I’m not great at math.
And if you talk too long about Return On Investment (ROI) and Click Thru Rate (CTR) my eyes glaze over.
But I am obstinate. Very obstinate. And this obstinance has helped me to learn these concepts and sell over 100,000 self-published copies of my books.
Here’s proof:
I know. You’re wondering what you’re looking at. This is a clipping from a service called Readerlinks that helps me to keep track of ad spend and book sales (I highly recommend Readerlinks). You can see that 101,099 books have been sold so far. This number is only my sales on Amazon (so doesn’t include Kobo, iBooks, etc—which are close to about 2000 copies). What’s that? You have a question?
Yeah, But how much money did you make?
I like it! Right to the punchline. Or the bank line. Well, the amount is just over $60,000. I know. Even I can do the math. That’s only about 60 cents per book. The good news is that lately the amount of money per book is much higher. Back when I started self publishing I was willing to sell the books at a cheaper price in order to get exposure.
Wait a sec? How long did it take you to sell 100,000 copies?
Ah, that’s another wise question. And you know what? I have a graph to show that.
Ok, this chart will take some explaining. First, I began selling ebooks in 2011. I’m a hybrid author (which means I publish with traditional publishers and also self publish). The important colour on that chart is green. That’s income from book sales. So you’ll see that in September of 2011 and onwards there were plenty of sales. That was mostly from one novel (DUST), a YA horror (in fact it has sold 46,000 copies). In the old days you could make your book free and it would shoot up the “free” charts on Amazon and then when it went back to being “paid” it would then shoot up those charts. It was a glorious time.
But it ended.
What? Things change in the publishing industry! Really!
You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you? But that’s the one constant with self-publishing. That great trick that works today won’t always work. If you follow the chart you’ll see that I made very little from about 2013-2016. I would just put up my out-of-print books and continued to publish with traditional publishers, where the majority of my income came from. So self-publishing was on the backburner. But in 2017 I began delving into it again with an eye to writing for very particular niches in different genres. You can see that the little green columns show that sales are climbing as we get closer to the present date. That’s because I released a series called Amber Fang that was a vampire action adventure series. And later I wrote a YA fantasy series called Dragon Assassin. Here’s an informative pic:
If you look at the above pic these books are organized in order of income. So Dragon Assassin boxed set sold 3920 copies but made more $ than Dust which sold 46,236. That’s because most sales of Dust were for .99c (about 33 cents for me) and most sales of Dragon Assassin were $2.99 (about 1.97 for me). Since the Dragon Assassin boxed set has only been out for 2 months, then being in a niche and supported by ads has been very helpful for it. If sales continue at the current level, I’ll make a comfortable living from self publishing alone.
So writing in a popular niche in a genre helped sales?
Yes. Absolutely. There are readers just waiting in those niches.
But the thing that helped the most was being obstinate.
About learning.
Yes, I knew more and more self published writers were helping their careers with advertising. But who wants to learn that new skill? Like I said, I’m not good at math.
But I am good at banging my head against the wall until I understand something. So I took courses from Self Publishing Formula, read books by David Gaughran, listened to countless podcasts and followed everything that Dave Chesson posted on Kindlepreneur. I learned how to do a proper newsletter. And I’m taking a course on Amazon ads from Felicia Beasley (even though I’ve taken two other courses on that same topic). Every time there was something I didn’t understand, I would take a break and come back and read it again.
So, I took a lot of breaks.
But usually on the second or third try I could figure it out.
And then I’d figure out how it worked for me. What works for a spy thriller doesn’t necessarily work for a dragonrider novel.
Um. That’s a lot of work.
Yep. And not everyone has to do that much to figure out what’s right for them. But my goal was to learn everything I could, find what works for me and stick with it.
Oh, and simplify it.
Because my real goal is to write. I do enjoy seeing an ad work properly. But I like telling stories more. So I’ve made everything as simple as possible. I spend ten minutes every morning on my Facebook ads. And spend about ten minutes every afternoon uploading my “spend” to Readerlinks so I can be sure I’m making a profit. And once a week I check my amazon ads.
Then I forget about it.
And I write.
So can you sum all this up?
Yes. I was able to sell all those copies because I learned to change with both the market and the industry. And I was always willing to experiment and to be curious.
And I always put the writing first.