Arthur Slade's Blog, page 2

Aiming For the USA Today Bestselling Stars...

A recent marketing goal of mine was to launch my Amber Fang books onto the USA Bestseller List. It’s perhaps surprising how easy it is (um, until you try it). In order to hit that list, a book has to sell in the vicinity of 6000 copies on three different vendors in the US in the space of a week (in my case the vendors were Amazon, B&N & Apple Books). My reason for aiming for this “feather” in my cap was to get a bit more buzz about the book. And, quite frankly, I was just curious what it would take to get onto that list.

I blustered full steam ahead, full of confidence!

I’ve read the accounts of several authors about how they hit the list—one of the best is by Nicholas Serik: Bestseller Mini Guide (sign up to his newsletter for more advertising tips).

The very basic method is to stack newsletter ads (that is have them run on the same day), run Facebook, Bookbub, and Amazon ads during that week, let folks on your newsletter know, and cross promote with other writers. Oh, and one more big thing, you need to get a featured deal with Bookbub (it's the Olympic Gold Medal of book promo). You pay for that honour, but Bookbub is such a large newsletter with so many readers that you are almost guaranteed to earn your money back. 

I submitted The Amber Fang Boxed set to Bookbub, promising to drop the price to 99c during the sale week (it’s normally $8.99 for all three books). And it was accepted! They at first put the featured deal on a Saturday, which meant the promo wouldn’t benefit from the long tail of sales (Since USA Today measure from Monday to Sunday) so I asked them to move it to a date earlier in the week. And they moved it to a Tuesday, which was very helpful. They placed it in the Supernatural Suspense category, which goes out to 1.2 million people. Their chart said, on average, this promo would account for 1700 sales.

Being in supernatural suspense was perhaps the best fit for this series. That said, it is an odd trilogy—a mixture of spies, assassins, vampires, and more scientific than supernatural (vampires in this world evolved alongside us—so no one is turning into a bat in this book). So it’s a hard series to classify. More on that later.

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I also applied for a grant to help offset the costs of this promotion. I live in Saskatchewan (it’s a prairie province in Canada) and we have a government agency called Creative Saskatchewan. Their motto is Create Export Succeed. If you are a Saskatchewan artist, writer, publisher, filmmaker, singer etc. this organization helps you get your product out to the world. I sent in a proposal and the jury awarded my project a grant that would pay half the expenses. This was both timely and particularly helpful because the grant meant that I could push the promotion further than my budget would have allowed on its own.

This was my budget (this is in Canadian dollars, so if you’re in the US don’t freak out! Just subtract about 25%). I believed this would be enough $ to reach the USA Today Bestseller list.

I followed the pattern of stacking ads leading up to the Bookbub Featured Deal. Amazon ads were hard to get going (they really don’t work well for big promotions) and Facebook, as per usual started costing more per click each day as it burned through the audience. There must be a magical meta world where Cost Per Click stays low forever, right?

Alas, not in this world.

Here are a few of the ads:

This was the most popular one. The “Buffy” quote really caught people’s attention. And the quote combined with the sell line, I think gave new readers a good idea of the contents of the book. And, judging by comments on the ads, only a few were readers who'd seen my work.

And that’s about it. Oh, except for the conclusions:

The Good News:

Bookbub was right when it predicted 1700 sales! The book sold 1421 copies on the day the Bookbub Feature Deal came out. I’m sure the long tail has added several hundred after that so it would be well over the average amount. Promo that day shot the book all the way up to #46 on Amazon, which is the highest point any of my books have been on that store. Amber also clawed her way to #14 on B&N and to the top 100 on Apple Books. Oh, here, why don’t I just show you too many screen shots of the successes:

Overall, in all markets, the book sold 5785 copies. I really wish every week could be like that. I’d be living in a Scottish castle. Of course, I’d move it to the Caribbean.

The Bad News:

I’ll cut to the chase. The book didn’t make the USA Today Bestseller list. Alas! And darn! And maybe a few of those other words my dad taught me (I call them tractor fixin’ words). During the sale week it sold 3757 copies on Amazon, 253 on Apple and 264 on B&N. That’s 4274 copies and short of what was needed. By about Thursday of the sale week, it was clear that it might not make the numbers needed and I decided at that point not to press down on the gas, as far as spending. Or pour on the gas, either. I did go over budget on Facebook ads (it’s too easy to do that!). Am I disappointed? Yes. It’s like mentally stubbing your toe. Or your ego. And I’m now hoping the long tail will keep the book selling.

The Conclusion:

Why didn’t it sell more? One reason is that many of my readers in Amazon read my Dragon Assassin series and aren’t interested in vampires. So if Amazon sent them an email about this book, they’d look at the cover and see an assassin, but no dragon. No thanks. Readers don’t tend to follow authors on Amazon as much as they follow genres. And I also didn’t do any author swaps, which was intentional because most of the authors I have connections with now are doing dragon stories. And a third reason is that the book might exist in too many genres. It makes the book great fun! But, again, readers who expect Twilight won’t like this book. Or even readers looking for supernatural Urban Fantasy, won’t find the supernatural in this book. That said, the readers who love it really love it. And the readers who meh! it, really meh it!

There are always meh sayers.

Would I do it all again? Of course. Not with this book because a second push would give diminishing returns (then again, never say never). But someday, I’ll try again.

Cheers,

Art

How Self Publishing Saved My Bacon in 2020 OR How I Spent $11,000 in Ads in One Month And Didn’t Have a Heart Attack OR How I Kept Writing This Blog Title Until The Universe Faded into…

This is either a nervous writer…or someone scored a touchdown.

Okay. Let’s start with the big one. Yep, back in February of this year of woe (2020) I spent $11,153.98 US in advertising (mostly for my Dragon Assassin series) but earned back $15,340 for a profit of $3341.88 US. Those are all insane numbers, especially the first one, so let me explain how I got into this.

I started self publishing my out of print books back in 2011 and I have also experimented with self publishing my Amber Fang series and have made a few thousand dollars each year in extra income. I’ve taken several courses on advertising (Self Publishing Formula Advertising Course being one of them) and read far too many books on marketing (David Gaughran being a favourite). About two years ago I noticed that there were several people doing well on Amazon with “dragon rider” books, that is books for YA that feature characters riding dragons. I had been writing more fantasy, so I wrote a series called Dragon Assassin. Scholastic Books has the rights in Canada, but I self publish the ebooks in the US, UK, Germany, Australia and NZ on Amazon. I am what they call a hybrid writer.

Hybrid always makes me picture a writer with feathery wings and a long scaly tail. But I digress.

You could add wings to this author if you want. That would make him a hybrid. Also, which Macbook is he using?

In 2019 I first released the ebooks as episodes (about 100 page stories). People will buy them outright or use their Kindle Unlimited account to read them and I get paid for the page reads. They were well received and earned back the invested money and a tidy profit. This is what the whole episodic series looks like:

Each episode had its own cover. Click the images to see what they look like on Amazon.

Every three episodes can be combined into a traditional novel. So this year I released them as “omnibuses”—and this lead to a much higher reach in audience. This is what they look like in that format:

Look upon these omnibi and despair. Sorry, I do like that Ozymandius poem.

I was still finishing writing the series (last one came out last week!). But the release schedule for these omnibuses started in February. That’s why I spent that crazy amount on ads: to get the books as high in the charts as possible (I used Facebook for 80% of the ads and Amazon Ads and Bookbub ads and various newsletters like Bargain Booksy for the rest). The only reason I felt comfortable spending that money was that I used Readerlinks, which tracks sales and income. And so I knew every day I was making a profit and could pay off the debt two months later when Amazon paid me (okay, I make it sound like I wasn’t sweating that whole time, juggling money around—I was).

Normally, I wouldn’t give exact numbers (and I won’t for the whole year). But this does give you a clear idea of how expensive that month was. And shows how it can be sometimes misleading when we only hear the amount an author makes in a month (without seeing the expenses). All of these graphs are from Readerlinks.

And this graph will give you a good idea of where all that advertising $ went.

I don’t know if the big splurge was worth it. The books hit #1 in various fantasy categories and started getting positive reviews. People with more advertising finesse than me probably could have accomplished the same result with less, but as long as I was making a profit, I kept charging ahead. I call it my “Cannon Fodder” advertising method. Each month I cut back on the spend, but continued to make around $US 3K profit. So that this last month my spend was only $780.00.

The series itself has sold the equivalent of 55,605 novels. I say equivalent because I am dividing the page reads on Kindle Unlimited into the pages of each novel (again Readerlinks does most of this addition for me). So the 9 Million or so page reads turns into about 30,000 books. And the other 25,000 or so is the “book” sales.

My next step, which is to promote the super omnibus (it’s already out) which gathers together the first 8 episodes of the series. I feel confident that it will do well in the new year once I give it a good push and that it will lead readers to the last collection in the series (that has episodes 9&10).

The first 8 episodes in one big omnibus stuffed with snark and dragons…

The biggest lesson for me is how marketing is quite a bit easier when you hit the right niche. My steampunk series, Mission Clockwork, did well, but anytime I tried to ramp up the spend to get more sales I ran out of people to market to. My Amber Fang books also sold well, but they didn’t hit the niche perfectly because they were more spy novels than vampire books. Whereas, with the “Dragon Rider” niche, there is almost always a profitable return on investment. Eventually I will run out of audience.

I have also learned that a niche really is a niche. My other books (steampunk and vampires, respectively) and even my fantasy novel, Crimson, didn’t get a huge burst in sales from the success of Dragon Assassin. These books didn’t have dragon riders on the front, so they weren’t of interest to my new readers.

The majority of these readers, judging by the all seeing eye of Facebook Ads, were ages 40+ with a good portion being in their 70s and at least 60% were female. I find that really interesting since these are older middle grade/younger YA novels. That means I haven’t even touched the “intended” market for these books. A traditional publisher in the US could publish them and find the younger audience much more easily that I could (since I’m marketing to people with credit cards).

This is a very happy dragon. He’s a bestseller.

Finally, this success came at the perfect time. This year nearly all of my school readings were cancelled and my traditional book sales in bookstores vanished. Plus, contracts I had with publishers were delayed while they waited to see which way coronavirus would shake the market. It would have been a very worrisome year without these developments. So I am thankful that the right things happened at the right time.

Now this “dragon” experiment is mostly done. Which means I’ll have to write something else, I guess. : )

If you have any questions, feel free to write them in the funny question boxes below.

Art

The last book of the Dragon Assassin series is here

Never start a war against a dragon and an assassin…

Presenting: The 2nd Dragon Assassin Audiobook

It’s here! Click on the image to hear it!

The Dragon Assassin audiobook is here!

I love audiobooks. And, believe me, Clare Corbett does an absolutely wonderful job of telling this story. Click on the link to hear a sample.

I'm Not Smart Yet I Sold 100,000 Self-Published Copies Of My Books

I’m not great at math.

And if you talk too long about Return On Investment (ROI) and Click Thru Rate (CTR) my eyes glaze over.

But I am obstinate. Very obstinate. And this obstinance has helped me to learn these concepts and sell over 100,000 self-published copies of my books.

Here’s proof:

I know. You’re wondering what you’re looking at. This is a clipping from a service called Readerlinks that helps me to keep track of ad spend and book sales (I highly recommend Readerlinks). You can see that 101,099 books have been sold so far. This number is only my sales on Amazon (so doesn’t include Kobo, iBooks, etc—which are close to about 2000 copies). What’s that? You have a question?

Yeah, But how much money did you make?

I like it! Right to the punchline. Or the bank line. Well, the amount is just over $60,000. I know. Even I can do the math. That’s only about 60 cents per book. The good news is that lately the amount of money per book is much higher. Back when I started self publishing I was willing to sell the books at a cheaper price in order to get exposure.

Wait a sec? How long did it take you to sell 100,000 copies?

Ah, that’s another wise question. And you know what? I have a graph to show that.

Ok, this chart will take some explaining. First, I began selling ebooks in 2011. I’m a hybrid author (which means I publish with traditional publishers and also self publish). The important colour on that chart is green. That’s income from book sales. So you’ll see that in September of 2011 and onwards there were plenty of sales. That was mostly from one novel (DUST), a YA horror (in fact it has sold 46,000 copies). In the old days you could make your book free and it would shoot up the “free” charts on Amazon and then when it went back to being “paid” it would then shoot up those charts. It was a glorious time.

But it ended.

What? Things change in the publishing industry! Really!

You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you? But that’s the one constant with self-publishing. That great trick that works today won’t always work. If you follow the chart you’ll see that I made very little from about 2013-2016. I would just put up my out-of-print books and continued to publish with traditional publishers, where the majority of my income came from. So self-publishing was on the backburner. But in 2017 I began delving into it again with an eye to writing for very particular niches in different genres. You can see that the little green columns show that sales are climbing as we get closer to the present date. That’s because I released a series called Amber Fang that was a vampire action adventure series. And later I wrote a YA fantasy series called Dragon Assassin. Here’s an informative pic:

If you look at the above pic these books are organized in order of income. So Dragon Assassin boxed set sold 3920 copies but made more $ than Dust which sold 46,236. That’s because most sales of Dust were for .99c (about 33 cents for me) and most sales of Dragon Assassin were $2.99 (about 1.97 for me). Since the Dragon Assassin boxed set has only been out for 2 months, then being in a niche and supported by ads has been very helpful for it. If sales continue at the current level, I’ll make a comfortable living from self publishing alone.

So writing in a popular niche in a genre helped sales?

Yes. Absolutely. There are readers just waiting in those niches.

But the thing that helped the most was being obstinate.

About learning.

Yes, I knew more and more self published writers were helping their careers with advertising. But who wants to learn that new skill? Like I said, I’m not good at math.

But I am good at banging my head against the wall until I understand something. So I took courses from Self Publishing Formula, read books by David Gaughran, listened to countless podcasts and followed everything that Dave Chesson posted on Kindlepreneur. I learned how to do a proper newsletter. And I’m taking a course on Amazon ads from Felicia Beasley (even though I’ve taken two other courses on that same topic). Every time there was something I didn’t understand, I would take a break and come back and read it again.

So, I took a lot of breaks.

But usually on the second or third try I could figure it out.

And then I’d figure out how it worked for me. What works for a spy thriller doesn’t necessarily work for a dragonrider novel.

Um. That’s a lot of work.

Yep. And not everyone has to do that much to figure out what’s right for them. But my goal was to learn everything I could, find what works for me and stick with it.

Oh, and simplify it.

Because my real goal is to write. I do enjoy seeing an ad work properly. But I like telling stories more. So I’ve made everything as simple as possible. I spend ten minutes every morning on my Facebook ads. And spend about ten minutes every afternoon uploading my “spend” to Readerlinks so I can be sure I’m making a profit. And once a week I check my amazon ads.

Then I forget about it.

And I write.

So can you sum all this up?

Yes. I was able to sell all those copies because I learned to change with both the market and the industry. And I was always willing to experiment and to be curious.

And I always put the writing first.

Podcast appearance: Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing

This is one of my favourite podcasts about writing and publishing. Mark Leslie Lefebvre is an excellent interviewer and we had a great chat. Check it out HERE.

Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction Class

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Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction

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Crimson is alive!

The latest version of Crimson is available now. It’s an official re-launch. Here’s the “red hot” cover.

A wildly inventive, action-packed fantasy. A darkly fascinating read.

— Kevin Sands, author of The Blackthorn Key

Slade’s piano-wire precision is a show of remarkable skill. It’s due to his unerringly smooth prose and spot-on dialogue that the story is able to whisk along so quickly. . . . Timely and timeless

— Quill & Quire

Dragon Assassin #6 is out!

More dragons! More fire!

http://readerlinks.com/l/696146