So, as part of my experiments, I figured I should make a post-holiday report. Though, this really wasn’t the best holiday to make a sale for. That’s besides the point here.
Only 4 copies of Bestiary of Blatherhorn Vale have sold. I’m wondering if the holiday worked against me and things will start picking up. The two free marketing movies should be kicking in today along with the morning tweet. Not a lot of Facebook sharing this time around. Still, I’m on the Hot New Release List. I’ve been noticing that outside of General Poetry, there isn’t a lot of competition. I’m 2nd and 3rd on the Hot New Release list with only 4 sales. The only one ahead of me is Tolkien, which is saying something. I think.
Beginning of a Hero is back to 2.99 and it’s sold 4 copies since then. The question here is what would be success with this. A single 2.99 book is equivalent to about 6 .99 cent books in terms of royalties. Yet, it would be less ‘physical’ sales. Do I go for the money or the higher sales amount? This will be determined by the progress of Prodigy of Rainbow Tower. On the plus side, the 2.99 pricing hasn’t killed the sales entirely, which was a slight fear I had. It looked like it would yesterday because it didn’t move until 10pm EST.
Don’t worry. I’ll be going back to my regularly schedules craziness in due time. The ‘Ask a Character’ and another Origin post are still in the works for the day.
Legends of Windemere 
You do realize that your “sales per day” are considerable more than my “sales per month”, right? I can’t imagine what getting four sales in one day would feel like…
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I actually didn’t realize that. Sorry.
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Honestly, I thought everyone was getting a few sales a day on their books.
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No, I tend to average a sale a month. So I think you’re doing pretty good. Then again, I deliberately set out to write a book that doesn’t fit neatly into a conventional genre, so it’s probably my own fault.
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Every genre has to start somewhere. Maybe your second book will help it out.
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I just checked, and my royalties for 2013 so far are $6.18.
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I think I asked this a while back, but did you use on-line advertising sites?
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I’ve been featured on a number of on-line book sites, which haven’t seemed to help any, except for when I am running a KDP free promotion. I do see a lot of point in doing any paid advertising–I can’t imagine that I’d ever make back the cost.
I just don’t have a product with a wide appeal. It’s not surprising, the writers that I feel are my main inspirations–Phillip Dick, William Burroughs, George Alec Effinger, Tim Powers–never sold very well, either.
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I’m starting to wonder how effective that KDP free promotion is. I did mine and it went great. Then things dropped. I wonder if people wait for a book to go back to free after a while instead of buying it. The idea that the author did it once, so they’ll do it again eventually. Yet, the free promotion seems to work for Romance authors in terms of boosting sales after the price goes back on.
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You could Cook the Books
or maybe just write Cookbooks.
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Not that amazing a cook. I’d get sued for stealing recipes. 😉
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I would get sued for making and serving those recipes. 😦
I am thankful every day that my husband cooks and I clean up. 🙂
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The way to look at it is by putting a weight to each version of a sale and ignore the copies sold / money made. Combine that with list position to maximise the outlook of what is best.
Basically, .99 books have a weight of 1. 2.99 books have a weight of 6. Therefore, You’ve sold a value of 24. I.e., it’d take 24 sales at .99 to be at this level. As you’ve already sold the book at .99, you have an idea of how long 24 sales would take, so compare the two.
It’s impossible to know which works within a day, you’d really want to compare a month of sales or even a few months (three months would be my preferred choice, work it in quarters like any other business).
This may be a bit late notice if you haven’t recorded your sales from the start, but you’re bound to have some recollection. So compare the two and see which carries the most value. List position may or may not be useful, this’ll be something only clear over time when you see if your sales/position stay frequent or plummet.
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I have a file that lists overall sales for the month. I was doing it to keep track of totals. The only difficulty with a comparison this time is that the first book won’t be 2.99 for a full month or three months. Not unless I have a big delay on the sequel. It’ll drop back to .99 cents to help with incentives.
Amazon does allow me to look at previous month sales and royalties too.
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Hmm… Well, you could keep an eye on it between now and then to get an idea of which is better. If it looks like 2.99 might be better, perhaps you could lower to .99 for two weeks with each new release and then bump it back up to 2.99?
This could also leave you open to hit that 3.99 sweet spot with the rest of the books. I know you wanted to leave it at 2.99 for the first few and then up it, but that could possibly be damaging. To me, that’d look like an attempt to milk the cash cow, cashing in on something you know will sale. While yes, it is exactly that, you have to try and mask it. 😉
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Looked at a chart and the 3.99 difference isn’t that epic for someone with a series. I’d probably keep Beginning of a Hero at .99 cents for a month to see it can help Prodigy of Rainbow Tower get on the Hot New Release List for that time. After that, I’ll play it by ear, but I’m still not sold on the idea of constantly switching the first book’s price. Maybe when the gap between releases is bigger than 3 months.
Still wish I knew what was so magically about 3.99.
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Regarding your conversation with Misha … I ran my book for free for the Kindle for two days in January. Around 6,000 people downloaded it for free. Once the free days ended, it finally started selling at $2.99. Through Kindle Lending Library borrows and outright purchases, I sold almost 400 copies over the next couple of weeks. I think the key is the program Amazon uses to link purchases. You know, the place on Amazon where it says something like “other people who bought this book also bought these books.” The more your book gets out there through the free downloads and other sales, the more you get into those kind of links. After a few months of dwindling sales, I lowered the price to .99 and put my book out on EReaderNewsToday. They featured it on May 17 and since then I’m up to 570 purchases at .99. I manage to sell 5-10 a day at that price. I’m still waiting for the drop-off to 1 a week.
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I’m going to try for EReaderNewsToday when I drop my book back to .99 cents. I did a 3-day free weekend and got about 3,000 downloads. After that, the sales were worse than before. I wonder if genre has something to do with it also. Fantasy is a very big, saturated genre with free sales going on all the time. Maybe the ‘this author will drop to free eventually’ mentality is more prominent in there.
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This is all part of the mystery that I want to solve. Unfortunately, I think one of the solutions is sheer volume. The more books you have out there, the greater the chance for exponential growth in sales. Equally unfortunate is that my fiction writing has stalled so i can’t increase the volume.
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I’m sure you’ll get your mojo back. I’m sitting on a few finished books, but have to wait for cover art. I think that’s a real test of an author’s patience. Waiting for something beyond your control.
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Wow. I’m so impressed with you writing a selling a book. That is my goal. I need to follow you and pick your brain.
Cranston
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Pick away. Hopefully, I can help.
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That’s awesome! Congratulations Charles! Wish I could make four sales a day! I don’t even sell that many in two months!
But I finally found out what my book ranking is, 399,201 in highest paid Kindle book sales! I’m happy with that. (Kind’a sad, I know.) So good job! 🙂
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That’s still good. Below 400,000. 😉 Look at the positive. Besides, you have an officially published book on the way, which is a step above me.
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Yes, much better than 400,000! And yes, that’s true. But I know the day is coming for the release of your officially published book. 🙂
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I hope so. Still no word, so it might be longer than I had hoped.
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Not to worry, the day is coming.
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Next in line to Tolkien? Not bad at all!
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Definitely. Hoping I can hold that position, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Not much competition.
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I’m simply impressed by your amazing writing and your willingness to try different marketing strategies to what works and what doesn’t! You are helping so many people who are considering heading into the land of Self-publishing!!
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I try. Hopefully, I’m helping more by being a good example instead of a cautionary tale.
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You are a good example….
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Bring on the crazy!
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