2016 Year in Review: Highs and Lows
From this author’s perspective, 2016 was a year of highs and lows. I decided to take a more aggressive approach to marketing my books, which, as illustrated in several examples below, produced less than stellar results.
January: Sales in the new year got off to a terrible start so I decided to try a few different promotions. I put my first novel Goliath on sale and ran a Goodreads Giveaway promotion for a free paperback copy. The goal was to generate interest in the book and garner a few more reviews, which would hopefully result in future sales. Since the novel deals with mental health issues, I also offered to donate all of my royalties from sales in January to the Canadian Mental Health Association. The results? You guessed it. Zero sales. Nada. Zilch.
February: Sales continued to be few and far between. However, I was distracted by purchasing a new house in the Shuswap region of British Columbia. With a May possession date, we started making plans for the move from London, Ontario to Blind Bay, B.C.
March: My new novel The Back Nine was released on March 11th. I was quite excited about it and planned a major marketing initiative. Unfortunately, Amazon had trouble making it available on their Amazon.ca website. Since the Canadian market is where I make most of my sales, I decided to delay the marketing efforts until it was actually available for purchase. To my surprise, sales started happening anyway. Don’t ask me how people even heard about the book, but I sold several copies in the U.S. and the U.K. in the first week. It was almost a week later when the book finally became available on the Canadian website and I started my marketing efforts. The Back Nine was my most successful launch to date and sold 80 copies in the first two months. (I know that’s not a lot for some people, but it’s a lot for me.) The new book also triggered sales in my other books.
April: I received a great review of The Legacy and had my name added to the LWS Luminaries page of the London Writers Society. I will forever be indebted to the members of the LWS critique group for helping me with my writing.
May: My wife and I moved into our new house in beautiful British Columbia. I was fortunate enough to discover a group of writers called the “Writers Nook” and we get together every few weeks to write and encourage each other. I attended the “Word On The Lake” Writers’ Festival (http://wordonthelakewritersfestival.com/) in Salmon Arm, which is quickly gaining a reputation as a top-notch event.
July: The Okanagan Regional Library purchased multiple copies of all four of my novels and made them available in their branches in the region. A local bookstore in Salmon Arm called the “Hidden Gems Bookstore” (http://www.hiddengemsbookstore.com/) also agreed to sell my books.
August: The Back Nine became my biggest selling novel less than six months after its release. Since my second novel, The Legacy, is about the Rio Olympics, I decided to run several promotions during the Olympic Games. Once again, disappointing results.
September: For the first time ever, I decided to try giving away free copies of The Legacy. Numerous people suggested this was the way for unknown authors like me to generate awareness and interest in my books. The promotion ran for three days and on the first day, it was the #1 book downloaded on Amazon.ca in the sports category. The free promotion may have resulted in increased exposure, but it has not generated any new sales or reviews since that time.
October/November: I ran several promotions for The Second Shooter which produced disappointing results. I also signed up for a series of Scriptwriting workshops offered by Peter Blacklock which proved to be interesting and challenging. In fact, I’m in the process of adapting my upcoming novel titled “Women 101” into a stage play. We’re hoping to workshop the play in early 2017 to see if it is good enough to be staged by one of the theatre groups in the area.
December: I am pleased to announce that I sold my 500th book in December. I know that’s not a lot of sales, but it means a lot to me. When I started writing four years ago, I thought the only person who would be interested in reading my novels would be my mother. I’m still not getting rich or famous doing this but I just looked at the numbers and it looks like I’ll make a whopping profit of $154 for the year. Sales have been in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Germany and India. Paperback sales account for 64% of my sales, which is not the norm for most indie authors. I’ve come to the conclusion that the most successful marketing endeavour is not discounting the price of books or giving away a lot of free books; it is simply continuing to write and produce new material.
In 2017, watch for the release of my new novel titled “Women 101”. It will be my first book in the humour category and is about a father’s (sometimes questionable) advice to his son about the fairer sex.
January: Sales in the new year got off to a terrible start so I decided to try a few different promotions. I put my first novel Goliath on sale and ran a Goodreads Giveaway promotion for a free paperback copy. The goal was to generate interest in the book and garner a few more reviews, which would hopefully result in future sales. Since the novel deals with mental health issues, I also offered to donate all of my royalties from sales in January to the Canadian Mental Health Association. The results? You guessed it. Zero sales. Nada. Zilch.
February: Sales continued to be few and far between. However, I was distracted by purchasing a new house in the Shuswap region of British Columbia. With a May possession date, we started making plans for the move from London, Ontario to Blind Bay, B.C.
March: My new novel The Back Nine was released on March 11th. I was quite excited about it and planned a major marketing initiative. Unfortunately, Amazon had trouble making it available on their Amazon.ca website. Since the Canadian market is where I make most of my sales, I decided to delay the marketing efforts until it was actually available for purchase. To my surprise, sales started happening anyway. Don’t ask me how people even heard about the book, but I sold several copies in the U.S. and the U.K. in the first week. It was almost a week later when the book finally became available on the Canadian website and I started my marketing efforts. The Back Nine was my most successful launch to date and sold 80 copies in the first two months. (I know that’s not a lot for some people, but it’s a lot for me.) The new book also triggered sales in my other books.
April: I received a great review of The Legacy and had my name added to the LWS Luminaries page of the London Writers Society. I will forever be indebted to the members of the LWS critique group for helping me with my writing.
May: My wife and I moved into our new house in beautiful British Columbia. I was fortunate enough to discover a group of writers called the “Writers Nook” and we get together every few weeks to write and encourage each other. I attended the “Word On The Lake” Writers’ Festival (http://wordonthelakewritersfestival.com/) in Salmon Arm, which is quickly gaining a reputation as a top-notch event.
July: The Okanagan Regional Library purchased multiple copies of all four of my novels and made them available in their branches in the region. A local bookstore in Salmon Arm called the “Hidden Gems Bookstore” (http://www.hiddengemsbookstore.com/) also agreed to sell my books.
August: The Back Nine became my biggest selling novel less than six months after its release. Since my second novel, The Legacy, is about the Rio Olympics, I decided to run several promotions during the Olympic Games. Once again, disappointing results.
September: For the first time ever, I decided to try giving away free copies of The Legacy. Numerous people suggested this was the way for unknown authors like me to generate awareness and interest in my books. The promotion ran for three days and on the first day, it was the #1 book downloaded on Amazon.ca in the sports category. The free promotion may have resulted in increased exposure, but it has not generated any new sales or reviews since that time.
October/November: I ran several promotions for The Second Shooter which produced disappointing results. I also signed up for a series of Scriptwriting workshops offered by Peter Blacklock which proved to be interesting and challenging. In fact, I’m in the process of adapting my upcoming novel titled “Women 101” into a stage play. We’re hoping to workshop the play in early 2017 to see if it is good enough to be staged by one of the theatre groups in the area.
December: I am pleased to announce that I sold my 500th book in December. I know that’s not a lot of sales, but it means a lot to me. When I started writing four years ago, I thought the only person who would be interested in reading my novels would be my mother. I’m still not getting rich or famous doing this but I just looked at the numbers and it looks like I’ll make a whopping profit of $154 for the year. Sales have been in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Germany and India. Paperback sales account for 64% of my sales, which is not the norm for most indie authors. I’ve come to the conclusion that the most successful marketing endeavour is not discounting the price of books or giving away a lot of free books; it is simply continuing to write and produce new material.
In 2017, watch for the release of my new novel titled “Women 101”. It will be my first book in the humour category and is about a father’s (sometimes questionable) advice to his son about the fairer sex.
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