InD’Tale’s TJ MacKay & me |
Most writers are curious about what is and isn’t working for other writers when it comes to selling books. I’m grateful for what others have been willing to share, so it’s only fair to share in return. Even though my results are a bit embarrassing.
I’ve only bought ads three times. I bought an ad last year with The Wordsmith Journal Magazine (online) for Little Miss Lovesick. After one month, I had zero new sales. Ouch.
In August, while Unexpected Superhero was enrolled in the KDP Select program (meaning it was only for sale on Amazon for the first 90 days), I took advantage of the program’s free days option and made the book free for five days in a row at the end of a conference I was attending. I also bought an ad from BookBub that appeared on the first day of the promotion.
There were a whopping 17,561 free downloads during those five days! Over 10,000 copies were downloaded the first day, which I attribute primarily to the BookBub ad. During the next two weeks, I sold only 24 more copies when the book went off sale (back to $3.99). Then the sales dropped back to the 0-3 per week average that has been more common for my books so far.
A month or two ago, I dropped the price of Unexpected Superhero from $3.99 to $2.99 to see if I could see a change in sales. There might have been a slight increase. At 0-3 sales per week, it’s a bit hard to say. 🙂
My third promotion-with-paid-advertisement was last week. I dropped the price on Little Miss Lovesick and promoted it with 19 other lovely romance authors and their books last Friday. I also took out a then-free ad from eBookSoda, a newer email list like BookBub that advertises free and reduced-price books. (The ads were free, then $5, and I’m sure they’ll keep increasing in price as they grow their list. The problem with this ad is that I don’t know if it went to 100 people, 1000, or 20,000.)
I dropped the price from $2.99 to 99 cents a week before the promo with Smashwords so it would be 99 cents at the other outlets by the day of the promo. I decreased the price on Amazon two days before, and it went into effect the day before. I saw that I sold one copy on Amazon a day or two before the promotion, then two more copies total during the weekend of the promotion and ad.
That’s it – 3 sales. At the high end of “usual” for me.
Little Miss Lovesick got a new (second) cover a few months ago, but it’s barely changed the sales. Unexpected Superhero got a new (second) cover at the end of March, too early to tell if it has affected sales yet. I took out another eBookSoda ad (the free ad that went to $5 when I did it this time) for Sunday, May 4 (my third choice date, Fantasy category, same as last year’s BookBub ad). I’ll leave Superhero at its current $2.99 price and see if anything happens when it’s not on sale but advertised.
And that’s about all I know so far. My second superhero book was to be ready next week for WonderCon, and which I expected to help sales of the first book. But my husband’s motorcycle accident and injuries trumped anything and everything that used to be on my To Do list. 🙂
I’ll keep you updated so you get a well-rounded view of self-publishing and advertising. (It’s less embarrassing to write about your successes, so there are a lot more of those stories out there.) It would appear that my experience underscores what other successful writers have said about success coming after you have several books out. Unfortunately, “life” has thrown a wrench in making that happen soon, but as the Brits (used to) say, Keep Calm and Carry On.
And keep writing! 🙂
Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her novels, Little Miss Lovesick and Unexpected Superhero, and the free short story “Superhero in Disguise,” are now available at most online retail sites. Superhero in the Making will be released this summer.
0 0 Read moreLife has been pretty hectic since I started down the self-published road. I am so impressed at the energy and innovation I’m seeing in the indie author community. But now that I’m a publisher as well as a writer, it seems there’s always something to do and not enough time for everything.
My latest project was to get involved in one of the popular e-book boxed sets we see popping up at Amazon and other online retailers. I was fortunate to team up with a bunch of knowledgeable and savvy indie writers, and we published the Romance Super Bundle in late September. Our fearless leader, Amy Gamet, has been the driving force behind the project. She also created the gorgeous 3-D cover.
My contribution to the bundle is my historical romance, Rogue’s Hostage. We priced the boxed set at $5.99, but it’s currently on sale for 99 cents. We still hope it will hit one of the big lists like USA Today.
On Oct. 7, we had a dynamite Facebook Launch Party guided by the dynamic and extremely organized Wendy Ely. It was attended by a lively bunch of readers, and the messages were flying fast at times. (It was all this old broad could do to keep up.) The event page is still available if anyone wants to see what we did.
Today, one of the authors, Lois Winston, is at Inkspot where she discusses this new way I’m thinking outside the promotional box, and does it more coherently than I can. I like her analogy of promotion being like “shouting into a tsunami” though I tend to think of it more as a lone voice crying in the wilderness.
At the same time, I’m still working on re-issuing my back list. In the last week, my werewolf novella, Ilona’s Wolf: A Fairy Tale Romance, was published at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, just in time for Halloween.
Blurb:
Imagine a world filled with magic, a tormented knight, a damsel in distress, an evil sorcerer…
While picking herbs in the woods, Princess Ilona is rescued from a woodsman by a wolf. When the creature licks her wounds, it is suddenly transformed into a man. A very handsome, very naked man who makes passionate love to her in a glade. She has dreamed of a handsome knight to aid her cause, but a werewolf?
Cursed by an evil wizard, Rolf was trapped in wolf form until he tasted the blood of a royal. Now he must escort the princess on a hazardous journey back to the castle to stop an ill-fated wedding and face the evil wizard who placed the evil curse on Rolf.
Passion flares between them, but both know there is no future for a princess and a werewolf. Or is there? In a world where magic and passion combine, anything may be possible.
(Previously published by Amber Quill Press)
The beautiful cover was designed by Carey Abbott of Safari Heat.
What is keeping you busy and energized these days?
Linda McLaughlin / Lyndi Lamont
Tara Lain’s November talk on blog tours inspired me to throw together a last minute combination of blog hop and mini-tour to promote my latest self-published release, How To Woo… A Reluctant Bride.
It all starts tomorrow with the Secret Santa Blog Hop. I won’t be the only OCC member participating. I saw Tara’s name on the list and Beth Yarnell’s and there may be more of us.
Here’s my schedule:
Dec. 17-19, Secret Santa Blog Hop
Dec. 20, Servants of the Muse blog
Dec. 21, The Romance Studio blog
Dec. 22, Love in a Book Reviews
TRS is the prize and I’m not sure how I lucked into a date there at such short notice. Next month I’ll report on how my blog hop/tour worked out.
You can find an example of one of Tara’s blog tours here.
One of the best things about our Orange County Chapter is the way we all support and help each other, and I know we’re all grateful for our wonderful writing community.
Happy Holidays!
Linda McLaughlin aka Lyndi Lamont
1 0 Read moreWe sometimes forget as we dash through our days full of deadlines and proposals and promo work what it was like to first put pencil to paper, to first send out a proposal, or meet with an agent at a conference. We might have buried the memory of that first rejection letter, or the second, or the fiftieth except as an anecdote while we share our (current) success story.
When a newbie writer asks a question so basic we feel they should have learned the answer in elementary school, how many of us remember angsting over lines per page and perfect format as if that alone would guarantee acceptance by one of the publishers? Or buying the best quality typing paper we could afford in hopes of recognition. I sure do.
In discussion with authors from chapters across the country, I hear stories of chapters imploding from expectations of unpublished authors who demand help from the published. On the other hand I hear stories from unpublished authors who can’t even get an answer to how to set up a blog. Somewhere in the middle is that healthy place of compromise and share.
Orange County has that great program of “Ask An Author,” but OCC has been innovative in so many ways. But it’s not just the published authors who can step up. Anyone who has attended a GMC talk can tell a neophyte GMC stands for Goal, Motivation, Conflict. NaNo refers to a mad dash to produce a book in a month, at the end of which you either love or hate your characters and it’s a tossup whether your hands or your bottom are more numb, All of us have knowledge to share.
I’m hoping these ideas spread to other chapters, large and small, to keep the chapters and RWA healthy and supportive of romance writing.
Monica Stoner writes as Mona Karel, and has two books available for your perusal
Teach Me To Forget and My Killer My Love
When she’s not blogging about basic promo or low carb cooking Mona’s Blog she’s enjoying life at 6500 feet in New Mexico, surrounded by a bunch of silly skinny dogs. And writing, writing, writing
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More info →A Slice of Orange is an affiliate with some of the booksellers listed on this website, including Barnes & Nobel, Books A Million, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords. This means A Slice of Orange may earn a small advertising fee from sales made through the links used on this website. There are reminders of these affiliate links on the pages for individual books.
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