First few weeks...

[Eve]

Hi Guys

It's my first week as a self published writer. Quite exciting but pretty daunting at the same time.

How did you guys get on in the first few weeks. I'm assuming sales are pretty poor to begin with?

Eve

[Michael]

Nice one! It gets a bit easier once you get over the initial paranoia of putting your work out there.

Sales are pretty poor to begin with, yes... and often pretty poor in the long term as well!

[Jim]

Sales will be pretty poor. There are a strategies people suggest.
One is giving the book away free. Sorry but I cannot see that one, each copy given away is one less people will buy.
Giving away a short story or prequel, that could be a different matter. Problem is, because it's free people download it onto their kindle along with scores of other free books and then probably never get round to reading it.
Promoting your book on 'Meet Our Authors' forum on Amazon is probably the default state for most of us, blogging and tweeting is also something we attempt, with less obvious signs of success.
There is a general feeling that we need four or five books up there before we look 'serious'

[Jud]

Have you opened an author thread Eve?

[Andrew]

Hi Eve, good luck!

I've had more people read my book as a result of interacting on this forum than through any other form of promotion, including my offline friends. Fact. So I would strongly advise opening an author thread as soon as possible.

But, yes, my sales started very poor, and have pretty much remained so, which is probably a good reason to ignore anything I have to say. I don't give my book away free either, I think it's a bit of a slap in the face to people who've paid for it.

I am told often that additional books is about the only way to improve your overall sales as you become more 'discoverable' and are gradually taken more seriously. No one has ever taken me seriously :)

[Jim]

Apparently being known to be generous with a bacon butty doesn't hurt either :-)

[Kath]

Oi! Behave!
Decent books come first - bacon butties later!

[Jim]

Ignite wrote: "Oi! Behave!
Decent books come first - bacon butties later!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW_zi8...

surely you can read decent books AND eat bacon butties at the same time.

[Eve]

Thanks everyone - I will set up an author page now!
And yes, I do make fab bacon butties ;o)

[James]

I'll have to disagree with those who don't want to do a free promo. If you don't, you're basically taking away one of the best tools you have to get your name out there.

The first thing you need to worry about when you're starting out as an indie author is not sales, but reviews. Nobody is going to buy your book if there aren't a substantial number of (positive) reviews on Amazon for your book. The best and easiest way to amass those reviews is to run a free promo.

I did mine about two weeks ago and gave out thousands of copies. It's still a bit too early for the reviews to start coming back, but if this promo nets me at least 50 - 60 reviews in the next two months it will have been well worth it, as that number of reviews opens up more and better promotional opportunities.

So you definitely need to consider it.

And now I'm off to start an author's thread :)

[Shaun]

James wrote: "but if this promo nets me at least 50 - 60 reviews in the next two months it will have been well worth it"

Good luck with that. I've given thousands of copies of my work away over the years and still haven't got that many reviews!

[James]

Shaun wrote: Good luck with that. I've given thousands of copies of my work away over th..."

Really? I read somewhere that you can expect 1 review to every 10 copies sold/given away.

I guess maybe that wasn't so accurate ...

[Shaun]

I wish that was the case, James. Reviews can be harder to come by than rocking horse s#@t, that's why it's always appreciated when someone takes time out to write one, regardless of whether it's a good review or not.

[Kath]

They reckon one per 100 copies (sold) because give-aways are often not very high on TBR lists. Sadly, very many people will be impressed (or distressed!) by your book but only a fraction of those will review. Many readers are strangely nervous of putting their views in print.

[James]

Well then, looks I got some bad advice. I guess I've to really start plugging for reviews.

[Tim]

I don't think freebies do much other than increase your download count. I know for sure that I have literally hundreds of free books that I've downloaded over a period of many months. Any new book from an unknown author will be at the end of that list. Known authors and books I've paid real money for will always get first dibs (plus freebies that I've won or specifically been given). For a new free book that gets added to the end of my TBR (aka slush) pile, it could be 3 or 4 years (!) before I get around to it, if ever. And I'm far from atypical. Which means, start looking for a review in 2016. (I do review probably 90% of the books I read, but I may well not be typical in that. And Amazon seems to have taken a liking to not publishing my reviews too - at least, my review of Andy's Third Rule never appeared.)

[James]

Tim wrote: "I don't think freebies do much other than increase your download count. I know for sure that I have literally hundreds of free books that I've downloaded over a period of many months. Any new book ..."

Okay. The question I would ask you, then, is why keep downloading more free ones before reading the ones you already have?

[Tim]

A question I keep asking myself!

But it boils down to: Never look a gift horse in the mouth. i.e., Because it's free.

[Jim]

James wrote: Okay. The question I would ask you, then, is why keep downloading more free ones before reading the ones you already have? ..."

I don't have a Kindle so I'm watching this from outside. Basically I think people download free books in case they are any good, but mainly just because they are free.
Think about when you go into a bookshop. You browse. You'll pick a book up, look at the back cover, perhaps flick through it. Then you'll put it back. I suspect a lot of free downloads are really just people browsing. I'd be surprised if 10% of the free downloads even got read. Most will just sit at the end of people's TBR list and never be opened. Some will be opened, glanced at, and deleted because they aren't what the person thought they were, or don't look worth reading.
Also I'm not sure whether your average reader even considers reviewing a book.Why would they expect to? In our specialist corner of the universe, yes books matter and we do reviews. But I must admit other that books I get spent specifically for review I don't review a high proportion of what I read.

[James]

Well, this is all very demoralizing, and contrary to how I was led to believe this whole process worked. I kind of thought people loved to leave reviews because it gave them the chance to spout off about what they were reading.

Oh well. Back to the drawing board ...

[Tim]

James wrote: "Well, this is all very demoralizing, and contrary to how I was led to believe this whole process worked. I kind of thought people loved to leave reviews because it gave them the chance to spout off..."

I don't know where your information came from but it's definitely way over optimistic. I write apps for a living, and there it's much the same as with books: Ratings exceed reviews by probably about 5 or 10 to 1, and reviews... one per hundred downloads is pretty good going. In my experience, 2 or 3 per thousand is probably nearer the mark (for apps, anyhow). And then generally they only say anything if they want to complain.

It's exactly the same if you ask for feedback about something. People in general won't say anything unless they are particularly disgruntled (you always see more negative comments than positive, because people don't normally bother to say "that was nice"). Just the way it is.

[Kath]

Don't let us demoralise you James - keep writing. It's not a simple equation though.

[Simon (Highwayman)]

This is interesting. It seems that the trick is to target the free books so that the percentage leaving reviews is higher..


I only bother with free books these days if they are recommended.

[Kath]

i always download freebies that our authors post here even though i know i have no intention of reading them cos they are not my bag - quite simply cos back ages ago someone told me that it helped with visibility and position in the freebie chart which had some kind of knock on effect in the paid chart.
but if that's the wrong thing to be doing i will happily stop!

[James]

Kath wrote: "i always download freebies that our authors post here even though i know i have no intention of reading them cos they are not my bag - quite simply cos back ages ago someone told me that it helped ..."

Well, I'm learning now that a year or two ago, freebies had more of a positive knock-on affect than they do now, simply because now, everyone does it and the market is flooded.

Typhoon Season made it up to #2 on the free Literary Fiction list, and #67 overall in the Kindle store, but I still haven't seen any sort of sales bump.

Seems the time for freebies as an effective marketing tool is over. Or maybe it's just because my book isn't a simple genre read, and most people who hunt for the freebies aren't the type who want to spend extra time or thought on a book.

I really don't know – I'm just hypothesizing.

[Mhairi]

I think you're right about the sales bump being a think of the past, James. I've heard that, as there are more and more freebies out there, the post-free day bump on Select rarely happens. It does happen, but not nearly as much or as often as it used to. Like all marketing tactics, when everyone does it, it becomes commonplace and doesn't make you stand out any more. Sad but true. I have no idea how to get my stuff to sell, and the best I've come up with so far is to publish a lot in as many different ways as possible, and hope something sticks. At least I'll be writing.

[Tim]

I think the best tactic is to have more books out there. The more books you publish, the more each book seems to sell.

[James]

Yeah, seems like having more product to peddle is the way to get things going.

Hopefully I'll have this second book ready to go by the spring.

[Mhairi]

Tim wrote: "I think the best tactic is to have more books out there. The more books you publish, the more each book seems to sell."

I'm certainly hoping that's true :D

[Shaun]

I'm going to use a revolutionary new tactic: I'm going to charge money for my books :p ;)

[Eve]

I'm probably making a huge mistake, but I'm putting my book on free this weekend.

been umming and ahhing over this - but I want to give it go, even though something tells me I might not achieve much.

[Paul]

Hey, Eve, hi from Dublin and an author who went live around the same time as you (Print on Demand). I know exactly how you feel. I've hit what I think is an early peak with my book (and not a high one) and have been working my brain on overtime trying to find the way ahead. However, I'm holding out until my Kindle version goes live (next couple of weeks) and then I'm going to make fresh announcements etc etc. and reduce price before I give in to the free option. In the meantime it's all a learning curve and I'm already learning from the guys on Good Reads. Don't despair.

[Kath]

hi eve, i went to click on your profile to check out your book but your profile is set to private - is this right? most authors have links to their books and stuff on theirs...

[Sophie]

Hi Eve! I have done free weekends for my first book and it did translate into a significant sales boost after the promotion ended. That being said, I do have two books in my series out with the third coming out next month. I have done one of the Read to Review programs through a goodreads group and that too helped my sales, and obviously my reviews. Not everyone liked the book, but it got me thirty reviews in one month (and I had to give out forty some copies for free in return). I have also contacted bloggers and asked them to read the book and then feature it on their websites. That has been moderately successful. Interacting on Goodreads and Facebook have been the most helpful for sales. I don't have fantastic sales or anything like that, but they are steadily improving. And like the others have said, even getting a second book out there really bumped up my sales.

[Eve]

Thanks guys thats really helpful

Still finding my feet on here and didn't realise about my profile, so will fix now!

[Kath]

yes, goodreads needs a little getting used to / working out!

if you need any help with your profile and linking books and stuff, we have a fair few goodreads librarians in the group who will help i'm sure :)

[Eve]

Thank you - I think its okay now but not sure about Linking books.

My book - The Blog of Maisy Malone has been added to Goodreads - do Y link to that?