What Worked (and Didn’t) in April
I think it’s safe to say that your mileage may vary when it comes to marketing, promoting, and ultimately selling books. There are enough variables involved to make it perhaps even more complicated the predicting the weather. Nonetheless, here I am attempting to bring order to the chaos and explain what did and didn’t work for me last month. These are unofficial results since Amazon won’t release finalized sales data until the 15th of April.
Overall my sales were down in April compared to March. I sold more books but made less money (I think). How’s that work? Pricing tweaks and experimentation (see below). Plus I only moved an extra 150 books or so, or around a 4% increase in volume.
First off my Blades of Leander trilogy, it did remarkably well again, although I think I left money on the table. The first two weeks of the month I experimented and dropped the price to $2.99 for all three books. Sales went up but revenue went down. I changed it after two weeks so the first book stayed at $2.99 but the other two returned to their former prices. That left the sales increased and recaptured missing revenue for books 2 and 3. I nearly made up what I lost, at least in theory according to my formulas. I’m predicting real world numbers will come in around $3000 – $4000 for this trilogy (over 1500 books sold).
The other experiment was with my Vitalis series. I released the third book so I knocked the first one down to $2.99 and then enrolled it in KDP Select for a 5 day freebie. I gave away a little over 2,000 copies in 5 days – not very impressive. Still, that and the pricing drop helped it start moving again. I sold about 40 books more this month than I have the last several, although that shows up as a slight loss on the balance sheet due to the reduced price. The good news is sales of Vitalis: Resurrection and Vitalis: Provenance went up and they more than made up for the missing revenue on Vitalis. Resurrection sold 30 more copies (most in the last few days after the promo) and Provenance almost matched the number (with the biggest boost in the last few days). All told, I’m predicting somewhere in the neighborhood of $750 on my Vitalis series for April (up around $300). KDP Select worked for me this time around it seems – now my hope is that I can keep the increased sales steady.
My Voidhawk series is up a few hundred, but that’s due to the release of Voidhawk – The Edge of Forever. My Wanted series broke even, and Dark Earth showed a very slight increase ($40 or so). The Lost Girls, my other experiment, tanked.
After fighting with Kobo to get The Lost Girls listed correctly and then having Amazon list it as paid too much time elapsed and it slipped off the algorithms / charts. I flipped it back to being free and “sales” picked up at a modest pace again, but books 2, 3, and 4 were not selling as well due to the period where exposure was lacking. I lost at least $600 on that series. I blame Kobo and their growing pains.
Speaking of Kobo and other non-Amazon booksellers. They seem to be tanking in 2013. I mentioned this in another post and promised a follow-up. Well, here’s the follow-up. Smashwords has released their Q1 2013 royalties and Novel Concept Publishing revenue with Smashwords was down around 33%. I don’t have the official report from Smashwords yet that lets my figure out where the money falls, exactly, but the bottom line is decreased significantly so I presume it will be spread in the same ratio as prior disbursements. And, for those curious, I make more on Amazon in a month than I make off of Smashwords in a year. Smashwords is a great platform with very fair terms and conditions – Mark Coker has done a heck of a job with it. But it doesn’t have the visibility or market segment that Amazon claims.
To segue briefly into talks of the future of ebooks and publishing I think it’s safe to say Amazon is going to be victorious. They will be the Microsoft of the publishing world, and Apple will be Apple. Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, and the others don’t seems to be doing much of anything except losing market share. Even iBooks looks to be sliding a bit, but I think they’ll remain a dominant (although secondary) player.
And traditional publishing? Oh it’s here to stay, but it’s going to be downsizing and merging. That’s my prediction and nothing more. It’s not wishful thinking it’s just the way things have been heading and seem to continue to head that way. The only ones denying what’s happening are the publishers themselves and the handful of writers that the publishers have elevated with money and promotion to turn them into icons. Or in the case of James Patterson, someone who managed to force traditional publishing to work for him instead of the other way around.
As for me, I’m hard at work on Isle of the Ape, the beginning of the Order of the Dragon fantasy trilogy (sequel to Blades of Leander). Any day now I’ll be releasing Forbidden Love, the first book in a potential new series as well – it’s a vast leap from my traditional fair, it’s all about romance and smut with a twist of espionage tossed in. I really like the premise and characters and I have plans for several (endless?) stories in the series if the first receives at least a lukewarm reception. Just remember, this one ain’t for the kiddos (and that’ll be apparent on page 1).
To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com .
