Another review is up for Whatley, this one from the great website E-Book Finds. It’s another blog devoted to writing honest reviews about independently published books. I think with the burgeoning numbers of authors releasing their works online now, these kinds of websites will become increasingly important for books to get noticed.
Whatley Tupper is given 4/5, and I completely agree with everything the reviewer states. Check out the blog.
I started this blog because I read that authors who want to go the self-publishing route need to start a blog. But, what to write about? Really, what do I have to say that others will want to read?
So, I decided to focus on all the details, the sales and such, of publishing my first ebook. Before I published Whatley Tupper on Amazon (and saying I ‘published’ it sounds so much more involved than in reality: I clicked a button), I couldn’t find much information on how many books new authors sell, and what to expect. So, that became the focus of my blog. And now that it’s been a month since I dived into this, I want to relay some of the things I think worked, and what didn’t.
What worked best?
A few things stand out. Checking in regularly to Kindleboards, DTP Community, GoodReads, Amazon Community Discussions, and most recently MobileRead forums definitely helps, and I know I’ve got a few sales through each of those avenues. The Author-Tag exchanges are also useful at both Kindleboards and DTP Community.
Making it cheap. I’ll discuss this in more detail tomorrow (when I’ll update the sales and royalties graphs), but putting my book down to 99cents made a huge difference in sales. I still don’t think I’ll keep it there for long (for reasons I discussed in earlier posts), but if you want to get your book out there faster, put it at 99 cents, at least for a week or so. If I could do this again, I think I’d start at 99 cents just to get more copies out.
Smashwords free coupons. I know I’ve received at least a couple reviews through this, and I’m sure more will come along at later times. Personally, this is all I use Smashwords for, the ability to give out free copies of your book. It also allows you to download the Kindle-ready book file which you can attach to emails to prospective online reviewers.
A professional looking cover. People really do judge a book by it’s cover, especially with ebooks, I think. The spray bottle I made in 20 minutes appealed to my minimalist tendencies, but a cover for a book needs to be bold and clear even in a thumbnail.
Getting reviews. Unless you’re getting friends to write overly glowing reviews, this takes time. Hence the 99 cent route is useful, as well as Smashwords.
Spalding’s Racket. I was featured when my book cost only 99 cents, and that day was the best day of sales I’ve had yet.
Getting lucky. First, get your mind out of the gutter. I’m referring to J.A. Konrath releasing his own choose your own adventure style book just this week, which lead to him writing a review for Whatley Tupper (which I plan on flaunting shamelessly anyway I can). This had nothing to do with anything I did. It’s just fortuitous timing.
What didn’t work?
Rushing into this too quickly. I really should have waited a couple more weeks before clicking publish. The earliest versions of Whatley Tupper had many typos, formatting errors, and malfunctioning hyperlinks. I’ve been writing for more than a decade, and this is no time to get impatient. I think I’ve been lucky in that no one who purchased one of the earliest copies ever wrote a scathing review (at least, yet), but this easily could have been avoided. Considering the bad taste a lot of self-published work is leaving in some readers’ mouths, I don’t want to be part of the problem. And I do not feel any resentment towards these people who trash self-published books for their amateurish quality. If people are paying for something, even if it’s just 99 cents, it should be professional in quality.
Raising the price to $4.49. Yeah, maybe there was a slight improvement in royalties, but I was only getting out a book every other day. An unknown author will never grow his/her base that way. Stick to $2.99, max, while no one knows you. This isn’t about making royalties, not at this stage, at least.
Facebook. But that’s just me, I’m sure. I never used it before, instead enjoying being one of the last holdouts as if it makes me a better person (it does). And, being a high-school teacher, I don’t want to have my own facebook account since that just seems like it’s not going to lead somewhere positive. Perhaps I’ll learn more about the potentials of this. Right now, it’s not doing anything for me.
What’s next?
I think the next month could be significant. I have a paid sponsorship at Kindle Nation Daily UK on Monday, September 27th, as well as on the US version on Friday, October 8th. Judging from the experiences of many others who have gone this route, I think this could make a significant boost to my exposure. I won’t know until it’s my time, but right now this seems like the smartest route to advertise that I’ve read about. Even though the price has gone up, $80 is cheap. I’ve spent that much mailing out a couple of complete manuscripts of Whatley Tupper, just to receive a lowly rejection later a couple of months later (“It’s not you, it’s me”).
I’m hoping to get a few more blog reviews, like the one at Digital Spotlight Fiction Review. Of course, this relies of more good luck, as well as those ever-so-useful Smashwords copies/coupons.
The key to all of this being successful is in having the exposure somehow taking on a life of it’s own. If Kindle Nation Daily leads to be big spike for a few days before returning to where it was before, then I won’t consider it a success. It needs to grow. It can grow slowly, that’s fine, but it needs to grow.
So, we’ll see.
Or, to be more accurate, I’ll see. Did anyone actually even read this far?
So, Whatley Tupper had his first blog review, and he passed with flying colours. It’s cool to read a really detailed review like this.
http://digitalspotlightfictionreview.blogspot.com/
After so many years of working on this silly novel, it’s cool to read that someone out there really, really likes it. I hope others will agree.
Today, The Adventures of Whatley Tupper is featured on Spalding’s Racket, a website devoted to featuring different indie authors each day, as well as the occasional shameless self promotion. I’ve read other people who noticed a boost in sales after being featured, although it will be tough to tell since I’ve lowered the price which has made a big difference in sales (I’ll write more on that when the week is through).
J.A. Konrath released his own take on the Choose Your Own Adventure books today:
It’s quite different from my own take on the genre, but all-in-all it’s interesting to see how different people are approaching the idea of adapting the Choose Your Own Adventure concept for adults and for the Kindle. I encourage you to check it out.
First, even with the change in price to $4.49, there hasn’t really been a defined/noticeable change in sales. All told, things look rather constant over these last three weeks, still averaging a little under 1 sale a day:
Although that means there has been a slight uptick in royalties, although not a huge change, either:
However, this week, and I’m quite certain for only one week, I’m lowering the price to the minimum: 99 cents. Like I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I don’t think I’d keep this price long term, but I’m curious what affect it will have on sales.
And just a note: when lowering the price to $0.99, and thus switching to the 35% royalty option, Amazon informs me that the book will be unavailable for purchase for 24 hours. Not sure why, but hopefully it won’t be out for quite that long.
All told, even though $4.49 seemed to work OK, I think I’d settle at 2.99 or maybe 3.99.
Also this week, J.A. Konrath releases his own Choose Your Own Adventure book, and I’ll have a post on that later in the week.
Just wanted to write a few notes about sales in the UK for Kindle books. First of all, I’m not sure why the UK has as separate Kindle store, since the rest of the world uses the American one. The UK site has separate reviews, prices, and bestselling rankings. As well, authors can only ever receive 35% royalties on sales from the UK, regardless of the price.
Sales of Kindle books in the UK are clearly a lot slower than in the US site. I’ve sold 2 books (and I feel quite lucky about that) in the UK, and I’m still around #8000 in rank. Each time that I sold a single copy, I jumped up below the #1000 mark. It makes anyone feel like a fleeting big-shot.
This makes me wonder if sales for Kindle books in other countries, like Canada (where I’m living) and Australia, are equally slow. The Kindle really seems to be an especially American phenomenon right now, they have a huge head-start on the e-reader market in the US, but not so much in the rest of the world. I’ve never seen a Kindle in Canada, but I’ve seen many, many iPads, of course.
However, I did pay for a one-day sponsorship with the UK Kindle Nation Daily on the 27th of September. Unlike people who say the American sponsorship has paid for itself with this, it’s virtually impossible for the UK sponsorship to do the same. It cost $40 for a one day advertisement, and if my book is selling for the equivalent of $2.99 in pounds, then I’d have to sell around 40 copies, which apparently would make me the number one best seller in the UK, considering the slow sales.
So, why did I do it then? Well, I do believe it’s a growth market there, and really, $40 is pretty cheap. I’ve spent that much mailing out manuscripts to publishers in the past just to get back a rejection letter three months later.
First, the Smashwords coupon expired today, I advertised it at KindleBoards, GoodReads, and the DTP Community, and 15 people downloaded the entire version. So, now the question is how many people will I get to review from this. Like I said before, I’d hope to get at least two reviews from this. I’ll have to wait and see.
Secondly, I can’t really tell what difference having my book featured on JC Phelps blog was for the day of Sunday because the free Smashwords coupon was also advertised there. I did notice a spike in people downloading the free copy, but no change in sales from being featured on the site. Unfortunately, I’m quite sure that JC Phelps audience for her blog is almost identical to the people at KindleBoards, which I’ve promoted my book as much as I can, so it probably doesn’t make a difference.
Other than that, I received an email from J.A. Konrath saying that he’ll be reviewing Whatley Tupper soon on the Amazon site (he’s been reviewing various Choose Your Own Adventure style ebooks in recent days in anticipation of his own similar book to be released soon). That would be fantastic. In fact, the very fact that someone like him with so much exposure is releasing a choose your own adventure book for the Kindle must be good.
First, the updates for sales after two weeks:
Rather steady, averaging about a sale a day. Well, with things all started now, I’m going to change the price. I’m reluctant to bring the price any lower than $2.99 for a couple of reasons. First, 2.99 is already really, really cheap. I know a lot of people see ebooks on Amazon for 0.99, but usually those are much shorter than this book, which is almost 100 000 words. I’m really not sure that making a book cheaper than 2.99, and thus having to significantly change the royalty rates, would make a noticeable difference. Secondly, I wonder if customers assume that a book priced at 2.99 is not as good as a book priced higher. Basically, if customers assume something priced really low must be poorly edited and unprofessional.
So, for at least a week, I’m raising the price of The Adventures of Whatley Tupper to the seemingly astronomical price of $4.49. Why $4.49? Why not. It’s 50% higher, but still really cheap.
I’ve read on few forums, including here, that some authors claim to have the same, if not better, results when they raise their prices, again assuming that customers take higher priced books more seriously. I’ll let you know this affects my own sales and will post another update on this next Sunday or Monday. That said, I’m not opposed to trying out the 99 cent option, and I will at some point. But, really, are we authors really wanting to say that a book of ours is worth the same as a single song from iTunes? Personally, I don’t think so.
Going away for the weekend, but a few notes to give before I leave. On Sunday, Whatley Tupper will be featured on JC Phelps blog, so it will be interesting to see what difference that makes. That will be the first blog feature for dear Whatley, and hopefully there will be more. I’ve sent out lots of email to different writing blogs and I’ve tried to add them to my blogroll. The question is, how many people look at these blogs that don’t already frequent the Kindle forums? I guess I’ll see…
The Most Boring Blog Ever Written 