Not huge numbers to be sure, but 8 paperbacks and ebooks, and about 5 books worth of page reads, and 3 reviews. I’m calling that a win!
Nearly each one I can trace to a discussion on Reddit or TikTok - personal interactions. Maybe one day it will scale, but making personal connections is working for me at the moment!
I do literary fiction and sci-fi. What’s working for you other small cats this month?
So I ran a Kindle Countdown Deal and I scheduled the Robins Reads featured promo, a BookBarbarian urban fantasy spot, and a FussyLibrarian urban fantasy spot. I spread them out over the week.
I priced my book at $0.99 from $4.99. From July 19 to July 25, I saw 38 orders and 682 KENP (about 200 more KENP added up over the next three days after the deal was over) for a grand total of $28.41 profit, not enough to make back even the cheapest promo campaign, which was Fussy Librarian's.
Here's what I spent for this KCD:
$85 Robin Reads featured promo newsletter spot. Live on the 20th and gave me 19 orders and 3 more on the 21st.
$41 BookBarbarian urban fantasy newsletter spot. Went live on July 22nd
along with
$32 Fussy Librarian urban fantasy promo newsletter spot. Also live on July 22. Between these two I got 11 orders the same day, 4 more on the 23rd and 1 last one on the 24th.
All of these, plus I had a Meta traffic ad campaign running from the 18 to 24 midnight. $7 a day. Between two ads with different ad copy, the campaign itself got 3,009 reach, 194 landing page views, $0.19 per view, approx. 6% CTR, $36 spent. I'm betting the newsletter promos did all the heavy lifting in getting me those 38 orders. Of those 38, I'd probably attribute some 5-7 sales to the Meta ad campaign.
Plus almost 900 KENP.
So I sank $194 into marketing and made back $28.41. I've reworked and analyzed my Amazon page, blurb, cover, etc. and I don't know what else isn't working.
I'm coming to my wits' end when it comes to marketing and promoting my book. I need help to figure out where my book is failing. Cover, blurb, keywords, genre mismatch, marketing strategy, etc.
I already got some feedback from a small writers' group. Most of the comments pointed out cover mismatch with the genre (it's YA Urban Fantasy but cover looks like romantasy), and having a dry informative blurb (here all manner of opinions took place, from suggesting rewriting in first-person, to making it longer, and others pointing out at the same time that I should shorten it!). I already tried reworking it, but I'm still unsure. Also, I changed one of my three Amazon categories: I dropped "Teen & Young Adult Werewolf & Shifter," and changed it to "Teen & Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy."
The other two categories are: "Teen & Young Adult Vampire" and "Teen & Young Coming of Age Fantasy"
My book is in the link in my bio for reference.
Thank you for reading my marketing misadventures.
TLDR: I booked three newsletter promo services for a KCD and these were my numbers--budget spent, sales, KENP, impressions, reach, etc.
I'm also looking for feedback because I'm going to go crazy. Cover, blurb, Amazon keywords, A+ content, whatever I can do to optimize my page and get more downloads next time.
I have an idea for a trilogy. I already have the outlines completed, and I've started on the first manuscript. But man, just writing one novel is a lot of work, let alone three of them. And writing is not my full-time job; it's just something I do on the side. So, I don't have a lot of time to spend on it. I estimate it would take me about a decade to complete them, maybe less if I'm lucky.
And realistically, there's probably not much reward involved, certainly not monetarily. In fact, I'd probably end up spending more money than I make back. And it's not that I'm doing it for the money, though that would be a plus. I write because I enjoy it. Still, it would be nice to have some incentive to justify the time, energy, and effort I put into it when I could be doing other things. I'm beginning to wonder if it's even worth it.
Is there a way to order an author proof without an ISBN with either Ingram Spark or KDP? I don't have the money for an ISBN right now but I would like to see how the book looks so I can continue editing if necessary.
I’ve done quite well on KDP, and spent very little to do so, and have now published a book to help others. But I think I’ve chosen the wrong title. Which do you prefer: “How To Self-Publish on a Shoestring” or “Self-Publishing Success on a Shoestring”? I know it’s a pain to change a title, but it might be worth it. Thanks to anyone who replies.
I have a mafia romance that’s been out for about a month. Book 1 did well, and now I have readers asking on TikTok and other social media when book 2 will be out. I haven’t announced the date yet.
I want to release in December, as that is the best and closest date I can do. But I know December isn’t usually the best month to publish a book with the holidays and such. I don’t think I can set a November release without rushing the book, so I’d have to push it back and make it a January release.
It’s book 2 of a duet, so I was thinking releasing in December might not be such a bad thing because it’s a continuation. Or should I just push it back to January. I’m really eager to get the book out but I don’t want to hurt the release.
Good evening, everyone. I recently completed my first novel at just about 80,000 words. I’ve also finished a developmental edit and submitted the manuscript to a literary agent who is interested in working with me.
At this point, though, I’m still trying to decide whether I want to continue down the traditional publishing route or pursue self-publishing instead.
I’ve done some research into both options, but I’m still fairly new to all of this and have a lot to learn. I’d love to hear from those of you who have experience with self-publishing—especially if you can sell me on why you chose it over traditional publishing.
As of right now, I only plan on publishing this one novel, although that could always change in the future.
My understanding is that with traditional publishing, once a publisher acquires the manuscript, much of the remaining production process—copyediting, proofreading, formatting/typesetting, cover design, and so on—is handled by the publisher. With self-publishing, I would be responsible for arranging and managing all of those things myself.
That’s one of the main reasons I’m trying to make this decision now. If I decide to self-publish, I’d like to start moving forward with the remaining editing and production work rather than continuing to pursue the traditional route.
For those who have self-published, what made you choose that route? What do you think are its biggest advantages and disadvantages compared with traditional publishing? And knowing what you know now, would you make the same choice again?
Thanks in advance for any advice or insight!
Hi everyone, does anyone know if there is still any “proofreading” software that I can use just to check spelling, typos, grammatical mistakes, and things like that? I’m not looking for enhancement features or anything that rewrites my text. I think Word does a good job, but I was wondering if there’s anything better online, since I mostly write online.
Finally, a bit of a moral dilemma: I’m trying to understand what people think about using a spell and grammar checker, or non-generative AI software, to catch these smaller issues. Of course, I’m talking about a first pass over a draft, not something used to produce the final version.
Thank you!
As someone who is extremely broke and hates AI, I've put a lot of work into self-editing my book over the course of (now) six drafts. I've had a lot of beta-readers. I'm trying to be ruthless about improving my prose with each draft. I'm at the stage where a copy editor is the next step.
I know not hiring an editor could be considered extremely taboo, but I'm also curious what other self-pub authors think and if there is any nuance around an author's decision to not hire an editor.
Btw, not saying I won't hire an editor, I'm really just trying to gauge what people honestly think about this.
Have any self published authors asked their local bookstore to sell their books on consignment and if so what was the response? If the answer from the bookstore was yes, did the bookstore sell actually some of your books?
JWT
I'm putting out RFQ's for a graphic artist to do the cover art for my book. Has anyone been successful finding good resources on Reedsy or Upwork? (I've had bad experiences with Fiverr so I won't use them).
Standard advice for new self-published authors: launch with an automatic campaign and let Amazon figure out the targeting. I get why, it's two clicks and you're live. But I think it's backwards, at least for a brand-new book.
Here's the thing: an auto campaign is only as smart as the data Amazon has about your product. On a book with zero history, Amazon starts by spraying your ad at loosely related audiences and learning at your expense. Your budget is literally funding its exploration phase.
So my sequence is reversed.
Manual keyword campaigns first. I've already done keyword research for the title, subtitle and backend anyway, so at launch I already have a reservoir of 40ish researched terms, broad match, one bid I control. I know exactly where every impression comes from.
Then I mine the search terms report. After a few weeks the real gold shows up: actual search queries from actual buyers. Winners get promoted to phrase or exact in a tighter campaign, budget-eaters become negatives.
Auto campaigns come later, once the book has clicks, sales and reviews. At that point Amazon knows who buys this book, and the auto campaign gets efficient almost immediately instead of burning budget guessing.
Auto-first isn't "wrong". It can work as a discovery tool if you religiously add negative targets (most people don't, and that's where the money leaks). But teaching beginners to start there because it's easy optimizes for convenience, not results.
Anyone else running manual-first? Or has someone had the opposite experience, where auto-first on a fresh listing actually outperformed?
Hey guys, I'm finalizing the layout of my book and I wanted to know the best way to present a map in the PDF file I'll be sending to Ingramspark. I see many double-page maps and I'd like mine to be like that. Is it just a matter of adding it and they'll print normally? Will the middle be cut off? Is there another way to present it? And how are maps usually presented in books on the US market?
(Cross-post from a different sub, thought it would be useful here too!)
This is a bit of an encouragement post because this place has been drowned down by a lot of negativity as of late, which makes sense, this is the complaining site. I'm guilty of using reddit as a venting diary myself. However, I wanted to dispel one idea I see floating around self pub spaces from some people who have gotten discouraged by their lack of sales: no one reads self pub books because there are millions of classic books to read.
This is very untrue, and to prove it, I'm going to give examples of successful self pubbed books I've read within the last year. Note: some of these people later did get picked up by trad pubs or indie presses, and a lot of them started as serializations on places like Royal Road, which is still self publishing really. I'm also a big reader of Litrpg and progression fantasy which both are genres that live and die on the KU library; but regardless, they all started as self pubbed and got readers, through a combination of good story telling, a marketable niche, and sheer luck. So, drum roll babababbababa:
Dungeon Crawler Carl:
This should go without saying how bloody successful Matt Dinniman has become. It is to a point where people who've never heard of Litrpg know about it. It became a running joke in the community that DCC fans were a cult, when people found it they had to let others know how damn good it was. And Matt slowly build a brand over 6 years, publishing 6 chonky novels, and by 2025 he had sold over 4 million copies. After that, he got a physical book deal with Penguin Random House and it ballooned to 12 million, and he now has a show in the works with Seth Macfarland. Amazon is also big to tout it as one of their big successes, doing ads with Matt.
(Let's be honest, it would not have been as successful as it was without the talking cat).
The Perfect Run:
This was a trilogy originally published on royal road, and is actually still up for free, as VoidHerald wanted to keep a free version as a thanks to everyone who helped him make it.
He published all three through KDP for paperback and Kindle, and then outsourced the audio to Podium Audio Inc. With it not even being on KU, he has 1700 Amazon reviews, 6000 goodreads, almost all positive.
He Who Fights With Monsters:
I will say, this is not a series I personally enjoy. I found it overly long and annoying, and the fact we are on book 12 with each book 800 pages and we aren't even close to the end is absurd. Regardless, it has done well. The paperback now has a small indie press doing special art, but even prior, book 1 has 23k Amazon reviews and 40k goodread reviews.
Stray Cat Strut:
A series that, like PR, is still available to read for free but has a Amazon listening; I have had the privilege of talking with the writer of this work, he's a really chill guy. I also had the privilege of watching a journalist guest talk about how he wants to fuck that guy's mom lmao. Anyway, he's about 8 books deep and the first alone, selling for 2 bucks, has 900 Amazon reviews and 1.3k goodread reviews.
Closing thoughts:
Listen, with all that said, they people did get lucky: they were in the right moment at the right time with a genre that is primarily self pub that is marketable and the books were all good for the most part and something people want to read. Your first book will not be DCC. You may never get more than 5 sales a book, but it is never because nobody wants to take a chance of self published works. On the contrary, many people like self pub because the authors are not bound to the restrictions of trad publishers, and they can make stories like a man and his talking cat playing alien life sized D&D.
Just keep creating, keep expressing yourself, and if the stars align, people WILL read it :3.
I am having difficulties in fleshing out an idea into reality, and am wondering if anyone else has done this before?
I was hoping to package multiple physical books together as a box set. What I had in mind were cardboard boxes with one side open to slide books in, with stuff printed on the front and sides that were basically a box that you put books in. I am having some extreme complications explaining this to my printer.
They are stuck on heavy duty pre-made cardboard, the sorts you see for real pricey special editions. I was looking for a softer cardboard, one which can be folded down accordian style and sent to me so I can pack them myself, and which are less expensive. i’m probably explaining this poorly, but I have seen the things I mean in shops so I know I’m not making it up!
Have any of you folks done physical book box sets, and have any suggestions on where these sorts of boxes could be printed so they’re not prohibitively expensive?
Or, simply, do you have a better way to describe what I’m flailing to express?
Thanks!
I ask because I've gotten maybe a handful but I've been in group chats where authors were bragging they got hundreds for their debut novel.
Second question: Does having a low amount of ARC readers guarantee a bad launch?
Okay, my first post wasn't the best one and I deleted it because yeah. I was tired with a lot on my mind so if anyone recognizes my user, I'm sorry. Bad laspse of judgement at the moment. But I did learn a bit in the comments and think on them which made me want to ask a follow up question.
I know someone had said if you want write for a career, you have to write to market. Which, after they explained what it was, which is understanding the premises and the common tropes, archetypes and why people like the genre (my case, it's Romantasy), I realize I did try to do that for my series. Though I guess the problem is that book 1 was already a complete story when I knew all the genre expectations that I couldn't really tweak it without it not making sense. Like I believe it's a well structured story with arcs that make sense. But I know the plot is kind of uncommon and the MMC is definitely a flip on things (cinnamon roll with that's a little whiny and brainwashed, and a bit in touch with his feminine side.)
I realized I couldn't really get rid of that side of him without messing up the story, but I realized I could develop him into a more masculine version of himself that readers would like. And add more tropes and a premise that people like (while staying true to the story and not feel like I'm stuffing in stuff for the sake of marketability. The sequels had a lot of space to work with, so I tried to keep the heart of the story while slowly adding in elements that people like about romantasy). I could slowly make the books more sexy to balance out the wholesome romance I want.
Question is... Could I work with this? Maybe I should promote Book 2 over Book 1? Maybe give out Book 1 Ebook for free to try and get people to want to read Book 2? Idk or is it just screwed til the series?
Just looking for ideas on how to market this sucker because it's hard 😭
EDIT: Or... Maybe should I just release the rest of the series quietly and put all of my marketing efforts into the next series that starts off more written to market? I want to complete this trilogy for sure, but if it's not marketable, maybe it's time to just write it and promote the next book idea?
I'm doing my first book singing in October at an outdoor craft fair. For those of you that have done them, what do you put on your tables and how do you set up?
Simple.
Would y'all suggest me to record my 68,004 word book for ACX? Like are the benefits worth it? Will I get downloads etc... I never did this, and therefore I ask.
My genre is young adult, fantasy, in a world of magic and mystery.
THANK YOU in advance!
I'm a first time author in Romantasy. Have a debut out for over a year. Doing my next book in the series. It's hopefully gonna be published March and the series' final book hopefully will be out next year as well.
It's disheartening. I tried Instagram. Tried Threads. Tried TikTok. Tried Reddit. Even if I had decent views compared to my peers (400+ views) it never resulted in anything. No sales or anything. Recently I've given up on social media as it's something I rarely like to do anyways and it took so much time away from writing. I almost feel like needing to do crazy work on social media is a lie. I've studied my peers, both successful and unsuccessful. So I've stepped away from it.
I did the ARCs before release (200+) and got a mix of reviews with 70% of them 4 stars and up. Nothing really negative. Many of them saying it was something they've never read before and saying they cried. I study other people, tried hook people onto my books, uploaded a lot, especially on TikTok. Tried different styles of posts, and different formats and everything I could possibly think of. Even increased my views. Still nothing.
I'm trying to build an email list. And hopefully get a Kickstarter going. And Meta ads going for the Kickstarter and I plan to test the ads when I set up preorders for my second book. I want to do the social media posts I would've done and just mostly keep it to my newsletter and Kickstarter where people seem to actually care. I have like a 15% to 20% open rate so far because I'm giving ebooks of my first book away for free. Got 5 Kickstarter followers but nothing has budged since I first announced it's prelaunch.
I'm just a bit discouraged. I just a post on somewhere where it was just like "I draw my own characters and my book is on preorder" and it has 1k likes (their debut by the way). Which GREAT for them, but I just wish it were that simple for me and even my authors friends that are doing the same as me or doing ads even better than me (doing all the "right" things with multiple books), but they still struggle. It makes me think... How does one even get it that simple? Is it because of the book I decided to write? Like is my book just not in demand? Am I even looking in the right market?
Marketing is exhausting. Going to keep grinding. Going to keep writing the story I wanted to write. Going to try looking for other marketing avenues. Will probably still avoid social media for the moment. But it still stings to think about.