Dale’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2017)

Dale’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

My latest from Dialogue and Discourse: A Minor Religion, In a Major Way

Alex wrote: "Kate Kelley's interview has gone up on Medium, for those who are on there.

https://medium.com/@arcarver87/the-bu..."

Finally caught up on these . . .

Here's a fascinating Medium article that came to my inbox this morning: Behind Many Great Male Writers There Are Even Greater Wives

Anna Faversham wrote: "Ah... yes, thanks Dale, I vaguely remember that from my days of trying to teach others to persevere, but I have forgotten the numbers. There was something that had a '100' in it. This was about a q..."

Maybe 100 was how many times you bang your head on the desk before moving on to the next promo? ;-)

Anna Faversham wrote: "I keep notes on all advertising, dating back to my very first ads several years ago - I'm just made that way!

I'm also aware that if I use a site too frequently with the same book, the returns dim..."

There's a marketing principle called the Rule of 7, which says that a prospect has to see your message 7 times before they start to pay attention to it.

Alex wrote: "Hi everyone

In previous years we have done both group promotion events and blog-go-rounds to help spread the news about our books wider than we can reach on our own, are there any plans for such e..."

I would be interested in joining assuming I can steal the time for it. I'm afraid I can't be a organizer, though.

Anna Faversham wrote: "I can tell you one that didn't: Bargain Booksy - I paid $70 for my Time Travel Romance and received 18 sales on the day (and, of course, the book was reduced to 0.99). Possibly I received another 1..."

I think with ads like these you have to keep at them and gauge performance over the long haul. I did 3 BargainBooksy promos last year (one for each of my books). The first got me enough sales to pay back the fee plus a bit extra, but the other two did not. Alex says he uses them once per month and in the course of a year makes money on the deal, but any given month may not make money.

A fun and informative Medium article from Benjamin Dreyer, vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief, of Random House, and the author of Dreyer’s English:

https://medium.com/s/story/close-prox...

Gina wrote: "Thanks for all the information about Medium. I had never heard of it before!

So I added my first article:
https://medium.com/@ginakarasek/there..."

Welcome to the club! I'm now following you and gave you some claps and a comment.

D.J. wrote: "Thanks Dale. I’ve just checked and it’s turned up ok. It does say temporarily out of stock on Amazon is that normal?"

I read somewhere on Ingram's site that that's normal, but that the book can still be ordered through them. I don't remember if my books show that way or not.

Another small issue I discovered with Ingram. You can enter a series title and number for your books, and on some seller sites (B&N for one) they will create a series page for your books. Amazon does not. For reasons that make no sense to me, they only set up series pages for ebooks if they are published through KDP. You can go through Author Central support to get a series page created for print books, but that doesn't give the ebooks a series page. Also, it seems (I may be wrong about this, but it's how it worked for me) you have to specifically ask to be directed to Author Central support, otherwise you'll end up at KDP support and they will tell you you have to ask Ingram to set up the series page, which Ingram can't do because they (obviously) don't have any control over the Amazon website.

I lost a little more hair over this before I got it resolved...

Alex wrote: "I shall be hosting the Bulwark authors over the next week or so and would be grateful if everyone could share these interviews around as widely as possible

https://alexrcarver.wordpress.com/2019/0..."

Shared on FB and Twitter. Are there any hashtags for this? I always forget about hashtags . . .

D.J. wrote: "How long does it take to get from Ingram to Amazon? "

As I recall, it only took a day or two. Some outlets take a little longer. Within half a week to a week, you'll see your book appearing on B&N, Books-a-Million, Kobo, and various other sites.

Updates to existing books can take longer. Ingram sends ebook updates once a week on Sundays and print book updates once a month on the first of the month. (Although, that might only be for price updates. I'm a bit confused on that point.)

D.J. wrote: "Oh wow. Small achievement but I did it. After completely failing to comprehend the setup for IngramSpark last week, I have submitted two titles. They are awaiting review or whatever they do with th..."

Congratulations, and good luck!

E.H. wrote: "Hi! This is Erica Graham. I have a new Goodreads author page for my pen name. Here it is: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show..."

Followed.

My next skywatching article for Dialogue & Discourse: Spring Springs

This is just popcorn: Fun With Medium Stats

Alex wrote: "My BargainBooksy ad that went out yesterday may well have been my best yet. So far I have had 68 sales reported between Amazon, Apple and B&N, which means I've made back around 40% of what the ad c..."

That's good.

D.J. wrote: "Dale wrote: "D.J. wrote: "Dale when you did IngramSpark recently, did you put in a table fo contents?"

No, I normally wouldn't do that for a work of fiction. I don't even have tables of contents i..."

I didn't find it that much different from KDP. It's just broken up differently. The one major difference, which is a bit of a pain, is KDP calculates an enters prices in different currencies for you, whereas you have to manually enter them on IS (although they do have a link to a currency converter).

My new article from The Writing Cooperative: How to Create an Advance Reader Copy.

I've also submitted a different version of this article to Indies Unlimited. It should appear there within the next week, I think.