Jumping into a very large pond (and trying not to drown).

I'm trying my first Kindle Countdown promotion. Empire of Chains will be $0.99 through 7/24. We'll see how it goes. My sales and KU reads have been steady but unspectacular so far. I'm hoping to get a bit of a boost and some more visibility.

So far, the $0.99 sale seems to be helping. I've made 7 sales in the last two days, and my book is now in the top 40,000 in the Kindle Store. That may not be great by some standards, but it's progress.

With the $0.99 sale about to wrap up, here are my results:

From June 29th to July 8th, I sold 26 copies. 10 of those were pre-orders.

Then, from July 9th to July 17th, I sold 0 copies (though I did get a decent amount of pages read in KU).

On the 18th, I dropped my price to $0.99. From then until now, I have sold 23 copies. EDIT: 24 copies.

So I'd say the sale definitely helped me. I can also conclude at this point in my career that being in Kindle Unlimited has been a huge plus for me. I know it has its issues, but it's working well for me so far. Because of it, I've made at least a little money every day since the book has been out.


Now I need to get to work on editing the second book in the series. I'd like to release it in mid to late September, with the third book following in December and the fourth book following in March.

In the meantime, I also have plans to release the first book of my Sunweaver series in October, the second in January, and the third in April.

I feel like three months is a good amount of time to put between books in a series. It keeps the reader from waiting too long, and at least from my perspective, it doesn't make it look like you're just churning out crap at a very fast pace. I've seen people who can put out a book a month. Some of them can even produce high-quality books at that rate. I'm a fast writer, but I'm not sure I'll ever be that fast. I also tend to write my books on the longer side (they are epic fantasy after all), which means that they can sometimes take longer to write, revise, edit, and polish.

July numbers:

e-books sold: 37
KENP pages read: 14,636
paperbacks sold: 5

Total (including June 29th and 30th)

e-books sold: 51
KENP pages read: 15,496
paperbacks sold: 7


I'm not setting the world on fire, but I felt like those were pretty solid sales for my first month. More than I expected, actually. I don't know how the next month and a half will go, but I expect a bump in my sales when I release the sequel to Empire of Chains in September.

ETA: I've also had my best day in pages read today, so that was some good news to come home to.

August has been pretty slow for me so far. I've read of a lot of people having a similar experience this month.

I'm also past the first month now. I figure sales will be slow unless I do some kind of major marketing push. I should probably get working on my revisions for the second book. I've made steady progress, and I still think I can get it out toward the end of September.

Once I do release it, I'm considering dropping the price of Empire of Chains to $0.99 again. I don't know whether I'd want to make this permanent with just two books out (though I suppose I can always do a test run and see how it goes).

I'm wary of going the free route with the book. I can't count the number of free books I've downloaded and never gotten around to reading. It's a balancing act, I guess. You'll get more downloads, but how many of them will actually buy the next book in the series?

Ambrosia said:

Ryan, how do the KU reads work for the author?

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The author gets paid based on the number of pages that are read. It usually comes out to a little more than 4/10 of a cent per page. That doesn't seem like much, but when you consider that my book has 860 pages according to whatever formula Amazon uses, that means I make roughly $3.70 for a full read of the book, which is actually more than I make from a sale (about $2.01)

Ambrosia said:

Thank you very much, Ryan. I'm sorry it took so long to reply. I actually "lost" this thread, which is why I didn't reply before.

It finally dawned on me a few minutes ago I could click on your name and look under your threads to find the post. I don't know where my mind has been.

It was a real "duh" moment for me.

Does the amount they pay depend on the amount you charge for the book? Are you happy with your results so far, not just with KU, but with publishing with Amazon in general?

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KU and the amount you charge on the book are completely independent of one another. Right now, for example, I'm reading a book that was free at the time I downloaded it, but since I have a KU membership, I figured I'd read it through KU so the author gets some money from my read.

Overall, I'm mostly happy. I don't expect sales to take off until I have more books out (though it would help if I get a good review in the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off). Going with Amazon is one of those things that you pretty much have to do whether you like it or not. For most self-published authors, the majority of their income is from sales through Amazon. Those who aren't in KU publish their books in other places as well. That works well for some people and not so well for others.

I have a cover now for the second book in the series: The Shadowed Land

https://ryanwmueller.com/2017/08/25/cover-reveal-the-shadowed-land/

Catherine said:

Nice cover! Are you still on track to release it next month? I was looking at your release schedule on your web site. Very ambitious--kudos to you for a strong start.

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So far, I'm still on track. It will probably be almost at the end of the month. It could be delayed, though, depending on how much of my time school eats up. I hope to stick to that schedule. It shouldn't be impossible or anything because I've already written all seven books of these two series. It's a matter of getting them into shape. Right now, I'm happy with what I have, but not quite thrilled, so I still need probably one more draft and then a final proofread on the second book.

Note: My drafts don't consist of rewriting the book. It's more of an editing pass than anything. I start out focusing on the bigger things, and then I narrow down my focus as I go. Obviously, I correct any typos and other issues as I go along.

August numbers:

8 e-books sold, 9,262 KENP read

Running total:

58 e-books sold, 24,758 KENP read, 7 paperbacks sold

JoB42 said:

Man, your cover is awesome. Love it.

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Thanks. It was done by Deranged Doctor Design. If you ever decide to go the self-publishing route, they do great covers at very affordable prices.

CaesarNaples said:

How do I turn a cover that I've commissioned into a print ready cover for Createspace or Lulu or any POD service? For my covers, I've used GIMP open source photo editor to make a pixel-perfect file for my cover. Do I pay the artist for the entire file?

Also, how easily can I commission the reverse side of my book? I've used that space for a blurb, a logo, a bar code, secondary blurbs and the like. Wouldn't it be ideal for the design to include all these elements?

For my self made cover, I spent a long time on the effects for the front and back of the book. I kept it open in GIMP and tweaked all the layers for days. AND IT STILL LOOKS QUITE AMATEUR. It's easy to spot that my book is self published.

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I don't know the answers for that because I contract out the cover art. They have everything ready for me, and all I have to do is upload the images to Amazon and CreateSpace.

September was a pretty quiet month for me. I'm hoping things pick up later this month when I release the second book. I'm also planning on dropping the first book to $0.99 when I release the second.

September sales:

4 e-books
1 paperback
4070 KENP read

I went ahead and dropped the first book to $0.99. I've been making more sales, so that's good.

And today I finished the proofread of the second book, The Shadowed Land. I'm planning on releasing it before the end of the month. I was thinking about releasing it on Halloween, but that might not be the most conducive to first-day sales because people are doing other things on Halloween.

Catherine said:

Do first day sales make a difference? Obviously you would want the launch to go well, but if you have more sales the first day vs. another day, will it boost your book's rank on Amazon?

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If you sell well enough right out the gate, you can get one of those nifty Bestseller tags Amazon puts on books. I'm not expecting to sell that well, though. My sales have been solid on the first book, but not spectacular.

I almost have everything ready. I just need a day I can sit down and do all the little housekeeping things. I'm thinking now that it might be Friday (my only day off from both school and work this week).