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Marie Silk: the value of permafree?
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Day 4 after release and still going strong :). Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,849 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Historical Fiction > United States > 20th Century
#7 in Books > Teens > Historical Fiction > United States > 20th Century
#128 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Sales have picked up on my other books too, and I'm half-tempted to credit some of that to AMS (of all things!). A goodreads member posted this link on AMS ads and (even though I was mostly disenchanted with AMS) I read through the article and figured I would feel more comfortable using keywords I chose myself (I honestly didn't know you could do this). My ad started last night and I started to see sales pick up. I'm keeping an eye on this one to see how it goes. I lost a lot of moolah on my last ad, so I'll be glad if this one pays off :). Here is the link for anyone interested in advice on getting the most out of AMS:
https://janefriedman.com/using-amazon...
My new release book doesn't have any reviews yet, but I sort of got a review today when a lady posted to my Facebook wall about it:
"Excellent!! Loved the twists and turns it took and how everything was wrapped up perfectly. Looking forward to a new series!!!!!"
That made my day!
Bryan Cohen also has some good stuff on AMS. He's done some webinars that I found helpful.Well done on your numbers!
Congrats on the activity, and interesting about the AMS ads. I did some ads this summer that didn't cost me much, but haven't generated much for me either, but I did the target-by-product ads, which it turns out are a pain to set up and not very effective for most people. I will have to try the keyword ads next.
Congrats, Marie! One of these days I'll learn your secret. ;)
Thanks for the info, Marie. I've been doing ads with my own keywords and to be honest, I'm not spending much at all, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of impressions either, so maybe my keywords aren't the greatest. Also, congrats on the sales! Glad to see the series has a strong finish!
Thank you for the replies! Well, I might have to retract what I said about AMS helping with sales, because according to my dashboard, my ad hasn't received any clicks yet. So I guess this pickup in sales could be due to the exposure my new release is getting. I will keep watching, but so far, haven't seen activity on my AMS ad (according to the dashboard).
Okay,I had to go look and yep,looks to me like someone was distracted while reviewing a supplement or something similar. I've seen this happen in a lot of items and you're likely right about the way the list pops up below the review. As for what to do, I would just mark it as not helpful and not worry.
But aside from that, congrats on your citizenship and successful promos!
Mod
Personally, if I had a review like that I'd probably chuckle and not worry about it.
Congrats on the dual citizenship.
Congrats on your dual citizenship and I'm glad you got to visit Legoland. I love that place as well!And ditto on the review comments.
Ahhh! I remember taking my kiddos to the Legoland in Chicago. Fun times!!! Sounds like end of summer was very good to you, barring the sunburn, of course. And hey, as long as that 5 star review gets lumped into all the others and not the first 5 or so reviews someone sees when they pull up your page, I'd say..."blessing", LOL.
Huh, okay... if I were you, I'd be thinking, they "love," it and feel more "energy." Great! Wonderful! But then again... I'm a kook!! At least it's a 5 star review! Huge Hugs!
Congrats on finishing a series. That must be... overwhelming! And I'm originally from the Inland NW. Very cool. My sisters live in Spokane.
And Yay for getting your citizenship worked out. That's a great thing to not have hanging over your head anymore.
I've been wanting to update this space, but I've been seriously slacking on the writing front, and therefore didn't think I had much to say. I wanted to have another book published by Christmas but I'm pretty sure my readers would like something more than a blank Word doc. *cough*I've got some more numbers to report for those interested. I will start off by saying that my sales took a nosedive in November/December. I had a steady number of sales through the summer and fall with regular promotions, but when November hit, and especially December, I could hardly get the needle to move. Not sure what happened.
Just for kicks, I checked on when my last Bookbub feature took place and what sort of waiting period they had between features. 6 months wait. Since it had been 7 months since my featured deal, I figured I would try the submission/rejection process again in the hopes of getting another feature someday. Somehow the stars aligned and my book was approved on the first submission! But the congratulations email from Bookbub gave me a heart attack. Here's why:
Bookbub says: "Dear Marie,
Congratulations! Our editors have selected your book Davenport House for a BookBub Featured Deal. To review and confirm all the details of your campaign, please click the button below:
VIEW DETAILS AND CONFIRM
If you have any concerns about the details of your campaign, please feel free to reach out to me before confirming and I’ll be happy to help!
Best wishes,"
I checked on the date they selected. DECEMBER 20th. Does anyone see why this might be a heart-attack-inducing-problem for a free book promotion?
For those unfamiliar with KDP Select free promos, they make it impossible to schedule a promo on the day your enrollment renews. Impossible. I even pleaded with Amazon to help, but no, they confirmed that they were "sorry I misunderstood", but December 20th was in fact a big fat black hole of promo nothingness.
To Be Continued...
Thank you, Alex. Fortunately there is a happy ending. It just took a while to type up :).
Sorry to everyone for leaving you hanging like that. But I'm a suspense writer, so I'm really not that sorry :D. Also this is a really long post.Since KDP was no help whatsoever, I reached out to Bookbub and explained the situation. I asked as nicely as I could if it was possible to reschedule for another date. LITERALLY ANY OTHER DATE WOULD DO. I wasn't sure if they would go through the trouble of rescheduling for a small-fries indie author like myself. I wasn't even sure if my email reply would go to an actual human, or perhaps get lost in email limbo. Thank Heavens I got a very kind, quick reply from them!
Bookbub says: "Hi Marie,
It’s no problem at all! I’ve updated your promotion so that you’re set to feature your book on December 13th. You should be able to see this change reflected if you log back into the Partner Dashboard and view your campaign details.
Please feel free to reach out with any further questions or updates!
Best,"
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU Bookbub! My fingers have never flown so fast to schedule a promo and pay an invoice!
I wondered how this feature would compare to my last one with them. My last feature had fantastic placement on the email and was even featured on Bookbub's Facebook page. I also did a lot of stacking and cross-promotion with my other books on countdown. I was conflicted with whether or not I should put the sequels on countdown this time. I finally decided to refrain from countdowns and see what it would be like to have a Bookbub deal with full royalties on my sequels (priced at 2.99).
Then I was concerned to see this blog post pop up:
Amazon Now Punishing Authors Running Bookbub Promotions
--which says that authors have been "rank stripped" during their Bookbub featured deals! Devastating for the indie author!
So my Bookbub deal for my book ran yesterday, and although it did not bring in as many downloads/sales as my previous [heavily cross-promoted] promo, it did bring in some great results. The email placement was good (near the top) and it was on Bookbub's Facebook page. I also stacked a feature with BookSends, Book Adrenaline, and Fussy. My book had a total of 23K free downloads while the sequels received 227 full price sales. My free book ranked #5 in the Free Kindle Store all day.
This morning, the day after my free promo, here is how my book ranked in the paid store, with an author rank for me too!
The second book to my series isn't horribly far behind at #1,900 in the Paid Kindle Store. Sales and KU page reads are going nicely. It's a welcome relief after my super slow sales month.
Wonderful rankings, Marie! Congratulations on your hard work and a job well done! Hugs
Wow! I'm officially jealous! Congrats again, Marie! ;-)
That is awesome, Marie! I hope it provides a wave of sales and high ranking that you can ride out for a good long time. :)Now I am terrified to check out that amazon link on the Bookbub punishment...but I will brave up and read it.
Wow, that's awesome, Marie! Your persistence and hard work paid off.
Thank you, everyone ♥Amie wrote: "
Now I am terrified to check out that amazon link on the Bookbub punishmen..."
Hopefully it's not an issue anymore. I checked my rank throughout the day and it was always there (not completely gone as the authors reported in the link), although it took a couple hours to catch up in the morning.
Congrats! I may try bookbub next year. Also I got a prequel of Davenport series to read soon!(:
And this space demonstrates why I would be a terrible blogger. Has it really been 6 months since I gave an update? Geez Louise. A lot has happened in the last half a year!
First, I decided to see what my books could do published wide vs. only on Kindle Select. It turned out to be quite a process getting my 8 books out of Select and published to the other ebook retailers. In some ways I felt like I was publishing for the first time all over again. I used Smashwords as my main distributor for BN, Apple, and most of the other stores, but I published directly to Kobo and Google. Now I know why I've almost never seen indie authors talk about publishing to Google. It's a royal pain haha.
Second, I set up a month-long promotion campaign (intended to target a wide audience) that would take place over the month of April while I skipped town and traveled the world a little. I tried some new tactics with sites I had never used before as well as booking features with the tried and true ones. I'm enjoying the freedom to publish my books wherever I want at whatever prices I want. I miss the income/improved ranks from Kindle Unlimited along with Free promotions and Countdowns, but I will give it a little more time to see if it's worth it for my series to be off Select. Since all of my titles were enrolled at different times with different end dates, it took until April 11th to have my full series available wide.
Third, I left the still-snowing Northwest USA and visited some new-to-me places like Nicaragua and Belize, and revisited Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, and Panama. It was 100 degrees some days and I was roasting. But I was so tired of the snow back home that sun and warmth were pleasant changes. I got to swim with dolphins and rays in Cozumel and snorkel the barrier reef in Belize. Pure magic.
Now I'm back and the results are in from my first attempt at wide distribution! Here is a summary of how books 1-7 of my series performed from March 30 through April 30.
Amazon: 618 sales
Non-Amazon sales:
(retailer breakdown below)
Smashwords: 1 sale, 75 free downloads
Kobo: 7 sales, 70 free downloads
Nook:
Apple:
Google: 5 sales
Amazon is the clear winner here but I would like to continue my efforts to reach the other platforms before I run back too quickly to KDP Select.
Not bad results for only being wide for a short time. Thank you for sharing your results. This is probably in our not too distance future.
Thanks for reminding me about Kobo promotions, Alex :) I applied for one that would run while I was away, but it took weeks to hear back from Kobo over whether my book was accepted or not so I had to do something different. I will try for another feature. Sounds like you had some great results! What price is your book at for the event?
Awesome to have you back! I am supremely jealous of all that travel. Sounds like a great month of sales to me. I had went wide in the beginning but I had used Bookbaby so I never had to deal with the royal pain of the actual posting the book to all the various sites. Doing that times 7 books had to have you needing a vacation :)
Best of luck throughout the spring and summer!
Fantastic results,Marie! I went wide for all of a month before Pronoun dissolved and decided it just wasn't worth pursuing another avenue. Looks like you've got some decent traction though.
Thank you for the replies! J.S.: Good luck with whatever you decide! If you are getting a lot of Kindle Unlimited reads now, it might be wise to hold off on wide distribution until those drop down.
Alex: 2 years? Phew, I don't know if I'm patient enough to wait that long! Thanks for the tips on Kobo promotions too.
Amie: Thanks! The vacation was perfectly timed once I got the book situation set up :).
Christina: It's a shame that Pronoun went away. Do you mind sharing your experience of going back to Select? Did you get page reads right away or have to build up sales again to see them?
I'd only put out a couple of my smaller titles on Pronoun and I was getting ready to put up a series when they folded, so there really wasn't much of anything to note. I did make one of the short stories free for a while and when I put it back in Select, it still had a bit of visibility despite the sunken rank.
Well bleh. I had to go up in this thread and edit some of my numbers from the campaign. Turns out I sold less on the wide channels than I thought :(. I discovered that Smashwords was including free downloads in the "sales" column, but with delays in reporting, it was difficult to detect. I had to go back to add up how many actual paid sales there were (total of 67 for April on all non-Amazon channels).Unfortunately, wide sales are not enough to justify wide distribution at this time. I'm pretty discouraged with my failed experiment. There weren't enough sales to produce a "tail" of residual sales on the other channels and I don't know how to make that happen short of a Bookbub ad. All told, my books earned about $115 in non-Amazon royalties.
I've unpublished my books on the other channels (had to make a special request with Kobo to withdraw from Kobo Plus early) and now have my books newly enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. I'm not sure if or when I'll go wide again.
In other news, the 5th book to my series is in the editing stage for audio production and will be for sale shortly! Hearing my books on audio has been more rewarding than I ever imagined. Sales are still slowish on audio but I'm hoping to get some new promos going that will help give them a boost. Thank you to all who are keeping up with and commenting on this thread.
Sorry to hear that, Marie. Honestly, despite those numbers being low, based on the data I've seen from others who are wide, you did better than most.
Hi Marie!You gave it a shot. You did something complicated and time-consuming. You collected data to help you make a decision. I think that's important. Thank you for generously sharing your findings with us. Also, I agree with Christina that you did pretty well. Hugs!!
Sorry that the reporting was tricky. But at least now you know what lies on the other side of the fence and can rest easy with where you position your books.When my debut novel was wide in it's first year, my non-Amazon sales were 13% of my overall sales. But the majority of those were scored during my big promos. I'd say my KU reads payout has totally been worth the switch as it makes up a solid half of my royalties. It's a little easier on my mind too, as it's only one platform to check throughout the day. I was getting on and off my phone checking my ranking like mad when I was wide ;)
Thank you Christina, Sam, and Amie. I guess wide distribution is one of those "won't know until you try" kind of things. Wide has its benefits but the benefits of Select outweigh them for my books.The good news is, my books have been re-enrolled in Select for almost a month now and have seen over 50K page reads in that time. I wasn't sure if I'd be back to square one with promotion since they had been out of Select for a few months. Things are looking good so far.
I felt badly about suddenly taking my books off wide distribution in case some wide readers might have wanted to continue the series with no way to buy the later ebooks. I added a note to my website that if anyone was in the middle of the series when the books were taken off those channels, they can contact me for the files for free. That made me a feel a little better. I certainly didn't intend to leave anyone hanging.
Being wide gave me the chance to try out permafree for my novella. Amazon price matched it to 0 once I emailed them about my book being free on the major channels. I wasn't sure if I could change the novella's price myself once it had been price matched. So even though I unpublished it from the other channels along with my other books last month, I left the novella at permafree and out of Select. Then something interesting happened earlier this week. I noticed a "sale" for this book on my report. I looked up my novella on Amazon and its price showed 99 cents instead of free. Amazon changed the price apparently. Some of you might have read about this on the SIA group.
The timing was actually good because free downloads had gone down to a few per day and I was considering returning the novella to Select anyway at the price point of 1.99. This gave me the chance to do so without worrying about ruining its permafree status. This book is currently getting sales at 1.99 as well as KU reads without promotion. It has usually been listed at either .99 or 1.99, meaning not a lot going for it in the royalty department. I would say it added more value to my series as a permafree book in the beginning when it was getting a lot of downloads. When getting only a few downloads per day, I think the better value is in having a KU book with the chance of royalties, even if they are at the 35% rate.
Feel free to share your own experiences with permafree :).
What’s great is that you are so diligent in monitoring your progress and switching up your marketing tactics. Nice work!
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Wow, that's really impressive! Congratulations, Marie.