Marketing and more. What to do?

[ameliasmith]

Sales on my latest book have slowed down to an average of about 1/day on Kindle and next to nothing everywhere else, but they're still higher than they were before this release. I had a little spike of 3 sales yesterday, and in my fantasy life it's because someone I met at Readercon was talking about it at WorldCon, but there's no telling, really, and it was only 3 sales.

I'm having a similar (slightly lower) number of downloads on my permafree short, which I'd hoped would serve as a teaser/intro to this book. It has only 2 reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, while the new novel has 8 Amazon.com reviews and about 10 on Goodreads.

The next book in the series is off to the copy editor and will be ready to upload within about 2 weeks, but I am planning to give the ARCs a few weeks before making it live elsewhere... then again, maybe I should just put it up everywhere almost as soon as I send out the ARCs. After all, it's a second-in-series. In any case, there will be 2 full novels in the series plus the two prequels within the next few weeks. The third and final book needs a massive substantive overhaul, which I'm estimating will take me until early/mid October, then I'm planning to get it to beta readers, do another revision, and send it to the copy editor (if he has time) in order to get it out by the end of the year. If the copy editor is all booked out, I may look for another one, or just wing it or use volunteer proof readers. 

So, I don't even know where to start with my marketing goals. Building mailing lists is all the rage, the done thing now, but what I most want to do at this point is to build sales and presence on the non-Amazon platforms, especially iBooks, Kobo, and GooglePlay. The permafree is doing next to nothing for me. I'd like to sell more of the books in this series, and because I'm thinking of moving into historical romance/family saga when it's done, I'm not super-keen on investing a lot in building a list of fantasy fans (though obviously there will be some cross-over). I will probably write more fantasy in the future, but it might be a few years.

I've thought about starting some PPC campaigns targeted to Kobo or iBooks on Facebook or Twitter, plus  but I'm leery of starting down that road because of the expense, and I just tried to start designing an ad and it's just... I feel like I just don't know where to start. It's the most direct path to what I'm shooting for, but treacherous. 

I guess the question that's bothering me is, with all this focus on getting mailing list subscribers, is there a good reason people aren't doing as much with the ad-for-sales angle that I'm missing? Obviously I have signup forms in the back of my books, and have 20 new subscribers from Instafreebie in the last few days, and I'm in another mailing-list-building promo. I feel like I'm doing enough to build the mailing list, but like I need something else. Gah. To sumarize:

Goal: more sales of books in this series, currently priced at $4.99, which I think is about right for its sub-genre.

Options: 

• figure out how to promote the permafree short (beyond just BKnights)
• Direct ads to the newer Book 1 on Facebook, Twitter, wherever.
• Carry on with occasional 99 cent promos on book 1, advertising with the usual sites (Patty's promo, Robin Reads, Book Gorilla, Bookbub if the gods smile on me)
• Just join the crowd and build the mailing list.

Constraints: Budget and brain power. I don't have a lot of tolerance for running ads at a loss, but I have neither the time nor the money to get $600+ or whatever it is worth out of a big course like Mark Dawson's FB ads course. 

[djmills]

Everything you need to follow Mark Dawson's FB ads course is available in the free videos. :-) Not worth the cost of the course.
I decided after watching the videos that I would be better off writing the next story, than spending the time to do the course, and create the adverts and spend money running the adverts.
I just need patience waiting for the readers to discover my "wonderful" stories. :-)
However, good luck building your list.
And thanks for the names of promo sites, Patty's promo, Robin Reads, Book Gorilla, etc. I need to read up on them and use if suitable for scifi and fantasy. :-)

[Miss Terri Novelle]

Okay, I took a look and the first problem that I see is your permafree is actually labeled book 3 which, I'd assume would give some people pause. If it is a prequel and you're using it as permafree, it would perform better for you if it was marked as book 1. That's an easy change and while it may not make perfect sense in terms of the actual story structure, it will make sense to readers who are used to getting a free lead in that's actually the first book.

That's my first recommendation.

My second is to wait until the next book comes out and promote the bejeesus out of that permafree. Make sure that there's an excerpt of the first full length book in the back of the permafree. Nothing too long, just a decent teaser. Make sure the language in the title/subtitles is clear so that people can follow the story structure. Prequel 1, prequel 2, Book 1, Book 2, Book 3. That's going to be the best and biggest thing you can do to get that permafree off the ground and working for you. Ask Cate, she was just talking about confusing readers with her spin off structure.

Keep up working on building your list, keep getting into every cross promo you can find, especially Patty's. Do a good hard push on the freebie and then if you're going to reduce prices, do it on the other prequel. Only put the full length books on sale if you have to...like if the prequels are too short or something.

In terms of PPC ads, those can be great and they can also be a huge time suck as well as a money drain. If you get Facebook ads right, they're really helpful. Consider that an extra. If you can get them going and they boost your sales enough to push you up in the rankings for your genre, then yay. If not, it was an extra and not the basis of your marketing plan.

In a nutshell, my advice is find a way to clarify your series structure so people can tell what part of the story they're coming in on, then do all of the other stuff--as much as you can. A chunk of concerted promo around your next release would be the best way to get some visibility. There's no reason to drop the price on your full length books to do that. If neither of the prequels is long enough to get you into the better promo sites, put them both into a boxed set and promo that instead. Keep your best products at full price if you have a limited number of them. Later on, when there are more, you can reduce them if you need to.

[Rinelle Grey]

I agree with Laura. Make it book 1.

And I'd get a more colourful cover too. It looks quite washed out beside your more colourful ones.

As for advertising, you're pretty limited with a 41 page book. Most won't advertise below 100 pages. I don't think freebooksy have a length limit, and there are others. Will check later when I'm on my laptop, and see where else I advertised the first part of my serial, which is also short.

[ameliasmith]

Thank you for the general advice, Laura.

Aug 21, 2016 21:39:17 GMT -5 Miss Terri Novelle said:

In a nutshell, my advice is find a way to clarify your series structure so people can tell what part of the story they're coming in on, then do all of the other stuff--as much as you can. A chunk of concerted promo around your next release would be the best way to get some visibility. There's no reason to drop the price on your full length books to do that. If neither of the prequels is long enough to get you into the better promo sites, put them both into a boxed set and promo that instead. Keep your best products at full price if you have a limited number of them. Later on, when there are more, you can reduce them if you need to.

And that's the trouble right there. The short story happens a year or so before the other prequel-book-1, with hardly any overlapping characters, though they all come together in the main series. Amazon won't allow fractional series numbering, or zeros, and the other prequel-book-1, Scrapplings, is really the first book of the overarching series, and the short is a side story. If I made it #1, then the numbering in Amazon's system and on the covers wouldn't match, and it would be just messy. I don't know how people make side stories fit into their series numbering. Making a box set of them and promoting them together might be the best solution. 

Aug 22, 2016 2:07:28 GMT -5 Rinelle Grey said:

I agree with Laura. Make it book 1.

And I'd get a more colourful cover too. It looks quite washed out beside your more colourful ones.

As for advertising, you're pretty limited with a 41 page book. Most won't advertise below 100 pages. I don't think freebooksy have a length limit, and there are others. Will check later when I'm on my laptop, and see where else I advertised the first part of my serial, which is also short.

More color on the cover would probably be a good idea. I have an unused background which might do. I thought that the parchment would give it more of a short story vibe, but yes, it is drab as all drabness.

I'll check out freebooksy. I also listed it on... something called digitalbooktoday, with a 2-month listing. They were having a special and I thought I'd check it out. I currently have the first full-length prequel on Freebooksy. 

Yeah, I see a prequel box set in my future. 

[Miss Terri Novelle]

Amazon can be less than helpful with series numbering. I knew that's why you had it like that, but I do think it makes a difference to readers. The box set is probably the best compromise if it gives you something long enough to promote.

I have no idea how people do them normally. My Earthbound series is subtitled A Psychic Seasons Novel, but is number 1 in the Earthbound series. I figured that was the best way to let people know since they couldn't really be linked into the original series.

[Pru Freda]

On the subject of numbering and series, here's an example of how I have done it.

Strictly Murder (The Verity Long Mysteries Book 1)
Married to Murder (The Verity Long Mysteries Book 4)
A Novel Way to Die (The Verity Long Mysteries)

So the novels are numbered in sequence and the novellas just have the series name. Somewhere or other - might be my Amazon page, might be my website - I list them chronologically. The novellas fit between 1 and 2 and 2 and 3, but aren't contiguous and can be read out of order.

[ameliasmith]

Yeah, I might drop the number from the short story. 

Meanwhile, I swapped out the background of the cover. What do you guys think of these? (Also, I have to get books into my sig line here one of these days!)


      


THe second one is slightly more in keeping with the other covers.

[lou]

I prefer the warmth of the colors of the second, but that's just a personal reaction and so isn't worth much, I fear.

[Suzy]

Both good, but the blue one has more mystery- or spirituality,perhaps.

[Miss Terri Novelle]

I vote for the second one. I like the colors.

[scdaffron]

I like the one on the right better. I like the colors and the text is easier to read.

[Rinelle Grey]

Another vote for the green and yellow one.

And you probably don't want to hear this, but I think you're unlikely to get much traction with a Permafree in the middle like that.

Could you rebrand the whole thing as one series, and make the first one Permafree? There are a lot more places to advertise a full length book anyway.

[djmills]

I like the green & yellow cover, it caught my attention first. :-) If it catches readers attention, they will read the blurb, and if they like that, will purchase. :-) Good luck with it.

[ameliasmith]

Off to change the cover, then! I like the background on the blue cover a lot, but the cover on the right is closer to the other ones in the series, so between that and your votes, I'll go for that one.

[Miss Terri Novelle]

Hey ameliasmith, I just found out you can set your prequel to number 0 so if you combine the pair of them into one book, you won't have to reorder the rest.

Now to see if they would allow something like a .5 in there...that would be awesome.

[ameliasmith]

I'll try to do that. Thanks, Laura!