Christopher D. Schmitz's Blog, page 6

Stay at Home for Black Friday! (read a book instead)

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Wish you could stay at home and read the Hunger Games instead of volunteering as tribute on Black Friday?

As much as I love seeing folks shopping at local retail, I know that most of those dollars don’t actually stick in our area economy and go to big box stores. (I imagine billionaires in a secret room watching live streams of holiday retail madness as they cackle like Mr Burns from the Simpsons.)  Rather than risk life and limb for a new flat screen which you’re going to feel compelled to repurchase again next season anyway, maybe #shoplocal and pick up some sale priced books from me to read in all that free time that you won’t need to be spending in the hospital. I’ve got four books on sale right now! (And feel free to read them right away and do your holiday shopping all from your living room. Stay safe my peeps!)

50 Shades of Worf

A back-alley brawl between the furries and the bronies.

Deadpool cosplayer keeps stealing all the erotic pegasus artwork.

Someone used a necronomicon to open a tentacle portal in the men’s room.

Two cops must go undercover at a comic-book convention to stop Wil Wheaton’s murder. You’ll love this buddy cop comic-comedy if you love Discworld, Hitchhikers Guide, or Bimbos From the Death Sun.

https://storyoriginapp.com/universalbooklinks/8705a392-fcb9-11e9-b3dc-5fabe5bfea32

The Kakos Realm: Grinden Proselyte Book 1

They took everything from him.

They branded his hands and killed the girl he loves.

Revenge is all Rashnir has left—but when it is suddenly offered, the ranger wonders what comes after. When a mysterious outsider shows up, everything changes and Rashnir must choose sides in the brewing holy war.

https://storyoriginapp.com/universalbooklinks/0dfb80ac-91f7-11e9-9ecf-3f6fd3dc1db8

Wolf of the Tesseract Book 1

Yesterday she was in Freshman seminar…

…now she’s running for her life.

What’s chasing Claire shouldn’t exist.

She’s convinced a homeless, ex-classmate of hers is stalking her. He says he can travel between alternate realities… but he also claims he can shape-shift and that she has magic in her veins. Only Claire’s blood has the power to unleash the great Devourer God and breach a gate that must never be opened… Blood that Claire wants to keep, but everyone else wants.

https://storyoriginapp.com/universalbooklinks/f86a6d2a-4bdd-11e9-99cc-fbcab6a35865

Dekker’s Dozen: Weeds of Eden Book 1

Dekker Knight has a secret past.

Vivian “Vesuvius” Briggs has a sword and a chip on her shoulder.

Together they run a delinquent team of space mercenaries: the Dozen.

The Dozen fight to keep their debts settled, fuel in their ship, and some equilibrance to their moral ledger as they race from job to job… which always goes sideways. They are more than mercenaries: they’re practically family—and the theft of an interstellar seed threatens to tear it apart… this seed, which some claim comes from the very Garden of Eden, could wreak unspeakable evil across the galaxy.

https://storyoriginapp.com/universalbooklinks/fe2a806e-555c-11e9-9eee-7f5124604f1f

Monetize your Newsletter for Holiday Sales With Your Mailing List

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If you’re like me, you try to plan in advance. That does NOT mean actually taking action (just because it’s snowing out here in Minnesota that doesn’t mean it’s time to play Christmas music yet!) I write this in my local coffee shop. Jingle Bell Rock is on their house sound system.

Anyway, mailing lists and promotions take a good deal of forethought to do well, so this is a timely blog post. Hopefully, young padawan writers, you have been systematically building your mailing list throughout the year(s). It’s time for it to pay off for you!

If you aren’t utilizing your newsletter or author’s mailing list, you are leaving cash on the table. I’ll show you just how much potential below!

 

Last year alone, we saw nearly 40% growth in total digital spending over the Thanksgiving holidays (meaning the chart below should feature another significant spike). We can protest the gluttony and excess of it all, but at the end of the day, we authors must be competitive and wise business persons. One cannot discount the potential money to be made by striking when the iron is hot.

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I’ve spent a good deal of time growing my mailing list to about 3,000 subscribers since spring, (actually, not all that much effort was required—it just took time to build it through regular promotions and author to author collaboration and swaps.) If you haven’t taken the time to read my post on how I did it, you should get started on it right now so you will be ready for future marketing. While you’re at it, I’ll point out that you missed it because you haven’t subscribed to my blog. Click that follow button and don’t miss my content. Don’t take my word for it, though, I pulled a lot of my advice from Newsletter Ninja, I suggest you get a copy of your own.

Now that I’ve got a list of folks who are used to hearing from me and have demonstrated that they like the kind of content I produce, I have an audience that I can pitch a special sales event to. Please note that I am not normally asking them to make a purchase any other time during the year… there is a danger in constantly being salesy and that leads to being viewed as spam… however, during this time of the year, this kind of ask is expected. A study by Shopify after the 2018 Black Friday/Cyber Week sales demonstrated the power of email marketing and the trust/rapport that is built on email lists (when done right).

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“The 2018 online retail holiday weekend proved the power of discounts. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday all posted +28% or higher digital commerce spending versus 2017, as consumers increasingly took to online retailers to snag deals and promotions. “ Comscore

My plan to utilize my newsletter is simple: Ask my readers to make a purchase. Share my own books which will be set at a limited time discount, and partner with other authors through Newsletter Swaps to broaden the impact of the sale weekend. If 5-8 other writers with their own mailing lists follow the same pattern and we each share our collaborators’ books too, then the reach broadens greatly. It’s the same methodology that the Storyorigin and Bookfunnel models were built on, only it takes it one step further from give-aways that grow a mailing list. This step makes a sale-based ask to that existing community you have grown.

This entire model works even better if you have cultivated a list with particular kinds of likes and then select collaborators with cross-over appeal. By this, I mean that if you grew a list for cozy Christian romance, it’s not a good idea to send them sale info for ab-rippling male on male BDSM reverse harem erotica. That will end up losing subscribers and alienating your audience, but if you’ve had any success growing it thusfar, then you already know that.

I write speculative genre fiction (SF/F/P/H) and would welcome submissions and cross-promotions for Newsletter swaps. You should click here and sign up on my swap form any time up until thanksgiving. Because it’s the one time out of the year I explicitly ask for the sale and break that rule of “don’t be salesy,” I will include as many shares as possible. If you are a Story Origin member, I sincerely hope you will jump on my cross-promo pages for sale-price books over cyber week. There are 3 right now that I am a part of which you might consider joining if there is any way your story qualifies:

Sci-Fi

Urban Fantasy

Epic Fantasy

Amazon alone accounts for 40.0% of U.S. online retail, and Amazon accounted for 43.3% of e-commerce gains in the United States last year. Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce is in large part thanks to its marketplace, which allows the retailer to sell millions of SKUs. More than one-third—176—of the merchants ranked in Internet Retailer Top 500 sell on Amazon in 2019, up from 104 in 2018.

One of the great things I love about Story Origin is that you can use Amazon’s affiliate tags with your Universal Book Links (UBL). If you don’t know about them, you really should do some research. The tags insert a 24-hour cookie that earns you a percentage based commission if the customer you refer makes a purchase. Given that so many e-sales happen over the holiday, it’s likely that you could earn 5-7% on holiday gift sales even if the shopper decides not to buy your book. I didn’t try to capitalize on this in 2018, but in 2017 I made a very healthy chunk of money when a few link-clickers did all their holiday shopping after clicking one of my links.

Caution! You cannot send affiliate links via email without having your account banned! But it is perfectly acceptable to send them from pages such as StoryOrigin’s promos or from a blog like this. Story Origin’s UBL service, however, functions as a redirect. If you click a UBL, it points to a hosted page on Story Origin that pulls in your affiliate ID and then shoots the user out to the product you have linked to it. Try it out by clicking this UBL for my newest Crime-comedy story. Pretty seamless right? (Now while you’re there, feel free to make some major purchases).

Don’t miss out on your piece of the pie this holiday season. Here’s an example of the market growth during this time of the year (followed by my model, which you should totally steal, to boost your sales.) The people are going to shop online anyway—you might as well do everything you can to support your writing habit by strategically positioning your followers by giving them a great deal on your books and using affiliate tags.

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Here is my model, and I sincerely hope that you consider joining my author journey (and maybe pop in for a newsletter swap!)

Have/grow your mailing list. (average open rates are 15-25%, but authors tend to be higher, and a click-thru of about 3% meaning that I should have about 90 clicks to my 3,000 large subscriber list) You should already be regularly interacting with your readers… if you do, your rates will be much higher.
Have your Amazon affiliate ID ready
Create UBLs via Story Origin (this is a free service) and include affiliate ID in link creation
Schedule ebooks to discount price if in Kindle Unlimited (.99 countdown deal) I recommend using series starters to encourage read-thru and KU clicks
Join Story Origin cross-promotions for sale during the applicable timeframe
Schedule special email that will include your books’ UBLs, followed by banners and blurbs for Story Origin promotions. Follow that with links and graphics for other authors you have agreed to do Newsletter Swaps with
Continue to find other authors and encourage them to do swaps, too! The more collaborators you garner, the greater success you will have!
Send the email on Cyber Monday and blast it out to your blog and all social media—you want your links as visible as possible in the chances that someone is shopping and your UBL earns you a commission.

Follow this advice and you should have a very merry Christmas—and hopefully, Santa will leave you some new book reviews in addition to an Amazon account full of cash

State of Writing

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I had a killer weekend and more than tripled my previous sales event record! I sold 173 books at #galaxycon minneapolis. It was a very good show–I did a little pre-release special and had paperbacks of 50 Shades of Worf available… a big box of them. Like the normal amount of books I sell total at a con. They sold out on day 1. I could have sold 100 copies or more and underestimated the response to my new humor book (now with more paperdoll action!)

I’m taking today off to focus on the writing that I didn’t do over the weekend and to relax a little. Now if I can just keep all the distractions away.

How one Indie Author sells 400-500 books at ComicCon

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If you’ve read some of my back articles, you know I’m a big fan of tabling at events to meet new readers and sell books. I’m also a fan of math… but I also really hate math—at least I hate algebra. I like the kind of math that helps me decide where my boundaries and expectations can be set. For example, I know that I generally make about $9-11 per book sold at a convention so I need to move about 15 books to break even on a table or booth that costs me $150. For small/mid-sized cons I typically sell about one book per 2-0.5% (I usually sell about 25 books per every 2,000-3,000 people in attendance. I could get a tighter average, but I don’t generally trust the accuracy of attendance numbers for cons that size—they tend to rely on table sales to stay afloat and want their headcounts to look good and feel they are “technically truthful” by counting folks twice if they enter, leave, and re-enter. They might also count vendors and con staff, etc.)

Knowing what you normally do is obviously beneficial. But so is knowing what could be possible. While I tend to sell about 30 at these sized events, I’ve doubled that figure almost 50% of the time (1 part increasing product, 1 part being good/getting better at cold sales, 1 part good product, 1 part great marketing materials.) I had a chance to chat with Lydia Sherrer on a Facebook Group we are both a part of. We do much of the same things, but she scaled up her efforts and hit where I’d like to get to with her sales booth. I’ll be giving it a run soon, but she lays out exactly how she sells hundreds of books at the conventions she does.

Check out her methods …

Lydia’s methods are reposted on this blog with her permission and draw from two articles she wrote and shared with her fellow authors. You can (and should check her out at all her pertinent links, here: http://lydiasherrer.com/contact ) First, I’ll show you her original post about selling 380 books, followed by her subsequent post about hitting 450 sales in one weekend!

How I sold 380 paperbacks at a weekend comic convention

Some authors have asked me before about how I sell so many books at conventions, so I thought I’d do a post here with some insights I’ve learned over the years for you all to pick through and see what might be helpful for you.

First of all, to understand my situation, I write a clean urban fantasy series that targets Harry Potter fans and cat-lovers (it has elements of cozy mystery and there’s a talking cat in it). So starting out I’m writing in a very popular genre targeting a very large fan base, so these methods aren’t necessarily going to get the same results as a book in some small niche genre.

Second of all, I’ve been publishing for 3 years and have 7 books out (5 in my main series, 2 spinoffs). When I first started and only had 2 books out, I still sold a lot of books comparatively, but keep in mind that the more books you have (specifically in the same series) the more books you will sell.

Third, I’m an extrovert, and have been selling things for a while. First it was Mary Kay, then it was art, now it’s books. There is a definite skill to engaging people face-to-face and pitching a product. If you aren’t an extrovert and you don’t like talking to people, that doesn’t mean you can’t sell books, but it does mean you will have to learn to put on your “engaging” face at an event and be willing to talk so that people have a reason to buy your books.

Okay, so keeping all that in mind, I just got back from the Lexington Comic and Toy Convention in Lexington Kentucky. It is a four day convention, and this year they had about 20k people attending (which is down from 33k last year because the convention center is being renovated and has less space, but to my great surprise, I sold almost twice as many books this year as last year). In this weekend, with a total of 27 hours of convention time over four days, and with the help of my husband and one assistant, I sold 380 books for a gross profit of about $3800.

That is a lot of paperback books. How did I do it? Read on.

This is my third year at Lexington CC, and I’m a known entity there. A good third of my sales were from returning readers getting the next book/s in the series, and people who had seen me there previous years and finally decided now to buy a book. So, if you are just starting out, don’t feel bad if you don’t sell a lot of books. KEEP AT IT. Remember the law of 7 touches (it often takes a customer 7 exposures to a product before they buy, so the more you can get in front of eyes, the better).
I do a ton of bundle deals. Only about 10% of my sales were of just one book. Most of the sales were either the first two books (I do a 2 for $20 deal) or the first two books with my cat novella thrown in for $5 (so 3 books for $25). That is an easy deal for the customer, it is nice even numbers with clear savings (I have my individual book prices prominent so they can see how much they are saving with the deal). My other popular bundles are the 5 book series for $55, and all my books for $70 (though I don’t sell many full sets compared to just books 1 and 2). But a BIG help this year and upping my sales numbers was my novella about the talking cat in the series, which was normally $7 but I threw in for $5 if they bought any other book. First of all, my audience loves cats, and second, it is a very low amount to add on so it is easy to convince people to do it.

NOTE: I price all my books so that at a bundle discount, I’m making 50% profit (so sale cost is twice the cost of printing/shipping). That way when I do sell a few full price, I’m making some extra money, but if I do mostly bundle deals, I’m still able to profit and cover expenses.

I actively ask for sales. THIS IS HUGE! I. Ask. People. To. Buy. My. Books. I know that sounds super scary, or maybe super offensive and pushy, but if you do it right, you end up making a lot of people happy, and you make money. They key to this is asking questions to engage the con-goers passing your table and narrow down who is your target audience. Here’s my method. I could probably teach this method in a class and make a ton of money, but I just want to help other authors get the readers they deserve, so here it is free:

–1) Watch the crowd, and for anyone passing whose eyes linger on my table/banner more than a few seconds, I ask them “Hi there! Do you like to read?” (AND, anyone wearing fan material of my target genre, so people with Harry Potter t-shirts, robes, cosplay, etc as an example. I’ve also gotten good over the years at figuring out what my target audience looks like in terms of gender/age range/what type of clothes they wear, so I can usually spot them in a crowd. If that sounds creepy, it isn’t, I promise, it’s just paying attention over hundreds and hundreds of customer interactions).

–2) If they answer yes (which most do), I ask them if they like magical adventure, snarky humor, and talking cats (which are three “keywords” for my books, that is three things about them that my target audience like, so if you like them, you are probably my target audience). If they seem at all interested, I do one of three things:

–3a) Only slightly interested and looking like they want an excuse to keep walking, I hand them one of my flyers which is a picture of my book on the front and a blurb on the back, and say something like “Here, take one of my flyers, we’ll be here all weekend if you decide you’d like some really fun books signed by the author herself!”

3b) Somewhat interested but looking like they could easily move on if given a reason, I hand them one of my books turned so the back synopsis is facing them and say “great! well if you like those things you’d probably enjoy my books, would you like to read the back of the first one to see what it is about?” VERY FEW PEOPLE say no when you hand them something, so it is a great way to get them interested without seeming pushy salesy. This is also a GREAT method for introverts or people who are shy about talking/selling, you let your book do the talking for you.

3c) Looking excited and interested in the books (this is a fair number of people, especially when I mention a talking cat). For these people I give them my 15-20 second elevator pitch for the series and then hand them my first book and say 3b) because that gets the product in their hands and gets them thinking about buying.

–4) After they have read the back of the book, unless they ask a question and start engaging me themselves, I ask them “Does that sound like something you think you’d enjoy? Or “Does that sound like a fun story?” If they say yes, I go straight into pointing out my bundle deals. If they seem skeptical, I mention that the books are great for fans of things like Harry Potter, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, etc, and probe them a bit to find out what kind of books they like to read, looking for a way to relate that to my books (if applicable) so they can form a good comparison in their mind. Then I say something like “if you’re interested in taking home some books, I have these special bundle deals this weekend” and let them know about how they can save money while getting a fun book they will really enjoy.

Selling books is all about identifying your target audience, hooking them with “keywords” showing them they will enjoy what is in your books, then showing them the value they will get when they buy (a great story and book sales/bundles), as well as overcoming objections (taking card as well as cash, emphasizing the value of a signed paperback copy vs. getting an ebook online, etc).

This is sort of already covered in my selling method of #3, but UPSELL UPSELL UPSELL!!! No matter what they say they’d like to buy, always ask for that next sale up. So if they want Book 1, mention the value of getting Books 1 and 2 for $20, since “you know you’ll want the next book as soon as you’re done with the first” and “why torture yourself and make yourself wait for the next book” etc. Don’t be pushy, just make sure they are aware of the sale they are passing up on. At least half of my sales come from upselling. This is basic marketing, I’m not reinventing the wheel or anything. You know how at fast food places they always ask what else you want? And they always ask if you want to make it a supersize meal? That’s up-selling.
I have really pretty covers. Many, many people stop because my covers are colorful and eye-catching. I did my research of my target market, looked at bestselling books in my genre on Amazon, and hired a professional cover designer. I also put my book covers on all my banners, which can be seen from a ways away.
I buy TWO artist tables right beside each other (I’m in the artist section at conventions, I rarely buy the big 10X10 booths because that is extra space I don’t need and it puts me among comic book and toy sellers instead of among the artists and crafters where people are looking to buy indie type stuff.) That gives me enough space for all my books AND gives me space for two people to be selling books at the same time. I always do shows with either me and my husband, or us two plus a helper, sometimes two helpers so we can all get more breaks. You can only sell so many items an hour, so having two people pitching/engaging the crowd at the same time doubles the amount you can sell.

——–

So there you go. That is all after, of course, I know I’ve written a good book that my target audience loves to read. Obviously some of the things I do won’t work for you, or you’ll have to adjust it to fit your books/situation. But everything I do is based on basic marketing strategies.

If you have any questions about anything I mentioned above, or other questions about how I do shows, feel free to ask in the comments. As long as you know your target audience, know what makes them tick, and you are willing to engage the people walking by your table, you can sell a good number of books. Good luck!

***Addendum***

DO NOT STEAL CUSTOMERS FROM THE VENDORS ON EITHER SIDE OF YOU!! This is extremely rude and you wouldn’t want others to do it for you, so don’t do it to others. This is the exact reason why I try to make sure there is always a non-author vendor on either side of me so that I’m not directly competing with my neighbors. This is also why I prefer doing comic conventions as opposed to book fairs, where everyone else is selling books too. It just makes it easier to not accidentally steal a customer.

The way to avoid accidentally stealing customers is to make sure to wait until a person looks at your booth before engaging them. If someone is standing in front of your booth but looking at your neighbor’s booth, don’t say anything! Wait until they look your way. If they are standing in front of your neighbor’s booth and looking at yours, you might even want to wait until they are in your space before you speak, just to be safe.

Also, if you ARE around other authors and the person you are talking to happens to mention they like a genre you don’t sell, then immediately point them to your closest author neighbor who sells that genre. You might even ask the authors around you for some of their bookmarks so you can give them out to people who might like their books. Also, once you are done with your sale, you can tell your customer, oh by the way, if you like these sorts of books, you should totally also check out XYZ author over there because her books are also amazing!! This is NOT a zero sum game, readers love reading tons of books, and the more books they buy, the more books they will read (including yours). So support your fellow authors and share the love!

****Addendum #2****

Someone wrote how they have trouble asking for sales because they hate it when other people sell to them, and I thought my response might be helpful since it is a common problem:

I am the exact same way, I hate it when people try to sell me stuff! So look at it this way: if you follow my instructions, you will be weeding out the people who A) don’t like to read and B) don’t like reading your type of book (because you are fishing for what they like with your keywords and figuring out if they like reading your genre, etc). So if you get to the selling part, all you are doing is showing them the benefit and joy they will get from an awesome product that you can provide them.

Let me ask you this: you buy stuff you don’t need, right? Of course you do! You buy things for your enjoyment, things that will make you happy and bring you pleasure. Everyone does, and it is a good and right thing to do. It is good to find joy in life. So, why wouldn’t you encourage people to buy one of your books if you know it will bring them joy? That is why knowing your target audience is so important. I’m not “cold selling,” where I’m just trying to get everyone to buy my books regardless of whether or not I think they will like it. I KNOW my books are good, and I know the kind of reader who likes them, so when I find those readers, I do my best to encourage them to buy my books because I KNOW they will enjoy them. See? You are helping the reader find something they like and convincing them to pamper themselves a little. After all, it’s only $10-20 bucks, right? That’s like, a meal. Nobody’s life is going to be hurt if they splurge a little and get a good book that they are going to like.

Now, one thing that is hard to do is believing in your book and believing that it will bring your reader joy. I have imposter syndrome just as bad as the next author. I squirm inside every time I tell people my books are good and that they will enjoy them, and a little voice tells me “liar, your books suck and nobody should waste their money on them.” But, I have over 400 five-star reviews for my series between Amazon and Goodreads, and THAT MANY PEOPLE CAN’T ALL BE WRONG about my books being fun to read. So, instead of listening to that voice in my head, I smile and tell people they are great books and if they like XYZ (in my case Harry Potter, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Supernatural), then they will like my books too.

 

 

How I sold 450 paperbacks at a comic convention

Some of you might remember my [earlier aritlce] detailing how I sold 380 books at a comic convention… I thought I’d add some new things I learned at my latest convention this past weekend. I didn’t think I could beat 380, and was completely blown away when I counted up my sales and got 450 books. The previous convention I did was a 4 day and so I figured that contributed to my high sales then. Since this one was only 3 days and slightly smaller, I expected to sell about 300 books. Boy was I pleasantly wrong!

Here are a couple details so you can get an accurate idea of the environment that made this possible:

Most factors were the same:

-major convention (between 20-30k attendees)

-I had TWO tables in the creator alley. Having twice the space enables me and my assistants to all sell books simultaneously

-I had 7 books there: 5 in a main series, 1 spinoff novella, and 1 backstory novel

-I had 2-3 people selling books at the same time (me + husband + assistant)

-I had good traffic flow (not a major spot/end cap, but near the end and with plenty of space for customers).

Things that were different:

-my tables were 8ft instead of 6ft. Not sure how much of a difference that made, but maybe a bit more room helped?

-my assistant this time was an author herself of several years and experienced at selling at cons*

-I re-structured my book bundles slightly**

-I made physical “book bundles” and tied them up in gold ribbon to display front and center on my table***

*: In addition to me and my husband, I always have at least one other person helping me sell books. This time my assistant was a fellow author in the same genre and she wanted to study my sales technique, so I happily welcomed her to my booth for the weekend. Both me and my husband are experienced salespeople, and my friend who joined us was a fast learner and very skilled herself, so I had 2-3 people (we rotated so one of us could take a break when needed) pitching passersby and selling books at all times. This is the second time I have “apprenticed” a fellow author at my table (though the first time the gal I worked with was a brand new author and hadn’t sold at cons before), teaching them sales techniques in return for their help over the weekend. As you can see in my numbers, both times (380 the first, 450 the second) payed off well. My author friends were also able to learn a lot over the weekend to apply to their own book sales going forward, specifically things like perfecting their elevator pitch, identifying their target audience, how to hook in potential readers and then close the sale, how to overcome customer objections, etc.

**: I have the retail price of each book displayed on it, so that my customer can easily see the difference between the “normal” individual price, and the book bundle prices. Previously my bundles were:

-First 2 books in the series for $20 (normally $24)

-All 5 books in the series for $55 (normally $66)

-all 7 books available for $70 (normally $86, plus they also got two free cat snark buttons)

-Finally, I would throw in my normally $7 novella for just $5 with the purchase of any other book.

THIS year, I changed the middle bundle (5 for $55) to the first 4 books in the series for $45 (normally $52), and gave away one cat snark pin with that bundle. I didn’t sell a whole lot of those, but it was an easier step from the 2/20 to 4/45 than to the 5/55. The biggest thing was that we REALLY pushed the $5 add-on novella. Once you get the commitment to something, then suggest a slight add on with savings and super extra value (the novella is about a talking cat, which is solid gold to my target audience), then they will often add it in. About 100 of my 450 books sold were the novella, and only about 1/4 of those 100 were sold at the $7 price, the rest were add ons, mostly novella + BK1 ($17) or novella + BK 1 & 2 ($25).

***: Instead of just having a sign that listed the bundles and savings to be had by getting them, I actually took the physical books, stacked them up, and wrapped them in pretty gold ribbon and used them as “display models” in the center of my table, upon which sat the sign declaring the “exclusive weekend deals.” Honestly, I didn’t think it would make much of a difference, but I sold 17 bundles of 7 books priced at $70 a bundle (which I threw in two free “cat snark” buttons if they got my whole set of books), and so that was a solid 1/4 of all my total sales. So, maybe seeing the pretty display set helped tempt people into buying! I also noticed that compared to my previous most profitable year at this con where I averaged two books per individual sale, this time around I averaged three books. I also doubled my total number of sales (number of people who bought a product, whatever that product was), which could partly be because I had more efficient/experienced people selling, but also maybe because people were more tempted to buy the bundles.

HOW TO APPLY IT TO YOU:

Obviously these exact details might not translate well to your own situation, but you can take the principles here and figure out how to tweak them to fit your books.

-Try to find someone to help you at your table. It’s not always possible, but maybe bribe a friend with a free pass to the event and break time to walk around and enjoy themselves in return for helping out. Two people sell twice as many books as one.

-If you have more than one book, always, always, always bundle! (if you only have one book, that’s fine! Do your best with what you’ve got, but write that next book ASAP!!). Writing series REALLY helps with this. It is always easier to sell series, and many readers love getting multiple books in a series at a time, even if they’ve never read the first one, as long as you pitch it to them convincingly.

-Think about price points and ease of sale for the customer. You always want to make it as easy as humanly possible for someone to make an impulse decision and hand you money. It’s easy to hand someone a single bill ($5, $10, $20) so try to price things at that price point if possible. $20 seems to be a sweet spot for me, I wonder maybe because ATMs give you 20s when you withdraw money, so most people have those in their pockets.

-ALWAYS UPSELL! It is possible to do this in a polite and winsome way, focusing on the benefit and good it is doing to your customer. I’ll let them know my discounts and how much of a good deal it is/how much they will enjoy having that extra book, then I say “but whatever works for you, just let me know,” then I shut my mouth and let them decide. Always accept whatever they want with a smile and a thank you. (it doesn’t hurt at all to point out in a humorous, tongue-in-cheek way that books are healthy and educational, so they are investing in their well-being, haha! I also tell them that because books ARE so healthy, they totally deserve to treat themselves to lots of them. To help lessen the sting of a “no, I’m watching my spending” and keep it from being awkward, I always laugh and praise them on how smart and responsible they are, way more so than me because I splurge on books all the time!).

-Spend some time thinking about who your target audience is, and what it is about your books that will add value to their life. It can’t “just” be that the books are good, or interesting. People have ZILLIONS of good, interesting things to capture their attention. So you have to do better than that. Think about what makes your book unique and what your specific target audience will most enjoy from the experience of reading your book, then use that in your sales pitch. Mine is magical adventure, snarky humor, and a talking cat. Those three phrases always make my target reader’s eyes light up and they are eager to hear my pitch.

-While it is always good to get out there and see and be seen, you need to use your time wisely. I like to say that any convention is worth going to at least once, if you want to try it. But I always prefer to ask other authors where they’ve been where sales and attendance were good, where management was reasonable, and people were eager to buy books. In my first two years I’d pretty much go to any event I could no matter how abysmal my sales were, just to get myself out there, and that is an okay strategy starting out. But be smart about it. Ask what the expected attendance is of an event before you commit. Don’t expect to sell a bunch of books at a local craft fair (you might sell some, or maybe a lot if you write about something related to crafts/that is your target audience, but don’t expect to sell much scifi/fantasy at a craft fair). Find out what events will have your target audience, and seek those out. Introduce yourself to the organizers and ask how you can help promote their event. Basically, be a smart business person, research your event beforehand, and decide if the number of books you can reasonably expect to sell (rough estimate is 1-2% of people who come through the door) is worth losing a whole weekend worth of writing + expense of the event. It’s okay not to make a profit at the beginning, and once you start breaking even that’s great! But if you are consistently not making a profit after several years of attending events, you need to re-examine your cover, your blurb, your banners, and your sales pitch and figure out why you aren’t selling books. Because it CAN BE DONE!

 

 

So you want to collaborate on book?

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Have you considered co-writing or jointly writing anything? It can be a great way to increase your reach by tapping the platforms and efforts of all writers involved.

Some of the biggest roadblocks to that are knowing how to split commissions and report sales, and the trust involved in such an effort. To top that off, it also creates increased tax and reporting obligations for whomever that is. There is an easy solution: a service called BundleRabbit.

First off, BundleRabbit.com is a website that grew out a different but similar sort of need: creating boxed sets/ebook packages—which is especially relevant for those who want to join big multi-author bundles to try and shoot out a huge book deal to find new readers, multiply marketing efforts, attempt bestseller runs, etc. Though that is not our purpose right now.

Some time back, I had thought of creating a book some time back that I could collaborate with some authors on. There were many great reasons in my mind to do that, including all of the above (but especially the expanded platform opportunities.) In addition to those, it would also reduce the overall workload of the writing, but perhaps the biggest reason was that the book was nonfiction and explored both matters of faith and speculative fiction elements. This is one of the primary reasons I began my writing career and so it perfectly meets my ideals as a matter of calling.

I devised a concept for the book: a collection of likeminded authors would talk about popular fiction series and interweave their themes and elements with scripture as a means to illustrate and explain those things from a Christian perspective. That would draw in readers and fans of those books/series. Further, we would also each do the same again for a second group of devotional readings based on our fiction series to lend credibility to those titles by association and also gain the opportunity to expose our works to new potential readers. Thus, the Faith in Fiction series was born.

The preceding paragraph is all, of course, conceptual. It could work across a variety of topics. Nonfiction is an obvious choice, but it would also work with anthology publishing and other collaborative collections or even co-written stories.

I had worked out what percentage I would charge for the management (I personally paid for things like cover art, etc.), editing, and each author percentage beforehand—with a total amounting to 100%. BR takes ten percent off the top for their services. Those services obliterate each of the roadblocks I had mentioned at the start of this article. They also handle the legal/contract portion by having each contributor sign up for an account and agree to the terms of the collaboration and their percentage of the profits.

The book itself is published to multiple services (so it is a “broad” release) including Amazon, Kobo, Apple, BN, and as a paperback (via KDP). Each author can also purchase author copies by contacting the service via email with a request. I did the math and they charge the actual print cost without any inflation (good on them—it appears it’s a service that really cares about authors rather than price gouging). They don’t charge a monthly fee and get paid when you do; I like that arrangement.

Once all of my contributors had agreed to the terms and registered, it took a few days for everything to go live, which is expected across the breadth of platforms. All in all it was not any more complicated than publishing a book directly through KDP (the steps looked different but were basically the same). You will want to have your files prepared, keywords picked, and formats converted to mobi, epub, and cover pdf graphic for print prior to starting the process or you may have to restart again.

Having used the service now and seen each step on the collaborative side of their services I can recommend it, and they have more services and options than I required (for instance, you can include a percentage of profits for an illustrator which is handy for children’s books and other sorts of collaborations.)

You will still need to do all of the other things you would do (marketing, newsletters, adverts, etc.) in order to make the project a success, but “many hands make light work,” as they say!

State of Writing

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Nanowrimo is coming up! And I’m deciding not to do it this year… I started early, instead. I’m trying to use my November focus to set a goal of finishing my second book in the Hidden Rings of Myrddin the Cambion series and I’m already half done as of last night. I’d also like to complete a detailed outline of Wolves of the Tesseract 3 before December so I can be plugging away at that book. I’ve got lots of time off between Nov/Dec so I expect things to go pretty well for my goals.

In other news, I’m working on a few other authory things as well. I have my biggest comiccon (in my homestate) of the year and expect to hit a new high-sales record for the third time this year, and I’m about to pay for my booth at the third largest convention in the US… I really don’t like traveling… but I do love selling books!

Cover Design Expectations and Buyer Triggers

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I know this used to post a weekly article for all you ravenous Indies… I’m still stockpiling data to write posts about, but I’m trying to complete so many WIPs at the moment that my blogging is taking a back seat… I did, however, participate in an online conversation about cover design in my writer’s circle and someone brought up this topic and shared a video I wanted to pass along.

Hopefully I will break some of  this down in the future with a detailed article. In the meanwhile, this video might give you much to think about as you design covers. Heck, you might consider redesigning your own titles. I know I relaunched with new covers at the beginning of the year while subconsciously doing some of what this video talks about (finding the common thread in like promo materials) and my sales doubled.

If you aren’t happy with your sales, even if you feel like your pitching at events/artist tables is solid, check the copywriting and the cover. Start with the cover, and then the writing. I bet sales improve with a pro-cover (even something picked up at Fiverr… it’s where I got all my new covers.)

 

State of Writing

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Very busy in my non-writing life, which is pretty normal for me, but I’ve been working on some things that have kept me from writing as much as I’d like. I’m throwing a little more attention at it now, leading up to November’s nanowrimo. I’m planning to complete The Gunslinger of Distaslias (book 2 of my Hidden Rings series) as my Nano entry. It’s pretty well outlined, along with the rest of the series which I hope to complete next year, but I need to get this one out of the way to stay on track for my writing timeline. I’m due to complete Wolves of the Tesseract 3 by the end of Feb.

Sidenote, I have two books scheduled to drop in November: my comedy and a thoughtful/nerdy devo book for my faith-based audience. I’ll post info about both over these next couple weeks, and promise to get a new info-blog up about some writing and marketing advice!

Increase Reviews with This Simple Trick

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The data is in: most humans are lazy. But you probably knew that already. Obviously, I mean other humans and not you… if you’re on my blog, you’ve already slain the procrastinary beast and written a whole book… a book that you need reviews for, but asking a reader to leave a review by navigating to amazon and typing in an overwhelming few letters, followed by the relentless scrolling to the review section followed by the seemingly endless finger movements required to type and submit “I liked it,” is just a bridge too far. Seriously, folks are lazy.

Only half a percent to a little more than one percent of readers typically leave reviews. Usually, you will need 500-1,000 sales to break out of that 5 review hole (before algorithms start to help out and many ad services have a 5 review minimum.) Here’s one trick I recently learned about to help increase reviews: create a direct link to your book’s review tool…

Wouldn’t it be great if a link sent your reader directly to the book’s review? You could ask readers to leave their thoughts right away in your book’s back matter—especially handy with an ebook when your page could look like this:

The End.

I love hearing feedback from my readers. Please leave me your thoughts and tell others what you enjoyed about this book. One quick click on this link will take you to my review page, thanks!

Go ahead. Click the link to see what it looks like. (It is the review page for Wolf of the Tesseract, my first in series book with a nice number of reviews that I bled and cried in order to get.) The link normally looks like this: https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review?asin=1632272326

To create the link it is as easy as deconstructing and changing the last few digits. Cut off the ISBN at the end and include your own, instead: https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review?asin=yourisbn10here

I know that the link says ASIN, and I have been told by others that the ASIN works, too, but I have so far only generated errors with the ASIN and only had success with an ISBN10, so use that whenever possible (and hopefully this error will correct itself since most ebooks only have ASIN).  ISBN is most appropriate to physical books… and how do I think lazy people will respond to typing out a long URL? That’s not any easier! But we can make it easier.

The End.

I love hearing feedback from my readers. Please leave me your thoughts and tell others what you enjoyed about this book. You can go straight my review page by typing in https://amzn.to/2mid3l7  Thanks!

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Make it as simple as possible for readers to leave a review and your count should increase! I hope this helps.

The two tools used are the Bitly Url Shortener and the QR Code Generator

 

State of Writing

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It’s been too long since I wrote a blog (almost a month now.) I promise it’s for a few good reasons. Firstly, my day job has been very busy. Secondly, my weekends have been packed with conventions. And thirdly, I’ve been pretty deep in edits and other book work.

Dekker’s Dozen 3 is in the bag and ready for ARC readers, Ashes of Ailushurai is still in progress, and Wolf of the Tesseract 3 is in prewriting (once the outline is done I hope to be in nanowrimo season, and plan to write my next Hidden Rings of Myrddin the Cambion). I’m also on the final edit of The Shadowless. I’ll probably share cover art soon.

The business side of the industry is also bogging me down. I’ve been reading books by different experts and looking for ways to take my writing to the next level. Hopefully that happens and soon!