Romance case study: should you give the first in a series away for free?

[Quantum]

1) How many books should you publish in a year?

2) In a series:

a) How many books should you publish?

b) Should you give the first one away for free?

The authorearnings.com presentation at the Romance Writers Association conference back in May 2016 answers these questions and more. See http://authorearnings.com/2016-rwa-pa...

By using the raw data and analyzing it in a spreadsheet (Excel is recommended), you can do the same for your target (sub)genre (as identified in Amazon).

Here's some highlights. These statistics should be taken as general guidelines; an author's specific circumstances take precedence.

1) The more often you publish the more you earn per title, but after 4 books it flattens out until 21 or more!


2a) As a series gets longer, you can earn more per title. The first big increase is at numbers 2 and 3, but then it dips and then recovers at number 7. So, it might be better to start a new series after finishing a 3-book series.


2b) Giving the first book in a series free (aka "permafree") results in a positive ROI only in a series of 7-10 books.

[Nik]

Wonder whether this can be equally applicable beyond romance

[Quantum]

i think that it would be prudent to assume that it doesn't apply beyond the romance genre. one should run the data themselves for their target (sub)genre. so for you, Nik, maybe one of these:

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Conspiracies
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Political

authorearnings.com doesn't have their raw data available for the last quarter of 2016 (but hopefully soon), so you'd have to use the 3rd quarter data.

[Nik]

Alex G wrote: "i think that it would be prudent to assume that it doesn't apply beyond the romance genre. one should run the data themselves for their target (sub)genre. so for you, Nik, maybe one of these:

Myst..."

Thanks, Alex

[Marie Silk]

Nice data, thanks Alex :)

[Quantum]

i opened the the Q3 2016 raw data in excel, but with ~200,000 rows of titles, it was pretty slow filtering out rows by genre on a 4GB windows 7 machine. i might try some different things on that machine or try a more powerful machine later this week.