Macy Babineaux's Blog, page 7

Feel the Sting

I woke up to a back-to-back 1 and 2-star rating of Dragon Blue on Goodreads. No review left, just bad ratings. That’s a little rough, after waves of 4 and 5-star reviews and written reviews of people saying what they liked about it. There’s been a little negative feedback so far. Some people have said there’s too much sex or that it’s too explicit in parts. One review said the central relationship transitioned too fast from dislike into love. That was fair.

But if they don’t say why they didn’t like it, you just have to sit there and take it. Nothing to mull over or think about how to improve. Just a little “you suck”. Ah well. I’ve got a pretty thick skin. Got to get used to such things. Just glad they weren’t the first ratings.

Also in the kind-of-sucky category, yesterday I had two promos going, one on Outlaw and one on Dragon Blue. Sales were, um, not good. I would think holiday weekends would be good for book sales. People might be going to the beach or a cabin or something, and they want something to read while they’re there. Or maybe they want to hide in their rooms when relatives are visiting and just read. But in my limited experience so far, that’s not the case. Maybe all those prospective readers are actually busy with friends and family, or engaged in activities other than reading. Fair enough. I’m going to be reluctant to schedule promos on holiday weekends anymore. It’s all part of the learning process.

So far my most successful promo has been one targeted specifically to shifter readers, which makes a lot of sense. So I think for Dragon Red I’m going to really try to hammer those genre-specific promos and just avoid the generic ones.

We’re going to grill some hamburgers later and just kind of take it easy today. I’m going to try to get some writing in, but we’ll see how that goes. Happy Labor Day!

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Another Promo and a Nice Boost

Yesterday was a good day. I ran a promo suggested by a fellow writer from a forum. The promo was specifically targeted at readers of shifter romances, but I hadn’t come across it before. As a result, Dragon Blue had 46 sales and 2K page reads, which was great. Good enough to vault it up into a couple of different top 100 subcategories and near 5K overall (5,008 was the highest rank I saw). So that’s pretty sweet. I was listening to a podcast yesterday where they talked about “stickiness” for books in the Kindle store, the ability to keep them from slipping in the rankings, without constantly having to bolster them with advertising. The problem was, I didn’t really get at what the author was trying to say. He seemed to be saying that just a really high-quality cover and blurb made the book sticky, but I’m kind of doubting that’s it.

I’m still thinking what’s mostly going on in this market, like so many others, is the economic phenomenon of cumulative advantage, defined in this source as an inequality ” in which a favorable relative position becomes a resource that produces further relative gains”. In other words, being successful makes you more successful. It’s the concept of the rich getting richer. In specific terms of the Kindle market, my intuition is that breaking into the top 100 in one or more subcategories confers some advantage in terms of free visibility. I’m also guessing that breaking into the top 20, the first page that readers see, is likely to confer an even larger advantage, leading to a lot of inertia for a title.

I mean, of course the quality of the cover and blurb are important. But I think the way the market is structured probably perpetuates success by disproportionately rewarding the successful. I’m guessing this author was finally able to punch through into the very top of the rankings, and that’s the primary factor in what made his book stick. Of course, I could be totally wrong. But I’m also guessing there are tons of high-quality books, with high-quality covers and blurbs, that only drift up to a certain ranking before plunging into the abyss.

Anyway, I was also a little stuck in the plotting on my giveaway novella, and I figured out how to plot the last half of the story. So yesterday was kind of a win-win. I’m going to try to knock out some more words on it today. Hope you all are having a swell weekend.

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Go ARC Team, Go!

Dragon Blue is slipping back down the rankings, which was to be expected. It peaked around 8K overall in the Kindle store, barely poking into one top 100 subcategory before quickly falling out. But I’m running another promo today, so maybe we’ll see a nice surge.

I really want to give a shout out to my ARC readers. I tried to thank them each personally for the reviews (if I missed anyone, sorry!). I ended up with exactly 50 readers. Of those, 23 have left reviews, which is a nearly 50% conversion rate. That’s pretty awesome. I think it’s more reasonable to expect something like 25% of your team to actually leave reviews. With the Exclusive ARC service and organic reviews, there are now 36 total on Amazon. But there are a few readers that came in right before the book was published, so we might get over 40.

My approach seemed to work reasonably well this go-round, so I’ll do the same thing for the next release. Hopefully I can double both the number of people on my team and the number of reviews. And for my readers I really want to maintain a high standard and improve if I can. One comment on Amazon struck a chord with me. The review said the central romance was too fast. That one day Miranda and Corban didn’t like each other at all, then BAM, they were in love. That’s a fair criticism, something to think about going forward. I had in my mind that I wanted their wedding night to be interrupted by the men who took his father reappearing in Xandakar. So I kind of hustled their feelings for each other along a little too fast. For future books, I’ll try to do a better job of showing the relationships evolve.

I’m still working on Switch and Bait. It’s a lot of fun. I hope my newsletter subscribers are going to like it. Meanwhile, I’m sketching out the next dragon book. I’m pretty sure it’s going to involve a lost son of Karth Wildfire, who everyone believed was dead, returning to the clan. I’d also like the main romantic relationship to be between this new character and another kind of shifter, maybe a deer or rabbit, not a prey animal. Forbidden love is almost always a good engine to drive a story, and in the world of Xandakar, dragons are not supposed to fall in love with other non-dragons. The subplot will involve the machinations of Marko and Nevra, introduced in the Epilogue of Dragon Blue. So the general shape of the story is still coming together.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend!

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Novella in Progress

I mentioned in earlier posts that I’m working on a new novella as an exclusive giveaway treat for my newsletter subscribers. It’s called Switch and Bait, and it’s about a team of shifters who take on missions for other magical folks when normal humans aren’t cut out for the job. It’s set in present day, in our world, and there are 3 males and 2 females. They are all different shifter types: wolf, bear, fox, otter, and hare. The main character is Sidney, the hare and also the computer/tech expert for the team. She has a crush on the wolf leader, Cole, but he barely seems to know she exists, and she’s too shy to say anything. She feels marginalized by the other team members as well, and is thinking about leaving the group and skipping town.

So when a doppleganger with the ability to look like any other person offers to switch places with Sidney, she jumps at the chance. The only problem is, her new life is about to get very dangerous, very fast. To survive, she’ll need the help of her team, and that won’t be easy when they’re convinced she’s not even gone. To make things worse, the doppleganger is doing what Sidney never had the courage to do. She’s seducing Cole.

Here’s the cover:

I’m pretty happy with the way the cover turned out. But if anyone has any feedback (positive or negative), please let me know!

Quick update on Dragon Blue: We’re up to 33 reviews on Amazon, maintaining a 4.6-star avg, which is great. Sales are dropping, but page reads are going way up, which is interesting. Yesterday the book had nearly 2000 page reads. I’ve got another promo targeted specifically at shifter readers set up for tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes. I may run another promo or two. Not sure yet. I was feeling a little discouraged that the book didn’t take off on launch, but I got some feedback from some vets that said it’s way too early to tell. I think I’m actually off to a reasonable start. I’d obviously like to make more money month over month, but if I’m just focusing on putting out a steady stream of high-quality words, hopefully the success will come.

The post Novella in Progress appeared first on Macy Babineaux.

I mentioned in earlier posts that I’m working on a new no...

I mentioned in earlier posts that I’m working on a new novella as an exclusive giveaway treat for my newsletter subscribers. It’s called Switch and Bait, and it’s about a team of shifters who take on missions for other magical folks when normal humans aren’t cut out for the job. It’s set in present day, in our world, and there are 3 males and 2 females. They are all different shifter types: wolf, bear, fox, otter, and hare. The main character is Sidney, the hare and also the computer/tech expert for the team. She has a crush on the wolf leader, Cole, but he barely seems to know she exists, and she’s too shy to say anything. She feels marginalized by the other team members as well, and is thinking about leaving the group and skipping town.

So when a doppleganger with the ability to look like any other person offers to switch places with Sidney, she jumps at the chance. The only problem is, her new life is about to get very dangerous, very fast. To survive, she’ll need the help of her team, and that won’t be easy when they’re convinced she’s not even gone. To make things worse, the doppleganger is doing what Sidney never had the courage to do. She’s seducing Cole.

Here’s the cover:

I’m pretty happy with the way the cover turned out. But if anyone has any feedback (positive or negative), please let me know!

Quick update on Dragon Blue: We’re up to 33 reviews on Amazon, maintaining a 4.6-star avg, which is great. Sales are dropping, but page reads are going way up, which is interesting. Yesterday the book had nearly 2000 page reads. I’ve got another promo targeted specifically at shifter readers set up for tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes. I may run another promo or two. Not sure yet. I was feeling a little discouraged that the book didn’t take off on launch, but I got some feedback from some vets that said it’s way too early to tell. I think I’m actually off to a reasonable start. I’d obviously like to make more money month over month, but if I’m just focusing on putting out a steady stream of high-quality words, hopefully the success will come.

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Dragon Blue: Launch Day Recap

Dragon Blue: A Lie That’s True went live exclusively on Amazon yesterday. Of course every author hopes that when they hit the publish button the copies will just fly off the virtual shelf, and before long they’ll be basking on a beach in the Bahamas, sipping something fruity and alcoholic. Alas, that’s the exception, not the rule.

We definitely got off the ground, though we didn’t quite blast into outer space. Here are some numbers:

Dragon Blue has sold 30 copies so far. There were 7 pre-orders, so 23 sales the first day. That’s not horrible, but since I’m pricing at 99 cents, we’re still not sipping those pina coladas just yet. There have also already been about 1300 page reads through KU, which is also not bad. That’s about 9 full read-throughs, give or take.

The book is currently sitting at 8,870 overall in the Amazon Paid Kindle Store. This is the first time I’ve broken 4 digits. Outlaw got as high as 15K, then started dropping. Dragon Blue currently has the following rankings in these categories:

#100 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Women’s Fiction > Fantasy

#143 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal > Demons & Devils

#151 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Women’s Fiction > Action & Adventure

Last night it poked up to #90 in Women’s Fiction > Fantasy, and I expect it to bob in and out of the top 100 in that category, based on what I saw with Outlaw. That Demons & Devils subcategory is a little weird. I put a lot of fantasy related keywords into the listing to make sure I was hitting all the fantasy subcategories. Technically there is mention of a demon in the book, and he’s going to be a central villain in later installments. But I don’t know if I would get any blowback from miscategorization on that one. For now I’ll leave it alone.

On Amazon, the book currently has 26 reviews, with a 4.6 average. Not bad. Fifty would be great, but we’re probably not going to get there. But I think ending up between 30 and 40 by the end of the week is reasonable. On Goodreads, we’ve got 14 ratings with a 4.71 average. But several of my ARC team have let me know they’re still reading, so more reviews should trickle in. I’ve worked my butt off putting together a team of nearly 50 reviewers, and it’s paying off in terms of reviews. But I’m competing with titles that sometimes have hundreds of reviews. I’m going to keep beating the bushes on my next book to keep building my team. My target is 300 ARC readers, which might be a nightmare to moderate, but I think it’s probably a vital key to success. I sent out thank you messages to everyone that left a review. If I’m able to consolidate everyone on a list, that’ll be a lot easier to manage. I’ll start organizing and curating more with the next release.

Today we’ve got 1 sale of Dragon Blue, but already 642 page reads, so the KU people are finding it and reading it. I tried to make it a page-turner. Some of the review feedback says that it starts a little slow but builds up steam. With Dragon Red, I’ll take that feedback to heart and try to hook readers in a lot sooner.

I’m trying to look at the long-term here. Of course I would have liked either of my first two books to take off, but again, that’s the exception. Instead I’m building up a solid ARC team and fan base. I’ll release the next book in the series at 99 cents, but then move it up to either 2.99 or 3.99, so conversions for people wanting to keep reading in the series should actually yield some reasonable income. That’s the hope anyway.

Meanwhile, I’m still plugging away at the giveaway novella. It’s about halfway done. I’ll probably share the cover design tomorrow on that. Anyway, if you were part of my ARC team and/or you bought/borrowed the book the last couple of days, thank you!

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Launch Day!

Dragon Blue is finally live! You can get it for 99 cents in the Amazon store here (free if you belong to Kindle Unlimited).

Launch day is going pretty well so far. As of this writing, I’ve got 10 sales, 6 reviews (4.7 avg) on Amazon, and 4 reviews (4.75 avg) on Goodreads. The ranking is climbing. It’s around 30K in the store overall, but approaching the top 100 in several subcategories. The one the book is ranked highest in is Women’s Fiction>Fantasy, which is fine. My primary category is Romance>Werewolves & Shifters, but that’s a highly competitive category and probably hard to crack.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who has stopped by since I started this blog. I hope it hasn’t all come across as shameless self-promotion, but at least on launch day I kind of have to peddle my wares. I’ll update either later today or tomorrow with new (and hopefully high) numbers.

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Early Review

Dragon Blue launches tomorrow, but I’ve already gotten some early feedback, and it’s been very promising. Of course, Outlaw got good early feedback and strong reviews, but didn’t perform all that well in the market. I’m still guessing that’s a problem with demand and not quality.

Anyway, Ingrid Stephanie Jordan over at her Tumblr blog posted this very nice early review. Here’s a snippet:

Woooooo well I’m blown out of the water.

This book is Phenomenal from beginning to the end, I’m trying to think of a better word, but let me tell you this Lady, Ms. Macy ROCKS !!!!

I think she liked it. I’m hoping a lot of other readers will as well. We’ll see how launch day goes tomorrow.

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Uncertainty

I got some words on the page this week, but not as many as I would have liked. I haven’t been feeling too great, and that’s part of it, but I don’t like making excuses. I need to put the old nose to the grindstone this next week and get a lot more done. I’ve written two novels in the past 60 days, and there’s definitely an impulse to want to just relax and take it easy for a little bit. But I think I need to get a steady workflow going and a stream of new titles into the market if I really want to succeed. So I can’t afford to take it easy.

I have conflicting ideas about how this next launch is supposed to go. Dragon Blue releases on Tuesday. It’s the first in a series, and I don’t know if that’s a slight knock against it, since people may not want to pick up the first book in a series if the others aren’t written yet. I have a substantially higher number of ARC readers this time around, and I’m really hoping that helps. I’ve read in various places that reviews don’t directly impact the Amazon ranking algorithm, that their primary use is quality validation. That hasn’t worked too well on Outlaw, which has above a 4.5 star rating, but isn’t seeing a lot of sales/borrows. There are only 14 reviews, and it’s possibly that there’s some threshold that really validates a book’s quality. I really don’t know.

I just read a report on a forum about an author making over $2K with their first romance book launch. They say they invested a significant amount of money in a cover and editing. I don’t feel like I can justify dropping $1K on such services until I’m seeing some kind of reasonable revenue on my books. I’ve done a solid amount of research on Amazon, and I continually see covers, blurbs, and writing that is, in my opinion, lower quality than what I’m producing. Are they just gaming the system? I feel like, when it comes to covers, mine are good. Not great, but good. I see very highly-ranked titles with abominations for covers. I don’t want to skimp on quality, but I really don’t see forking out hundreds of dollars on a cover until I reach a certain level of success. Maybe it’s one of those catch-22 things, but based on my research, books can do very well with much less quality than what I’m putting out.

Between the ARC service I’m using and my own efforts to build up an ARC team, I’m really hoping to get 25-50 reviews within the first week. I just listened to a podcast in which the author said that the best promo is your next book. I’m only doing a few promos, so we’ll see. I think I’m going to put a lot more resources into promoting the next book and see how that goes. I’m getting good early feedback on Dragon Blue, so I feel like I’m doing something right. We’ll just have to see how things go next week.

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Working on a New Novella

So I’ve started working on a new novella as a giveaway incentive for signing up for my newsletter. The working title is “Switch and Bait”, and it’s a shifter romance based around a team made up of a male wolf, a female hare, a male bear, a female fox, and a male otter. It’s set in our world, present day, but has links to the Xandakar novels. They are basically mercenaries, hired out to do jobs for shifters and other magical customers who either don’t want the attention of humans or don’t think humans can handle the job. The stand-alone novella involves one of the team members, Sidney Swiftpaw, switching places with a doppelganger who can look like any human she wants but can’t take any animal forms. Sidney is the only prey species among the team’s shifters, and she’s also the tech/computer expert. She feels underappreciated by the rest of the team members, so she warily decides to try living another woman’s life temporarily, while the doppelganger takes her place on the team. There are lots of little twists along the way, and it should be fun to write (and I hope to read!).  I’m aiming for 25K-30K.

I’ll probably share the cover here when I’m done with it. I already have a mockup that I really like. Hopefully I can finish it in about a week. Then I’ll make it available as an exclusive bonus for newsletter sign-ups. I’m also going to send it out to existing subscribers. Speaking of which, I’m up into the double-digits now!

The ARC readers on Dragon Blue are already going great. I got some feedback from one yesterday who had finished the book. She loved it, but noticed a few errors. I fixed them and already pushed out an updated version on Amazon. Self-publishing is pretty cool that way. So it’s less than a week before Dragon Blue goes live. I’m not expecting a slam dunk. I think setting your expectations too high is a recipe for disappointment. But I do expect it to do well, better than Outlaw, since it’s a more focused launch and written much better to market.

I don’t really expect steady results until I’m at least three books into the series. I know some readers don’t even want to pick up a book in an unfinished series, for obvious reasons. But once the series is established, they’ll give it a go. My plan is to release and keep Dragon Blue at 99 cents as an intro to the series. Future titles will release at 99 cents for at least two weeks (I’ll experiment with the duration of the launch promo), then bump up to either $2.99 or $3.99 (I’ll experiment with that too). That seems like a reasonable plan.

For right now, I want to do a great job on this novella, which could eventually lead to another series if my newsletter subscribers like the characters. As a newer author, I want to make sure I’m giving new readers a strong incentive to give me a try, and offering them something of value for free seems like a solid way to start that relationship. Then I’ll dive back into Xandakar, book two, which I’ve already started sketching out a little. It’s going to deal primarily with the red dragons, though we’ll probably see representatives from every clan somewhere in the story. I like writing books that are fast-paced, with lots of action, both in and out of the bedroom. I also like surprises, so there will be at least a few thrown in.

Thanks for coming along for the ride!

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