SPFBO 9 is underway and I hate myself!

[R. R. Hunter]

Oh wow! I am too excited. I opened the SPFBO post on their site ( Queen's Book Asylum ) and instantly went light headed. I'll get over this eventually... until then, I'm just going to enjoy the natural state of euphoria brought on by excessive nervousness.

 

[pmmg]

Good luck to both of you.

You look at that gallery of book covers, and it looks like each is ready to battle with their invoking images. As behind each some grand and profound story.. It must be something to see yours next to them.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

The images I loved are being on best-seller lists sandwiched between GRRM and Abercrombie or other big names. Those are fun flashes of greatness, heh heh.

Seeing the contests just inspires blood lust, and I start slapping on my Celtic war paint.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Joy! In an interview, the blogger who has my book is into Urban Fantasy and NOT epics... though she did have a grim dark phase... Hmmm, sounds like a challenge, LMAO.

 

[Finchbearer]

It’s a very interesting scene, I don’t think I have the guts to try going indie. I’m confused though, why are so many of them free?

 

[pmmg]

It’s a very interesting scene, I don’t think I have the guts to try going indie. I’m confused though, why are so many of them free?

Why are so many what free? Do you mean, why do so many offer their books for free?

I would think to try to get off the ground with initial readers and reviews.

 

[Finchbearer]

Yeah when I’ve checked them out via the clock through links most of them are free. I find that strange, why give all your hard work for free!

 

[Demesnedenoir]

A lot of authors do free offers during SPFBO as promotions, and some have permafree books to suck in readers... which is why Kindle Unlimited is so successful. Trust me, an author I spoke with (not fantasy, romance) gives away books and makes WAY more money on the read-through than most trad authors make. Giving away your only book is a suckers bet, but people still do it to build readership and social proof for future books. I'll be giving away Eve of Snows for three days because I have $25-$30 in other books I want people to buy. When you have a backlist of 30 books like some people do? Yeah, it works.

In some instances, it's desperation as well.

Yeah when I’ve checked them out via the clock through links most of them are free. I find that strange, why give all your hard work for free!

 

[Prince of Spires]

There are 3 reasons for giving away books:
- Read-through in a series. You give away book one for free, and make your money on people reading the whole series.
- Kindle Unlimited: If you're in KU, you make money for each page someone reads. So you even earn money for a free book, if people read it via KU instead of simply "buying" it. Being free gives you lots of people downloading, which increases your rank, which gives you more visibility and thus more reads.
- Rank boost: some people plan free promotions to increase their rank, and gain visibility. And then make money when the book is no longer free and people find it because it's high ranking.

The last one is generally not a great plan if you don't also have one of the other two.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I've never done an Amazon freebie before, so I didn't wanna talk too much. In general, I have been against giving away EoS for free, but not so much because I don't like free, but because a person needs a few books to make it worthwhile. So, it being the 5th Anniversary of EoS I gave it shot. Older book and 3 more in the series, it was time to give it a shot.

3rd day of Promo, I ran almost exclusively FB ads. It's the last day, and heading for midnight and the end of the price reduction... so! I cranked the FB ad $25 to see what happens. Therefore, I'll just run with today's numbers so far in this examination.

FB ad spend = $75- Frankly, I'd put almost everything into FB next time around. (EDIT: CORRECTION-Ad Spend was only $71 at this time, so cash sales were over 50% ad spend. I'm not gong to correct all the numbers, I need sleep more than I need accuracy, LOL)

Sales/KENP = $37.28 (and tends to lag a bit, picked up about $20 last night after going to bed)
So, that would leave me in the Red $37.72

There are still two things sitting in the weeds: Read Through and KENP read.

KENP, if KU downloads get me a mere 10,000 page reads I'm at break even+ with ~$40. That's 2-3 people reading the entire series. Already, EoS and other books are matchig the KENP read of my new novel, The Contessa.

Read Through. If 2 people end up buying the rest of the series at regular price that is conservatively $42 and at profit. I always tend to lowball Read Through estimates, and make no mistake, a shit load of people who downloaded the book will never open it and some are flat-out freebie readers who will pay for nothing. However, my best guess for read through rates is about 50% with a typical cash buyer. At times it appears higher, but I use that as my baseline. I hope this is lowball but I have no way of knowing, but let's say only 10% of downloads get read buy Book Buyers (not Freebie Folks) that's 50, with a 50% read through of 25X$21... Read Through Income = $525. Rounded numbers, $525+37-75 = $487 Profit.

How many people downloaded Eve of Snows in that time frame? 504. A 1% Read Through = $105.

BONUS: Because I've used FB's pixel over the past 3 days, the 3000+ FB users who clicked on the ad are now tagged by the system and I can run follow-up ads at them.

BONUS: Added about 50 people to my email list.

BONUS: I played around with various avenues of advertising and now know that BookBub ads are not 100% worthless. They can be effective in this instance, and MAYBE with enough toying around with bids I could make them push FB in efficiency. Maybe.

BONUS: Over 50k people will have seen an EoS ad.

Bottom Line: This promo will be in the Black within a couple weeks at most. That said, will it work for everyone? Probably not. EoS has a lot of Social Proof with award wins and whatnot. I know people will read through, and I know it will find hard core fans— along with a some haters, heh heh.

TOTAL DOWNLOADS for this promo... 3111 (17 since I started writing this) and counting. ~$150 in cash sales. If I'd put my Bookbub ad money into FB right off the bat, I'd guess I would be pushing 4000, and I think but can't prove that many of the cash sales are coming from FB where people will see that I've got discounts on the other books.

I will kill most advertising after this and watch the read through. If it works, I will push FB ads hard next time around, stress it to the gills and see if I can hit 10,000 downloads on the cheap. Before or during my next releases? Yep.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Nice going! It shows why people run free books. It would be interesting to see if a next promo gets similar results or if a bunch of people had their eye on the book and now grabbed it because it was free.

I think for free books a 3% read-through is considered great, with 1% being the bottom figure people aim for. Though I guess KU skews the figures, since all the books are "free" to the reader. People joining your email list is always a good sign. What do you offer them?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

A drawing for a couple autographed books. There are different levels of "free giveaway" by which readers you reach. That might be one place that BB ads have an advantage. I consider KU readers as an in between. They just pay in a way that encourages read through without dropping $9.99 for the next book, heh heh. Judging read through is a bit of mysticism the best I can tell, LOL. KU read today is over 2200 at 7am... but 5am by Pacific Time which I think Amazon uses.

It'll be impossible to accurately judge read through, about all I'll be able to note is how much things went up compared to normal. But the key is it won't lose money, that's a hurdle in all paid advertising. Historically, my numbers suggest higher than normal read-through for Eve of Snows when compared to what people suggest.

Results shouldn't be too different for FB ads. Not that I could tell precisely, but it appeared steady over 3 days and targeted a pretty big range of what had to be cold sales.

Nice going! It shows why people run free books. It would be interesting to see if a next promo gets similar results or if a bunch of people had their eye on the book and now grabbed it because it was free.

I think for free books a 3% read-through is considered great, with 1% being the bottom figure people aim for. Though I guess KU skews the figures, since all the books are "free" to the reader. People joining your email list is always a good sign. What do you offer them?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

One thing I know for sure, there are authors playing the marketing game better than me, and though not a one I've spoken with gives me hard numbers, they are using their Amazon free giveaways most every cycle while still running some pretty big budget ads on a constant basis.

But, there are others... Well, there is more than one way to skin a cat is the saying that comes to mind.

 

[Prince of Spires]

There definitely are plenty of ways to skin a cat...

What works for some doens't work for others. And what worked 5 years ago might not work now. And what works early in a writer's carreer might not work later and vise versa. That makes it very hard to get any useful advice from anyone.

I think the main thing I've learned is that, apart from the odd unicorn, intentionality makes a big difference. Don't just keep flinging stuff at the wall to see what sticks, but be intentional about your marketing efforts. Free days can work, but you have to see it as a part of the whole. Just running free days by itself will not do much. Same with all other marketing advice.

 

[Finchbearer]

I remember the good old days when Kindle did monthly deals, and the book were something like 79p GBP, now you can still get 99p books but their few and far between and I do not begrudge paying that for a new digital book. What confuses me though is if I hypothetically sold my own digital book for 99p GBP in the USA would only be 78€ or would it $1.75?? Or thereabouts.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

The one constant is: the more books you have to sell, the better, heh heh. That way when you find your audience they can run with it. With the launch of EoS I didn't realize how good it was actually doing, if I'd had 4 books available that first year... wooo. Lots of ups and downs all the time, inflating and deflating expectations. But, it is what is, and you plug along and repeat what works.

 

[pmmg]

I remember the good old days when Kindle did monthly deals, and the book were something like 79p GBP, now you can still get 99p books but their few and far between and I do not begrudge paying that for a new digital book. What confuses me though is if I hypothetically sold my own digital book for 99p GBP in the USA would only be 78€ or would it $1.75?? Or thereabouts.

Well...there would be a conversion rate. That is usually posted next to the price when buying from the big retailers.

Ideally, you would want it at 99 cents US. $1.75 will not look like a deal, and the psychology of the whole 99 thing will be missing. I would hope a place like amazon might have a way of pricing it for the US as separate from the UK.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Every distributor I've dealt with does pricing down to a certain number countries. They do it a little differently, but it's fairly granular.

Well...there would be a conversion rate. That is usually posted next to the price when buying from the big retailers.

Ideally, you would want it at 99 cents US. $1.75 will not look like a deal, and the psychology of the whole 99 thing will be missing. I would hope a place like amazon might have a way of pricing it for the US as separate from the UK.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I remember the good old days when Kindle did monthly deals, and the book were something like 79p GBP, now you can still get 99p books but their few and far between and I do not begrudge paying that for a new digital book. What confuses me though is if I hypothetically sold my own digital book for 99p GBP in the USA would only be 78€ or would it $1.75?? Or thereabouts.

On Amazon you set a price per country (for each of the countries where they have a large-ish store I believe). So you can make it whatever you want, within the guidelines Amazon gives you. No free books, below 99ct or above 9.99 you only get 35% royalties (they convert these amounts for different countries), that's pretty much it.

So you could have your book priced at the same time at 99ct GBP and $2.99 US. Or $19.99 US if you so desire. Amazon does offer a convert this price to everywhere else option, which basically just applies whatever exchange rate they're having at that moment, but it results in ugly prices (like 1.73, or 4,38). What I do is I convert whatever price I want using the AMZ exchange rate by clicking that button, and then I manually go in and change the prices to the nearest .99 or .49. Which is a whole minute of work for ebooks.

For some reason they make doing this a pain for paperbacks, since you then list the price before VAT, which you won't find anywhere in european stores. So you have to keep trying until you hit a price which gives you a .99 after VAT is included.

Same with many other platforms really. Draft2Digital gives you the option to price per country. However, they need to be more customer friendly, so they auto-create nice prices for you. So if you publish via them, they'll send .99 prices everywhere.