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Eve of Snows for $0.99

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Hey folks! Eve of Snows is on a countdown deal on Amazon right now for $0.99, so it's a great chance to pick the book up for cheap. Buy 'em up!

The weird part is seeing EoS ranked in the 20k overall area and realizing that a few years ago it was there for months, spiking as high as 10k, without any special promotion. I really didn't have a clue as to how well I was actually doing, LMAO. Live and learn.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
I have watched the Amazon rankings for my books jump tens of thousands of spots on the basis of half a dozen sales. No clue why that is.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Jumps are relatively easy, ups and downs over a day, sustaining 20k overall is not so simple, and probably worse now as we head into the holidays. Hindsight isn't always 20/20, but if I'd recognized how well Eve was doing back in the day I would've had a greater appreciation and maybe not screwed things up, LMAO.

It's always funny when the hardcover jumps a million ranks after selling a copy... then tumbles like a 747 whose engines fell off.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
It can go lower... It does make me curious just how many books are available on Amazon. It's at least over 6 million.

it's also fascinating how damned competitive it gets toward the top. When EoS was rocking, it hung out in the 20-40k range for a few months and spike to 10k here and there, and because a lot of that was KU downloads, there was no real way to tell the numbers. Breaking 20k was tough, and breaking 10k was nasty as hell. It takes a lot of consistent sales (cash and KU) to punch through, let alone stay up there. And a few extra sales will barely move you.
 
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ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
It tells me there are millions of books on Amazon with effectively zero sales. Or maybe ten sales over the course of a year. Thus far, I have sold a grand total of twenty-four copies of 'Capital' online - but two or three of those, I believe, came from Barnes and Noble.
 
Downloaded! Locked and loaded so to speak, looking forward to it. Hoping it will be my average cosy middle-of-the-night bleary eyed nursery epic fantasy read to keep me awake in those early hours 😜

I wish I had more of a collection of paperbacks, but I do love a good 99p deal, so my digital library is *thriving*.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Yeah, I love print... but! soothing the aging eyes and cash savings are hard to resist, LOL.

Downloaded! Locked and loaded so to speak, looking forward to it. Hoping it will be my average cosy middle-of-the-night bleary eyed nursery epic fantasy read to keep me awake in those early hours 😜

I wish I had more of a collection of paperbacks, but I do love a good 99p deal, so my digital library is *thriving*.
 
Rank 3960000? I would think even one sale should get you out of that.
From experience, a sale gets you above 1.000.000 sales rank. How high exactly depends very much on how well other books are selling at that time. Also, I suspect some black magic is involved somewhere.

The moment you don't get a sale, your sales rank starts to deteriorate. It seems to do so on a half-life kind of decay, similar to radioactive isotopes decaying. 1 sale a month keeps you oscilating between something like 1.5-2 million and 250k and 400k sales rank. To breach 100.000 in sales rank you'll want to have a bunch of sales relatively close together (depending on the time of year, a sale every other day would be my guess). Which means, to stay above that you need consistent sales for as long as you're above that.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
From experience, a sale gets you above 1.000.000 sales rank. How high exactly depends very much on how well other books are selling at that time. Also, I suspect some black magic is involved somewhere.

The moment you don't get a sale, your sales rank starts to deteriorate. It seems to do so on a half-life kind of decay, similar to radioactive isotopes decaying. 1 sale a month keeps you oscilating between something like 1.5-2 million and 250k and 400k sales rank. To breach 100.000 in sales rank you'll want to have a bunch of sales relatively close together (depending on the time of year, a sale every other day would be my guess). Which means, to stay above that you need consistent sales for as long as you're above that.
That tracks with my experience.

Assorted promo campaigns netted me two dozen sales of 'Empire: Country' over the course of a month, punching up to a rank of 300,000. But, since those promos ended, the sales rank has begun a long, slow decline, where it now sits at about 1,141,000.

1671095737528.png

'Empire: Estate' has sold twelve copies total, the last one in October. It is currently on a long slow slide between the 6 and 8 million ranks.

'Empire: Metropolis' sold fifteen copies immediately after its release in November, giving it a starting rank of 202,000. No sales since then, so its current rank is around 1.5 million.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
One guess as to where the "I was too naive to know how good I had it" phase was in Amazon sales, LMAO. But in all fairness, after that I had gone wide and quite a few sales on other vendors to make-up for the ranking drop part of those later times. The highest rank achieved that I noted was 176 overall in 2019, but I think it actually spiked above that. I can also tell basically where FB took a faceplant.

EDIT: Think I can basically date other experiments and drops in advertising and whatnot. Kind of interesting, heh heh. Also, presales were 20+, so the book never really had a "cold start" in the millions.
Screenshot 2022-12-15 at 10.00.50 PM.png
 
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Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
The interesting thing right now is that the ranking is maintaining and even climbed up a bit in the last couple of days with fewer cash sales, which I assume means that more KU readers are jumping on board. I've got a lot of question rattling in my head about this because it also followed kicking in FB ads again... I won't speculate, but I'll be playing around to see what I can reckon from the tea leaves. heh heh.

I'd also forgotten how often the book sat in top 10-15k overall for a long stretch at the beginning. Memory is a funny thing.
 

Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
It tells me there are millions of books on Amazon with effectively zero sales. Or maybe ten sales over the course of a year. Thus far, I have sold a grand total of twenty-four copies of 'Capital' online - but two or three of those, I believe, came from Barnes and Noble.
Sales? Now I might not be a native English speaker, but I think we're just making up words now.
(Just taking the piss, I ought to read Demesnedoir's marketing exploits)
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Hope you enjoy it! I just sent off a print copy to Spain, a book blogger, before I checked shipping costs... wow! I really hope he enjoys the books, I had no idea what international shipping runs, LMAO.

Even though no longer on sale, picked up a copy and added it to my TBR list.
 
Hope you enjoy it! I just sent off a print copy to Spain, a book blogger, before I checked shipping costs... wow! I really hope he enjoys the books, I had no idea what international shipping runs, LMAO.
Maybe just order a copy of your own book on the Spanish Amazon and ship it from there to the blogger? Even with their shipping fees included that might be cheaper.
 

TWErvin2

Auror
What I have found is that having new releases in a series tends to keep sales flowing. Getting from the first novel to the second in a series there is a drop, but normally once the reader completes the second, they tend to pick up the others.

This is pretty much normal for most of my series novels. The standalones do not benefit from the next release in the series, so after the initial release (which tends to spike lower than series books, for me), sales are fewer and further between. This enables me to suggest that having sales in the past tends to slow the rate of drop in sales ranking on Amazon. And also tends to keep the floor above a million, unless there is an extended drought of sales.

I cannot say how KU affects all of this, as my books are wide, but I would imagine, with KU's tendency to attrack voracious readers, but I magin the ranking would spike higher upon release and possibly last a little longer, and also provide less volitibilty...and maybe even help with sales on Amazon in the long run. If someone were both wide and Amazon exclusive with comprable series, that would give a better picture.

Below is the second book track record in one of my series. for reference.
Betrayal Sales Record Amazon 2nd book in series.jpg
 
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