I bit the bullet and enrolled in KDP select. We'll see how that goes.

Good luck!

I've found that there are two "cliffs" on KDP, regardless of whether a book is in Select or not: the 30-day and 90-day ones. This may vary somewhat by genre, but expect sales to drop off substantially at those two timepoints. In order to keep the momentum going, you have to promote/advertise. Or write another book. Ideally, do both.

Dhewco · Mar 29, 2016

Well, I can't promote/advertise...I'm not kidding. I have 0 funds. If it wasn't for my parents, I would be homeless. They moved into my home before I became unemployed so I can take care of them and ended up a year later helping me out. I fill out applications every week (sometimes daily) but I haven't even gotten a call back for an interview in 6 months or more. So, there will be no advertising. I'm not going to ask them to do that.

As for another book, I am almost finished with a thriller that I should have the rough draft done in a month or so. It's not the sequel to Humanity, but it should still be good. I've never been able to work in the same 'world' one right after the other. I don't know what it is. I could try, but it feels like editing...even if it's a sequel. It's weird.

Thanks for the well wishes. I'll let ya'll know.

ETA: I keep forgetting about the review sites. I could try them and see if they'd give it a read. To be honest, I never read review sites so I don't even know which ones are the best. Or the gentlest. I'll be upfront...I can handle criticism, but I want it constuctive. "Hey, this was a good scene..but the character did something unbelievable...or Dhewco's use of fragments were at times distracting, but I enjoyed the way he did..."

The only reviews I've ever read onine were the ones someone shared because the book sucked so much that the reviews were hilarious. (Crevette's review of a PA book that had Orlando Jones (I think) on it, for example)

There was a review site upthread that someone mentioned, if I'm not mistaken. I went back and saw it was indieview.com. How good is it for driving traffic to the book?

lizo27 · Mar 29, 2016

indieview.com lists reviewers who will review independent/self-published books for free. Look at the list and find reviewers who read in your genre and send a request. Take a look at the reviewer's site to get an idea of what sort of reviewer they are and what kind of following they have.

Dhewco · Mar 31, 2016

I was pondering doing a 'Kindle Countdown' deal...but without advertising it probably won't mean much, right?

M. H. Lee · Apr 1, 2016

Right. I've run Countdown deals with no promo and had zero sales. If people don't see it, they don't know it's on sale.

But you can pay $5 for a Bknights ad through fiverr ($5.50 with tax) and probably get a couple hundred downloads of a free book or a handful of sales at 99 cents.

And in terms of getting the cover into your signature, I sort of cheat, but it works. Open an account on kboards, use their Author Signature tool to generate a signature with your cover in it, copy the code they give you, remove the kb affiliate code at the very end, and use that code to create your signature here. Voila.

Dhewco · Apr 1, 2016

Well, one question....is free a good deal when you don't have another book on Amazon? Does it drive sales for a single title (after the countdown) when that's all you have?

ASeiple · Apr 1, 2016

Don't go free with only one book. There's no place to go for people who like it.

AW Admin · Apr 1, 2016

ASeiple said:
Don't go free with only one book. There's no place to go for people who like it.

This is a really smart point. It's also true.

Go free with the first book when the second is 30 days or less away from release.

That said, giveaways to reviewers or to social book sites like GoodReads are a different matter, and can be startlingly effective.

AW Admin · Apr 1, 2016

M. H. Lee said:
Right. I've run Countdown deals with no promo and had zero sales. If people don't see it, they don't know it's on sale.

But you can pay $5 for a Bknights ad through fiverr ($5.50 with tax) and probably get a couple hundred downloads of a free book or a handful of sales at 99 cents.

And in terms of getting the cover into your signature, I sort of cheat, but it works. Open an account on kboards, use their Author Signature tool to generate a signature with your cover in it, copy the code they give you, remove the kb affiliate code at the very end, and use that code to create your signature here. Voila.

Fargin' brill, that is.

Can I add this to the FAQ?

Also: I'm willing to help with sigs, but it can take me a day or two to have the time.

M. H. Lee · Apr 1, 2016

AW Admin said:
Can I add this to the FAQ?

Sure.

Also, in terms of a free standalone book. If you're in Select, sometimes people borrow your book instead of downloading the freebie. This means you can get pages read that you get paid for as well as a rankings boost when the book comes back off of free. I did this earlier this year with a romance novel. Gave away 5,000 copies or so, but also made enough in sales after the promo and in pages read to more than pay for the $100 cost of the ad. (Details are in my thread.) Not saying it works every time--I think the fact that was a romance helped a tremendous amount--but...It can be worth trying. I have one of my shorts up for free this weekend (The Price We Pay), running a BKnights on it on Monday, can report back if I see the same thing for that story that I did for the romance novel. I suspect I won't. Genre and length are probably significant factors in how a free run pays for itself.

Dhewco · Apr 1, 2016

I'm finding it hard to work on the sequel. The lackluster sales (even though 9 is better than I expected) makes visiting this world harder. You say bknights is 5 and change? I might try that. I don't know if I'll do it this month. I had to buy a new phone.

WriterBN · Apr 1, 2016

I've used Bknights a few times and had results similar to M. H. Lee. They're good for freebies, but most freebie downloaders don't convert to sales.

For books at $0.99, you have to spend $10 if you want to get any results: the $5 option only gets you listed on their web page, in an infinitely scrolling list of hundreds of other books. The extra $5 gets you into their newsletter, which helps a bit.

Generally speaking, you should be able to cover the cost of the ad, if you have a book in a hot genre (romance seems to do well).

Edit: I should add that the guy who runs it is very helpful, and he'll offer a refund if you don't get results. I did take him up on that once.

Dhewco's Diary

Windvein

Dhewco

ASeiple

Livin' la vida biblia

Dhewco

lizo27

Speshul snowflake

Dhewco

WriterBN

ASeiple

Livin' la vida biblia

Tavia

Dhewco

J. Tanner

Dhewco

Dhewco

WriterBN

Dhewco

lizo27

Speshul snowflake

Dhewco

M. H. Lee

Dhewco

ASeiple

Livin' la vida biblia

AW Admin

AW Admin

M. H. Lee

Dhewco

WriterBN