Wrapping up 2020

Whew, I made it out of 2020 alive and with my sanity intact... mostly.  Time to wrap that puppy up and shove it into storage.  Here's how my writerly year shook out...

I wrote 73044 new words last year.  For the most part, that was finishing Cinder Ugly and writing Duke Noble .  I also laid some words down on several other books - another SCIU novel, the Arthurian UF thing, a quirky thing, and an attempt to start a sequel series to the model books.

I edited and published two books last year - Ugly and the Beast and Cinder Ugly.  That brought my total number of published novels to 15.

In sales, it was not a good year.  I sold a grand total of 65.39 books for a whopping $79.89 - an average of $1.49 a book. The only book I didn't sell any copies of was Project Hermes.  :sigh:  Of course, I didn't do any paid advertising last year for the nine free or sale things I did.  It was all on me and I didn't have the heart to do much marketing.  

I had five freebies.  I moved 359 books that way. 

Goals for the new year?  Well, I'm trying to take it day by day.  Lord knows my goals for last year didn't pan out.  And I quote: "If I can swing that, I'd like to see Ugly and the Beast and Cinder Ugly hit your ereaders in 2020.  I'd also like to get another SCIU and another Dennis Haggarty at least written, if not out there in public."  I did get UatB and CU out to the world.  As for the other two... umm, no.

This year, I will get Duke Noble's first book finished and out there.  Yes, I hope he will be a series.  No, I have no clue where I'll go after this one is in the can.  I still want to get another SCIU and another Dennis Haggarty out there.  Then there's the idea I had for more from Jeni Braxxon.  We'll see what happens.  I'm not promising anything but Duke at this point in time.

Other than that, the hope is to just keep plodding along and not let whatever happens this year derail me as much as last year's events derailed me.  

How was your 2020?  Do you have plans and goals for this year?  What are they?

Spreadsheets for the New Year

As you all probably know, I'm a spreadsheet geek.  On the personal side, I have spreadsheets for the books I've acquired and for my weight and activity (where I also keep track of writerly things like word counts and pages edited).  I do spreadsheets for the payjob.  And I have spreadsheets to keep track of things for the writing business.  Those last ones are the ones I want to talk about today.

I have a whomping huge spreadsheet to keep track of my expenses and income.  All six years worth.  That one's particularly ugly this year, so we won't really talk about it much.  When I finish updating it, it will tell me how far in the hole I am and whether I made any progress anywhere.  The closest any of my books is to being out of the hole is Accidental Death.  It's only $102.51 in the negative.

My other two main spreadsheets are Book Sales Data and Sales Totals.  

Book Sales Data has a tab for each month of the year and on each tab, it has sales information for each book - color coded by book on the rows with columns for each possible sales item.  Each potential US price gets a column, other countries get columns (except the EU countries only have one column because they all use the euro), there are columns for KU and print and returns. This sheet is for quantities only.  I used to do quantities and amounts, but I deleted the amounts section several years ago because it wasn't necessary here.  I keep all that over in the Sales Totals spreadsheet.

The Sales Totals spreadsheet is another whomping huge one.  This sucker tells me everything - quantity, amounts, page reads, etc. on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis with comparisons and charts.  I use the Book Sales Data sheet to feed this one.  (I have to, or this one would be even huger and the weight of it would probably topple my computer.)

The first tab of the ST takes the data from the BSD.  It's a lot like the BSD in that there are color-coded lines and columns for each of the possible sales items. Rather than try to explain it, here's a screen capture of what I'm talking about.

Pretty, pretty rainbows.

I couldn't capture the whole sheet, so I just gave you a month and the quantity side.  The earnings side looks the same, except the numbers over there will have dollar signs, when I have numbers to put into it.  The colors are for more than just looks, too.  They help me keep track of things with a glance.  Dying Embers will always be that shade of blue.  If I'd thought this though way back when, series would all be the same color, but I didn't.  And it would've messed up my rainbows anyway.  

If you look beneath the rainbows, you can see the tabs to where all that information works.  The Daily is quantities of everything sold.  The Daily Pgs is for Kindle Unlimited.  Overall keeps track of everything over all the years.  Monthly breaks it down.  Pgs Read does the KU by month and book.  It's all pretty self-explanatory.  

Every time I publish another book, I have to update everything - adding rows and columns, etc. - but for the most part, this works for me all year long.  Sucking in data and presenting it in a format I can easily digest.  

Every month, I have to plug in formulas to make ST pull from BSD, but that's only because I'm too lazy to do it all ahead of time.  I used to populate the thing with formulas at the start of the year.  Then it got to be such a pain, I decided to do it month to month, as things sold.  Why put a formula into a cell if there will never be any information in that cell?  So, I stopped.

Anyway, you probably won't ever want or need anything like this.  It keeps me out of trouble and even when the sales are light, it gives me a clear outlook on where I've been and where I'm going. 

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them as long as they aren't too involved like I'd be building your spreadsheet for you.  I've often thought about offering my services to make spreadsheets like these for other authors, but the sheer weight of these things and the data involved makes it less than ideal.  And the time it takes to create and maintain one would make the process costly for other writers. 

And besides, few writers are as geeky as I am.  I like knowing exactly what's going on with the business at any given time.  Even when the news is bad.  

Speaking of which, I will be doing at least one wrap-up post here sometime next week to talk about 2020 sales and junk.  See ya then.  I won't be here on Friday.

More Randomness

The five-days-free thing for UNEQUAL ended last night.  I moved 99 copies and it reached as high as 54th in free dystopian.  We'll see if any page reads come of this.  If nothing else, there are 99 people in the world with the opportunity to read and enjoy it.

I'm up to 27516 words on Cinder Ugly.  It would be more, but I took Friday off to watch Live PD and then the yardwork I did Saturday screwed up my wrists enough that I took that night off, too.  There's a pivotal scene coming up next and I have no idea what's gonna happen.  Should be fun writing.

I started work on the blurb for Ugly and the Beast.  Here's what I've got so far:

Jeni Braxxon’s life as a up-and-coming supermodel hit the skids when she got cursed.  The asshole who did this to her is rotting in jail, but the curse remains, leaving her as ugly as the north end of a southbound dump truck every damn night.  Still, she’s trying desperately to hold onto her old life.  As if this case of the gruesomes and impending unemployment wasn’t enough for a gal with serious esteem issues, someone snatches her nephew.  The fight is on to find the boy before something seriously heinous happens to him.  With the help of her friends and a magical cat, Jeni will face anything this world or the next throws at her.  If she’s lucky, she might just make it out alive.

Yeah, it's pretty rough, but you get the idea of what goes on, so it's not totally lame.  Or is it?  I'll keep working on it.

UatB is at the readers and so far, I'm feeling good about it.  We'll see if that holds once the responses start to come back. 

I tell ya, it's nice to be working again.  The writing is flowing pretty well and with it, excitement for other stuffs keeps popping into my head.  But I'm staying focused.  Fingers crossed the excitement is still there when I sit down to write SCIU #4 or DH #3.

Oh, and I did some pricing stuffs this weekend.  I raised the prices on Sleeping Ugly, Accidental Death, and Natural Causes to $3.99.  When Ugly and the Beast comes out, it'll be $3.99, too.  Just trying to get my books in line with the market and each other.

I hope y'all aren't bored with this random stuff, but it seems like the only stuff I can hold in my head long enough to write an entire post. 

How are things with you? 

Self-Publishing Income Versus Outgo.

It's time to talk about the thing I hate most - Income versus Outgo.  What I've made versus what I've spent. 

As you might have guessed, I keep it all in a spreadsheet.  Every time I spend money on the writing business, I put it in there.  And every time I make money from the writing business, I put it in there.  Of course, since I hate looking at this, I hadn't then taken those incomes and outgoes and transferred them to the sheet that does the math on it all since last January. I did that on Saturday, so I figured I'd share the results with you here today.

At first glance, the income and the outgo nearly match with income coming out a little ahead.  This is because for 'incoming', I also put down any money I've contributed to the process from other non-writing sources.  The reality of 'sales' versus 'outgo' is the depressing part.  The reality of it is that I am $8K in the hole.


:shrug:  That's the reality of this self-publishing thing I'm doing.  Some writers have it better.  Some have it worse.  I expect a lot of writers are about the same.

Okay, so how does outgo/sales break down by year?

2015: -$4958.94 / $1357.92
2016: -$2079.18 / $786.15
2017: -$1525.56 / $318.92
2018: -$2329.14 / $627.53
2019: -$428.00 / $468.80

On the upside, last year is actually showing in the black by like $40. 

I won't bore you with the actual 'by book' numbers.  The book I've made the most money on is Dying Embers.  I assume because this one has been out the longest and my first year was my best year.  The book I've spent the most on is Wish in One Hand - because I had to do the cover art twice and I spent a huge sum on the first cover.  The book that is closest to being in the black is Accidental Death.  Another $100 in sales without spending any more on it and it'll have paid for itself. 

Of course, I've spent $300 on two books that aren't even out yet - covers for Ugly and the Beast and Cinder Ugly.  Maybe I'll start recouping some of that in the first half of this year.  We'll see.  I'm still playing with the idea of publishing those without sending them through the editor.  If I go with the editor, add another $400-$500 to each of those.

So, there are the hard numbers for my first five years of publishing.  Like I've said before, if you're in this for the money, you'll probably be sorely disappointed.  Then again, maybe you'll break out and soar.  Your mileage will probably vary.  Good luck out there and may 2020 be a better year for us all.

And here's the point where you can ask questions.  I'll answer them if I can.

2019 Sales and Marketing Wrap-up

Happy New Year!  Well, that's another year in the can.  I can't say I'm sorry to see 2019 go.  :waves buh-bye:  Let's just go ahead and get this wrap-up out of the way so we can put 2019 away.

It was not a banner year for the whole writing/selling books thing.  I had hoped to get two books out in 2019, if I remember right.  That didn't happen.  I started the year in a slump and it pretty much lasted all year.

I did get Ugly and the Beast written.  I also got it kind of edited.  Then I started Cinder Ugly and the wheels came off.  I wrote part of a Space Bunny thing.  I also did some noodling around with ideas for another SCIU and another Dennis Haggarty.  I participated in NaNo and got another big chunk written on a YA fantasy I started 6 years ago.  Oh, and I started a short Christmas story involving the genies.  Not much to crow about considering there were 365 days in there with which to work and how little I actually worked on writing.

In the selling books arena, here are the numbers.  It's easier to deal with numbers sometimes.

Total sales $: $469
Total copies sold: 484

Not as much money as last year, but better than 2017, so I'm not crying into my coffee too much.  With no new books hitting the market, I should be happy I got that many sales.  This year, I did roll over 3K books sold over the entirety of my publishing life.  It averages out to 603 books and $712 a year.  (2015 was a big year, so it skews the average.)  Woohoo.

Dollars spent on marketing: $316
Sales $ earned from paid ads: $353

So, I finished the year in the black on paid marketing, but not by much.  If it weren't for marketing, I wouldn't have sold much in 2019.  I mean, take the $353 off the $469 and you get $116 worth of books sold without any paid advertising. 

Average per book income: 97c

Considering that I only sold 24 books at full price, I'm amazed I averaged that much.  I attribute it to Page Reads, which, while not netting me the same dollars as selling a full-priced book outright, certainly nets me more than a discounted 99c book.  I sold 316 books at the sale price of 99c, of which I get about 64c.

Speaking of Page Reads...

Number of books sold through the KU program: 72.82
Dollars earned through Page Reads: $126.04

And the majority of that can be attributed to paid ads.

It's getting harder and harder to sell books as a self-published author.  For me, anyway.  I'm sure there are writers out there doing much better than I am.  They're probably dropping new books at least 4 times a year, spending a bunch more on marketing, and have more social presence than I do.  I can only do what I can do, so I'm trying not to come off as whiny.  Like I said, this was a hard year but not the worst year ever.  Sure, I'd like it to have been better.  Who wouldn't?

My goals for the year ahead depend mostly on having the funds to pay my editor.  If I can swing that, I'd like to see Ugly and the Beast and Cinder Ugly hit your ereaders in 2020.  I'd also like to get another SCIU and another Dennis Haggarty at least written, if not out there in public.  Beyond that, I can't commit to anything.  Not yet.  I hope to under promise and over deliver.

Ah, hope. It's a thing.

Do you have any questions for me?  How was your 2019?  What are you hoping to accomplish in 2020?

Free Book Numbers

Since I had Project Hermes listed for free this week, I got a little curious about the numbers.  Oddly enough, I'd never actually looked at the numbers for my freebies before.

Let's hop into the wayback machine...

2015:  I listed Dying Embers as free in March and moved 356 copies.  I also sold 26 copies of it that month.  Since there were no other books published at that point, that was all DE.

2016:  I did quite a few freebies in 2016.  The biggest one was for DE, during which I moved 2431 copies.  That was February.  I also had a freebie for PH (then BloodFlow) during February and moved 127 copies.  In March, I listed AD for free and moved 759 copies.  FG was free in August - 100 copies.  WIOH was free in both September and October - I assume for one day each month - and 321 copies went out the door.  All told, I gave away 3738 copies in 2016.

2017:  I held two freebies for WIOH only.  I moved 858 copies and then sold 75 copies of the next three genie books - on sale during the freebies for WIOH.

2018: In March, I put AD for free and moved 118 copies - after which I sold 4 copies of NC.  Then in April, I listed DE as free again and 1007 went out the door.  Residual series sales for FG and EG ended up being about 40 books.

2019:  In February, I put Unequal for sale for a day.  Moved 22 copies.  Afterward, I sold one copy of UEQ and one copy of Blink of an I.  This week, Project Hermes was free for three days.  161 copies went out the door.  Since there isn't any book that relates directly to PH, I don't expect a lot of movement, but there's always a chance for KU reads and other sales.  :fingers crossed:

All told, I've given away 6260 books since 2015.

Sometimes, I see an uptick in sales of the book I made free.  Sometimes I get sales for other books in the same series.  Every rare once in a while, other unrelated books get sold because of a freebie promo I've run.  It's hit and miss.

Personally, I hate giving anything away.  But I understand that sometimes giving books away helps sell books.  And I have to remind myself that the people who get my books for free might not have slapped money down to buy them because I am an unknown author to them.  Once they give me a try, they may go on to buy my stuff. 

As a reader, I rely on free books to feed my reading addiction.  The budget's so slim right now I can't afford to try new authors, so I pick them up during freebie promos.  And if they're good, I try to find space in the budget to buy their subsequent books.  That's kind of how the freebie promo is supposed to work.

What about you?  Have you tried freebie promos for your books?  How did they work out for you?  If you haven't tried them as a writer, do you use them as a reader to find new authors? 

SCIU Sale Wrap-Up

As the year progresses with no new books to show for it, the sales get weaker and weaker, so I probably shouldn't expect much.  You need to be constantly putting forth new material.

Anyway, I said I'd share the results of the latest sale, so here we are.

First, an update on last month's OUAD sale.  It finally made enough money to pay for the ad I placed.  And with page reads still coming in, I'm ahead a little.

Now, the SCIU sale.  It ran from the 10th through the night of the 16th.  Dying Embers was 99c, Fertile Ground and Early Grave were $1.99.  I placed an ad with Bargain Booksy that ran on the 12th for DE ($55).

As of this morning, I sold just under 36 copies of DE, 5 copies of FG and 5 copies of EG.  I'm still seeing page reads, but the hope of actually paying off the ad is slim.  Which kind of blows but like I said, not unexpected. 

Overall, I'm still ahead on ad revenue, showing a 8.91% profit.  $271 spent on ads.  $297.50 earned off ads.  That'll change a little as the month progresses and page reads continue to come in, but not in any major way.

I didn't keep track of rankings this time.  At one point, DE made it into the 300s in its genre specification and into the teen-thousands in overall books.  Not quite enough to effect sales greatly. 

Prior to the ad, I had no sales this time around.  I fell down on the job of pushing on FB.  That may account for lower sales from the ad because the rankings of all three books were so poor when the ad came out.  I made a pretty, new graphic that seemed to get a lot of Likes on FB, but didn't really equate to more sales. 

Could be that because one of my pre-ad push days was Sept 11th the pre-sales fell apart.  It wasn't really a great day for book buying or looking at ads.  But when I set my sale dates, it wasn't even on my radar.  My mistake. 

Anyway, live and learn. 

Not sure what lies ahead for marketing this year.  I have sales penciled in for October, November, and December.  Whether I'll be able to advertise remains to be seen.  Gotta make money to spend money to make money... Ad infinitum.

As for overall sales for the year, I just passed the 400 books/$400 mark.  Not sure if I'll pass last year at this rate, but I've already passed 2017, so this won't be my worst year ever.  That's gotta count for something.

And that's it.  Any questions?

July Sales Wrap-up

Well, I said I'd give you a breakdown of the month, so here it is.

This past month, I held 5 sales, starting on the 4th and ending on the 29th.

Sale #1 - Project Hermes.  No advertising other than FB Group posts.  Sold 3 books.  No page reads.
Sale #2 - Blink of an I.  No advertising other than FB Group posts.  No sales.  No page reads.
Sale #3 - Sleeping Ugly.  No advertising other than FB Group posts.  Sold 2 books.  No page reads.
Sale #4 & #5 - Accidental Death and Natural Causes.  Paid $55 for an ad for AD, and did all the FB Group posts.  To date, AD sold 39 books, had 2.45 books worth of page reads, and had one return.  NC sold 17 books and very few page reads so far.  The ad has not paid for itself yet, but we'll see if the page reads keep coming in.

It was a long and tiring marketing month, but I don't regret doing it.  If I hadn't done it, I'm sure I wouldn't have sold nearly as much.  Like way not as much.  The ad is only $11 short of paying for itself, and that's not as bad as it could've been.

Now, these ads usually pay for themselves with my sitting around praying for page reads.  I think what happened here is that there were only two books in the series.  When I did the same ad for the SCIU books - a three book series - the ad paid for itself.  When I did the same ad for the OUAD books - a four book series - the ad more than paid for itself.  (Noting, of course, that I only advertised the first book in each series.)

Of course, all these sales and discounts have dropped my per-book average to 96c.  But that was to be expected.  I wish I could sell more books at regular prices, but you know what they say... If wishes were fishes, we'd all eat like kings.

Next month, I hope to do something with Wish in One Hand.  Not sure what or when.  And the longer I take to decide, the fewer my options are for advertising.  One place is already booking ads for September because August is sold out.  Umm, yeah, missed that opportunity again.  I might do a whole 4th anniversary of WIOH thing.  I'm playing with the idea of making it free again.  I just hate paying for advertising on free books.  Bleh.

Anyway, that's the wrap-up for my July sales spectacular.  Any questions?

Sale Wrap-up Post

Okay, so there was a sale.  All four of the Once Upon a Djinn books were 99c/99p each for a bit there.  And the sales were fine.  Not OMG! HOW AWESOME IS THAT!, but fine.

As I said before, I managed to glean some sales on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week through simple FB Group posts.  The ad with Bargain Booksy got me a total of 46 sales on Thursday.  Friday saw 6 additional sales.  Saturday, I only sold 2.  Sunday was crickets, but I saw 5 sales first thing Monday morning before the big 'end of sale' FB push.  Unfortunately, my marketing efforts on the final day of the sale didn't sell any other books. 

I had a slight burp on Monday when I discovered that Amazon had raised the price of Up Wish Creek a day early.  (Still said the sale was In Progress, but it wasn't.  I think it had to do with its KDP 90 days ending on the 27th, but... meh.)  I had to change my marketing plan, of course.  Can't market the series as being 99c each when the third book is $3.99.  So, I shifted gears and only marketed Wish in One Hand at 99c/99p.  Apparently, that didn't do a darn thing.  :shrug:

Ah, the vagaries of marketing and book selling.

Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome.  Sure, I'd like to have seen sales really take off, but that would be like winning the lottery, and we all know how that works.  I'm just glad I covered the cost of the ad and that more people are reading the Once Upon a Djinn books.

During the sale, I sold 75 books.  Now we wait and see if any residual sales or page reads come in.  

As for Rankings, WIOH started out in the US at 797201 and hit 15588 overall and 1077 in urban fantasy at the top.  It ended the sale at 124365 / 5787.  Those aren't numbers that will attract anyone on their own, but maybe someone stopping by will see them and feel a little better about trying the books. 

Next month, time and fundage willing, I will have a sale with advertising for the SCIU series.  I really need to start thinking about this stuff more than a month in advance.  The closer it is, the harder it is to get marketing at a variety of venues. 

Any questions?  Did I forget anything pertinent? 

FB Group Marketing Update

I know all of us are trying our damnedest to find the magic formula that will sell books.  I don't have one.  What I do have is a list of Facebook Groups that I market to**, in the hopes that someone getting the feed from those groups will be interested in the books I'm advertising.  This sale I'm having (today's the last day) has born out the necessity for using this tactic.

The sale started last Tuesday.  The paid ad didn't go live until Thursday, but I wanted to get a jump on knocking those Amazon rankings down to a more acceptable level, so I started first thing Tuesday morning with FB Group posts.  By the time the ad went live, I'd sold 16 books (4 complete sets) using only those posts.  And my rankings for all four books had dropped from the stratosphere down to the 110Ks.

Then the ad went live.  Right now, I don't FB market on the days my ads go live - because I want to see which sales are almost certainly directly relatable to those ads.  But Friday, I started up again with the ads.  I should've hit the ground running and started with the ads first thing, when the rankings were at their lowest point, but I lazed and only ran half the posts at 6:15a.  The other half got posts around 3p.  Got some residual sales then.  I took Saturday off for the most part and only posted to one new group.  Saw a couple sales that day.  Bright and early Sunday morning, I posted to all the groups.  No sales on Sunday, but I woke up to five sales this morning.  By the time you read this today, I will have done a final push.  Fingers crossed it brings in additional sales.

I'll post more about the actual sales numbers on Wednesday.

As for the groups I post to, the list has grown and here it is:

Amazon Kindle Goodreads
Indie Authors International
Self-Published Crime Fiction Writers*
Crime, Thriller, Mystery Readers' Cafe*
Kindle Unlimited
Thriller Mystery and Suspense Book Club*
Thrillers, Killers, & Suspense*
Kindle/Book Club
Mystery and Thriller Publicity Book Club*
Indie Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Promotion
Free Kindle Books*
Kindle Krazy!  Authors Actively Seeking Readers
Ebook, Book Ads and Self Promotion
Book Reviews and Promotion
Shamelessly Promote Your Books
Free Kindle Books UK*
Kindle Readers and Authors (new)
Promote Your Books Here (new)

* Not used during this sale because the genre or the price didn't fit.

If you remember the list from before, there are a few missing.  For one reason or another, I left those groups and made a note to not rejoin them.  Also, I have two groups I've requested membership to but they're still pending.  If they accept me, I'll put them on the next list.

As always, if you use the above groups, please pay attention to their rules.  For instance, the owner of the Indie Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Promotions Group has a strict rule about 'no romance / no sex'.  Not that books can't have those things, but they'd better not be the primary storyline in the books you promote there.  Unfortunately, people keep trying to break his rule and it seems to irritate the crap out of him.  Do not irritate the people you're trying to market through.  Seriously, don't.

And the Free Kindle Books UK isn't a group.  It's a page and if you want to have your books marketed there, you have to send a message to the page's owner.  She's been prompt and pretty cool, but don't push it.

Of course, posting to these groups can be a drudge.  Picking the image, creating the verbiage, and then posting posting posting...  Blerg.  But for the time I put in on Tuesday/Wednesday, I made about $10 and that ain't bad.  Plus, it was worth it to help boost ad sales.

I feel like I'm forgetting something, so if you have any questions, ask away.  And whatever your marketing efforts, good luck!

** For free.  Posting to FB Groups doesn't cost a dime.  Shhh, don't tell FB or they'll find a way to charge us for it or something.

Wrap-up of Last Week's Marketing.

Time for another marketing post.  I hope you find these helpful.

Last week, I held Kindle Countdown Deals for all 4 of the Once Upon a Djinn series books.  I had one paid ad, 2 newsletter mentions, and numerous FB Group posts.  Prior to the ad going live on Tuesday, I had one sale for Wish in One Hand, which did what it needed to do - bump the rankings.

The sale started Sunday, and I started marketing to FB Groups then.  I used the image from my OUAD postcards. 

No sales that day.

More FB Group marketing on Monday just using the image that comes with the series link and one sale.

Monday, I paid for a FB Boost of the same ad with the series link and no other image.  $10 for 1 day.  Approximately 240 people saw it and 25 of them engaged with hit.  No sales directly relatable to it, though.  This post got some likes from people I've never heard of, but none of them Liked the OUAD Page.

Tuesday was the day of the ad. The image there was a compilation Bargain Booksy had created, with Wish in One Hand on the bottom row, second from the left.  I sold 25 books directly relatable to the ad.  Mostly WIOH, but I did see a few sales of the other three books, too.  I did no FB group marketing that day.

Wednesday, I started back to FB marketing again.  I chopped the postcard image down a bit for this day. 

By this time, the rankings for all four books had reached their zenith.  WIOH made it to 16802 in All Books, and 1178 in Paranormal & Urban Fantasy.  I saw three sales that day.

Thursday, I kept at the FB Group Marketing.  I created a new image for this day's marketing:

I sold 13 books that day.  (See Friday's post about Thursday sales.)

Since on Thursday, I had posted to FB Groups throughout the day, I didn't do too much advertising on Friday (to keep from overreaching on the 1 post a day thing and to make sure I had the availability to post everywhere on Saturday morning.)  I did create a new image and posted it to a couple of groups.

4 sales on Friday - one of each book.  By Friday night, I'd generated enough money to cover the cost of the Bargain Booksy ad.

I used the above image in all of my Saturday advertising, with the exception of the groups I'd posted to on Friday and my own FB Pages.  For those, I went with:

Just to mix it up a little.  I mean, the followers of all of those Groups had been seeing my posts for a week and I don't want to be a bore.  Ya know?

I got one sale on Saturday - after I went to bed.  

The Page Reads starting coming in on the fifth.  So far, those are only for WIOH, but I expect some of the readers who finish WIOH will go on to read the other 3 books.  Because that's what historically happens.  In fact, it happened after the Sleeping Ugly sale last month - someone read SU and then one by one, went through the genie books.  Yay.

So, that's that.   Any questions?  Which image do you like best?  Personally, I like the last one.  It's tie-dyed.  Groovy, man.

More Marketing Data

Last year, I did something a little different.  I kept track of everything related to marketing.  Duh, I know, but it wasn't something I'd thought about previously.  In the interest of looking at this more as a business, I charted the data to see where I was spending my marketing dollars, how effective each campaign was, and other junk.

Here's what I learned:

I spent $329 on ads last year.  From those ads, I made (to date because that last ad is still bringing in revenue) $491.  That's like a 33% return on investment.  From what I've read, you should be happy with about a 20% ROI on book ads, so I'm pretty pleased with that number.

The best return I saw percentage-wise was from a set of ads I did for the SCIU books with Authors' Billboard.  Three ads for $6 each netted me a 79% ROI. 

Other notable returns were through Bargain Booksy (about 25% ROI), Ereader News Today (about 50% ROI), and Paranormal and Urban Fantasy Bargains (run in conjunction with an ENT ad, so not sure about ROI).

The worst return was any time I tried to pay for ads for Project Hermes.  One of those was also with AB, the other was with Bargain Booksy.  Since I've seen awesome returns of 20% or more from ads with both of those venues for other books, I blame the book and not the venue.  It's probably the blurb.  Might be the cover.  I'll have to do some more research.

Another thing for me to consider is that I was very proactive on Facebook groups for some of my marketing campaigns, but not for others - and the PH sales were part of the 'others' group.  Also, PH is a standalone. 

One of the tanking ad campaigns was for my Dennis Haggarty books, but I did another campaign for those books later in the year that did well.  That might be timing.  I guess.  Maybe.  And, again, I might not have pushed the FB groups much during the first campaign.  Also, one of the venues I chose to advertise with was an unknown and, upon further investigation, they were mostly retired in place at the time of my ad.  (Research, people.  I didn't do mine, so I paid the price.)

The December sale for the SCIU books - which is still earning me some money - was with Bargain Booksy and a new-to-me venue called Book Adrenaline.  Right now, it's running a 25% ROI.

I have a sale set up for Sleeping Ugly this coming week - the 16th thru the 22nd.  An ad should go out in the newsletter for Authors' Billboard on the 18th.  We'll see how that goes.  I haven't advertised SU yet, so it's kind of an unknown.

I'm also going to be setting up a sale and advertising for the Once Upon a Djinn books for next month.  If I can get off my leaden butt.  Those usually do well.  I'm going to try a new-to-me venue again - Book Barbarian (if I can get a slot - they go fast).  That along with maybe something through Author Billboard and PUFB should see some nice returns.  :fingers crossed:

As with everything, your mileage may vary.  These are my experiences alone.  Market at your own risk.  And all that disclaimer, 'don't sue me if you don't get the same results' kind of verbiage.  Hell, your books could do better than mine, for all I know. 

Any questions?  Wednesday I might go over the nitty-gritty of creating advertising for these venues.  It's really not that hard, but worth talking about.

This is a Business

This is a business.

Sometimes I need a gentle reminder.  Sometimes I need a smack upside the head.  So let me say it again...

This is a business.

I tend to forget, in the course of letting my creative side run amok, that this is not about skipping rocks across the publication pond to see how many times they bounce on the surface before they sink.

Or maybe it is.

If you're into rock skipping, you know you have to pick just the right rock or it'll hit the surface with a big kerplop and disappear beneath the glassy water.  It has to be flat.  It has to be smooth.  It needs rounded surfaces to skim across the water.  Otherwise, it's a fail before you even let it go.

You also have to pick just the right day to skip rocks, when the water is kind of glassy.  Can't skip rocks across waves, doncha know.  I tend to suck at this part.  Not for actually skipping rocks, but for this analogy.  I'm really not good at knowing when the best time is to launch my rocks across the publication pond.

I kind of even suck at picking the right rocks sometimes.  DE has been a great rock.  It's still skipping right along there.  (As long as I continue to nudge it.  Helps that it has the most reviews.)  Others?  Kerplop.

Okay, I've beaten that analogy to death.  The point is this is a business.  I've talked about ROI (return on investment) from a marketing standpoint, but never from a publishing standpoint.  If a book will cost x-dollars to publish, will it conceivably make that money back?

To date, not a single one of my books has recouped the initial investment.  Accidental Death has come closest.  I'm within $100 of making a profit on that one.  But paying for marketing makes that kind of a 'one step back, two steps forward' thing.  The worst at recouping so far has been Wish in One Hand - because reasons*.  I'm still in the hole big time on that one.

So, when considering where to go with my writing and my publication schedule, I really should be thinking about how to get out of the hole (or, rather, how to not make the hole even deeper) instead of how to get all the books of my heart published.

Not sure how that will go.  Right now I suspect this writing dry spell is directly related to thinking about the business side of things.  The tiny CFO in my head is at war with the Director of Creative Development.  One wants to audit, the other wants to dance.  And the CEO is beginning to see that the DCD has had far too much leeway for far too long.

DCD:  "Don't make me look at the spreadsheet again.  Please.  It's all too depressing."
CFO:  "Look at it.  Look. At. It."
DCD:  :whimper:

Anyway, it's the start of the year.  Good a time as any to think about things, look at things, and get my mind right.


*Mainly, I paid too much for a shitty cover from a 'real artist' who was supposed to give me something beautiful and gave me, instead, something that looked like it was hacked together from bad video game screen captures.  But I launched with it anyways.  Which sucked.  Then I had to pay for a better cover so my subsequent djinn books' sales wouldn't suck.  Live and learn.

Twenty-Eighteen in Retrospect

What can I say about 2018?  It's a blur?  It was busy?  :shrug:  It was what it was.  And now it's time to wrap it up.

I'm still plugging along out here in Self-Publishing Land.  And I met my publication goal.  This past year saw 4 new books published, which brings me to a grand total of 13.  The books in 2018 were Blink of an I, Early Grave, Sleeping Ugly, and Unequal.  One suspense, one paranormal, and two dystopians.

Sales this year were better than last year, but I threw a lot more money at advertising.  I spent $330 on ads in 2018 and made about $470 directly linkable to those ads.  Sales overall went over $600 for the year.  (Yeah, that's the right amount of zeroes.) That was about $300 more than I made in 2017, so I'm calling it a win.  I also went over $3K total sales for the whole shebang and have sold over 2500 books in the four years I've been publishing.  No clue how many books I've given away.  I don't track that.  It depresses me.

Of course, with all the discounts I had this year, my average $ per book went down to $1.12 from my overall average of $1.22.  I didn't hand sell a single book in 2018, though, so I don't have those tugging my averages up.  Gave away a few, but didn't sell any.

A while back, I raised the prices on a majority of my books to make them more in line with other books of the same genres and quality.  It didn't really make a difference in how many books I was selling but when a book did sell at regular price, I made a bit more scratch.

The books didn't gain that many more reviews this year.  I treasure the ones I did get, but I wish there were more.  Then again, who doesn't?

If you're interested, here are the 'copies sold' numbers as of last night:

DE - Overall: 1003.82 / 2018: 152.15
AD - Overall: 572.63 / 2018: 87.12
WIOH - Overall: 363.89 / 2018: 100.76
PH - Overall: 88.06 / 2018: 15.46
IDW - Overall: 124.14 / 2018: 25.54
FG - Overall: 136.89 / 2018: 54.60
UWC - Overall: 81.69 / 15.89
NC - Overall: 28.22 / 2018: 14.57
WHTF - Overall: 53.04 / 2018: 14.87
BOIA - Overall/2018: 11.36
EG - Overall/2018: 49.23
SU - Overall/2018: 12.19
UEQ - Overall/2018: 4.40

Umm, yeah.  Kind of depressing.  Makes my brain hurt.

But I'm still plugging away.  They haven't beaten me into submission yet.  However, I'm at a loss to figure out what I'll be doing in the year to come.  Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  Something has to change, I guess.  Not sure what.  With the slow start I'm looking at, I can be fairly certain I won't be publishing 4 books again.  If I can get two or three out, I'll be pleased. 

On the upside, my books are out there and people are reading them.  Not as many people as I had envisioned when I started this mad ride, but more than it could've been.

All in all, 2018 wasn't horrible.  Still, here's to a better 2019 for us all.

Sale and Marketing Wrap-up

The sale for Accidental Death ended at midnight the 26th (which is the first minute of the day, not the last - a point which confuses me to this day).  It was a Kindle Countdown Deal with only one price point - 99c.  After which, it returned to its regular low price of $2.99.

The sale started at midnight on the 19th.  On the 19th and the 20th, the only advertising I did was through FB, Twitter, and this blog.  I sold one book on the 19th and one book on the 20th.

On the 21st, I had an ad go out through Bargain Booksy.  Ad cost $55.  The ad hit their site at 7am CST and their newsletter reached me at 11am.  I saw one sale before 11am, and that was in Australia (at full price because Amazon doesn't allow KCDs in AU).  Once the newsletter hit inboxes, my sales began to climb.  I saw 53 sales for AD on the 21st and 3 for Natural Causes.

Over the next few days, I had some sales every day with little additional advertising.  I did put out a couple of things to FB groups on Friday, but whether they caused sales or not is hard to tell.  I did a full-on blast Sunday afternoon across all my usual FB groups - a sort of 'time's running out, buy now' thing - but I didn't have an extra sales as far as I can tell.

Pages reads started on Thursday and have been chugging along since.

The ad paid for itself on Saturday, which is the primary goal of paid advertising for me.  Everything after that is gravy.

November was shaping up to be one of my worst sales months ever.  I'd only sold 1.29 books before the sale.  Since the sale, I've sold over 75 books, saving this month from the pits.

I've also seen some pages reads for books not in the Dennis Haggarty series, which certainly helps.  Someone read all of Early Grave, someone else started In Deep Wish and then, I assume, went over to read Wish in One Hand. 

As for the rankings I was tracking...  AD started out the sale at 943,000 in all books  and reached a high of 6401.  In its genre category, it went from somewhere in the 2100s to a high of 28th in Hard-boiled Mystery and #36 in Noir.  That was Thursday morning.  It's been steadily falling since, but with additional sales trickling in, the fall isn't as fast as it could be.

Here's the graph (because I'm a nerd):

Rank in Thousands

Natural Causes also got a boost in rank.  But I didn't start tracking it until it had already risen in the ranks, so there's not really a baseline.  It did reach 68443 in all books and 281 in HB/Noir.

All in all, I'm pleased with the results.  The rest of this month is gravy.  Not a lot of gravy, but better than it had been.  So, it's all good.

Thanks for reading along.  I hope following this helps you in some way.  Now, I've got to start planning my next marketing ventures for December before I get left out.  Wish me luck.  ;o)

Charting Sales, Rankings, Marketing, etc.

This is going to be a boring post.  Unless you're a nerd like me. 

Okay, so I'm doing a sale this week for Accidental Death.  And I thought it would be a good time to try and track the advertising I'm doing along with sales and rankings. 

Yep, I built a spreadsheet.

On one tab, I'm noting when I did a markety thing - date and time, who it was with, and the results as I see them.  On another tab, I'm tracking rankings and how they fluctuate with time and sales.  On the third tab, I'm keeping track of the time of each sale.

This is not scientific.  There's no consistency with when I'm checking sales and rankings, so the times may be off depending on how busy I got doing something else. 

One thing I've learned so far is it takes about 8 hours from the time I get a sale until when it impacts my rankings in the US.  The UK rankings change after about 6-7 hours.  Not nearly quick enough to jump my ranking for boosting sales in the eight hour period, but further sales should help sustain it. 

And it doesn't take long for the rankings to start dropping again if there are no further sales. 

I had one sale Monday morning.  At the time, AD's ranking was around 943,000 in the US.  Eight hours later, the ranking rose to about 159,000.  It dropped throughout the day yesterday with no more sales in the US.  Yesterday, the ranking in the UK was around 920,000.  I got one sale early afternoon here (early evening there) that upped my ranking to 53K.

This morning, the rankings are at around 400K in the US and 81K in the UK. 

Now, I'm not sure how Kindle Unlimited downloads impact rankings and in what timeframe.  I read something the other day that made it seem like it would take 4 days to show up, but I think that might've been for some other bestselling list thing.  I'm unclear.  Fingers crossed I am getting some KU interest that will show up in later days.

Thus far, I have only been doing free advertising - blog, Facebook (groups and pages), and Twitter.  This blog netted me my first sale.  I have no way of knowing which post got me the UK sale, since I had completed three different types of advertising that day before the sale, and five different types the day before. 

Today, a paid ad goes out to the populace.  It's the only advertising I'm doing today, so I can chart it better.  Not sure if the Wednesday before TGD is the best time to put out an ad, but it was all they had open for this week, so I took a chance.  Might be a total waste of $55.  Might be awesome.  Who knows.  Thursday through Sunday I will continue with the free stuff and see what happens.

Poor planning on my part means the sale will end before Cyber Monday.  Derp.

I probably couldn't do this if Accidental Death was selling like hotcakes.  Not at this level anyway. 

Anyway, I hope I haven't bored the hell out of you with my nerdy numbers thing. 

Any questions?

Oh, and have a Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow.  (If you're here in the states.  If not, just have a happy day.)

Selling More Books

The other day, David Gaughran had a most excellent blog post 'How to Advertise and Sell More Books' by guest poster Nicholas Erik.

Now, there's a lot of math in there, but most of it is useful - even if you're not mathematically inclined and your brain glazes over.  If your brain is glazing over, scan past that and read the non-math.  The part on Back Matter is particularly useful.  As in 'lightbulb over the head moment' useful.

And it all makes total sense.  Which makes me feel like a derp.  But derp is fixable. I'll be spending some quality time this weekend fixing all my back matter.  I only wish I'd thought of this when my series books were shiny and new.  Not sure how much good it'll do after the fact, but it can't hurt.

It's gotta help when I do advertising.

Go back to the math parts when your brain is less glazy.  Seriously.  Knowing how effective your advertising efforts are can help when you're thinking about what kinds of marketing to do next.  Which is where I'm at.

Now, I don't do the whole 'cost per download' thing.  I look at the bigger picture - the ad cost me $X and I got $Y in sales.  Y minus X = ROI (return on investment).  If the ROI is positive, then it was a good ad.  If it was negative, then it wasn't.  The higher the ROI, the more effective the ad.

For instance, the ENT ad I placed for DE back in July netted me $92.19.  I spent $45 on that ad.  Making the profit on that ad $47.19*.  That makes an ENT ad way more effective than say, a Bargain Booksy ad which cost me $55 and only netted me $11.83.  Making the loss $43.17.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to see that's a bad investment.

Anyway, there's still a lot more I can do.  And I'm working on it.  Having some big outgo coming up, though, is putting a crimp in my budget, so we'll see how much I can do over the rest of this year.  I haven't done squat for marketing this month and I'm seeing squat for sales.  Just as actions have consequences, so do inactions.

I hope this helps.  I really hope reading that article helps.  :fingers crossed:


*Imagine how much better that could've been if I'd had the right back matter.  Ugh.  I'd like to kick myself.

An Even Dozen

With the publication of Sleeping Ugly on Saturday, I'm at an even dozen published novels now. 

Five years ago, I couldn't even conceive of having that many book published, let alone publishing them all myself.  Of course, about five years ago was when I sat myself down and did some serious thinking about where my career was headed and how I was going to achieve my goal of being published when I kept running into the traditional publishing brick wall. 

About this time, fourteen years ago, I finished the first draft of my first novel.  Back then, I had been so certain I'd snag an agent and a publisher lickety-split.  (Waits for laughter to subside.)  Nine years of writing books and querying later and I'd had quite enough, thank you very much.  I decided to quit beating myself into a bloody pulp and do all of it my own damn self.

It was scary as hell. 

It's still scary as hell sometimes.

But I wouldn't go back.  I can't even imagine what going back would be like. 

Anyway, it's been a wild ride.  Twelve books.  My first book just rolled over $1K in sales.  I'm hoping to make it to $3K overall by the end of the year.  And I've spent - with the last payments made for Sleeping Ugly - just over $10K.  That's about $833 spent per book on average.

Umm, yeah, following the dream ain't cheap.  But the hope is always there that a book or two (or all of them... heh) will take off and turn my 'in the red' to 'in the black'. 

I keep plodding forward.  Book #13 - Unequal - should be out by the end of the year.  Thirteen books over the course of four years.  Not a bad bit of production there.  And not one I'd likely see if I was traditionally published.  From the time I first send a book to my editor to the time it's available for you to read takes about three months.  Tradpub takes way longer, from what I understand.  Nope, not going back.

I'll keep publishing books as long I have money to pay my editor and cover artist.  And as long as I still have fingers to type.  Good lord willin' and the crick don't rise.

Marketing Venues

Okay, I know I've done this before, but here's an updated list with recent info.

These are the venues I've tried this year and the results (as near as I can figure them):
(Disclaimer:  I don't know how much of the sales actually came from paid ads and how many came from freebie residuals or how many were from my own efforts on Facebook and Twitter.)


Author's Billboard: In April, I did a free book thing with Dying Embers, had Fertile Ground at 99c, and kept Early Grave at $2.99.  During that sale, I placed ads for all three books with AB at $6 ea.  I recouped that $18 and the residuals have been awesome.   In June, I did ads with them for Accidental Death and Natural Causes.  Those ads cost me $5 (they were having a sale), but I did not recoup my investment that time.

Ereader News Today:  In May, I put Wish in One Hand at 99c and left the other three books in the series at $2.99.  I placed an ad for WIOH with ENT for $40. I recouped my money, but as to how much above that is attributable to this ad?  :shrug:  Enough to make me want to use ENT again. 

Paranormal and Urban Fantasy Books:  I also had a two day ad for WIOH here during the above sale.  With the ENT ad already going, I have no way to assign particular sales to any one venue.  The cost of this was $8.

FB Boost Ad:  I also ran a Facebook Boost ad during the sale.  Again, I have no way of saying definitely that sales came from this boost.  It cost $20 with a $10 coupon, so I was only $10 out of pocket.

eBooks Habit: For my June Dennis Haggarty Mystery sale, I also used this venue.  And again, I did not recoup my investment.  I should have been paying better attention here, though.  Their FB page hadn't been updated in a while, but I'd already placed the ad when I discovered this.  Do your homework.

Bargain Booksy:  I used them for a trial ad for Project Hermes at full $2.99 price.  I paid $55 and did not make even half of that back on sales.  I've had better luck with them in the past, so I'm guessing it was the book and the price that screwed me this time.  Live and learn.

I discovered a couple new venues specifically targeting the mystery/suspense/thriller genre and the SF/F genre.  They're a little more strict with their requirements, so I'm not sure what I'll do for ads with them, but I'll let you know when I do and how it went. 

I have a request in for another ad with ENT, this time for DE for the end of this month sometime.  We'll see if they accept or reject my request. 

To wrap up, so far this year I've spent $153 dollars on advertising and I figure I've made about $230 off those ads.  So even with the ads that didn't do well, I'm ahead for the year there.  Now if I can just sell enough to recoup my editing and cover art costs.  Heh.  We won't talk about that hole today.  It's big and it's deep.

Recent Marketing Efforts

I suppose all y'all saw my overly optimistic marketing post on Friday.  Umm, yeah.  I never came back to update because there really wasn't all that much to update. 

I think my ads came out, but I don't know for certain because I never got the newsletters in question, but I did see a slight uptick in sales regardless that most likely did not come from my FB group posts. 

Anyway, here's the final shake out from those (without any potential residual sales - which I don't expect - or page reads - which I hope for but are unlikely.) I garnered 14 sales from the two ads for the two books.  Which netted me about $9.  I spent $22 on those ads.  The larger portion of the 14 books sold seem to have come from the $6 ad rather than the $10 ad. 

Now, it could be the books themselves.  I'll admit that AD and NC are not wearing my best two covers, and the blurbs might not draw the most people.  They aren't for everyone.  However, when I ran an ad with ENT for AD back in 2015, I sold gobs.  :shrug:

Speaking of ENT ads, I'm still seeing sales from the ad I placed with them in May.  Page reads mostly, but I'll take them. 

Anyway, I'm still figuring this out.  I'll be trying some more ads next month.  Fingers crossed those go well.  All I can really say for certain is that regardless of the ROI (return on investment), I sell more books with ads than without ads.  (As evidenced by the lack of ads last year and the corresponding lack of sales versus this year.)  So, I'll keep on trying.

By the way, the books are still on sale thru tomorrow night.  Since the number of copies of AD way outnumber the sales for NC, I'm going to assume some of you haven't picked up the second book yet.  What are you waiting for?  ;o)

Any questions about anything?