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CoffeeCat posted:Is anyone brave enough to talk about how well their book is selling?
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Nov 20, 2011 04:26
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 21:18 |
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Thanks to this thread, I re-discovered JA Konrath's blog and got up the courage to put my work up on Amazon.CoffeeCat posted:Are people making any money? I put up one of my works a couple of weeks ago and so far I've sold 4 copies on amazon.com, 1 copy on amazon.co.uk, and 1 copy on amazon.de for a total of 6 copies (about $12 in royalties total). I've also had 2 samples downloaded from Smashwords but no sales. I have to admit that I got teary-eyed when I looked up my reports and saw those sales. Even if I don't sell anything more than those 6 copies, I'm grateful we have the option to self-publish like this and I have a lot of hope for how the future will go. It's given me a great deal of motivation. Does anyone else look at their Amazon reports and stare at the 'Refund' column? That, along with negative reviews, would make me wince. But I guess "keep trudging along" would be the thing to tell yourself if/when that happens.  Midrena fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Nov 20, 2011 |
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Nov 20, 2011 12:07
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Soulcleaver posted:I've sold about $20 worth of books in five months. You've heard this many times before, but getting started is hard. I've made 50 bucks in six. The three pack really helps in that regard. Hopefully once the print version comes out, my profit will increase.
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Nov 20, 2011 20:34
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I've made roughly $20 through Amazon over the last month via $0.99 short stories, and about $11 since February through Smashwords.
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Nov 20, 2011 20:53
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I made 40 bucks my first book and that was August, since then no sales. Its fine, i'll keep making them whether anyone reads or buys them . I just enjoy making them.
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Nov 20, 2011 21:45
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I've made $0 through Smashwords, but I have the ability to give coupons there, at least. Sales on Amazon were virtually nonexistent until I put out another story earlier this month, and now sales there and through B&N are pretty regular. Not great, but consistent. I don't know if having novels put out by small publishers will increase the sales of my self-published stuff, but I'll find out next year. Also, reminding everyone to supply/mark tags on Amazon! I've been told it makes some sort of difference. (Plus I think it's fun  )And yeah, the Refund column used to crush my soul. I guess people don't like finding out things are free when they've just paid 99 cents for them.
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Nov 20, 2011 22:31
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People can ask for refunds if they don't like your writing? I guess that makes a sad sort of sense...I'm kind of glad that hasn't happened yet over 60 sales.
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Nov 20, 2011 22:45
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I have one 30k length thriller novellete and three 15k length parts in a serial novel that have been up for about 8 months. The first two months I sold not more than $25 worth, but sales started to increase steadily. At their peak, I was selling about 1,000 copies a month combined and banking $350. The last month sales have been lovely, and I'll come out at about $100. The months preceding Xmas are usually bad anyway; it doesn't help that I have completely neglected my readers recently...I blame mother nature, Notch, and Skyrim for that.
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Nov 21, 2011 02:12
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Roar posted:People can ask for refunds if they don't like your writing? I guess that makes a sad sort of sense...I'm kind of glad that hasn't happened yet over 60 sales. Yea, you can get a refund anytime up to 7 days after the original purchase from amazon. I hate to admit it, but I have requested a refund for lovely writing more than once. Learned the hard way not everyone spends time polishing their books up to look nice, some people just have it one step above fan fiction websites. Hell, one book I picked up had loving "leetspeek" in it as the actual writing, and it was not a cyberpunk kinda book. It was an apocalypse kinda virus book. Imagine reading something like "So, the world was like, WHOA and then moving like a t0t4l b4u5, The leed scientist ins3rted his keyc4rd to the l0ck. BOOP and the door opened!". Yea, I asked for my dollar back. I thought it might be a "joke" of some kind, but just random pages through the book were that badly written. 2.99 refund requested shortly thereafter. There are some great self published books, but it's like mining for corn in a river of poo poo.
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Nov 21, 2011 03:42
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:There are some great self published books, but it's like mining for corn in a river of poo poo. Perfect analogy. Think I'll share this with some other writer friends. I've been pleasantly surprised with my own sales so far. I threw a short story up on Amazon last month with only the bare minimum of promotion (haven't spent a dime on ads), with the proceeds going to charity. I figured it would be a learning experience for when I put the real deal out next week. I've managed 15 sales in three weeks or so, pretty pleasing for something just tossed out into the void. I'm making a much bigger promotional push with my full-length, with several giveaways planned as well as an advertising campaign. I'll let you guys know just what I do and how that goes. How many of you are maintaining a regular blog? I'm finding that to be the biggest factor in sales so far. workingdogv1 fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Nov 21, 2011 |
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Nov 21, 2011 15:03
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I have a blog but I don't update as much as I should http://www.zombiesoftheworld.com/zombies-of-the-world-blog/ I did experiment with regular blog posts but I didn't notice any additional sales or attention. I did some lengthy blog posts for October (halloween and zombies) and posted a few of them on Reddit. One wasn't received well http://www.zombiesoftheworld.com/blog/8-great-zombie-songs-for-halloween/ but the other was http://www.zombiesoftheworld.com/blog/8-recent-foreign-zombie-films-you-need-to-see/ I didn't notice any sales even when the post was popular on Reddit.
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Nov 21, 2011 19:46
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I know it's not a big deal to get ranked when the pool is so tiny in sub-sub-sub categories, but I hit #60 on Amazon's Hot New Releases in Epic Fantasy. Pretty stoked about that, even though I haven't even hit 10 sales yet. It's just a nice feeling to see myself ranked somewhere.
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Nov 21, 2011 22:21
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In reference re: sales, I went back and tallied my sales for Shadow of a Dead Star since 6/23 when I began self-publishing. According to the figures, I sold around 270 copies across multiple outlets (Amazon, B&N, Createspace). Most of these were electronic, and from various regions. My first month sold 35 copies, my highest month was August at 47 copies, and my lowest was October with 20. So, I made about 200 bucks after taxes. Now, of course, I'm no longer self-pubbed so I don't get access to those figures unless I ask my publisher (who, it has to be said, has been very happy to offer those to me once publication resumes).
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Nov 21, 2011 22:22
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Oh, hey, apparently my parenting short story is #10 most downloaded on the parenting section of Smashwords, and #1 in the Parenting/fatherhood section. It's bittersweet...between all the retailers I've probably had like 2000+ downloads and I haven't made a damned cent from it. That's not all there is to life, though, I guess.
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Nov 22, 2011 05:31
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Horray! My latest ransom project was just funded http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rosspayton/killsplosion-a-pvp-rules-light-tabletop-rpg?ref=card I just realized that ransom projects/kickstarter could be used for self publishing fiction, not just games. I've done 4 funded and completed game ransom projects so far. Killsplosion is funded but not yet completed. This blog post explains the ransom model. http://www.slangdesign.com/2009/06/blog/the-story-behind-the-new-world-primer/ If anyone has any questions about the ransom model or using Kickstarter, I'd be happy to answer them.
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Nov 22, 2011 06:05
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Roar posted:Oh, hey, apparently my parenting short story is #10 most downloaded on the parenting section of Smashwords, and #1 in the Parenting/fatherhood section. It's bittersweet...between all the retailers I've probably had like 2000+ downloads and I haven't made a damned cent from it. That's not all there is to life, though, I guess. Exposure, old son. I put up a bunch of stories on my website for free, and I managed to get a bunch more readers that way. 
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Nov 22, 2011 14:00
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I have stumbled up a marketing strategy this is beginning to work big time for me(For real this time, I'm on target to meet my goal of 30 books over 30 days a week early). It's the methodology of the hard sell. I get on twitter and pitch the gently caress out of my book in real time. This is also combined with the attitude that if you don't care to buy, Unfollow and get the gently caress off my feed. This is not a social club, this is me pimping my books and entertaining those that buy. The entire ideology is contained in this blog post entitled: Authors,time to stop being doormats. Yeah, yeah, authors have found success other ways, but they only work if they have a built in market already. Since my work is so out there, the only way to get people to read is to literally shove it down their throats. And this method wouldn't work at all if I wasn't selling a good read. I've always been of the opinion that the way books are sold is retarded. Authors are not supposed to hard sell and pitch their work. No we have to befriend our readers, let them walk all over us in the hopes they'll click and buy. It doesn't work, not for me anyways. So I've changed my tune to what does seem to work. And remember releasing the next two sequels to A Clear and Feathered Danger within sixty days of each other, that is now paying off for obvious reasons. What do people think? Roshi fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Nov 22, 2011 |
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Nov 22, 2011 19:37
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How do you think it would have worked if you'd started the aggressive pitch when you only had a hundred followers? Would you have grown into the thousands at that point? Let's ignore the indie and self-pubbed aspect for a second. How would I feel if some of my favorite authors that I followed used their social media to hawk their goods? I realized that some of them DID, and I bit on that hook. So, it does have merit. However, I still prefer to see little slices of their lives, rather than an ad. It doesn't turn me off to them, but it certainly isn't endearing. In example, I follow Brandon Sanderson. A friend of mine got me interested in his books (word of mouth still being king). I read his stuff, loved it, and started following him. He seemed to be absurdly personable and approachable, and when I discovered that he was living in the same town as a friend, mused that it'd be cool to have said friend meet him and sign stuff for me. My friend hit up Sanderson on Reddit, and 2 days later had signed books - not only signed, but with inspirational "keep on writing" messages when my friend said I was about to publish a book. Now, when I tell people about books I'm reading, I talk up Sanderson because he's shown himself to be a good person as well as a good author. I'm more likely to spread the word about an author who has excellent books that is also an enjoyable person compared to an author with good works that's spending their time shilling to the masses instead of meeting the masses as a person. Will it work for you? I'm inclined to say yes, after that long winded post that really had no point. I'd be willing to bet that most of the masses are fine with ads being thrown at them on Twitter and Facebook. The retail world works entirely this way, and it seems to work fine for them. I don't think there's enough data to say "hey, this is a new and profitable way to sell books" quite yet, and I don't think I'm ready to take that approach, but I think people WILL respond to it, because they're used to it from other areas. I just don't think it's for me.
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Nov 22, 2011 21:28
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I agree with Mortanis. While I prefer getting to know an author as a person, I can also see where your approach would grab some attention - as you said on your blog, it's worked for people like Howard Stern. In some ways, I'm actually a bit jealous because I wish that I could be that guy, but I'm just not. I think the Sanderson model is a lot more like what I would follow - not so much because I think one is better than the other, that's just who I am. If my writing is going to reflect who I am, then I feel that my own marketing approach should do the same; otherwise, I'm just not being authentic, and I think that shines through more than anything else.
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Nov 23, 2011 05:31
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Personally, I'd never really expect people to follow me on twitter or facebook or read my blog or whatever solely because they want to buy stuff. Maybe they just vaguely like the free content I put out there. And I'm fine with that because I enjoy putting it out there. I'd never be so harsh as to say "Paying customers only you freeloaders" or similar. While I can kind of see the curiosity and frustration that would drive one to actually ask "why are you even putting up with me if you're not buying my stuff"; to me that sort of interaction speaks of a very strict product/customer relationship that could really drag down word of mouth. It's not so much being obsequious as it is being personable and tolerating that a lot of people are going to like you in a manner too half-hearted to fork out cash.
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Nov 23, 2011 05:46
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I'm reading the manuscript for Kindle All Stars: Resistance Front right now. It's loving brilliant and all of you better buy the gently caress out of it when it releases. This IS the modern Dangerous Visions.
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Nov 23, 2011 06:13
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Azure_Horizon posted:I'm reading the manuscript for Kindle All Stars: Resistance Front right now. It's loving brilliant and all of you better buy the gently caress out of it when it releases. This IS the modern Dangerous Visions. Hell yeah. We can distribute that manuscript to press, right?
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Nov 23, 2011 19:28
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Myrddin Emrys posted:Hell yeah. We can distribute that manuscript to press, right? I think we can only distribute it to people who guarantee to buy it and review it.
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Nov 23, 2011 19:34
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Azure_Horizon posted:I think we can only distribute it to people who guarantee to buy it and review it. Oh, I thought that was the "friends and family" pre-release rule. Laurie said it was an "ARC" which I took to mean Advanced Review Copy, which I also took to mean "we can give to press who will write articles on it". Not that I've done that yet.
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Nov 23, 2011 19:38
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I posted this in the freelance thread, but since it directly applies to self-publishing, I thought this would be a good place as well. From SA-Mart http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3450526 darnzen posted:Goon run e-publishing site WritelyDone.com is looking for authors, freelance writers, illustrators, editors, translators, file-conversion experts, or anyone else who can provide services for the ebook publishing industry. This site is meant to enable self-publishers to produce professional quality work, without selling your soul, or giving away your rights to the material you created.
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Nov 23, 2011 21:36
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Looks cool. I just signed up. "As a reward, here is a picture of a puppy." Thanks, I needed that. I'll sink my teeth into it after this awful holiday weekend.
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Nov 23, 2011 22:25
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Myrddin Emrys posted:Oh, I thought that was the "friends and family" pre-release rule. Laurie said it was an "ARC" which I took to mean Advanced Review Copy, which I also took to mean "we can give to press who will write articles on it". OH, well, I didn't see that. Go ahead, send it to the press.
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Nov 24, 2011 00:22
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Capntastic posted:It's not so much being obsequious as it is being personable and tolerating that a lot of people are going to like you in a manner too half-hearted to fork out cash. It's not even those people(the ones that love me, not my books), it's the people who just added me to boost their numbers and don't really read my tweets at all. And today I started a weekend long "buy or die Tweet-O-Thon sponsored by the Avian Syndicate" a fourth-wall breaking "telethon" to spark sales(and unfollows) which has book characters coming in and talking to me. Mordridakon, a main characters whose a hominid-eating-obsessed red dragon, threatened people to buy or he'll eat them. Just now I did Dave 237, a round-tentacle thing whose in all 3 novellas but doesn't speak. I give him a key board and he starts acting like an okatu(not cannon whatsoever). I've gotten at least two sales and got many other's attention because they find it hilarious. Roshi fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Nov 24, 2011 |
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Nov 24, 2011 02:45
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did you set up separate twitter accounts for these characters?
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Nov 24, 2011 03:16
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clockworkjoe posted:did you set up separate twitter accounts for these characters? And just so everyone knows, I met my goal of thirty sold over thirty days one week early!!!
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Nov 24, 2011 05:12
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FingerbangMisfire posted:Looks cool. I just signed up. That was a bit of whimsy on my part :-) Glad you liked it! Full disclosure: that puppy is my dog, but he is 4 years old now.
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Nov 25, 2011 00:27
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There was talk earlier in the thread about pen names and such, and out of curiosity: Are you writing under your real name or a pen name? Do you write in more than one genre? If so, are you using/planning to use a single name for all books, or a different name for each genre?
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Nov 25, 2011 05:33
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Real name for me. Opinions differ overall. But it's been said that folks who write across multiple genres write with a different name for each genre, which makes sense, since you're effectively building a brand. Also HAPPY TURKEY GENOCIDE DAY for those who celebrate. I ate the hell out of some turkey earlier.
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Nov 25, 2011 08:31
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A friend tried to convince me to write a series of crappy cliched vampire novels under a pseudonym to make a quick buck. Selling out is looking better every day.
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Nov 25, 2011 09:09
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Real name for normal stories, fake name for stories that include sex. Would really rather not have my grandmother (or coworkers or anyone for that matter)...hell, anyone stumbling across the latter while looking at the former. Roar fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Nov 25, 2011 |
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Nov 25, 2011 11:20
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Pen name for all my books (so far just fantasy), simply because my last name isn't Google-friendly.
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Nov 25, 2011 17:17
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I write across genres, but will keep the same name, easier on me to keep one twitter account.
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Nov 26, 2011 01:33
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Planning on using my real name for everything, for simplicity's sake.
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Nov 26, 2011 03:05
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I'm going to use variations of my name separated by different tones. For surreal, funny things I'm going with Joey Peters. Right now I'm in the process of editing a bunch of old manuscripts. Anyway, I'm working through my old stories and prepping them as ebooks. Here's my first two.  Perdition Lost A dead guy and his demon best friend break out of Hell after the devil quits his job. They want to just lay low but it doesn't take long for them to get recruited into bringing the devil back home. Along the way they encounter angels, alchemists, and eldritch abominations. This, way back in the day, was the very first novel I wrote. I've spent the last couple months gutting it. I've probably cut a quarter out of the last draft and then rewrote another 30%.  Starship Victory: The Last Boy on Earth It's Season 1, Episode 1 of a series of intertwining short stories that will build together into a serial novel. The Starship Victory was supposed to check up on the technological process of a civilization, but instead finds a smoking cinder in it's place. The Victory's crew of humans, cyborgs, turtles and space gods must untangle this most mysterious knot before the dangerous hyper-entity on the surface destroys them.
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Nov 26, 2011 05:57
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 21:18 |
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....so I'm having an interesting experience from my self-publishing time via CreateSpace. CreateSpace says I've sold exactly 9 physical copies of my book, Shadow of a Dead Star. ....which is interesting, because I've counted no less than 15 copies in various local bookstores. So what the gently caress? Has anyone had this situation happen to them?
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Nov 27, 2011 08:43
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