Thursday Thoughts: Numbers
I can’t be afraid to pump my books. How else are readers going to discover them, right? You do run the risk of annoying some people, but the key is to change things up regularly and not post the same thing all the time. You also have to provide entertainment to everyone who follows you or subscribes to your newsletter.
In the end, it’s one of two things that will create sales for your books (other than the obvious—having well written books), numbers and dedicated fans of your work.
I’m sitting at 650 newsletter subscribers, and of those, about 50% open my bi-weekly sendings on a regular basis. But do they buy my books?
It’s so difficult to tell even though I do see that a few have clicked on purchase links. I think the telling stat is from my last presale offering. If half of the subscribers that open my newsletter bought Euphrates Vanished, I would have had ~150 presales. But that might be over ambitious as many of them do prefer the free book offerings, so let’s try for 10% of my subscribers, that’s reasonable, right? So, 30 presales. I would have be happy with that.
But, alas, I only had 5 presales. Needless to say I was a bit disappointed, but that’s how things go in the indie author world, with so many books to choose from, it takes a tremendous effort to stand out in the crowd.
It’s getting close to five years of being an author, so what do I have to show for it?
The Kindle Unlimited pages add up to about 225 total books, so I’m sitting at 1335 books. Now some of those are free downloads, but they are still in the hands of readers, although I suspect many of the freebies have been left unread on a Kindle reader.
Not huge numbers, but hey, I’ll take them.
-Leon
Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words, and his latest sci-fi mystery, Euphrates Vanished.
My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/
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