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@Mr Alex: re "If you look at the public response of most writers in the most recent SIA discount promotional blitz over the 4 July weekend, it seems like many go back down to their previous rankings (I'm waiting to be corrected on this).Well, wait no longer! For I am here!!! Just kidding. You're right. Semi-right anyway.
None of us kept our promo rankings. In fact, mine started dropping the second I changed my price back. With that being said, nearly three weeks later, they're still significantly better compared to pre-event.
Even my author ranking has remained higher but that little bugger is volatile as shizz!
@Mr Steve: Nah, you're not being negative. Just realistic, I suppose. People like you balance out my crazy and keep my feet planted firmly on the ground. Which I appreciate! Although...
*pops happy pills of the potent variety* ^_~
@Mr Nik: Yeah, visibility is an elusive creature, eh? I think this is where a bit of luck comes in for sure!
Hugs,
Ann
Annie wrote: "@Mr Alex: re "If you look at the public response of most writers in the most recent SIA discount promotional blitz over the 4 July weekend, it seems like many go back down to their previous ranking..."thx for that graph. so what was its highest ranking during the promo? top 20? (i forgot.) and right before?
@Mr Alex: re "thx for that graph. so what was its highest ranking during the promo? top 20? (i forgot.) and right before?"No problemo. I know you dig graphs *smirks* And nope, not even close to top 20. However, there were other indies who made it to single digits in their respective categories. And even some in multiple categories.
My highest: #81 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Romance
As for overall ranking paid in the Kindle Store...
Pre-event: 22,316
Post-event: 1,601
Current: 15,151
They're not really accurate indicators because they fluctuate hourly. I was at ~20K yesterday and ~8K a couple days ago. Selling a few copies in a short timespan will give you a major boost, ya know?
Miss Marie's numbers seem a bit more stable than mine. Not sure if that's a genre thing? Maybe...? Dunno.
But speaking of that wonderful woman *big-squeezy-hugs Marie* Thank you!!
Not to forget Evan selling dozens of books every day with his debut novel, heavily cut by the editor. And I mean the due respect here
Nik wrote: "Not to forget Evan selling dozens of books every day with his debut novel, heavily cut by the editor. And I mean the due respect here"OMGoodness, yesssss!! *claps excitedly* His numbers are pure awesomeness!!!
Annie wrote: "No problemo. I know you dig graphs *smirks* And nope, not even close to t..."thx for indulging my predilections.
Nik wrote: "Not to forget Evan selling dozens of books every day with his debut novel, heavily cut by the editor. And I mean the due respect here"
what's his book? i could gather data on it.
Hahah my ears were burning :DFor all those interested I have been very open-book about my debut novel and it's success. I've posted thoroughly about it on my Blog and on KBoards (username EvanPickering)
I have two separate posts on my blog detail the first 90 days of my results and the 90 thereafter. I wont link em specifically but you can find them pretty easily on mah blog!
Blog and Author Page
Feel free to ask me whateva! I've talked about it alot, but the original HOOD manuscript I cut 200 of the 280 pages after working with an editor and rewrote it in 4 months. Guaranteed I would have had a fraction of the success I did if I hadn't done that. Honestly, my editor just helped me learn how to be a better writer and storycrafter. There was a lot of writing mechanics and concepts I did not know.
Evan
*GASP* The Indie God has graced us with his presence!!! *faints*Yeah, I'm a dork. Thanks for sharing, Mr Evan! Your numbers are fantastic, dude!! Keep on killin' it!!!
Hugs,
Ann
Evan wrote: "Hahah my ears were burning :DFor all those interested I have been very open-book about my debut novel and it's success. I've posted thoroughly about it on my Blog and on KBoards (username EvanPic..."
thx for jumping in.
your graphs and 6-month stats are nice. so here, we're talking about what the daily sales rates are before, during, and after a sales discount. so you had one in April and your stats state:
before: 20-22 bks/day
during: 360 total/3 days - 120/day
but how about immediately after? (i can't really tell from your graphs b/c the scale on the y-axis is too small). you state 24.4 bks/day for the entire 180 days, but what is it now also?
thx for any insight into your data that you're willing to provide!
btw, how you give your average words per day (1k/day) is instructive. i also like how you set your new goal to be 2k/day, which is pretty much in the ball park of many successful writers (John Scalzi's is 2500/day).
Evan wrote: "Hahah my ears were burning :D....the original HOOD manuscript I cut 200 of the 280 pages after working with an editor and rewrote it in 4 months. Guaranteed I would have had a fraction of the success I did if I hadn't done that...."
Since you've made the details public (and thanks a lot for that!), I thought you'd kinda expect people discussing and analyzing your success -:)
Very well done and keep going upwards! The next release may amplify the overall sales.
Can editor's impact be that decisive on the prospective success of a book? I wish editors were magicians -:)
Steven wrote: "J.J.,After my less-than-optimal experience giving away ebooks years back, I started using the Kindle Countdown option, offering books (reasonably) priced at $2.99 at a discounted price of $0,99. N..."
It reminds me of a commercial Toyota is running right now where the salesman hands the woman the papers to sign.
"We just need your signature."
"I...can't..."
"But it's a great deal."
They tell you nothing about the car, the whole selling point is that it is a "great deal."
I've worked in the grocery business and I can tell you from experience, all you have to do is give the perception of a sale or a deal and people go nuts...it doesn't have to actually be a sale and could in fact be something priced more than the competitor, but if you make people think it is, they will buy anything.
All,To inject a positive note in my negative spiel, I should mention that I wouldn't want to be doing anything else--I'm having too much fun storytelling.
Annie,
Your stats point out two things: (1) It IS a lottery. You haven't won the complete Powerball (up to $390 million now), but you've definitely won one of its smaller prizes. Congrats! (2) Results might be very genre dependent. Romance and erotica are HUUUUGE now. You can write it. I can't. Same for cozies.
Those three genres (or a main one, romance, and two subgenres, erotica and cozies) might be good examples of "writing to market," recognizing where reader interests currently lie and writing stories to fill those niches. There's nothing wrong with that per se if your motivation is that you like to read in those genre niches and believe you can contribute (my motivation for my genres, by the way). If the only motivation, though, is to jump on a bandwagon to sell lots of books, an author might not be true to her- or himself and her or his art. (Another comment that contributed to my being kicked off that indie-author site, I'm sure.) The distinction is clear. In the art world, it's the difference between Gauguin and Kincaid (a "formulaic" painter). I'll refrain from mentioning Kincaid-like authors (the ones I have in mind aren't indies).
r/Steve
J.J.,LOL. All right, this will sound sexist as hell (and I'll accept my flogging), but when my wife says, "I got a great deal!" I respond, "What did you buy? What was the original price?" Department stores often mark clothes higher (men's and women's) and then offer sales that just bring them down to a reasonable price (Nordstrom v. Target, as an example); otherwise, you end up paying high prices at the glitzy high-end stores for items you can find less expensive elsewhere.
On the other hand, a new Penney's CEO tried my "permanently on sale" philosophy and just about ruined the brand (or was that Sears?). Maybe I should raise all my prices and then offer coupons on Smashwords every month? Geez, I hate this promo stuff, more than anything because I'm more interested in entertaining readers (after recovering costs, of course).
But, at the risk of making GR's owner a bit irked with me, Amazon is definitely an instigator by encouraging authors, especially indies, to put ourselves in these situation. They're only interested in selling books, i.e. to them books are just the same as other products now.
r/Steve
@Mr Steve: re "They're only interested in selling books, i.e. to them books are just the same as other products now."I hate (not really haha) to say this, but if Amazon looked at it any other way...they'd be outta business...
Just my 2 cents.
Hugs,
Ann
EDIT: Ooops. Didn't even read your actual reply to me hahaha!! Yes, I agree with the whole "lottery" bit to a certain extent. For sure!!
Annie,My bad! I tend to combine replies. Mr. Steve? Lord, that sounds old! ;-) I'm young-at-heart at least.
BTW, some of my books are a wee bit risque and/or romantic at times (not PG-13, but nothing you can't see on the cable channels, though), e.g. The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, but only as part of a more general plot, and when the plot calls for it. Romance is part of life in general, and characters must seem lifelike. I never throw in the Hollywood-like romantic interest of a guy or gal MC without justification, though. Remember the bombshell astrophysicist in Top Gun?! Some screenwriter thought she was necessary, I guess. (Now, that does date me!)
Inre Amazon: they started out as booksellers, but now other aspects of that huge business seem to dominate their business thinking. They definitely helped start the ebook revolution and indies took advantage. Someone far back in this thread discussed the parallels with the music industry. In the end, listeners and readers reaped benefits; the artists, not so much? We both even have pirates stealing our products and selling them or giving them away. Brave new parallel worlds!
r/Steve
@(Mr) Steve: Haha I Mr/sir and Miss/ma'am everyone! Top Gun...my great granddaddy told me about that once...
I jest, I jest!!!! *giggles*
Great stuff, Evan! Thank you for sharing :)I have a couple questions if you are okay with answering.
1. what is a one stack promo?
2. did you make the KU All Stars chart?
Thank you and well done!
Steven wrote: "J.J.,LOL. All right, this will sound sexist as hell (and I'll accept my flogging), but when my wife says, "I got a great deal!" I respond, "What did you buy? What was the original price?" Departme..."
The JC Penny's situation sort of highlights how men and women approach shopping differently. Most of the men who had an opinion on that "always on sale" mentality loved the idea that they could go in and buy whatever they needed at any given time. One comment I remember was something like "I like not having to wait for a sale to buy underwear." But it is largely the women who drive the shopping revenue and they're not flocking into the store in droves when the price is always at its lowest.
I tend to not think of it as so much sexist as it is legitimate marketing. It's the reason retailers' ads usually feature women. It's why when you walk into a store you see a vast disparity between the number of women's clothes on sale vs. men's clothes. As my brother said, women tend to view shopping as a sport or an adventure, and the retailers play off that. And when JC Penny tried to get away from that kind of marketing, we saw what that did to their bottom line.
What is KU all stars chart? How does one get there?
The authors with the most Kindle Unlimited pages read on their books are eligible for bonuses and an "All Star" label on their book's page. I have been wondering how many pages read an author needs to have to make the charts :).
Not sure. I'm a bit dull when it comes to marketing, I'm afraid. Still learning. I can see that the blue KU bar has been activated for some of my books. This happened when people bought my books, I think?
Thanks guys!Annie, thanks for the kind words. Makes me feel all fuzzy :)
Alex G., my sales after the stack promo was around what it was before, 20-25ish books a day for about 2 weeks, then it jumped up to around 30-35 books a day for around 2 months. I can only assume this was the result of word of mouth spreading of the book, or something to that effect--considering the 'delayed reaction' effect.
Past week or so I've only been selling like 15 books a day (meh) but it's been awhile since I've run a promo, and I've done very little advertising what with focusing on book 2. From what I've gathered nothing boosts book 1 like publishing book 2 :D
Nik,
My editor helped me learn huuuge concepts like scene-sequel format and taught me how to outline and better structure a story, as well as other big-picture things like not trying to reinvent the wheel, just making the wheel your own so to speak. I just soaked up knowledge from her like a sponge! The book is TREMENDOUSLY better from her efforts in teaching me.
Marie,
A stack promo is when you put your book on sale and feature it in multiple promotions over the course of a few days (a stack of promotions, if you will) kind of like an overdrive-boost of promotion.
No, I didn't make the all-star chart. I was close though! Grumble. Imma get it. It's one of my goals.
Glad to hear from you all!
Evan
Evan wrote: "Nik,My editor helped me learn huuuge concepts..."
Thanks for the elaborate response. I'd appriciate the intro to your editor/contact details. After such superlatives, I feel I might try her kind services and couching, if and when ready with the next project
@Mr Evan: re "Past week or so I've only been selling like 15 books a day (meh)"Meh, my butt! I'm gonna celebrate my 15 books a day, thank you very much!! ^_~
Unfortunately Nik she isn't accepting new clients at this time, she's also a published author so she's perdy busy. I've asked her before on behalf of people, and she told me if she wants to find new clients she'll come to me, and I'll let you guys know!I can recommend to you the book she recommended to me that I studied the hell out of and it was where I come to understand much of what she was trying to teach me.
Techniques of the Selling Writer
It's kinda pricey, you can always look for it in a local library. But it is absolute gold. It's a bit old and kind of not up with the times, but the writing advice and technical writing skills alone probably catapulted my writing ten years ahead of beating my head against a wall of ignorance lol.
Annie, haha sorry wasn't trying to drink any haterade, I just want MOAR! I've grown accustomed to selling silly amounts of books a day and I want to get back to that hehe. Who knows maybe it was just bottled lightning? Ah well. off to write more of book2!
Evan
Good luck with book 2 and hope you multiply your sales for they say to be in the top ten you need to sell few K books a day! I hope we foster some huge- and bestsellers here -:)
J.J. wrote: "people feel like they're getting a better value if the discount is 50% instead of 33%"Ooops, sorry! I totally missed this!! But yes. Agreed!!! Gotta love perception, eh?
Hugs,
Ann
Evan wrote: "my sales after the stack promo was around what it was before, 20-25ish books a day for about 2 weeks, then it jumped up to around 30-35 books a day for around 2 months. "thx so much for the extra info. i calculated your post-promo average daily sales at 27.8, which means a 32.4% increase. another follow-on question (when you happen to pop in again) is was your average daily sales trending up, down, or level before the promo?
Evan wrote: "I can recommend to you the book she recommended to me that I studied the hell out of and it was where I come to understand much of what she was trying to teach me. Techniques of the Selling Writer"
excellent. i had checked it out from the library but now i'll buy it and put it in my bookcase next to How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling, The Elements of Style, GMC: Goal, Motivation and Conflict: The Building Blocks of Good Fiction (oops, i returned that to my friend).
UPDATE: ordered it.
Nik wrote: "Evan wrote: "Nik,My editor helped me learn huuuge concepts..."
Thanks for the elaborate response. I'd appriciate the intro to your editor/contact details. After such superlatives, I feel I might ..."
Couching?? Really, this isn't the place to promote that sort of activity!!!
Ian wrote: "Couching?? Really, this isn't the place to promote that sort of activity!!! ..."-:) Haha, well noticed.
I might need an editor even to participate on GR it seems.
I'll return couching for now
Is there a way out from "reinventing the wheel"? Hasn't all emotions been used up already? You cannot invent new emotions.
Haha, good catch, Ian. I was about to google couching because I was worried that I missed something. The imagination runs wild...
not sure how relevant this is or not but I just tried a kboards discovery ad,as a forum with mostly people that own a kindle, you would assume that any promotion would garner you some sort of sales. I used it to promote my first book that I had sort of neglected in favour of promoting my latest book.
nada, not a single sale. first campaign that I have done that didn't yield any results
Sorry to hear. Reminds me that many return empty-handed from doing ads on GR
@Sir Ian: Hahahaha, couching! *wipes away tear* Thanks for the giggles!!
Annie wrote: "J.J. wrote: "people feel like they're getting a better value if the discount is 50% instead of 33%"Ooops, sorry! I totally missed this!! But yes. Agreed!!! Gotta love perception, eh?
Hugs,
Ann"
Thanks.
It's the same reason some businesses run eternal "Going out of Business" sales when they're not actually going out of business.
Being in retail, I've seen a lot of bundle sales (2 for 5$, 5 for $10, etc.) where the sale prices works out higher than the regular price, it is out there for the customer to see it for themselves, and they still buy it just because it's "on sale."
I use to play a trick at one point putting slow moving items into a display case at regular price - in no way did I promote it as a sale, but just by being in a special case, people think it's some sort of a deal and scoop it up even without a stated discount or anything.
Annie wrote: "@Sir Ian: Hahahaha, couching! *wipes away tear* Thanks for the giggles!!"Glad to have got a smile or giggle. I couldn't resist it when I saw it :-) I had to share my laugh.
@Mr JJ: Funny how the human mind works, eh?@Sir Ian: Always share laughs. Best shizz in life is built on laughter ^_~
@Mr Tim: Google tells me 'boat'...errr...what the flogger nuts??
*smiles sweetly*
Hugs,
Ann
@Mr Tim: Ohhhhh!! Makes more sense now. I was like, ummm, what am I suppose to do with a darn boat?? *giggles*
Alex G.,Obviously there is some small-scale variance (as there always is with anything statistical) but on the whole it would appear my sales were climbing before I ran the promo. Then came the short level period then it jumped up to the high number of sales per day.
I think that answers your question! :D
Evan
I guess everyone wants to hear it clear and loud whether the size matters
If the story is really engaging, it can be over 1,000 pages and I'll still be disappointed when it's over. If I'm not really digging it, I want it over as quickly as possible. I hate when I DNF a book.
World, Writing, Wealth
Books mentioned in this topic
GMC: Goal, Motivation and Conflict: The Building Blocks of Good Fiction (other topics)Techniques of the Selling Writer (other topics)
How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling (other topics)
The Elements of Style (other topics)
Techniques of the Selling Writer (other topics)
More...
Visibility - it's just my own impression and what I hear from others. Our books sit among millions of other titles. In order for someone to decide whether s/he wants the book, s/he needs to know it exists. I thought after putting some serious efforts into producing a book or a few, we might as well give them some exposure.
I'm not even talking about paid promos, btw. So far I heard not that exciting feedbacks about paid promos on GR, Face, Google, but better (maybe still modest) response from promos (even free) with different book promo sites, especially those having a considerable followship on Twitter