Lindsay Buroker's Blog: Lindsay Buroker, page 19

My Experience Advertising My Ebook on Twitter

Every now and then Twitter sends me an email to let me know about their advertising options. I ignored these for a while because the original site they directed me to didn’t seem very intuitive (I have the patience of a gnat, and if I can’t grasp something like this in a few seconds, I wander away). They’ve made some changes though. Last week when I clicked and logged in with my Twitter account, I found everything laid out quite simply. So I decided, what the heck? I always love the idea of pimping my books via advertising (if it proves effective) because I’m at the point where time is more valuable than money, and that’s the least time-intensive way to promote a book.

Here’s the Twitter Ads homepage if you want to take a look.

A wizard walked me through writing a tweet (or choosing an existing one to plug) and allowed me to choose who to display the ad to by keywords. (There was one for “science fiction & fantasy”.) I had the option to find more possibly interested people by choosing to also show ads to followers of certain handles on Twitter. For instance, if you think your books would appeal to @NeilGaiman fans, you could display your ads to his legions of followers.

You can also choose where in the world you want your tweets to be displayed. I opted for the United States for this experiment, since I was going to send people to my book’s U.S. Amazon page.

Once you’ve chosen who you want your tweet-ad displayed to, you’re ready to plug in some money. You can decide how much you want to spend overall, how much you want to spend per day, and how many days you want your campaign to run. You can also choose whether you want to get new followers or for people to follow a link.

My goal was to get people to click on my link (which led to the Amazon sales page for the first Emperor’s Edge book, a free download). Here’s what it looked like:

Like heroic fantasy? Quirky heroines? Deadly assassins? Try the first Emperor’s Edge novel for free: http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperors-Edge-ebook/dp/B004H1TDB0/ (Twitter automatically shortened that to a t.co link to fit.)

Twitter charges you based on “engagements.” They won’t charge you to display the ad, but they’ll charge when it’s clicked on, retweeted, responded to, or when you’re followed.

My results

Since I was only dabbling, I  set this up for one tweet (normally with advertising, you would want to split test — create multiple tweets to see which performs best). I spent $100 over two days, bid $1.50 per engagement (the minimum they suggested, though they said I would usually pay less), had 181 engagements (158 clicks, 17 retweets, 1 reply, and 5 follows), and paid an average of 55 cents per engagement. I have no way of knowing with the clicks, but a lot of the retweets and the reply came from my own followers, people who would have done those things anyway, so I was a little meh at being charged for that.

According to Twitter (I got a lot of emails about my campaign for the couple of days it was running, and even after that), I had a higher than average engagement percentage (1.67%). That’s good, since I didn’t spend much time tinkering and trying to come up with scintillating copy. I’m sure it would be tougher if you were trying to sell a book instead of giving away something for free.

Did I get more than the average number of free downloads from Amazon on those days? I would guess I might have gotten about 50 extra over the two days, so it wasn’t very significant. (By comparison, spending a couple hundred on a Bookbub ad, if you can get accepted, would be good for thousands of downloads — even the $1 I paid the Fussy Librarian to plug the also free Flash Gold recently resulted in at least 100 extra downloads.)

In the end, I don’t mind that I spent the money to experiment, but I probably wouldn’t do this type of campaign again. I did, however, like the set-up and targeting and detailed dashboard, so I could see using Twitter advertising for something else. (I should also note that if I had taken the time to set up a real landing page that had links to all of the places my freebie could be downloaded, I might have had better results, since not everybody shops at Amazon or has a kindle/kindle app.

Have you tried advertising on Twitter? How did it go for you?

 

Related Posts:

The Art of the Amazon Sale: Improving Rankings, Selling More Books, and Gaining Exposure
The Fussy Librarian: A New Book Recommendation Site (and advertising option)
How Sue London’s First Novel Became an Amazon Bestseller in a Couple of Weeks

3 Amazon Tips for New Authors (and maybe old ones too)

A Twitter conversation prompted me to share a few basic Amazon tips for those who e-publish directly through their KDP dashboard and may not have realized there’s such a thing as “Author Central.”

1. Use Author Central to improve blurb formatting

The KDP dashboard lets you upload your ebook, choose categories, and write descriptions, but the description field is on the anemic side. You can fill in your basic blurb here, but then head over to Author Central, add your book, and edit the book description there if you want to use italics, bold text, or bullet-point lists.

You can also add reviews and “from the author” messages. These descriptions tend to be updated quickly and will override the ones you entered via the self-publishing dashboard.

2. Link editions of your books/ebooks/audiobooks

Sometimes Amazon figures out how to link an ebook and a CreateSpace paperback on its own, but sometimes you have to tell them. If you don’t, the different formats get listed separately and the reviews don’t carry over.

This can also be done through Author Central by contacting the support team. Here’s the information on how to do it.

3. Make an Amazon author page

When you click on your name on your book’s sales page, you will either go to an author page or a list of search results using your name. The latter isn’t particularly user friendly and might not show all your books (or might show some of other people’s books in the results). Again by using Author Central, you can create an author page that includes all of your titles, a bio, pictures, and your blog and Twitter feeds (I get quite a bit of traffic to my site from people who click on the blog post titles on my Amazon page).

Head to the profile section in Author Central to fill in your information.

Are there any other tips you would like to add? Please share them in the comments section below. Thanks!

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Quick Update and What’s Coming Next

It’s been a while since the last blog post, and I’m sure you’re wondering, “What’s going on in Lindsay’s world?” You weren’t? Well, humor me anyway.

First off, Wounded is now available at iTunes which means you can get it just about everywhere (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords), if you’re game to try a modern mystery story. Thank you to everyone who has already grabbed a copy. Some people have asked if there will be more stories with the characters, and I probably will do a couple more at some point. As I’ll point out if I get around to writing my post on genre-hopping (it’s on the to-do list), it’s a lot easier to get something new off the ground if you have a series.

But next up, we have more fantasy.

I’m almost done with the first editing pass of Republic, the monster follow-up to the Forged in Blood novels. You knew the new government couldn’t get off the ground without a few snafus, right? And, even more obvious, Amaranthe and Sicarius couldn’t go on a tropical vacation without getting into trouble.

Last month, I was debating whether to split Republic into two books, but I’ve decided there’s not really a good breaking point, so I’m going to leave it as one. It’s currently sitting at 212,000 words (just over twice the length of the first Emperor’s Edge book). Why so big? We’ve got six point-of-view characters in this one (Amaranthe, Sicarius, Tikaya, Mahliki, Sespian, and Maldynado), and there’s a lot going on. With all of those POV characters, this is a departure from the usual format, but I hope fans of the series will enjoy spending time in these guys’ heads.

I’m not sure on the release date for Republic yet, but it should be early spring. It will take my beta readers a while to plow through this beast, and while they’re working on that, I’m going to be finishing the fourth Flash Gold novella. I started on it last summer, but got distracted by all of my other projects. I’ve been invited to a steampunk convention in Tucson in a couple of weeks, though, so I thought I should write a little more actual steampunk! It would be nice to finish it up and have it ready to go by then, but I don’t know if that will happen, because I have a ski vacation coming up next week (bad author, slacker author, I know!). I’ll try though.

After FG4 and Republic, I’ll be working on the second Rust & Relics book as well as the first novel in Yanko’s series (if you haven’t checked out the prequel novellas yet, they’re available everywhere now too). For those who have already read the novellas, the first one in particular, you’ll get to find out who “Dak” is in Republic.

That’s about it for writing updates. For those who are authors or who are interested in that side of the business, I was interviewed on the Self Publishing Podcast last week. Check it out if you need something to listen to during your commute.

Any thoughts? Questions? Let me know!

Related Posts:

3 Years of Self-Publishing, 2 Years of Writing Full Time, and Lessons from 2013
A Full-time Indie Author Answers Your Questions: Part 1
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Ebook Pricing: What You Think Your Book Is Worth vs. The Point at Which It Will Make the Most Money

In the indie author world, there are few topics as hotly debated as that of ebook pricing. You don’t have to spend long on a self-publishing forum to hear all sorts of advice:

Don’t price too low or it shows you don’t value your work — if you don’t value your work, how can you expect anyone else to?
Don’t price too high because people won’t spend that much on an unknown author.
99 cents is dead — don’t bother with 99 cents because you only get a 35% royalty.
Never ever price your ebook at $1.99 — it’s the Bermuda Triangle of pricing!
Price the first book in your series for free to draw in readers who might end up liking the book and buying the rest in the series.
For crying out loud, don’t give anything away for free — people just download free books and never read them, and if they do read them, they’ll probably give you a crappy rating.

So… confused yet?

Long-time followers of my blog (or people who look me up on Amazon), will see that I take a middle-of-the-road approach. I have the first ebook in my Emperor’s Edge series permanently free, and most of the rest of the novels in the series are $4.95 (I do have Book 2 at $2.99 at the moment, which may or may not stay that way). For short stories, I either go with free or 99 cents (if it’s free it’s because it’s something I posted on my blog for free first, such as my recent holiday story, which was a thank you to readers). For novellas and short novels, I’ll price somewhere in between (these days, I try to write things that are long enough that I feel justified pricing them at $2.99, for the 70% royalty, or I’ll put the shorter things together in a collection).

Does that mean you should do the same thing? Nope. You should either do what makes you content (allowing that you might be leaving money on the table, because you’re pricing based on your own opinions rather than experimentation) or you should experiment to see what earns you the most money per month.

That last bit sounds kind of obvious, doesn’t it? Yet a lot of authors balk at the idea of trying different prices and seeing what the market says. They price based on their own hunches and prejudices.

They think, “Oh, I wouldn’t value a 99-cent book, so I’m sure others won’t either.” Or maybe they think, “I put XXX hours into writing and preparing this novel, and there’s no way I’m selling it for less than $X.XX.” Or perhaps it’s, “Nobody’s heard of me, and I doubt they’re going to pay much for an unknown author, so I’m going with 99 cents.” The argument I’ve seen most often and which is, quite frankly, one of the more short-sighted ones, is: “If I don’t sell my book for at least such-and-such, I’m not going to have a chance of making minimum wage for the work I put into it.”

I want to address the last argument, because I see variations of it so often. First off, before we jump into numbers, I want to point out that very few authors make any significant money on their first book — nobody owes us minimum wage or any other amount of cash. This whole process is like building a business, and for most of us the income grows over time as we get more books out, especially when we’re talking about e-publishing, where titles can remain out there and can continue to sell indefinitely.

The second thing I want to point out is that the price of the book is only half of the earnings equation. The other half is how many copies you sell.

Price * Units Sold = Total Earnings.

We’ll keep it simple and not worry about royalties and what the store makes vs. what you make. My point is that it’s possible to become a millionaire on a 99-cent title, just as it’s possible to make absolutely nothing. You may make more money selling your books at less than your ideal price (i.e. what you feel the book is worth). That’s just how it is.

But anyway, let’s talk numbers and kick around a couple of scenarios (AKA how do we get to minimum wage, anyway?). Let’s say you go bargain basement and make your first novel 99 cents. Because it’s at the 35% royalty, you’re only making about 35 cents on each sale. Let’s say you bust your bum on marketing and sell 100 copies in your first month. That earns you… $35. Yeah, cringe, right? Not even close to minimum wage. If you keep that up for the whole year, you get $420. Still not that impressive. Latte money, maybe.

But — and here’s where so many people get tripped up — you really have to consider earnings over the life of a book, not over a month or even a year. Over ten years, that title could bring in $4,200 if nothing else changes. There’s always the possibility that it will start selling better as you get more titles out and gain more of a following as an author, but let’s assume it stays the same.

$4,200 in ten years still isn’t that impressive (and it’s why I’m not a big proponent of the 99-cent novel unless it’s part of a sale or on-going strategy to get readers into a series). Let’s say you had priced that novel at $2.99 instead. It would earn (at a 70% royalty) $2.05 a sale. Maybe you’re only able to sell 50 copies a month, instead of 100, because of the higher price point. That brings your earnings up to $102.50 per month and $1,230 a year. A little better. At $5 it gets better still, though you may or may not sell as well at the higher price point. This is where the experimenting comes in. Try a month with it at one price, and then try a month with it at another price.

Some authors actually sell better (more books) when they raise their prices, though most of us find it easier to move more copies as the price lowers. If we want to maximize our monthly income, we have to play around and find the point of diminishing returns. I want to emphasize again that for those of us who can take emotion and pride out of the equation, the focus should be on monthly income and not on the price of the book at all.

*This is the point where I admit that I might be leaving money on the table because I don’t experiment all that much. I’ve sold them for less, but I’ve never tried selling my ebooks for more than $5. Remember up above where I said some people prefer to do what makes them content, even if it’s possible they’re not making as much as they could? That’s me. I’m comfortable with what I make, and I like the idea of keeping my ebooks a good value for readers. I’m not sharing my earnings with an agent or publisher, so this just seems fair to me. But if you’re not content right now, and you want to be earning more… I urge experimentation.

The more books, the more potential you have to earn

Here’s another one that seems obvious but which again gets overlooked, especially by those who bring the “But I want to at least make minimum wage” mindset to the table. Remember that $1,230 a year we’re earning from our $2.99 ebook that’s selling 50 copies a month? Let’s jump forward to the point where we have 10 novels, some novellas, and a few short stories out (that’s me right now, after three years of self-publishing). If all of your novels are selling 50 copies a month at $2.99 (for the record, I’m a mid-list author at best, and my worst selling novels sell quite a bit better than that), you’re now making $12,300 a year from your novels and probably a couple of thousand extra from your shorter works. So, yay, we’ve reached minimum wage.

That’s a pretty conservative estimate of what you could make with that much work out. If, in the process of publishing these novels, you’re able to gain some true fans, the types of people who tell their friends about your work, you might find that 50 sales a month per novel is very beatable (with a little spent on advertising here and there, my EE novels are still selling 300+ a month, though I’ve completed the series and moved on to other things).

You might also find that you have a break-out novel or two in the bunch. A couple of years ago, JA Konrath published his stats for his $140,000-month and we saw that a handful of his 40+ titles were responsible for the majority of his income. I talked about the Pareto Principle in that article, also known as the 80-20 rule. In our cases, it may very well end up that 20% of our work results in 80% of our income. My distribution isn’t quite so lopsided, but my EE series does account for the majority of my earnings. Back when I built websites and wrote content for a living, two of my 10-15 sites brought in the majority of my income. This kind of distribution happens all over the place. For most of us, the only way to have those breakout books is to publish a lot of books. It’s very hard to predict what will become a winner, but the more titles you have out there, the better your odds.

But I’ve drifted off topic a bit here. It never hurts to point out that for the majority of authors it’s going to take a lot of novels to build a full-time income, but my ultimate message here is to try and maximize your overall monthly income rather than getting hung up on the price of a particular book. Try free. Try 99 cents. Try 2.99. Heck, try 7.99 or 9.99 if you want. Experiment. Keep track of what works, and if you find that you make the most money pricing your ebooks at $0.99 or $4.32, then by all means, do so.

 

Related Posts:

3 Years of Self-Publishing, 2 Years of Writing Full Time, and Lessons from 2013
Pricing for Launch: Book 1 in a New Series, Go High or Low?
Ebook Pricing Strategy for a Stand Alone Novel?

Book Blog Tours That Accept Self-Published Authors

A book blog tour is when you “appear” on a number of blogs over a week or two (some authors go bananas and schedule a different blog each day for a month) to promote your book. This usually involves being interviewed or writing a guest post for the site. Some blog owners will also read and review your book.

You can arrange tours yourself and hand-pick the blogs, keeping in mind that some people won’t respond or be interested in hosting you, or you can pay someone else to arrange things for you. Prices vary, as do the quality of the blogs that participate (naturally, you want to appear on established sites with a solid readership).

It’s been a while since I did a book blog tour (almost three years), but I may check into them again this summer, since I’m working on some new series. As I recall, the two or three tours I did weren’t all that useful insofar as selling books, but they did result in me getting some much needed reviews back in the days when I didn’t have any readers yet. Several of the hosts reviewed my book on their own sites and also posted the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

I’m fairly certain most bloggers and tour operators don’t guarantee reviews, but it’s natural that some of the bloggers will be curious about the authors they host and might check out your book of their own accord (you can also include a free copy with your post or interview).

In case you’re interested in trying out a book blog tour for yourself, I’m posting a list of some of the tours that accept indie/self-published authors and that aren’t hugely expensive (thanks, Elise, for putting the list together for us!):

Book Blog Tours

Bewitching Book Tours

Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy, and paranormal erotica

Cost: $40-$175

Notes: Geared towards the new author, the ebook author, the small and independent press author, and the mid-list author. Also for the author who doesn’t have a huge marketing budget but wants the most bang for their promotional buck.

Enchanted Book Promotions

Genres: accepts all genres (though geared towards scifi, romance, fantasy)

Cost: $29-$249

Fire and Ice Book Tours

Genres: most genres accepted

Cost: $35 – $90

Notes: Not accepting new sign ups at lower package rates.

Worldwind Virtual Book Tours

Genres: accepts all genres (though geared towards scifi, romance, fantasy)

Cost: $110-$340

Notes: Price includes $50 Amazon card giveaway

Pump Up Your Book! Virtual Book Publicity Tours

Genres: all genres

Cost: $299 and up

Notes: Clients have some national media placements; website is difficult to navigate

Jitterbug PR

Genres: Many

Cost: $55 – $180

Notes: Not exceptional website graphics or quality of writing on blog. Also a PR, marketing and publicity company.

Xpresso Book Tours

Genres: focuses on Young Adult & New Adult tours in all genres of both pre-release and post-release books

Cost: $150 – $250

Notes: Professional easy-to-navigate site.

Read Between the Lines Blog Tours

Genres: specializes in fantasy

Cost: $25 – $100

If you have any comments on these outfits or want to suggest any other book blog tour sites, please let us know below.

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Ebooks, Word Count, and Marketing the Stand-Alone Novel (or should one book become two?)

I’ve always preferred to read and write novel-length fiction, but the ebook has brought back the short story, the novella, and the serial (among other things), story formats that were never that practical outside of magazines (and even then, it had been a while since you saw many novellas and serials). Space was always a consideration, with certain page counts being more feasible (financially speaking) than others.

With ebooks, it doesn’t cost any more to deliver a 200,000-word epic novel than it does a 10,000-word short story. Oh, sure, editing will be pricier on the bigger tale, assuming you hire outside eyes for that task, but that’s a one-time cost. Authors now have the ability to write in whatever story format they prefer and even get creative with how novels are crafted and delivered.

And more than writing preferences may come into play. As independent authors, we’re responsible for our own marketing and for figuring out the best ways to satisfy the reader and make a fair wage from our work (a living wage, if we’re lucky).

For example, the single novel can be a hard sell. My experience with multi-book formats suggests it’s easier to market and sell a series because you can play around with free or 99-cent “loss leaders” while leaving later tomes at full price. Right now, there are a lot of venues that like to advertise bargain books, which works perfectly for those of us with a series and an inexpensive Book 1.

If all you have is a single novel, you can put it on sale and try to gain traction with advertising, but even if a reader enjoys it, there’s nowhere to go from there. Oh, you might have other unrelated ebooks out, but jumping to a new world and/or new characters isn’t, for most readers, as automatic as buying the second book in a series.

So, what do you do with that single stand-alone novel? If the stars align right and the tides are favorable (AKA if it’s a big enough book), should it perhaps become two?

This is what I’m mulling over with my current project (working title: Republic). For those who have followed along with my Emperor’s Edge novels, this idea might sound familiar. Last summer, the sixth and final book in my six-book series turned into Forged in Blood I & Forged in Blood II (making it a seven book series, I suppose). Even being broken apart, those books were as long or longer than the rest of the novels in the series, so I thought it made sense.

Now I’m working on a transition novel that can either provide more closure for the EE series or work as a launching point into a new series (we’ll see how the reception is). From the beginning, I had only envisioned it as one book, but at the same time, I knew it was going to be a big one, because it has six point-of-view characters. I guessed it would be around 150,000 words when I got started. Well, I’m at 160,000 now and I have the big end battle yet to write, along with a long (and I hope fun) epilogue that I’ve had in mind from the beginning. I’m beginning to think Republic will be 200,000 words by the time I’m done.

For comparison, a new fantasy novelist is encouraged to submit novels between 80,000-100,000 words to agents. The first Emperor’s Edge book is around 105,000 words.

There’s this thing about epic fantasy though… it likes to be big. I’m not sure what the word counts are on those Jordan or Martin books, but they call them Chihuahua killers for a reason (fortunately with ebooks, you don’t need to worry about dropping super thick tomes on small dogs). Many fantasy readers enjoy these big meaty books, so I’m hoping I won’t get too many complaints about length. (People might not dig the new storyline or the departure from two POV characters to six, but that’s a different concern.)

So, what’s the problem?

There’s not really, aside from the fact that I’ll be spending a lot more time on a novel I can’t necessarily charge a lot more for, but I am wondering if turning this into two books might offer some opportunities from a marketing perspective. I never bother advertising Books 2-7 in the EE series, because I assume nobody’s going to jump into the middle without having read the first book. That means EE1 has been through BookBub and many of the other big sites that offer sponsorships multiple times already. In short, it’s old news.

With Republic, even though it has most of the characters from the EE series (along with Tikaya and Rias from the Encrypted/Decrypted books), it’s a spot where someone new might be able to jump in without being lost. Or at least not so lost that they couldn’t enjoy the story (maybe new readers would even want to later pick up the earlier books to catch up and get all the inside jokes).

I’m already planning to do something completely different with the cover art (illustrated), so it’ll feel like the start of something new. And I think the blurb might sound appealing to those who specifically seek out epic fantasy (I’ve never described my stuff as epic fantasy, but with the political emphasis in this one and the multiple story lines, it feels closer to it than many of my others). Also, the first chapter, which people might download as a sample, starts off with Amaranthe and Sicarius getting out of a little trouble on a tropical island before being called back home by the president, is on the fun and entertaining side, and I could see it drawing new folks in.

But, if I keep this as one big book, I’m not going to be particularly interested in bargain pricing it (hey, this puppy represents a lot of hours!), so I wouldn’t be able to advertise it on the big book sites, and I don’t know how many new people would try it at full price. (Since I usually price based on word count, I expect I would go around $6.95 for the ebook on this one.)

If I turn it into a duology, I can have more room to play around with pricing. I can essentially charge the same amount but make the first book less expensive, maybe $2.99 for the first part and $3.99 for the second, with a launch/sale price of 99-cent sales on the first. The downside is I would doubtlessly get new readers who didn’t like part 1 enough to buy part 2, but those are people who probably wouldn’t have plunked down $7 for an ebook from an author they hadn’t tried anyway. As far as regular readers, they might find the lower prices more appealing as well. Even if it’s technically the same $7 either way, folks are used to paying $5 from me, not $7, so that might be a bit of a balk. This way they could pick up the first part now and grab the second later. Like FiB1 & 2, it would end up feeling more like two books rather than one big expensive book.

At this point, I’m just tossing ideas around. I haven’t finished the novel, and I haven’t gone back to see if/where there might be a logical breaking point if I were to divide it. If you, as a reader or author, have an opinion on all this mulling, I would love to hear it.

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Swords & Salt Novellas Available Everywhere Now

For those who enjoy adventure fantasy with a splash of humor, I have three new novellas out. They’re set in my Emperor’s Edge world but feature (mostly) new characters and take place across the ocean, over in Nuria. They stand alone as individual stories, but they’re also prequels for a longer trilogy that I’ll be working on in 2014.

You can grab the first novella, A Question of Honor, for free at Smashwords with coupon code AQ98H (good through February 15th, 2014), or you can buy it for 99 cents at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or iTunes.

The second novella is Labyrinths of the Heart: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords

The third story is Death from Below: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | iTunes | Smashwords

You can also pick up the boxed set if you want to save some money. The Swords & Salt Collection: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | iTunes | Smashwords

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3 Years of Self-Publishing, 2 Years of Writing Full Time, and Lessons from 2013

It’s the beginning of a new year and I just had my three-year self-publishing anniversary, so it seems like the appropriate time for a summing-up/what-I’ve-learned post.

When I started in December of 2010, I published my first novel, The Emperor’s Edge, and a collection of short stories for children, The Goblin Brothers Adventures. I was originally only going to self-publish the children’s stories and look for an agent for EE and Encrypted, the other novel I had finished at the time. But I had stumbled across the blogs of some authors doing well with e-publishing and decided to try the novels too (also, I was dreading the Agent Query Game). I’m glad I decided to publish more than the Goblin Brothers, because I’ve sold fewer copies of those children’s stories than anything else I’ve published, even though the ebook is only 99 cents. Meanwhile, I’ve been making a living from the sales of my other works (the collection has greatly expanded) for the last two years.

Lesson #1: Fiction for middle-grade and younger remains a tough sell in the e-book world.

Nice reviews and early interest in The Emperor’s Edge led me to focus on those characters, creating a series that ended up being seven novels long and which I completed last summer (though I’m working on a new novel with many of the same characters). Having a series that people were invested in is what allowed me to eventually turn this into a full-time job. I published other things in the meantime (my Flash Gold novellas, a sequel to Encrypted, and a handful of short stories), but the EE books were my breadwinners.

Lesson #2: A series with dedicated readers is what leads to reliable income.

Over time, the numbers tell you how many people go on to buy subsequent books after trying the first, so you’ve got a good idea how many buyers you’re going to have each month if you can get X number of new people to pick up the first book. You also get an idea of how many people will buy the next installment before you even start writing it. With unrelated works, things are more hit-and-miss. You might get lucky and attract an all-new audience, but you might also find that fewer of your dedicated readers will try the new characters/new world.

Since I finished my core series this summer, I’ve tried a couple of “pilots,” stories that could be developed into a new series (Torrent, a contemporary fantasy, the Swords & Salt tales, prequels for an epic fantasy trilogy I want to do, and a contemporary mystery/love story that’s coming out later this month). It’s a little scary when your money-making series ends, but you don’t necessarily want to commit to something new until you see if there’s potential. Will people like it? Will they buy it? Will they want to see more from the characters? The nice thing about e-publishing is that you can get this feedback quickly. That said…

Lesson #3: You should give a book time on the market before giving up on it or making hasty decisions regarding series-potential.

Based off early reviews, I almost scrapped Torrent and the notion of doing a subsequent series. At one point, I was going to take it down from the store altogether. The only reason I didn’t was because it was clearly set up as a Book 1 and I felt compelled to write more in the series at some point, so people wouldn’t be left hanging. Because of those early reviews, I did rearrange my writing plans, and instead of immediately going into writing Book 2, I jumped into a new novel in my old world, using most of the characters from the EE series (along with the Encrypted folks).

One of the cool things about writing full-time is that OMG, you get to do this for your day job! But one of the trade-offs is that you have to continue to write things people want to buy, because it doesn’t take long for sales on older novels to drop off.

So what eventually happened with Torrent? I left it up there while I went on to my other stuff, and it’s actually sold well, quite well when you consider that I haven’t mentioned it anywhere since launch weekend back in September. Even for launch, I didn’t do more than announce it to my newsletter, and throw up a post on Facebook and Twitter. I haven’t spent a penny on advertising (I always figured I would wait until I had more books out in the series). I’ve also had some nice emails and comments from readers who enjoyed it and want to see more. In addition, I got an email from someone at Amazon last month, and they may include it in some kind of featured sale in a couple of months (no guarantees, but, hey, they’ve never emailed me about any of my other books). So that brings me to…

Lesson #4: Glowing reviews don’t always make for a best-seller and the book that gets hammered hardest might just sell well.

I should note that I agree with some of the critiques for the book, and I’ll try to address certain points and improve on things as I go forward in the series. However, it’s also worth pointing out that…

Lesson #5: If you publish something in a different genre, you risk displeasing people who prefer the old.

As authors, we sometimes like to jump around and explore new genres and different styles of writing. (Why of course it’s time to try something in first person!) There’s nothing wrong with that, but we have to realize that those people who really liked our old genre and old style of writing may not be excited about the new. I think the next time I jump to a different genre (there’s going to be a space-age SF series eventually, so look out!), I’ll mention it to the mailing list but won’t do the big discount to try and encourage them to try it. If they do and they like it, great, but I’ll go to the book blogs and genre-specific advertisers and try to first put it in front of those who really dig that type of book.

Income, Number of Books out, and International Sales

I used to do reports about how much I was earning from self-publishing and how many books I had sold. Long-time followers of the blog (yes, all three of you) might have noticed that it’s been a while since I did something like that. I don’t mind when others do it, but for myself, I feel there’s a point where it becomes a little weird to talk about money (probably the point where you stop earning less than the average income in your country and start making more than it). That said, in 2013 I earned more than I ever did from my old day job, so I’m enjoying the self-publishing gig and hope to be able to continue.

Interestingly, I sold fewer copies of each title on average in 2013 than in 2012. The increased income is more a result of having more books out than in becoming some huge blockbuster author.

I found that sales and big promos for my Book 1 were less effective in 2013 than they had been in the past. I sold/gave away fewer books in most of these promos and there was less sell-through into the rest of the series. I think part of this is a result of more competition — more books out there in the marketplaces — and also because many of the people on certain lists had already seen and/or tried my Book 1 if they were going to.

Even with fewer new people trying the series each month, as I reached the end, I had some great launches of those final books (IIRC, FiB1 & 2 both debuted in the Top 200 overall in the Kindle Store — not bad for epic fantasy). As I said, there’s a lot of power in a series, and even a slow build-up of readers over months and years can bring notable success in the end. (As some of you may remember, Forged in Blood 1 also made it to the finals for a Goodreads Choice Award in 2013.)

Launches aside, I’m relieved to have reached the point where selling a couple hundred copies a month of Title X, Y, and Z results in a good income. I have quite a bit of work out now. (For those who don’t want to count, I’ve published 10 novels and about that many novellas and short stories as well.) It all adds up, and even though I haven’t had a huge release since this summer (the “pilots” naturally don’t sell as well as the books in the proven series), my income has been fairly solid these last few months. So let’s make that…

Lesson #6: A mid-list author with enough titles out can make a nice income from writing.

There’s a lot of talk about how there’s more competition in the Kindle Store and elsewhere these days — more independent authors publishing and also more Big 6 backlist books being put out in ebook form, but if you can cultivate a fan base that enjoys your work and will try a lot of what you write, then you can do this for a living, providing you’re able to publish regularly and keep getting more stuff out there for readers to consume.

Something else that happened in 2013 for me is that my international sales grew. I started to gain some ground in the Kobo and Apple stores in 2012 (thanks, in large part, to having a perma-free Book 1 out there), and 2013 was the year that my international sales went from pocket-change to hey-that’s-some-nice-money. I just got paid by Amazon for October’s sales, and the earnings from the UK and DE stores each could have paid my rent. A year ago, it was pretty good if I earned more than a couple hundred dollars in each of those spots.

What’s changed? I haven’t done any extra marketing to those stores, so I’ll assume it’s again a matter of having more titles out (people who enjoy my first book have six more they can grab in the series, plus related works) and also of having a perma-free title there (though EE1 has been free in those stores for almost as long as it has been in the U.S.). Interestingly, Torrent has done well in those stores, especially in Germany.

You never know when one of your titles with okay sales in the U.S. might take off in another country. And, even as ebook growth is tapering off in the U.S., it’s just now ramping up in other parts of the world, so that income could become significant.

Lesson #7: Pay attention to foreign markets.

I haven’t yet taken the bite to have any of my works translated into another language (mostly because I’m busy writing new stuff, and that sounds like a lot of extra work!), but even English-language sales in other countries can be big, so I’ll be looking for more opportunities to promote my work in international markets.

I think I’ve rambled on for long enough today, so I’ll stop with that lesson. If you have any wisdom you would like to share, please let us know in the comments section. Thanks for reading!

 

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Finding New Readers with a Multi-Author Ebook Bundle

Last week, I pointed out that bundles of ebooks are doing well on Amazon, multiple book collections by single authors and also multiple book collections by different authors who share a common genre or theme. In the comments section, Anthea Sharp mentioned that she was a part of such a bundle and it was indeed doing well; they’ve sold 25,000 copies of “Faery Worlds“, and it’s sitting at 187 overall in the Kindle Store as I write this.

I happened to have shared absinthe with Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, one of the authors once, so I asked if she would be willing to answer some questions (you know, the usual interrogation on how they had come to put the set together and how it had come to be selling so well). Anthea Sharp and Tara Maya were kind enough to chime in here as well. If you’re thinking of putting together your own bundle, I hope you’ll find all this information helpful!

Finding New Readers with a Multi-Author Ebook Bundle

Jenna’s Answers with Anthea Sharp’s input:

Before we jump into the marketing, pricing, and promotion questions, why don’t you tell us about a bit about your writing background and the book you have in the Faery Worlds boxed set? 

Before I start, I want to thank you Lindsay for giving me this opportunity to talk about my part in Faery Worlds and to help out some other indie authors who might just be getting started.  With that being said, I can tell you that I never once considered becoming an author while growing up.  I started writing seriously only after graduating from college and soon discovered that I’d found my calling in life.

One of my focuses in school was Celtic Studies and I think this initiated my love of storytelling and the common Celtic theme found in all of my books.  My Otherworld novels are a prime example of this.  The first book in the series, Faelorehn, which is my book featured in Faery Worlds, tells the story of Meghan Elam.  Meghan is a junior in high school and has a tendency to see and hear strange things.  One night she wanders from her home and is attacked by a pack of demented hounds.  Fortunately a mysterious young man, Cade MacRoich, is there to rescue her but he also has news for Meghan: she is Faelorehn, an immortal from the Otherworld.  The rest of the book follows Meghan’s life as she tries to come to terms with who she is and how she feels about Cade, all the while being hunted by the Morrigan, a malicious goddess from the Otherworld.

For the boxed set, who was the organizer and how did you get involved with that?

Anthea Sharp was the author who initially contacted me, Alexia Purdy, Elle Casey, J.L. Bryan and Tara Maya back in May with an idea to team up and put together an anthology of our work.  I loved the idea immediately because I had seen several other authors creating their own bundles and successfully helping their readers discover new writers.  Once all of us were on board, Tara and Anthea got to work weaving our novels together and getting the cover art ready for Faery Worlds.  We also pitched our ideas for the title and although several were considered, Faery Worlds won out in the end.

You guys (six separate authors) are selling six ebooks for 99 cents. Once the royalties are split up, is the collection making any money for you, or are you doing this more for lead generation to promote your other works?

When Anthea first contacted us, she pitched the idea that we use what royalties we made to further market the bundle.  Since marketing can be rather pricey, using the revenue from Faery Worlds could help all of us advertise our work and hopefully interest readers into looking into our other books.

As for the set making any money, I would refer to Anthea.  She is tracking all the financials for us and keeps us up to date.  So far Faery Worlds IS making decent money, but that it is used to help spread the word about our books.

As I write these questions, the set is #236 overall (now 187!) in the Amazon store. What have you guys done to promote it?

All of us have mentioned it on Facebook, Twitter and other, various online locations.  Anthea has done a lot of the behind-the-scenes advertising for us.  I contacted her earlier and here’s what she had to say:

So far the bundle’s had normal ads with book outlets (ENT, POI, KFD), and some targeted Facebook work.  We ALSO had a little bit of early adopter luck, getting on the Also-bought lists of some very strong-selling box sets, which is still helping us.  I’m also lining up more targeted ads to fantasy readers.

Do you feel that going in with five other authors has made promotion easier and/or more effective than if you were to put together your own collection of stories?

Absolutely.  Not only are some of my Faery Worlds co-authors much more experienced in the field of online marketing than myself, but combining our books together has multiplied our exposure and potential audience through Amazon’s recommendation list.  And if you check out some of the reviews for Faerie Worlds on Amazon, the response has been positive and our readers seem happy to have discovered a new author or two after reading our bundle.

Do you have any tips for authors who might be thinking of going in with others to create a boxed set? Is 99 cents key to making this a super bargain for readers, or might other price points work?

I would recommend looking for authors who write in a similar genre or theme (i.e. paranormal romance or maybe stories suitable for Halloween).  Going with the low price definitely helped us out, so I would at least start there and maybe raise the price later.  So far the six of us have been happy with sales so the price remains at .99 for now.

Tara Maya’s Answers:

Why don’t you tell us about a bit about your writing background and the book you have in the Faery Worlds boxed set? 

I love history, traveling to exotic places, and fairy tales with happy endings, and all of that definitely goes into what I write. The book I have in the Faery Worlds boxed set is the first in The Unfinished Song series.

The Unfinished Song is one saga, separated into twelve volumes, and the entire thing was originally inspired by an obscure Polynesian myth. Rather than use the usual medieval setting for fantasy, the world of Faearth has neolithic technology — think bows and arrows tipped with obsidian rather than swords. Magic doesn’t come from spell books, but from dancing. Dindi, the heroine, is a young girl who has no magic, so she’s forbidden to dance. She convinces a powerful (and powerfully handsome!) warrior-dancer, to teach her in secret. Breaking that taboo embroils them both in an ancient war between an almost extinct race of faeries and the Deathsworn trying to annihilate them.

I “went indie” in 2010. Before that, I had two books published traditionally (under a different pen name) but I love the creative control that being my own publisher has given me.

How did you get involved with the boxed set?

Before I became involved in this project, one of the most successful means of promotion that I’d found was doing excerpt exchanges with authors who had similar books. Another great method was contributing stories to anthologies. So I was very excited when Anthea Sharp proposed this bundle. It had never occurred to me! Yet I could instantly see the possibilities.

I do professional cover artistry as well as write, so I volunteered to contribute the cover art.

Once the royalties are split up, is the collection making any money for you, or are you doing this more for lead generation to promote your other works?

I’ve been involved with several short story anthologies. These are also good promotional tools, but they have some problems. One biggie is the question of how to divvy the profits. The money anthologies earn isn’t a lot, and split between 5-20 authors… well, it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Until vendors like Amazon and iTunes allow split royalties for a single volume, that problem is going to remain.

If you don’t split royalties, you have to treat the anthology like a magazine. The publisher pays contributors a flat rate, and assumes all the financial risk. I did this myself with a science fiction anthology called Space Jockey. It will take about a year to earn back what I invested in that, so it has obvious drawbacks for most indie publishers.

If the publisher doesn’t pay the contributors, or pays a tiny amount, then you have a fairness issue. Because one person is making money on it and the others aren’t. The usual solution is to donate the proceeds to charity. Let’s assume the best, that the money goes reliably to the chosen charity; this still isn’t great. Why? Well, because, alas, what usually happens is that most the contributors lose interest in really promoting it, as it’s really hard to see any immediate benefit. Based on my experience, I would be leery of contributing to another “charity” anthology that’s just going to collect cyber dust. I would rather let someone profit from publishing my short story, even if *I* don’t see any royalties, because at least I know that publisher will be actively incentivized to promote it.

This is what made Anthea Sharp’s proposal so brilliant. All of the profits are churned right back into paid promotions for the boxed set. Now, any indie who has experimented with paid advertising knows it usually isn’t worth much. It doesn’t pay for itself.  Except… this way it wouldn’t have to. If you spend a $100 bucks in ads, you’re pretty unlikely to make a profit. But if you just assign as your budget whatever the book has already earned, why the whole matter of ROI is moot. Best of all, it’s completely fair to everyone, because we ALL have a stake in the bundle doing well.

The other MAJOR problem with short story anthologies is that there (frankly) just aren’t as many readers interested in reading short stories as novels. The “boxed set” is an anthology … of novels! What people WANT to read. Another brilliant idea. It’s so easy to do with digital publishing.

What have you guys done to promote the set?

I think that aside from the slow snowball effect of reinvesting the profits, we’ve all worked hard to promote it through social media. Personally, I did as much as I could, though it was modest. I featured each author individually on my blog, and additionally recommended each one personally to my email list of fans. Fans wrote me to thank me for the recommendations.

I continue to do so. A common question I get from fans is when my next Unfinished Song novel is coming out, and it’s nice to say “as soon as possible but in the meantime, go read all my co-authors in this anthology, you’ll enjoy their books as well.”

The other great thing about this boxed set is that when a reader is introduced to the books of the authors she likes, she goes on to read the other books by that author. That means the author rises in Amazon’s ranking, in the Also Boughts, etc. And as each author becomes more popular, more readers find that author through other books, then find the series… It’s a Virtuous Circle. Any other promotions or new releases any of us do has a positive impact on the others. In November, for instance, I ran a writing workshop. My videos had over ten thousand hits, all together, and I noticed an impact on the sales of all my books, although I wasn’t advertising them directly. Now, multiply that by six, as each author does her or his own things, and you can see how the impact can snowball.

Do you feel that going in with five other authors has made promotion easier and/or more effective than if you were to put together your own collection of stories?

This is an area where I feel very lucky to have fallen in with a fine group of human beings. All I knew when I agreed to the project was that these fellow authors of mine were good writers. I’d read and enjoyed the books of all but one before the project, just by chance, and I read the books of the remaining person while we were negotiating. It was important to me to be able to recommend the books. But until we started discussing this project, I had no idea if the authors themselves were lazy, thieving orcs or honest, upstanding hobbit folk. Fortunately, they all turned out to be wonderful, and that meant working together with them on promotion was easier and more effective than doing it on my own.

Trust, transparency and communication are key.

Do you have any tips for authors who might be thinking of going in with others to create a boxed set? Is 99 cents key to making this a super bargain for readers, or might other price points work?

I don’t think the price by itself is what makes it work. Offering fantastic value is what makes it work. Leveraging the combined visibility of all the authors in the set across their various networks and platforms makes it work. Using the low price *as a way to attract notice* makes it work.

Readers want novels, so that helps right there. They want to know they’ll find something good to read without endless searching — they want curating. They want increased reward for lower risk. Six books by six authors for a low price means that a reader at all interested in the genre will probably find something he or she enjoys… and a gateway to many more books to enjoy after that.

My biggest tips for authors wanting to do this would be:

1. Read the other books and make sure they are good, and that you’d recommend them.

2. Match genre carefully. (Our books are not just fantasy, but faery fantasy.)

3. During the negotiation process, make sure these are fun, friendly and honest people that you can work with (and be so yourself)

4. Don’t expect too much, too soon. So many authors freak out if something doesn’t explode overnight, but that’s not the indie model. A slow build can be powerful.

5. Remember, you get more by giving more; by helping others, you help yourself. That’s what shared promotion is all about.

~

Thank you for all the information, Jenna, Tara, and Anthea!

Readers, you can check out Faery Worlds at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iTunes, and Kobo.

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How to Be a Happy Indie Prawn with Patty Jansen

We’ve got a guest entry today from one of my old critique buddies from the SFF Online Writing Workshop, Patty Jansen. She first posted a version of this encouraging article at the Kboards, and I asked if she would be willing to share it here as well. I hope you enjoy it, and if you’re a fan of science fiction and fantasy make sure to check out her work. The first book in her Icefire trilogy is free at Amazon and elsewhere.

How to Be a Happy Indie Prawn with Patty Jansen

A couple of months ago, Mark Coker from Smashwords said: Amazon is playing indie writers like pawns. Silly me, of course, I cannot see the word “pawn” without reading “prawn”. So there we go, the indie prawn. This species is a bottom feeder, living off little scraps that sink to the depths. The indie prawn busily moves around, out of the path of the large predators, but rarely, if ever, rises to the surface.

Confession: I am a little indie prawn. Hear me roar. I am astonished that I’ve managed to sell more than 100 copies a month for 15 months straight, but I’m not much bigger than that. Coffee-and-donut money is very close to my past.

We all start out like prawns, putting up our books and hoping that someone will buy them. Sometimes, people do, and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they don’t until you’ve brought out an entire series. Which means that you’ve got to write an entire series first.

While you’re doing this, waiting for sales to take off, things can get pretty depressing. You check your sales and there is little or no movement. You know you’re in it for the long haul, but you feel like you’re swimming against the stream.

If you are unhappy, frustrated and unhealthy within your writing, how can you expect your fiction to sing? How can you expect to find the energy you need to keep going?

I initially wrote this article as a post to the Kindleboards, a large community of self-published writers, for those unfamiliar with it. This online community boasts many extremely successful members, some familiar, others not so, who make a living from their writing. As a new and unknown writer, it is easy to log in to the forum and become demoralised in 10 seconds flat. After reading posts where people complain, “I used to sell 30 copies a day but now I’m only selling 10″, you feel like crawling under the bed, because you’d be jumping for joy if you sold 10 copies of a book per month, or just 10 books full stop.

Definitions

Russell Blake so famously said on the Kindleboards: Most. Books. Don’t. Sell.

I actually dislike this statement. It is 100% true that most books won’t make any bestseller lists. They don’t need to. There are legions of writers doing quite well (and meeting their own goals, including paying a living wage) without ever having had any books in any bestseller lists.

My books sell. They just don’t sell enough to pay my bills, but they sell a heck of a lot better than they did in tradepub. So, if your books sell enough to buy you a cup of coffee, they sell, and go and celebrate your damn coffee!

Attitude

If you need money desperately, get a job. Alternatively, manage your despair or channel it into something positive, because despair is like that woman on the train wearing far too much perfume: no one wants to sit next to her. If you need to whinge, don’t make a habit of doing it in places where potential readers can see it. Don’t continuously whinge in public, like Twitter, or your blog or Facebook.

At the Kindleboards, this statement generated some heated comments from people who said, “But I can’t get a job,” and other less kind statements. My comment about getting a job is about two things. 1. Security. A regular income working for a boss is, for most people, easier to get than any level of income security from writing. 2. Interactions with the world around you. If the lack of success in writing makes you a sourpuss to be around, and your family and friends (and readers) are starting to avoid you, find something that tips you back into more happy territory. Your writing will benefit.

Expectations, and the managing thereof

The only thing that’s a dead-set certainty is that brown bar at KDP at the start of the month, or the zeroes on other sites.

Whether you’ve sold 10 or 10,000 the previous month, there is no guarantee that the next month will bring similar results. There is no steady path climbing slowly upwards. No one owes you a living.

So, if you go through life expecting that brown bar to last forever, you’ll feel good when you get a sale. Feeling good is paramount.

At the Kindleboards, there was also some interesting discussion on this, with a subset of writers expressing the need to feel more ambitious and less “good” when writing. It could be that some people feel this. The anguished writer is an old cliche. Personally, I’ve never believed in the anguished writer. I believe that most writers will produce their most solid and constant work, delivered on time and of acceptable quality, when in a balanced state of mind. Anguish over the lack of success is a really, really destructive thing.

Ignore the Joneses

Sales are funny. Once you get used to a certain level, it’s never enough. The other funny thing is that no matter how much you sell, someone else will always sell more.

You are not someone else. You don’t write their books. So simply say “Congrats!” and move on. No need to dwell on other people’s lucky breaks and why you are more deserving than they are.

Build a brand and your own readership

Ads can give you short-term shots in the arm, but you should be working at creating a loyal fan base who are interested in hanging out with you and reading your brand of fiction. Work on that brand. Amazon is probably not a very good place for doing this. You should “own” your brand by directing people to your Facebook page or author site or some other place that is yours, where you talk about your fiction, waterskiing or Greek pottery, or whatever is part of your brand. Study the brands of authors you admire. Try to describe in one sentence what is unique about you and your fiction. Your public persona is the brand and accumulating readers around that brand is a slow process, and so is building a coherent library of books.

Genre-hopping?

If you feel you have to write a certain genre to get sales, you’re setting yourself up for disaster. Yes, it’s true that Romance sells well, but if you’re like me and don’t read Romance, stay away from it. I’m stuck in the dungeon of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and I’m determined to stay there, because dammit, that’s what I like to read and write, sales be damned. In order to remain happy, you’ve got to stay true to your passion. There is nothing wrong with trying other genres or subgenres, but if you’re doing so only in the hope of getting more sales, you’re doing it wrong.

Price

If you’re only going to sell a handful of books per month, you may as well sell them for the full whack. Especially if you’re writing genre fiction, your competition is not other indies, it’s tradepub books. So if you price just a bit under tradepub ebooks, you get two advantages:

1. You’ll look more like a tradepub author (presuming your book is up to scratch)

2. You have a decent amount of room to move if you want to do a promotion

If your book is going to sit at below 500K in the rankings, it’ll look a lot better priced at $6.99 than at 99c.

As another bonus, if you sell a copy, you get $4.50 and there’s your cup of coffee! I believe in some countries you can even get a donut with your coffee for that amount.

Coffee and donuts make a writer happy.

There is no shame in coffee and donuts.

They are YOUR coffee and donuts. Be proud of them.

Last year I was on coffee and donuts, this year I’ve paid for an international trip and a professional camera. Next year I may be back on coffee and donuts. Or not. The only thing I can do about that is to keep writing and to keep myself in a state of mind that allows me to write.

Bio:

Patty Jansen is an Australian author of Science Fiction and Fantasy, who has published novels both through traditional press (Ambassador, Ticonderoga Publications 2013) and self-publishing platforms.

You can see all her books on her author site. Patty blogs about writing, self-publishing and a variety of other things at Must Use Bigger Elephants.

First book in the Icefire trilogy: Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.

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