Note, please: I’m not selling anything here. Just trying to
point out things I’ve learned that might also help you.
I’ve been writing, well, forever. But my early work was all
academic and either practitioner-related or theoretical finance. All textbook
stuff, and my early readers were my students in the MBA program where I taught
NYU’s Stern Graduate Business School), a few decades in the past. It was not
for money. As university faculty, it was “publish or perish.”
These days, I’m playing a different game on a different
planet, so to speak. I’m a bestselling espionage technothriller novelist
writing DS Kane’s Spies Lie series, currently with six titles out (Bloodridge,
DeathByte, Swiftshadow, GrayNet, Baksheesh (Bribes), and ProxyWar).
The initial marketing help I received was a report on market positioning for
thriller fiction, from Alex Newton’s K-Lytics reports (http:// k-lytics.com).
These were helpful in deciding how to tilt my books and which keywords would
serve me best.
As I work on completing the seventh in the series, CypherGhost,
I felt a need to review my marketing assumptions. I needed more data, to make
decisions on specific marketing tactics.
Specifically:
·
How is the market for my books changing?
·
Can I continue to rely on the marketing methods
my marketer, Rebecca Berus of 2 Market Books, developed
specifically for me and my books? Or should we adjust my marketing budget and
plans to accommodate recent changes in the market?
·
Can I employ the same specific marketing tactics
repeatedly without the results diminishing?
·
How high is the ceiling in monthly revenues on
my e-books, print books, and audiobooks, and is that ceiling changing?
It has been nearly two months since the current report from
Author Earnings (
http://authorearnings.com/report/may-2016-report/)
was released. I am still busy with writing and revising my next Spies Lie book,
and my deadline for a copy-editable draft is getting near, but I decided to
spend an hour or two to see if my marketing methods need revision. Here are my
preliminary findings:
Independent publishers have nearly a 67% increase in unit
sales and total revenues during the most current 27 months. Big House
Traditional publishers show nearly a 33% decline over the same period. Indies
now own 67% the market share of Trads, when measured in total dollars.
So far, so good. I continued reading. The next series of
charts showed the 27 month trend of author share by publisher type. Indie
authors nearly doubled their market
share. Trads were down by half. Here, we’re seeing the total market in dollars
broken into pieces by publisher on a month-by-month basis. Again, it looks like
my own results, and I find that a pleasing thing.
So, I needed to read on, to see if there were statistical
aberrations I needed to heed. And, I found this:
·
“More than 50% of all traditionally published
book sales of any format in the US now happen on Amazon.com.
·
That’s just the traditionally published books,
though.
·
In addition, roughly 85% of all
non-traditionally published book sales of any format in the US also happen on
Amazon.com.
·
In other words, a comprehensive cross-sectional
snapshot of Amazon.com’s sales, like the one we are describing here in our May
report, is a definitive look at more than half of all daily US author earnings,
period.”
I finally found the charts that depicted the annual income
ceilings by author for the Trads versus the Indies who debuted in the last
three years:
·
At $10,000 per year, there were about 1,800
Indie authors and just over 500 Trad authors. But, I make more than this.
·
At $25,000 per year, there were just under 1,000
Indie authors and just over 200 Trad authors. But, I make less than this right
now, although by year end, my annualized results should approach this.
·
At $50,000, there were about 800 Indie authors and
just under 200 Trad authors. This is my short-term income target (2 years).
·
At $100,000, there were just under 300 Indie
authors and just under 75 Trad authors. This is my long-term income target (3
years).
·
There were charts for other, higher income totals
($250,000, $500,000 and $1,000,000), but by the time those interest me, I’m
sure the results will change quite a bit.
Okay, so far, I think I can see exactly why I done so well:
Rebecca Berus placed me, my books and my advertisements, all in the best spots
to take advantage of current book demographics as they were changing. But, what
about the future? How is this market changing and what will it look like in six
more months? Will I be able to achieve my short-term income goals?
I reviewed previous Author Earnings Reports. They complete
an update about once every four months. So, Trad author’s curves are
flattening, not quite asymptotically. Authors incomes in the Trad world are
failing to increase with the market. Their sales are slowly decelerating somewhat.
Over the same period, Indie author’s curves are increasing at a slightly
accelerating rate.
How long can I use the same techniques before their
effectiveness is blunted? What new techniques work well, and which ones are
doomed to fail?
·
The same advertisement for the same book in
promotions three or more months apart begins to fail in its second occurrence
(down by about 33% each time… 7,500 units to 5,000 units to 2,800 units, etc.)
·
“Free” books distributed per promotion fall even
faster, down 50% per occurrence.
·
Selling promos at $0.99 is more effective for a
higher retail price. $3.99 nets more sales at $0.99 than does retail at $2.99
on sale for $0.99.
·
For a long series, during a promo for any other
book in the series, the first book in the series being nearly free ($0.99) will
boost total promo sales (including all non-promoted books in the series) by
about 25%. As a result of this, we changed the price of Bloodridge, the first
book of the series to $0.99
It would seem that for the near term, I’m doing as I should.