Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion
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Looking For Guinea Pigs
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Mod
As for why you may not be getting the draw you want: I'm afraid the biggest obstacle you are going to have is criteria vs interest. You are looking for books with many good reviews, which is great, but most authors with many reviews are going to throw their money at the established sites who will guarantee a ROI. Also, BookBub promotes free books, which I think is part of the popularity.
You might consider starting with free and discounted books and see how well those go. Once you see more clicks or sales, start adding the full priced books gradually.
Whatever direction you take, I wish you success!
Yeah, I'm offering free promotion at the moment. Our current plan is not to rely on reviews as a criteria for inclusion. However, it appears that, currently, this is a bit of a problem. We've twice in the last week promoted books with zero reviews and the result has been zero sales. I think the reason for that is this:
Our newsletter is intriguing potential buyers enough to click through. However, once on Amazon (or wherever), the lack of reviews is causing people to think again. It's something that we can overcome in the long term as we become more established and trusted, but for right now, it's a bit of a problem.
Ultimately, we want to charge and ideally we want to do this as soon as possible. But we're not going to be able to do it with books over a certain price point if readers won't take a chance. That's why we're looking for authors to act as guinea pigs as we refine what we're doing, increase the subscriber base, build trust and so forth.
This has turned into a far more word-y reply than I thought it was going to. But, I hope you can see where I'm going with this.
Mod
Cool. The next newsletter is going out tomorrow. Your thoughts are more than welcome.
Hi Shanna,Just got back from a couple of days away from things. I will take a look at your book, however.
Mark
I was thinking about your emails the other day, and two things occured to me. First, many people do not buy books every day, so as great as it is to constantly see new stuff, people may not even look if they are not buying. To be honest, I had dozens of emails, and I deleted one of yours unread simply because I knew I wasn't buying right then. That ties into my second observation, which is selection is somewhat lacking in a daily email. Not only was I not buying that day, but I knew there were only one or two selections to look at. Perhaps a weekly email option instead of only daily, recapping the week's books into one message, might solve both issues at least for my buying habits.
Hi David,Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated. The thing with fewer emails is that when we're featuring a book that's on a discount deal, that deal may only be available for 1 day.
I do agree with a lot of what you say - your buying/reading habits sound like mine - so there's plenty of food for thought there.
Mark
Hi Shanna,I'm not sure we're going to be able to feature your book at the moment, to be honest. I haven't read it but it sounds like it's Young Adult to me.
We just don't have the YA readers on our mailing list yet. So far we've concentrated on what I'm going to call - if only for want of a better term - the 'serious' Science Fiction fans. The two YA styled books we've featured so far have done literally nothing.
We do have some promotions planned for November that are solely aimed at those people who love The Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Divergence and so on, but until we can get those readers on board, we're not going to be looking at Young Adult.
There's no point in annoying our current subscribers AND giving YA authors - who might benefit from our service in the future - a bad first impression.
Just subscribed. Don't mind being a guinea pig for free publicity! Got only 3 reviews on Amazon so far, but all 5 stars. It's a hard SF/thriller about dehumanization.http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M04MKYS
Can't run a promo for another 10 days or so, which gave me an idea. To go to less frequent mailings as David suggested you'd have to get authors to coordinate giveaways mutually, but there are calendar tools on google and yahoo for doing exactly that.
Hey Mark,Your book has the weirdest blurb I've ever read, which I must admit has me intrigued.
Thanks for signing up. We're currently working on a 1 mailing every other day basis, with - usually - 2 books featured.
You don't have to be 'free' to be included but a reduced price is what we are looking for. I am interested in at least reading your book. We read everything before we include it.
If I can get a copy sent to team at scifi365.net, that would be great. Put my name in the subject line too.
Cheers,
Mark Stockton
If you're still looking for books to promote, I'd like to submit my time-travel sci-fi, Kronos Duet. You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Kronos-Duet-Ald... and a ton of other places. Amazon has a few reviews, as does Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/book/show/18310960-...
I'll sign up on your site asap. Please let me know if you want me to send a copy of Kronos to you.
Cheers
Aldous
Sounds really, really interesting. And we've been looking for some strong time travel novels too. So, please email the book to team @ scifi365.net and mark it for my (Mark Stockton) attention.Mark
Was on your site, Mark, and clicked through to Amazon for your book of the week. Sometimes they allow a sample to read. Couldn't find one with this particular book, Planetfall. I may be just clueless as to how to find it.However, I thought I'd mention that a sampling option, either through links or on your pages, would be a very good thing for potential buyers.
Aldous
Weird. I'm getting the sample when I visit the page for Planetfall on Amazon USA and UK.
Told you I was clueless. :-) I found the download sample button. Thanks.
I've certainly found your service valuable in promoting my book, Planetfall. Thanks again, Mark!https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
My pleasure, L.E. As you'll have guessed from the previous message, yours is our current Book of the Week (posted to the blog each Thursday), so you should see a few extra sales from that too.
Mark
I'd like to participate, but I don't know how to put a book on special offer for a day. I'm on KDP but not in KDP Select, and also on Smashwords. Can anyone enlighten me?
Richard, I'm also on Smash and KDP. I don't know the KDP process, but Smash is simple enough. Just go to your dashboard and you should find the 'Coupon Manager' option to change the price, and to make it a limited-time discount. You can set the length of time for the coupon to be valid, and set the price yourself quite easily. Buyers then simply use the coupon code, entering it when they make a purchase.
Thanks. I guess I'd want to coordinate across both platforms, though. KDP is 90% of my sales, so far.
Mod
You would have to manually change the price through the publishing page, but... Give yourself a ton of leeway if you want to make sure the changes go live before the promotion. Typically, I think it takes about 12 hours, but there have been reports of slow updates. Also, remember that if you price below the $2.99 threshold, your royalty will drop to 35%.
OK, thanks very much for that. Scifi 365, would you consider listing my book? It's at The Dark Colony - let me know if you'd like me to send a file. Thanks.
Um... should I take non-response as refusal?
Nope, you shouldn't. You should take it as me not completing the things that were on my to-do list for yesterday. But, heck, I own the company: if I can't be a lazy good for nothing, who can?!So, yes, please forward the file (ePub or Mobi, I don't mind which) to team [at] scifi365.net and mark it for my attention (Mark Stockton).
Cheers,
Mark
Thanks Mark, sorry, didn't mean to sound grumpy. It's on its way...
Hmm, but that criterion every book published before 1963 would be classified as YA. Verry interresting....
Hi Shanna,OK, my apologies. I'm not sure where I got that from - it might have been the age of one of the characters or that review you mentioned.
Anyway, we'll definitely consider your book. If you could email a copy (ePub preferrably) to team [at] scifi365.net.
Cheers,
Mark
It's a daily deals book promotion mailing list thing similar to BookBub but for Science Fiction only.
We're doing lots of experimenting while we build up our subscriber base and would be interested in a) knowing authors thoughts on what types of books, at what price and with what criteria (ie: number of reviews, etc.) we should be pushing.
And b) We'd like a few guinea pigs from among you lot whose books we can promote.
This thread has been inspired by a failure to help sell a single copy of a debut novel by a Goodreads author, despite a healthy amount of click throughs from the newsletter and despite the fact that the book is really damn good.
If you have experience - positive or negative - with some of our competitors, I'd definitely like to hear what you think they (or you) did right and wrong.
There is a post over at our blog here http://www.scifi365.net/science-ficti... - but I'd like to know your views.