The spikes you see in the first graph directly correlate to paid advertising. There's a little residual sale activity after the ad, but beyond that, crickets in the whole book sales area.
What's notable is the continued page reads after the sale is over. Two weeks after the ad went live for Dying Embers, I'm still seeing people in the KU program reading books even if nobody is buying the whole thing all at once.
Sure, these numbers aren't going to wow anyone and I'm nowhere near making the list of top sellers in KU, but to see residual pages reads at all is always welcome.
This is why I keep my books in KU. As I've said before, the times I've taken my books to a wider distribution, I do not see enough sales to make up for the page reads I've lost. Of course, your mileage may vary. We all have to do things that work best for us. I just don't have a wide enough reach to bother having my books available everywhere. And I don't have a large group of people out there telling me they'd buy my books if only they were available for Nook or Kobo or whatever. (I used to have a couple people who asked, but one sale here or there wasn't making it worth my while. If you don't have a Kindle and want to read my books, Amazon has an app for that.) My stay in Kindle Select could change, but for now, this is working for me.
Any questions?
Nope. Sorta looks like my own graph.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, I now have two and a half series wide. Penumbra has been almost from the beginning. I took the first two compilation novels of Moonstruck wide (one reason for doing a different version--I could keep the original individual novels in KU, while revising two novels and adding what amounts to a novella in between them for the wider distribution copy. Doesn't break the TOS that way.Then I took Nightriders wide after a couple of years. It was a gamble because I often made more in KU than in sales. When I realized page reads of the NR books fell off, I took them wide. I'm starting to see sales now, from other distributors, as well as sales to libraries and borrows on Scribd and Hoopla and I think there's one other subscription service that Draft-2-Digital publishes to. Anyway, it appears that I'm at least staying even--new royalty streams vs. KU. Will I take the original Moonstruck books wide? Probably not. Interestingly, their KU numbers are picking up.
I'll never figure out what words and what doesn't. As you know, I seldom advertise or put stuff on sale. I probably should but I'm such a dunce when it comes to doing it.
Anyway. I'm glad you're good at this stuff. I learn from yoU! Maybe I'll get brave enough to dive in some day.
Have a great weekend. Go fishing!
Yay for sales! I think yours top mine by a factor of ten.
ReplyDeleteWhen I went wide, I didn't have a single sale until I withdrew my books. THEN they sold. A couple, anyway. I'm sticking with KU - I may not sell many, but I get twice as much money when I do.