As some of you may have realized from the publication of The Adventures of Reztap, it has been an exercise in marketing for a self-published book. I've learned many things in the last nine months. I'd like to share them below:
1. People will complain about price, no matter what it is, and changing it to something lower will not affect sales. In fact, it's more likely to impact them.
2. A professionally edited book has more avenues to be marketed. There are some book reviews sites that will not review a book unless it has been professionally edited. Anything that reduces your opportunity for exposure is bad, especially if you don't have a large marketing budget to advertise but depend on the reviews of others to get the word out about your book.
3. Many have commented that the book was not long enough. It was not even something I'd considered when I published it, but people have an expectation for a book that it be a certain length. I think my book was about 75% of the length people expected.
4. Word of mouth is hard to build. Many of the successes you've seen in the self-publishing world (those books that got picked up by a large publisher) built a large fan following before ever being published. A lead time of one to three years would go a long way to building an audience for the book ahead of it being published.
5. Many self-publishers have a dedicated web site to the book (or books) and you can buy the eBook or hard copy through a link directly on the site (not many actually sell it directly, but point to a major retailer's web site for the book).
6. Pushing the book at conventions requires a lot of pre-planning and an outlay of money for a table to hawk your wares. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, but I was definitely not prepared for the financial outlays, especially just to push a single book.
7. The act of publishing the book and eBook is actually fairly easy now with the tools available on the internet.
8. Marketing is NOT easy.
9. Actual publishers want a built-in audience for your book - it is a plus when approaching a publisher and sometimes a requirement. Catch-22 - if you already have a built-in audience, why do you need a publisher? You can get additional exposure through the publishers web site, promotion through retail outlets, and prestige that gets reviewers to look at your book and review without you even asking. Ok, maybe you still have to ask, but it's easier to get them to do it when they see it was published by a major publisher.
What does this mean for the future of The Adventures of Reztap? I've pulled the book because it does need to go to a professional editor. I thought I did a bang up job editing it, and many normal readers may only notice one or two errors, but it is riddled with errors mostly due to a rewrite from third person to first person. I missed point of view changes in many places, even after three very thorough editing reviews.
I figured if I'm going to send it to a professional editor, I might as well address additional issues with the book. Length being the primary one. I will be adding an epilogue and an appendix with information about the universe according to Reztap. Where appropriate, I may add some passages and information within the story itself, but it will remain the same overall story. I won't introduce any major plot changes or anything like that. As I'm halfway through writing the sequel, I have a better insight into areas where I may be able to expand the original story where it makes sense to.
For now, the hard copy of the first edition of The Adventures of Reztap is still available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon/Createspace, and The Book Patch. I will likely leave them there for now.
I will continue to write the sequel and the third book in the series. After making changes to the first book and completing the next two books, I will approach some major publishers to see if there's interest in publishing the books.
As a complement to the books, I will be investing in a dedicated web site to the books and intend on putting blog posts and short stories with the characters on there, as well as some book reviews of other authors. I hope I can build a decent audience over the space of a year or two and bring the world back to readers. Until then, grab a first edition hard copy if you can. I'll probably pull those after a few months as well.
Thank you for your support and attention!
Artemus Withers
P.S. Keep tuned to this blog for updates on the aforementioned web site, sequel(s) progress and other news.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Price - Not Such a Factor in Sales
It's been an interesting discovery. Perhaps it was the lack of pushing the product or maybe it just doesn't matter, but when I dropped the eBook pricing for The Adventures of Reztap to $2.99 I didn't sell a single one. Whereas, in my inital push to get the book out there, I had priced it at $4.99. I sold several at that price, but perhaps that was because of the newness of the book. I really can't say.
I do believe that my marketing leaves much to be desired. It would not appear the price of the book means one wit to whether or not someone will actually purchase it. History suggests if someone has been reached, noticed the book, was interested in that subject and willing to pay a fair price for it then there is a sale. I don't know how else to quantify the results.
I will leave the eBook at $2.99 through the holiday shopping period. After that I will raise it once again to $4.99. It will be interesting to see what the results of this post will be before and after the price is raised.
For your ease of purchasing frenzy which I'm certain will occur after this post, I'm putting the links to both the hard copy and eBook of The Adventures of Reztap below:
Kobo
Amazon (Kindle eBook & paperback)
Diesel
Sony
Barnes and Noble (Nook eBook & paperback)
Apple (iTunes)
Smashwords
Happy purchasing! Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/WinterSolstice/etc.
Artemus
I do believe that my marketing leaves much to be desired. It would not appear the price of the book means one wit to whether or not someone will actually purchase it. History suggests if someone has been reached, noticed the book, was interested in that subject and willing to pay a fair price for it then there is a sale. I don't know how else to quantify the results.
I will leave the eBook at $2.99 through the holiday shopping period. After that I will raise it once again to $4.99. It will be interesting to see what the results of this post will be before and after the price is raised.
For your ease of purchasing frenzy which I'm certain will occur after this post, I'm putting the links to both the hard copy and eBook of The Adventures of Reztap below:
Kobo
Amazon (Kindle eBook & paperback)
Diesel
Sony
Barnes and Noble (Nook eBook & paperback)
Apple (iTunes)
Smashwords
Happy purchasing! Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/WinterSolstice/etc.
Artemus
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Facebook, other progress
Over the weekend, I embarked on another marketing experiment. I created a page for The Adventures of Reztap (http://www.facebook.com/TheAdventuresOfReztap?ref=hl). I set a start and end date for the campaign as well as a daily budget. Essentially four days for a budget of $40.
The ad would display on the targeted audiences pagem in the right hand side of the screen like other ads. My targeted audeince for this campaign was those who liked Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Firefly and The Stainless Steel Rat. These were all comparisons one reviewer ,ade for the book, so I thought that would be a great target audience.
I failed to put a link to buy the book on the Facebook page until a day after I started the advertisements. Obviously, I need to make a checklist for future campaigns with different books. I also failed to monitor the campaign to make sure it ended on the date it was supposed to. Guess what? Sure enough, I log in two days after it is supposed to have ended and see that my budget is continuing to climb because the campaign is still going. Frustrating to be sure. I thought I'd been very meticulous on when the campaign was to end, bu the status was still active and looked like it would remain so for a full month, not just four days. luckily, I was able to "pause" the campaign. I'm only in for another $12 and some change, but that was more than I wanted to spend on the experiment.
The page now has 40 likes. I also implored my friends on Facebook for their participation, and probably half of these likes are from them. Any increased sales from the marketing campaign? Not a single sale. In fact, sales appear to have dropped off considerably to a trickle of zero. All in all, the book was well written, has been enjoyed by nearly everone who has picked it up, but without a strong marketing push, no one will hear about it and pick it up.
Lesson learned from this endeavor? The self-published novel and requires a hefty amount of self-marketing. Creating the book isn't the problem. Getting people to hear about it is the problem.
undeterred, I have continued writing on the sequel. I'm somewhere near the end of the second chapter, having completed the synopsis. Part of my time has been spent figuring out who does what on the ship now that the crew has expanded from two humanoids and one android to a crew of around one hundred. There are plenty of surprises still in store for our heroes - I can hardly wait to see what they are.
Marketing hat still on,
Artemus
The ad would display on the targeted audiences pagem in the right hand side of the screen like other ads. My targeted audeince for this campaign was those who liked Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Firefly and The Stainless Steel Rat. These were all comparisons one reviewer ,ade for the book, so I thought that would be a great target audience.
I failed to put a link to buy the book on the Facebook page until a day after I started the advertisements. Obviously, I need to make a checklist for future campaigns with different books. I also failed to monitor the campaign to make sure it ended on the date it was supposed to. Guess what? Sure enough, I log in two days after it is supposed to have ended and see that my budget is continuing to climb because the campaign is still going. Frustrating to be sure. I thought I'd been very meticulous on when the campaign was to end, bu the status was still active and looked like it would remain so for a full month, not just four days. luckily, I was able to "pause" the campaign. I'm only in for another $12 and some change, but that was more than I wanted to spend on the experiment.
The page now has 40 likes. I also implored my friends on Facebook for their participation, and probably half of these likes are from them. Any increased sales from the marketing campaign? Not a single sale. In fact, sales appear to have dropped off considerably to a trickle of zero. All in all, the book was well written, has been enjoyed by nearly everone who has picked it up, but without a strong marketing push, no one will hear about it and pick it up.
Lesson learned from this endeavor? The self-published novel and requires a hefty amount of self-marketing. Creating the book isn't the problem. Getting people to hear about it is the problem.
undeterred, I have continued writing on the sequel. I'm somewhere near the end of the second chapter, having completed the synopsis. Part of my time has been spent figuring out who does what on the ship now that the crew has expanded from two humanoids and one android to a crew of around one hundred. There are plenty of surprises still in store for our heroes - I can hardly wait to see what they are.
Marketing hat still on,
Artemus
Friday, July 27, 2012
Tracking the Oiled Ferret (Sales)
With all this discussion about pricing and effects on sales, a sobering thought entered my befuddled brain. These are barely real-time statistics I am referencing for my conclusions.
Amazon and Smashwords are relatively on-time with their notifications of sales and how much that will put in my account. I recently received a nice little sum of money from both of them for sales in May and June. That was the end of the second quarter.
The next payments, no matter how many I sell, won't com until the end of October. I can still track sales for those two sites, but the long-term result is still a quarterly payment.
The real challenge will be tracking the sales for the Premium Distribution channel. All those web sites report sales roughly quarterly. My fancy little price change for testing won't yield any measurable results for those channels until October. That's a very long waiting game.
Advice to the other self-publishers out there - just be ready for a long game - this is not a quick one-handed poker challenge, it's a long yacht voyage around the world.
We'll table the discussion of where the book ranks in sales for another day.
Artemus
Amazon and Smashwords are relatively on-time with their notifications of sales and how much that will put in my account. I recently received a nice little sum of money from both of them for sales in May and June. That was the end of the second quarter.
The next payments, no matter how many I sell, won't com until the end of October. I can still track sales for those two sites, but the long-term result is still a quarterly payment.
The real challenge will be tracking the sales for the Premium Distribution channel. All those web sites report sales roughly quarterly. My fancy little price change for testing won't yield any measurable results for those channels until October. That's a very long waiting game.
Advice to the other self-publishers out there - just be ready for a long game - this is not a quick one-handed poker challenge, it's a long yacht voyage around the world.
We'll table the discussion of where the book ranks in sales for another day.
Artemus
The Paradigm Shift - eBook Pricing
I've seen many articles relating to how to price eBooks. I've had feedback on how The Adventures of Reztap eBook is priced ($4.99) where the paperback is $12.95. That is about a 62% discount - which seems to be in line with other pricing I've seen.
On the high side, there has been some discussion about $9.99 being the average price for a fiction eBook. I would venture that is also an average couple of more pages than my mdoest entry at 180 pages. Still, I don't think there are an average 360 pages to all those fiction eBooks, so the pricing still seems more than fair from that standpoint.
However, I have also seen articles and stories about pricing the eBook at $2.99. This is the minimum pricing at which the author can still get a 70% royalty on Amazon, so I think that is whre this bottom line pricing figure has emerged from. If you go below $2.99, your royalty drops to 35%. On Amazon, you can't price below $0.99. You can get free eBooks onto Amazon by offering them free elsewhere (like Smashwords) and Amazon finds out and "price matches" your eBook. But that's not a tried and true method; it's just what I've heard. If you enter the KDP Select program, that is a zero cost for your eBook for Prime members, while the author gets a piece of a $600,000 pie - really only about $2 per book checkout by the Prime member.
In the interest of testing, I'm going to drop my eBook to $2.99 on Amazon and Smashwords. This first book is all about discovering what works and what doesn't. It may take a while for the price change to filter out to the other platforms that get the digital eBook from Samashwords (Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Diesel, etc.) I will let you, my intrepid companions on this ePublishing adventure, know what the outcome of the price change is. Be warned, the price changes set may not take effect for a few days - I've already taken steps to change the prices - for instance, now the eBook is unavailable on Amazon until they review the eBook again, a process which could take up to 48 hours.
Other strategies include giving the first book in a series away free to drive sales of other books in the series. Unfortunately, the other books in my series have yet to be written/published, so it doesn't so much apply to me at this time. In a year, that will be a different story and a different blog post.
Happy Pricing!
Artemus
You can download The Adventures of Reztap from Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes (look in iBooks on iPhone or iPad), Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Diesel.
On the high side, there has been some discussion about $9.99 being the average price for a fiction eBook. I would venture that is also an average couple of more pages than my mdoest entry at 180 pages. Still, I don't think there are an average 360 pages to all those fiction eBooks, so the pricing still seems more than fair from that standpoint.
However, I have also seen articles and stories about pricing the eBook at $2.99. This is the minimum pricing at which the author can still get a 70% royalty on Amazon, so I think that is whre this bottom line pricing figure has emerged from. If you go below $2.99, your royalty drops to 35%. On Amazon, you can't price below $0.99. You can get free eBooks onto Amazon by offering them free elsewhere (like Smashwords) and Amazon finds out and "price matches" your eBook. But that's not a tried and true method; it's just what I've heard. If you enter the KDP Select program, that is a zero cost for your eBook for Prime members, while the author gets a piece of a $600,000 pie - really only about $2 per book checkout by the Prime member.
In the interest of testing, I'm going to drop my eBook to $2.99 on Amazon and Smashwords. This first book is all about discovering what works and what doesn't. It may take a while for the price change to filter out to the other platforms that get the digital eBook from Samashwords (Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Diesel, etc.) I will let you, my intrepid companions on this ePublishing adventure, know what the outcome of the price change is. Be warned, the price changes set may not take effect for a few days - I've already taken steps to change the prices - for instance, now the eBook is unavailable on Amazon until they review the eBook again, a process which could take up to 48 hours.
Other strategies include giving the first book in a series away free to drive sales of other books in the series. Unfortunately, the other books in my series have yet to be written/published, so it doesn't so much apply to me at this time. In a year, that will be a different story and a different blog post.
Happy Pricing!
Artemus
You can download The Adventures of Reztap from Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes (look in iBooks on iPhone or iPad), Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Diesel.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
iTunes - Finally!
It is with great fanfare that I announce The Adventures of Reztap is finally available on iTunes! It was a long wait (longer than I aniticpated), but I'm happy it's finally there.
For those wondering exactly how long the wait was, here is the timeline of events for you to reference for your own eBook publishing adventures:
5/12/2012 - eBook first published to Smashwords. Immediately enrolled in Premium channel, but takes a while for approval.
5/30/2012 - Premium status approved. At this point, it is up to the distributors to pick up the electronic data to publish the eBook on their sites.
5/31/2012 - Kobo picks up the data from Smashwords.
6/2/2012 - Opted out of Amazon (Kindle & CreateSpace) since I would be publishing directly there.
6/5/2012 - Diesel picks up the data from Smashwords.
6/19/2012 - Baker & Taylor picks up the data from Smashwords.
6/21/2012 - Sony picks up the data from Smashwords.
7/13/2012 - Barnes and Noble picks up the data from Smashwords.
7/21/2012 - Apple picks up the data from Smashwords.
Every disributor listed here has a schedule for picking up data within a week of its availability on Smashwords - obviously the schedule is a very loose guideline to which they don't adhere very closely. The nice thing is it gives an approximation of when (AFTER picking up the data) you can expect to see the eBook available on the web site and they've been pretty accurate. While it took forever for iTunes to pick up the data for the eBook, it was finally available today (7/26/2012) less than the two weeks it said it might take.
So when distributing through Smashwords, you can anticipate (but not guarantee) that your work will be available with two months of enlisting in the Premium Distribution Channels.
I don't know how other aggregators work, but I look forward to hearing tales of your adventures here soon.
Happy iTuning,
Artemus
For those wondering exactly how long the wait was, here is the timeline of events for you to reference for your own eBook publishing adventures:
5/12/2012 - eBook first published to Smashwords. Immediately enrolled in Premium channel, but takes a while for approval.
5/30/2012 - Premium status approved. At this point, it is up to the distributors to pick up the electronic data to publish the eBook on their sites.
5/31/2012 - Kobo picks up the data from Smashwords.
6/2/2012 - Opted out of Amazon (Kindle & CreateSpace) since I would be publishing directly there.
6/5/2012 - Diesel picks up the data from Smashwords.
6/19/2012 - Baker & Taylor picks up the data from Smashwords.
6/21/2012 - Sony picks up the data from Smashwords.
7/13/2012 - Barnes and Noble picks up the data from Smashwords.
7/21/2012 - Apple picks up the data from Smashwords.
Every disributor listed here has a schedule for picking up data within a week of its availability on Smashwords - obviously the schedule is a very loose guideline to which they don't adhere very closely. The nice thing is it gives an approximation of when (AFTER picking up the data) you can expect to see the eBook available on the web site and they've been pretty accurate. While it took forever for iTunes to pick up the data for the eBook, it was finally available today (7/26/2012) less than the two weeks it said it might take.
So when distributing through Smashwords, you can anticipate (but not guarantee) that your work will be available with two months of enlisting in the Premium Distribution Channels.
I don't know how other aggregators work, but I look forward to hearing tales of your adventures here soon.
Happy iTuning,
Artemus
Friday, July 20, 2012
Book Two Teaser - Sort of...
I began writing the sequel to The Adventures of Reztap. The new book will be titled Reztap and the Quest for the Insane Moth. If you've read the first book, the title makes sense. If you haven't, well it sure is a curiosity isn't it?
Onto the teaser as promised! I completed the outline for Reztap and the Quest for the Insane Moth a couple weeks ago. The outline has been marinating and cooking in my brain while I've been engaged in other pursuits that have nothing to do with writing. On a business trip this week, I finally delved into the world of Tar and Gorth again and completed chapter one and am just starting the writing of chapter two. What I have completed (via the outline) are the chapter headings for the book - some of these were quite interesting in the first book, and I tried to keep them that way for the second. So, you're only real preview of the book before I finish writing it and go through the edit process is presented below.
Chapter 1 – How’d that get there?
Chapter 2 – Moth Bawls
Chapter 3 – Why Rimtikians are so Pissy
Chapter 4 – Witless Protection
Chapter 5 – Hell Hath No Fury
Chapter 6 – The Unattainable Bargain
Chapter 7 – Between a Scarf and a Hard Place
Chapter 8 – Dilo the Traitor
Chapter 9 – No Place Like Home
Chapter 10 – Past Tense
Chapter 11 – That Rock is Hard to Swallow
Chapter 12 – Gorth Takes a Vacation
Chapter 13 – Nothing as Profitable as War
Chapter 14 – Mental Fatigue
Chapter 15 – Magnetic Personalities
Chapter 16 – Scarfing down the next Mission
Of course, only part of this makes any sense if you've read the first book and probably makes no sense whatsoever if you haven't. So get out there and read book one! Book two is on the way, I promise!
Slaving away in a digital graphite mine,
Artemus
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)