An interview at mustmutter went online today. It’s been a really slow last week for sales, so we’ll see if this makes a difference!
Eighth Week in Review
So, the post KND week, and there hasn’t been much of an afterglow:
After the weekend, it was actually one of my slower weeks of sales. However, if there is going to be any lasting improvement in sales because of KND, it’ll have to involved people enjoying the book and telling their friends. Word of mouth takes time, if it happens at all. I’m still very impressed with my KND results, but I hope to see a general improvement. That said, I had no other promotions this week.
And this makes me realize that while I wait/hope for another blog to review my book, while I wait for another advertisement to have its day, I don’t feel like there’s a lot I can do to promote my book anymore. I used to try posting a lot at KindleBoards or MobileForums, and I still do, but I don’t think it’s making a difference to my sales. I feel that those who frequent these boards have already read/heard about my book, so I’m preaching to the choir, somewhat. These are great places to ask questions and learn about new promotions, but I don’t feel that I’m connecting with any new customers.
So, how does one connect with potential new customers at this point? First, I think I need to be patient. I’ve read many times that self-publishing is a marathon, not a sprint, and that sticks with me. It takes time to build a fan-base. It takes time to get reviews on Amazon. It takes time to get reviews from blogs (I’m still hoping for another three or so in the next couple of months). Often, I’m tempted to release my next book right away, but I’ve always come to the conclusion that it’s better to take it slow, build that fan-base, that review-base. I wrote the draft of my first novel in 1998 and I published by first book in August of 2010 through Amazon. There’s no need getting impatient. I have to keep telling myself this.
This week, I have an interview being posted at mustmutter. Also, I’m upping the price to $3.99, just to see what happens. I’d like to keep it there for some time, to be honest.
Seventh Week in Review
So, let’s get this out of the way from the start, the thesis statement of my post: Kindle Nation Daily sponsorships (US) works. At least for me. Here’s my updated sales graphs:
Note the vertical scale. My previous highs were just under 10 in a day. Now it’s shot up to 50 (followed by 13 on Saturday). Look at some of my previous posts to see how previous peaks have been utterly dwarfed. The fact that in my experience the ad was paid for in less than 24 hours is quite impressive. I wouldn’t normally expect the cost of advertising to pay for itself so quickly. This truly is a win-win situation for Stephen Windwalker (the one-man operation that is Kindle Nation Daily) and for the sponsors. I do think that $80 is an appropriate fee for the day, and so I hope it doesn’t change for some time.
Now, of course, the question of how sales will be affected in the longer-term are still an unknown. My goal is for a slight but distinct improvement in day-to-day averages. Before this weekend, I tended to sell about 1 a day, a little less actually when you ignore various other promotions (such as interviews or Amazon discussions mentioned in previous posts). My goal is that I’ll average closer to 2 sales a day for the next few weeks. By next weekend I should start to get a feel of how this will play out. That said, I’ve already signed up for another KND sponsorship on December 7th. It will be interesting to see how a second sponsorship pans out.
This week I’ve also signed up for the KindleBoards book of the day (my date is November 14th and the cost was $35) and the RedAdept Reviews sponsorship (the week of January the 8th and the cost was $10). The fact that these are ‘click-me’ ads, akin to Google or Facebook ads that I don’t really think people ever click on, leads me to believe these will not be terribly cost-effective. At least not like KND.
This week, however, I don’t have any other promotions on the way. So, it should be a good way to see how the KND sponsorship plays out. So, in case my opinion is not clear enough, I now repeat for emphasis: I wholeheartedly recommend a Kindle Nation Daily sponsorship to any self-published author. And considering that just last week I was somewhat dissing the UK sponsorship, I didn’t think I’d be won over so completely.
Kindle Nation Daily
So, just today Whatley Tupper is the paid daily sponsor at Kindle Nation Daily. It’s been up for 1 hour, and I’ve had three sales. It’s an encouraging start. I’m not sure how a choose-your-own-adventure novel for adults will go over with KND crowd, although I’ve heard it’s male-dominated, so it could work well. I’ll give a detailed account of how this went for me this weekend.
Also, I’ve already purchased another KND sponsorship for December 7th, so obviously I think this is a good idea.
Quick update:
It’s been exactly 12 hours since my sponsorship went out, and I’m really pleased. Already I’ve had 32 sales. This is really going to screw up the scale of my sales graphs! It seems like this will pay for itself before the day is through. I’m very pleased, especially after my disppointing experience with KND UK. It’s early, but right now I’m definitely pleased with the results.
Quick update re: Quick Update
Just noticed that I used the word ‘pleased’ three times in that short paragraph. How disgraceful.
Sixth Week in Review
I’ve noticed a trend in the sales of my book, pretty much in all six of the weeks since it’s been published. Perhaps you can spot it here:
Sales are always best in the beginning of the week (Monday to Wednesday), and then dies down to a trickle (or nothing at all, like this week) from Friday to Sunday. Apparently, people don’t really want to buy silly comedic choose your own adventure books on the weekend. It’s a Monday thing.
This week I had several things happen: Kindle Nation Daily UK sponsorship, a feature Indie Books Blog, an interview at Kindle Author, as well as a review at Motherlode (all discussed in previous posts). While I can’t tell what exactly caused what sales, I’m sure the Kindle UK sponsorship led to some American sales, and I’m presuming it was the reason for most of that spike in sales I had (although I’ve had no UK sales this week). Overall, a nice start to the week, and then a very slow end. And even though October has been utterly dead to me so far, I did finally break the $100 mark in royalties, so I’ll finally get a cheque at some point–I don’t know how often Amazon pays out to international authors. But that was a goal of mine that I didn’t think I’d reach in early October, so I’m pleased with that.
This is the week, however, that I’ve been looking forward to for some time. On Friday, October the 8th, my book will be the paid daily sponsor at the US Kindle Nation Daily. I’ve read many accounts at KindleBoards where people mention breaking even with this in just a day or two, so obviously that is my hope. But I also hope that it leads to some longer term exposure. Either way, I’ve already purchased another US sponsorship, hopefully for early December. KND has been getting so much positive press at KindleBoards that it seems certain that prices will go up, yet again, and availability will dry up faster and faster.
Finally, I purchased (for $35 USD) a daily feature at KindleBoards for November 14th. Look at me, Mr. Moneybags…
70%
Another review just went up at Motherlode, a blog reviewing indie books:
http://gracekrispy.blogspot.com/
Check it out. These sites seem integral for self-pubbed authors to gain some legitimacy and hence some traction.
Kindle Nation Daily UK Results
So, some 24 hours ago, my Kindle Nation Daily UK sponsorship went online. The results are in! The grand total of new UK sales is…
… none. I’ve had 4 sales until now, which seems rather normal compared to my US sales, but none from the UK since the weekend. There has been a nice little boost to my US sales in the last 24 hours, although it’s a little hard to tell exactly since in that time my book has also been featured on Indie Books Blog, as well as an interview at Kindle Author. It’s actually rather annoying that these last two free promotions ended up timing out with my Kindle Nation UK sponsorship, since I can’t really tell what’s causing what.
Anyhow, I’m pleasantly surprised by the affect on my US sales, and I’ll see how long that lasts. However, as it stands now, the UK sponsorship through Kindle Nation Daily seems quite overpriced. That’s just my experience, at least.
If someone reads this who’s had better success with Kindle Nation Daily UK, please leave a comment!
Five weeks in review
So, as mentioned in my last post, I received a big boost in sales early in the week in which I attribute almost completely to an active discussion in the Amazon Customer Discussions for a few days. Over these last few days the discussion has pretty much dried up, and the effect on sales it quite apparent:
And the effect on royalties just as obvious:
Thanks (I believe) to those discussions, I had more sales last week (especially in the first few days) than I did in the week when my book was priced at 99 cents. Like I wrote earlier, that single discussion made a bigger impact on sales than anything else I’ve done. But, these last few days things are quieting down.
Tomorrow (Monday), I have my paid sponsorship for Kindle Nation Daily UK. Most of what I’ve read about the UK sponsorship leads me to believe I should count myself lucky to just get a few sales. If this is the case, then the UK sponsorship is way overpriced. I’ll let you know on Tuesday with a detailed post on this. It seems that UK Kindle sales at about 1/10th of the Amazon.com site’s sales, so I guess I hope to get a whopping 5 sales from that sponsorship. At 35% royalties, that’s… not much. We’ll see.
Don’t Discount the Discussions
The Amazon Customer Discussions, that is. On Sunday evening, I posted a new thread, promoting my book and the fact that I was lucky enough to get a nice review from J.A. Konrath. It was fairly shameless promotion, but when you’re doing stuff online, it’s a lot easier to be shameless. The thread is here (and please join the conversation!). Well, I was also lucky enough to inadvertently start and argument on the board about whether or not an author should be promoting a book there (I think slightly more people were in favour), and this had the side-effect of keeping my topic on the first page, garnering a lot of hits from people. Although I don’t believe it’s possible to view how many views a customer discussion has had, every time a volley of posts came in, I sold a few copies. Many people in the thread said they bought a copy because they found the posts funny.
I think until now I’d discounted how valuable the Amazon Customer Discussions are. I can honestly say that they have led to more sales of my book than any other single thing I’ve done. While I’ll update the sales on the weekend, I’ve had a better start to the week than I did when I dropped the price to 99 cents. I’m sure there’s some residual effects from having a couple of positive reviews on blogs, but, again, when there’s no action on my thread, not much happens. If a number of people start replying to me and each other, I sell one, two, maybe three copies in short period of time. It’s taken me by surprise.
Ironically, the argument that began in my post began because some people didn’t want authors clogging up discussions with their promotions. So, I’d feel bad about writing this post, except that I know that not a lot of people are going to read this, so I’m not afraid of causing a flood of new postings at Amazon…
4 Weeks’ Sales in Review
So, as alluded in my first month’s review, changing the price to 99 cents made a very noticeable change in sales. You don’t have to be an expert with reading graphs to see what happened:
I think you can tell when the price dropped to 99 cents. Still lots of fluctuations, including no sales at all last Wednesday. The highest spike also corresponds with the day that Whatley Tupper was featured on Spalding’s Racket. I’ve heard others say that when they drop to 99 cents that their sales spike and then cool after a few days, and I can certainly attest to that.
In terms of royalties, of course, they slowed, even though I nearly doubled my total sales in a single week:
But, of course, anyone who sets their price at 99 cents shouldn’t be thinking about royalties. (I will be honest about this: I do want to crack the $100 mark sooner than later, because that’s when a non-US citizen breaks the threshold to receive a royalty cheque from Amazon. It will be the first ever royalty cheque I’d ever had, and I might just want to frame it). Pricing at 99 cents is about exposure, and I’ll admit that I was taken by surprise with how much of a difference it made. I’ll definitely try another one-week 99 cent sale again in another month (probably November) to see if something similar happens.
But, for the next few weeks, I want to leave the price alone at $2.99. I’m curious if I’ll notice any difference in sales compared to the last time it was at this price. Then, I was averaging about 5 sales a week, but I’ve received a couple of nice blog reviews since then, as well as an Amazon review from J.A. Konrath. You know that I’ll update you with all the exciting Excel graphs next Sunday.
The Most Boring Blog Ever Written 