# The Current (Temporary) Self-Publishing Zeitgeist



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

Now that write to market has faded into history after 22 months, can we safely assume the new and exciting business model for authors is to frantically produce as many books as possible in order to develop a massive backlist, and then pour every last dime into covers and AMS/Facebook ads promoting book one in the series as an ersatz permafree?

If so, am I correct in assuming this does away with the "writing another book is the best marketing" and "stick to one genre or fail" advisories? Since the simple act of releasing a book now provides no tangible benefits aside from reinforcing a backlist (my last release flatlined after 36 hours after being purchased by nobody outside my mailing list), isn't it clear writing another book by itself provides an author with no marketing advantage?

Much of the conventional advice has fallen by the wayside in the last 7-8 years. Make your book free/permafree reportedly does little now since free books are hidden. I'm fairly certain I don't have to go in to Kindle Unlimited. So at this point I think we can safely say that KDP Select itself provides almost no benefits to any author aside from some potential hidden advantage in the algorithms which again is not sustainable.

Which leaves us with AMS, which is basically a combination of eating in to more (and more) of your stated royalty and paid also-boughts. Or you can chase a Bookbub, which is nice if you get it, but not a sustainable strategy for making a mortgage payment every month.

Now I'm sure most of us have considered this, but in this new and exciting era we have a looming problem. We're price-capped on books in general and we are earnings-capped in Kindle Unlimited. Since AMS is all based on auctions, per-click prices *must* continue to rise until they reach a natural equilibrium. After all, authors are all fighting over those first six slots in the carousel with higher bids as their only weapon and their only defense. That equilibrium is called a price floor. We're all standing on that price floor. When the floor is rising and the ceiling isn't moving, you get this:






Anyone got a business plan for those of us without an R2 unit?


----------



## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

Why do you think write to market has faded away?


----------



## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

...


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Why do you think write to market has faded away?


Statements from top-selling authors like these:



> Launching needs a mailing list which can get you 40-100 sales on day 1, and about the same number of borrows, with page reads coming in on day 2. This launches you to better than 10k, and gets you some visibility, so you can hang there for a while.





> But not having an AMS ad running by day 2 end, is a killer these days.


Such statements are consistent with my experience and the sales totals between book one in my series and book four. My book one just "took off." 
I had relatively good read-through from one to two. We can also contrast statements like this with the same author's experience three years ago when book three made his series "take off" (complete with sales totals for proof). There was no mailing list or AMS ad then. Just book three.

My book three was published less than four months ago. Suffice to say it didn't "take off" despite the success of the two books that preceded it. Something changed between February-March of 2017 and April of 2018. Kind of like a light switch.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> I'm not seeing it the same way at all but that's the beauty of self-publishing.


Fair enough. Allow me to quote you from your own blurb:



> One of the biggest challenges facing any self-published author is visibility. How do you find the customers that will buy your book?


How is that any different from what I just wrote?


----------



## VirginiaMcClain (Sep 24, 2014)

Whelp... guess we'd better all just give up then.


----------



## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit next to me! 

(I have cookies, coffee, and wine.)

_Edited to remove quote. - Becca_


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

Am I correct in further assuming this isn't the place for this discussion?  Because I can just go ahead and delete the thread if it's going to turn into a circus for purposes of reporting and attracting moderator attention.  

With all due respect, if you have nothing substantial to add to the discussion, please don't turn my thread into a circus.  My career and the time I spend writing is important to me, as I'm sure it is equally important to those reading this thread.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Whelp... guess we'd better all just give up then.


Virginia, didn't you recently get a Bookbub?

Can you reconcile the following statement with your apparent disagreement with the premise of my questions about the state of the industry?



> but keep in mind that before the BookBub I sold 214 units in SIX months


Given according to your own numbers, you were selling a book a day (with pro covers and almost exactly the same reception and success level as my Book One) and now you are selling even fewer (weeks after a Bookbub campaign), why are you ridiculing me? Do you and I (and many others) not face the exact same challenges?


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

OP, you sound glib and bitter and not interested in actual dialogue. It's cool to vent sometimes--we all need that--but if that's what you're looking for, you might want to make it clear. If you want an actual conversation about strategy, make that clear.

But if you do start a conversation about write to market, I expect you'll see all the same themes. You seem to be confusing visibility with having a commercial book. You can have the most commercial ("written to market") book in the world. It will still fail without visibility and in 2018 you need a mailing list AND advertising or a ton of luck if you want visibility.

As for writing to market, it's not about sacrificing what you love. It's about making a conscious choice to write something, knowing how commercial it is. Personally, I care more about readers than sales, but the best way to get more readers is to sell more copies. It's really the main metric I have for how  much my books are reaching people, so I tend to feel better about books that sell more. So I choose to write more marketable books, most of the time.

The book I just released is not as marketable as the stuff I normally write and that's okay. It was a conscious choice I made and I'm expecting fewer sales than my last release. It's still commercial, but it's a different style than how I normally package and advertise my books, so a) my audience might not go with me on that change and b) I'm no longer an expert in how to market it.

These are skills that take time and experience to develop. My first series was soooo not commercial, but in my inexperience, I thought it was marketable and that was... not good. It took me a long time to figure out how to write a commercial book that I really loved.

For better or worse, I've found success very book dependent. Yes, I have enough of an audience that I'm pretty much guaranteed a certain level of sales, but a commercial, well packaged book might be the difference between that base level and 10x it (or more, over time). It's good in that you can always get back in the game, but it's bad in that you always have to execute everything at 10/10.


----------



## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Such statements are consistent with my experience and the sales totals between book one in my series and book four. My book one just "took off."
> I had relatively good read-through from one to two. We can also contrast statements like this with the same author's experience three years ago when book three made his series "take off" (complete with sales totals for proof). There was no mailing list or AMS ad then. Just book three.
> 
> My book three was published less than four months ago. Suffice to say it didn't "take off" despite the success of the two books that preceded it. Something changed between February-March of 2017 and April of 2018. Kind of like a light switch.


I'm not saying your conclusion is necessarily incorrect, but you are basing it on a very small data set. Two book releases when more than a thousand books are released every day could very easily be atypical for a variety of reasons.

Every time I think I've spotted a trend in the performance of my own books, something changes. I was seeing what I thought was a downward spiral, and then along came August, and sales and borrows both improved without my doing anything. I'm looking at a small data set as well, so who knows if what I'm seeing means anything, but I think the problem here is exactly what our problem often is--we don't have enough data to really know what's going on?


----------



## boba1823 (Aug 13, 2017)

When I was originally looking into self-publishing not so very long ago, the first advice I came across was the conventional "write to market" approach. Which is really more of a write-to-trend approach: pick some 'hungry' niche, read some books, copy them tropes into your own book, make a similar cover, and then try to trick Amazon's algorithms into propelling you toward mid-list glory.

Fortunately, after thinking about all of that briefly, I decided "no thanks" and did more like the opposite.

Here's the basic approach that I follow: Write a good book. Preferably a _really_ good book. As close to one as you can, anyway. (Also.. learn what makes a book good so you're better able to write one. Read NYT bestsellers and so forth.) Package that book up nice. Make it somewhat distinctive, but also professional. Don't just copy exactly what every other cover in your genre looks like, or readers will see your book as generic. Branding - do that. Also, as part of writing a good book.. don't think you can just copy some tropes and then you have a good book. Most readers are looking for a good book, not some specific list of tropes. Then price your book right. I.e. not so cheap you can't afford to advertise it. Then.. learn to advertise it. And then keep advertising it. Good books don't have a month-long shelf life, and relying on Amazon to do the selling for you is.. maybe not the best idea.

I'm sure my books won't ever be the best ones out there. But I don't really see the point in producing books that are little more than carbon copies of whatever mid-level _yawn_books are trending in some sub-genre chart on Amazon, either. Maybe, if I could super good at advertising and honed a fantastic launch strategy, I could land my books at the top of that heap for a while. But if the books are just more of the same, there's not going to be much reader loyalty. Nor is there likely to be much appeal beyond a very narrow audience.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> OP, you sound glib and bitter and not interested in actual dialogue.


Allow me to state for the record that I will not respond to accusatory language, any passive-aggressive attempts to portray me as something I'm not or attempts to derail the thread. I am stating facts backed by evidence and asking questions for the purpose of determining how I (and others observing this thread) should invest my time and future marketing efforts.

I'm asking pertinent questions. Many people want the answers to these questions. It's important.

If you don't happen to agree that write to market and the simple act of releasing a book are no longer effective, that's fine. Provide your evidence and let's discuss it. Otherwise, respectfully, don't make unfounded assertions you can't back up, because it drives down the signal to noise ratio and confuses beginning authors who don't know better.



> It will still fail without visibility and in 2018 you need a mailing list AND advertising or a ton of luck if you want visibility.


Then we agree.


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

None of the strategies/tools you mention (WTM, AMS, FB, writing another book) will bring evergreen success to a faulty talent. 

For those with talent, price-caps don't really apply, though there is definitely a ceiling, as is the case with anything equipped with a price tag. AMS and FB ads do work well and tend to produce acceptable ROI (it's still hit or miss for everyone, and some more than others). Writing to market will never die, once an author has successfully identified their market.

So, I think the current zeitgeist is the same old zeitgeist. The playing field is different, but talent still rules.


----------



## VirginiaMcClain (Sep 24, 2014)

It's not that I disagree that this whole writing thing is a hard slog (it certainly is), it's that your phrasing of your original post sounds entirely defeatist to my ears. I could easily be misreading something, I didn't get a ton of sleep last night, but I don't know what you're actually expecting as a reply. Your set up here doesn't sound like you're asking for sincere advice on how to move forward, it sounds like you're looking to start an argument about how we're all of us doomed never to succeed. 

In truth, I think for the next little while at least, producing a lot of titles in a series is going to be the only solid way to make money for a bit. Permafree may not work like it used to, but having a low priced entry to a series and then getting a BookBub on said entry seems like it's working well for a lot of people, especially if that series is long. So, yes, it seems like having a lot of books is the way to go. A lot of people seem to be making FB ads work in their favor as well. Along with going wide. But everything is changing, so who knows what the answer will be next month, next year, five years from now?

I don't feel like a have a confident rebuttal to your original post, because I haven't succeeded yet (beyond the one BookBub, which I failed to take proper advantage of). I'm not trying to ridicule you in the least, but I am trying to lighten the mood a bit. This business is hard enough without deciding we're doomed every other day because of things changing.

The publishing industry is in flux and will be for the foreseeable future. Success will most likely derive from changing tacks fast enough to keep wind in your sails despite all the unpredictable weather changes. She who adapts, wins. But I don't have any solid answers to your questions, and I was trying to be funny. Sorry if I offended, that was not my intention.


----------



## Ty Johnston (Jun 19, 2009)

Well, I would like to add that publishing another book does help. I have less than 200 people on my newsletter list, very rarely do any advertising (and then usually just AMS), have never had a Bookbub feature, always offer at least a few freebies though I don't take part in Select, but I have a decent backlist, about 50 books or so. Every time I put out a new book, my sales go up, even without any promotion or advertising whatsoever. That only lasts a couple of months, and the numbers aren't a huge spike, but slowly over time it builds. It also depends upon the genre for me. My fantasy sells better in the long run, but for the short term my horror tends to do better.

I just write, publish, get it out there, mention to a few friends online that I've a new book out, maybe do some AMS for a couple of weeks, do a very short blog post saying I've got a new book, send out a newsletter saying I've got a new book, then I forget about it and go on to the next book, or I screw around for a few months depending on what's going on in my life at the moment. I might, maybe, if I'm in the mood and think of it, contact a few regional stores about carrying my books or latest book, then I do the grunt work and they cut me a check.

I'm not getting rich, but the bills are paid.

Also, I'm not suggesting my simplistic approach works for everyone, and might not work for someone just starting out today compared to 10 years ago. But it keeps me sane because I'm not chasing a bull by the tail all the time. Could I jump to the next level? Probably, but then I'd have the headaches that went along with it. I'm not interested.

Not sure anything I've written here answers any questions, but I thought it might offer a different viewpoint from someone who doesn't follow or worry about the latest indie writing trends/zeitgeist/whatever. I just write 'em and publish 'em, mostly at my leisure after other folks (my beta readers and editors and such) finish with their job.


----------



## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Statements from top-selling authors like these:
> 
> Such statements are consistent with my experience and the sales totals between book one in my series and book four. My book one just "took off."
> I had relatively good read-through from one to two. We can also contrast statements like this with the same author's experience three years ago when book three made his series "take off" (complete with sales totals for proof). There was no mailing list or AMS ad then. Just book three.
> ...


I'm not sure how any of that supports the idea that WTM is going away any time soon. Everyone who is selling books regularly is advertising, so in order to get traction everyone else has to advertise in order to compete. It has to do with how competitive the Kindle store has become, rather than being a reflection of write to market disappearing.

Also, three years ago, I don't think AMS ads were even a thing yet, so that would have an effect on the market. The ecosystem has changed so much, and authors have really upped their game, which means you can't rely on what worked three years ago to work now.


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Write to market has faded? I die.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Write to market has faded? I die.


According to Chris Fox, this was the conventional path to success as recently as February of 2016:

http://a.co/d/9J0BSGr

I read that book, and published the top-selling work of my career eight months later. Since then I've written and published 11 titles in the last 16 months. 350,000 words including three new military sci-fi titles, one of which includes my top-selling book.

The book I published in 2016 is still my top seller. Writing to market by itself is no longer enough for me and neither is just releasing a new book. I suspect that is the case for many other authors as well. If this is true, I would simply like to know what the path forward is.


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> According to Chris Fox, this was the conventional path to success as recently as February of 2016:
> 
> http://a.co/d/9J0BSGr
> 
> I read that book, and published the top-selling work of my career eight months later. Since then I've written and published 11 titles in the last 16 months (350,000 words). The book I published in 2016 is still my top seller. Writing to market by itself is no longer enough for me and neither is just releasing a new book. I suspect that is the case for many other authors as well.


And yet it's still working for quite a few other people, so saying write to market is dead seems a little silly ... especially since only marketable books will sell.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> And yet it's still working for quite a few other people


Who? According to Amazon, in their recent shareholder letter, only 1000 authors are earning in excess of six figures. Perhaps your definition of "quite a few" and my definition are different.

In the meantime, is it your position that simply writing books to market and publishing them is enough to build a successful career as an author? (Successful defined as not needing one or more day jobs) Can you provide examples of authors who are currently doing that without AMS ads, Bookbubs or five-figure mailing lists?

On the subject of Bookbubs, we have Virginia, who paid handsomely, no doubt, for a Bookbub only weeks ago and now has a rather attractive-looking cover on a book south of 400,000 in the rankings. Should she not be improving at this point and not sliding into obscurity again?


----------



## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

*cracks knuckles*

Okay, there are two ways to answer this, depending on what the OP is looking for. 

The first way: is this actually a "what do I do now, because nothing that's worked in the past, either for myself or for other people, is working anymore?"

If that's the conversation we're having, there are going to be pages of back-and-forth about whether or not what the OP has tried before actually doesn't work anymore, or just doesn't work for HIM, but works fine for other people, and that will inevitably lead to the "just because it worked for you two years ago doesn't mean it would work for anyone starting out now" and that's perfectly valid! Anyone offering advice from a position of continued success, regardless of when they began, will be dealing from the perspective of success bias.

The answer I have to this is, extending what doesn't work for the OP to mean that "it isn't working for anyone" is a stretch, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Everything here works until it doesn't any longer, and that's always going to be true. Further, the marketplace isn't going to necessarily keep on providing new opportunities to replace the ones that stopped working.

The second way to answer this question is, where are we all going, as an industry, long-term, as a whole? I like this question more.

there are mega publishers--the proverbial big 5--who are too large and too set in their way of doing things to change sufficiently to adjust to the way the marketplace works now. I don't think all 5 will continue to exist as separate entities.

There are not-quite-mega publishers, who are large enough to make a lot of money but small enough to adapt to change in a more nimble fashion. (Think earnings in the hundreds of millions instead of the billions.) Those publishers can look at what's worked for indie publishing and adopt some of those strategies in ways the giants simply can't, from marketing to a streamlined business plan. I predict one or two of these publishers will start doing very well in the next decade.

And there's the small publishers, indies/self-published authors. I've said a version of this before, but: our part of the marketplace (which is large, but not as large as we probably think it is) has succeeded because of a number of factors. Those include: the ebook marketplace's initial hyperinflation, which i believe is over; and traditional publishing simply not paying midlist authors, despite counting on those authors for the steady stream of income which is now drying up and choking some of them, because those authors are now fully aware they can make more by self-publishing.

I'm more interested in the first thing: the market slowing down. I think the future of self-publishing is that it will become much harder to succeed quickly, and much harder to succeed at ALL if you are a mediocre writer.

I don't mean by this that the OP or anyone else IS a mediocre author; I mean that the industry allowed mediocrity to succeed for a long time. As the market matures there will be less demand for something/anything/my Kindle is hungry and more demand for quality. Please apply your own definition of 'quality', which is entirely subjective.

Finally, I don't think Amazon will go away, but its influence and market share will start to go in the other direction. We'll see B&N bought in the next few years and either end its ebook platform or see it taken over, and I think we'll see the print marketplace rally, as well as independent bookstores. Publishing has spent the last decade stunned by the discovery that it didn't understand its own industry as well as Amazon did, and I think the nimble players in the market have gotten over that shock and are getting smarter. (And again, none of the big 5 are nimble.)

At least, that's what I think.


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Who? According to Amazon, in their recent shareholder letter, only 1000 authors are earning in excess of six figures. Perhaps your definition of "quite a few" and my definition are different.
> 
> In the meantime, is it your position that simply writing books to market and publishing them is enough to build a successful career as an author? (Successful defined as not needing one or more day jobs) Can you provide examples of authors who are currently doing that without AMS ads, Bookbubs or five-figure mailing lists?
> 
> On the subject of Bookbubs, we have Virginia, who paid handsomely, no doubt, for a Bookbub only weeks ago and now has a rather attractive-looking cover on a book south of 400,000 in the rankings. Should she not be improving at this point and not sliding into obscurity again?


I know people who don't market at all and make five figures a month. I know people who market extensively and make six figures a month. I know people who market very little and make six figures a month. Personally, marketing made up 3.2 percent of my take-home last month and I do quite well. Why? I write to market and release frequently. That's pretty much been my plan from the get go and I stick with it. I've never marketed a lot. I do AMS ads for several first-in-series books but the bulk of my marketing is on the backs of my new releases. As for BookBubs, I'm in Select so they rarely give me slots. I had one this year on a series I took wide. Before that, it had been more than a year since I got one. I still put in a couple times a month but don't ever expect to get them. As for my mailing list, I've been working on it for years. It's completely organic, no giveaways or freebies, and no promotions to draw in sign-ups.
Is it a different market than when I started? Absolutely. I've still seen numerous people break out in the past two years and each and every book was written to market.


----------



## sailingthevoid (Oct 4, 2017)

I don't have the experience to really corroborate or refute anything above, and I'm not trying to do this full-time, but I thought I'd share my personal, recent experience which is a bit more cheerful:
- I wrote two books about five years ago. Sold a thousand-odd copies altogether, mostly through ENT ads and family/friends. Then stopped writing for a few years because of Life. Sales flatlined, as you'd expect.
- Wrote a third book (in the series). Published it two weeks ago. Moved all three into KDP Select.  Discovered AMS was a thing. Ran some ads on book one. People are now borrowing and reading books 1-3. Hurrah!
- Appear to be making more in royalties than I'm spending on ads. *Tiny sample size caveat!* Profit so far = roughly 1/200th of monthly mortgage payment, so have resisted urge to quit day job. It's really perked up my joy in the whole writing/publishing experience, though  

Again, I'm in a very different boat to the full-timers here. But I do believe there's a chance that if I keep putting out good books that I enjoy writing and that have broad-ish appeal, and doing my best to adjust to however the marketplace changes over time, I'll have a chance of making a go of it.


----------



## Justin Jordan (Feb 15, 2011)

Aside from anything else, write to market as a sole way of producing sales* works by finding underserved markets. Which will pretty much not remain underserved once identified, because people are, you know, writing to that market. And this is reasonably clear from Chris Fox himself. He hasn't just written one type of book - he's moved on to related but different markets.

I wouldn't characterize that as write to market being gone or not working, anymore than FB ads 'don't work'. You could still probably find underserved markets, but you can't keep writing in the same market without other stuff. The people who advocate strongest for writing a bunch of books is generally the 20Books To 50K folks, and the big dogs there generally are writing to market.

I'd also note that literally every successful book is serving a market, or it wouldn't be successful. Write to market was mostly about doing this intentionally rather than just happening to get it right. And that's probably still good advice. 

*And I make this caveat, because that's never really been what Fox advocates.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> I know people who don't market at all and make five figures a month.


Fair enough. According to Amazon, they wouldn't fill a high school gym.



> Is it a different market than when I started? Absolutely.


Then we agree. For those people who write to market and release frequently and don't have growing sales like those you and some others have experienced, what's the solution? If book-a-month no longer works, what does? That's the road forward.


----------



## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> In the meantime, is it your position that simply writing books to market and publishing them is enough to build a successful career as an author? (Successful defined as not needing one or more day jobs) Can you provide examples of authors who are currently doing that without AMS ads, Bookbubs or five-figure mailing lists?


I'm curious why you seem to think WTM means you don't have to advertise or have a mailing list. I'm pretty sure Chris has never said writing to market frees you from the need to advertise.


----------



## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Who? According to Amazon, in their recent shareholder letter, only 1000 authors are earning in excess of six figures. Perhaps your definition of "quite a few" and my definition are different.
> 
> In the meantime, is it your position that simply writing books to market and publishing them is enough to build a successful career as an author? (Successful defined as not needing one or more day jobs) Can you provide examples of authors who are currently doing that without AMS ads, Bookbubs or five-figure mailing lists?
> 
> On the subject of Bookbubs, we have Virginia, who paid handsomely, no doubt, for a Bookbub only weeks ago and now has a rather attractive-looking cover on a book south of 400,000 in the rankings. Should she not be improving at this point and not sliding into obscurity again?


Perhaps we need to define doing well and "quite a few." I think most people wouldn't expect quite a few to mean over a thousand. Also, if the letter said in excess of six figures. Personally, I wouldn't define success as starting at the $1.000,000 mark. I'd be ecstatically happy making six figures on writing, and one might still make a living at it with five figures. Remember also that the figure only includes earnings on Amazon. Successful wide authors might make considerably more than just their Amazon earnings.


----------



## Dom (Mar 15, 2014)

I thought that was an honest and helpful response, Crystal.

Speaking to the others chiming in and not Shane, I feel like this guy isn't listening and just wants to assert THEN WE AGREE. You can only help someone who wants to be helped. I personally disagreed with 10 different things in the OP but can already see it's not worth my time to discuss.

Saying 6-figure authors are the only successful ones is also a strange point to make.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> I�m curious why you seem to think WTM means you don�t have to advertise or have a mailing list.


I don't think that. I don't know where you got that idea.

But I also think you will agree the conventional wisdom for the last six or seven years has been "the best marketing is to write another book." Since 2016 it has been "write to market." I'm fairly certain I don't have to go back and link all the threads where that advice was offered. My question is since the best marketing is no longer just writing another book and/or just writing to market, what is?


----------



## Trioxin 245 (Dec 29, 2017)

Not sure how to respond or rather wondering if I should but here goes. Many people see you flying off the handle, its not a dig at you but rather a wake up call to pull yourself together. Your original post basically is summed up as, "What worked yesterday doesn't work today. What do I do now?"
All those things you had mentioned beside permafree work for me just fine. So perhaps what you need to ask is, "why have these things stopped working for me?" 
You are going to have to start from the date you mentioned it started going downhill until today and take a long objective look at your work. Did your covers or writing change? Did your audience move on to another genre? There are a million possibilities of what went wrong, but you are going to have to figure it out on your own because the fault lies with you. Its a rough wake up call, but you need to hear it.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Eleven books at only 350,000 words? That makes for some very slim volumes.


I left out the collections in the total, but let's go with everything published since April, 2017. Closer to 400,000. These are approximate:

Dawnsong: The Last Skyblade 98,000 
Devils Demons and Dead Men: 60,000 
Trolls, Traps and Treachery: 56,000 
Strike Battleship Marines: 60,000
Secret of the Witchwand: 20,000 
Encounter at Demon Skull: 15,000 
No Savage Under This Moon: 20,000 
Starships at War: 250,000 words 
Fleet Commander Recon: 60,000 
Battle Magic Collection: 55,000 
Middle Grade Burnout: 12,000

The middle grade stuff is usually more novella length. The LitRPG and MSF are usually around 60k. Is 60k too short for a novel? I keep the word counts manageable so I can publish fast enough. But then I suppose I don't have to do that any more if book-a-month doesn't work.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> "What worked yesterday doesn't work today. What do I do now?"


I have a couple of questions in no particular order. How is that "flying off the handle?" Secondly, I'm pretty confident in saying I'm not the only person facing this problem. The rapid accumulation of replies and views is pretty conclusive. This thread is a couple hours old.



> Did your covers or writing change?


I like to think they both improved, as all things do with experience and effort.



> Did your audience move on to another genre?


Possibly.



> because the fault lies with you


Oh. I didn't know we were assigning blame.


----------



## Luigi (Jan 23, 2018)

My best guess as to why having a large backlist is the only thing working is because of the binge factor. People who like to read will keep reading books that they've liked from the same author, and they will buy the next and the one after that. Amazon likes this, they want to keep the readers reading, instead of possibly putting a bad book (or bad experience) in front of the reader. A reader that has read one good book after another, will continue reading vs one that can't find the right book. I'm assuming that it takes much more than just having one good book, to catch a new reader.  An author with several good books becomes a money earning machine for Amazon which is why they ultimately care about.

Of course, this is all speculation.  

But at the end of the day, writing the best book that you can write, and truly believing in your work will get you where you want to go. The internet is still growing, so we are still early in many ways.


----------



## Trioxin 245 (Dec 29, 2017)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Who? According to Amazon, in their recent shareholder letter, only 1000 authors are earning in excess of six figures. Perhaps your definition of "quite a few" and my definition are different.
> 
> In the meantime, is it your position that simply writing books to market and publishing them is enough to build a successful career as an author? (Successful defined as not needing one or more day jobs) Can you provide examples of authors who are currently doing that without AMS ads, Bookbubs or five-figure mailing lists?
> 
> On the subject of Bookbubs, we have Virginia, who paid handsomely, no doubt, for a Bookbub only weeks ago and now has a rather attractive-looking cover on a book south of 400,000 in the rankings. Should she not be improving at this point and not sliding into obscurity again?


For someone flying off the handle and crying victim, you sure have no problem dragging others under the bus. Shame on you.


----------



## boba1823 (Aug 13, 2017)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> But I also think you will agree the conventional wisdom for the last six or seven years has been "the best marketing is to write another book."


That's always been wrong  Okay, okay, not necessarily _wrong_ - but it's one possible approach that packs in a lot of assumptions that may be true for every situation. This perspective is, I assume, based on a launch-visibility focused strategy. It assumes that with each book you release, you're building up a larger and larger fan base (and especially a good mailing list), which enables you to launch each book higher on the Amazon charts. The higher you get, the more _new_ people see the book, and the more new fans you get.

Lots of things can mess that up. Some you can (sorta) control, some you cannot. You can't control Amazon messing with its algorithms and charts ways that might help, or more likely hurt, the visibility you get from this approach. Nor can you control how many readers are actually looking at the Hot New Release charts and the like. Changes in these probably affect how well the new-book-as-marketing thing works. What you can (kinda) control, through the content, quality, packaging, etc., of the books you put out, is whether you are in fact _growing_ a fan base with each new release. If you put out a bad book, your fan base may actually shrink, and then your next launch may be worse than before. Ending a series and starting a new one, or trying out a new genre, may cost you fans - or it may significantly expand your fan base. Probably a bit of a gamble, though if the new book is _good_ there's a better chance of positive results. The timing of book releases, and how well you maintain a connection with fans between releases (e.g. doing your mailing list well) will also affect it.

*But ewe*. That's not for me. Too complicated, too much left to chance. For me, the best marketing is _marketing_. And mainly advertising. I can just pay to stick my book in people's faces. It's so simple I could cry with joy. Yeah, alright, it's not actually all that simple to advertise well - to achieve a decently high conversion rate and a decently low cost-per-click. (And I'm mainly talking about Facebook, which is what I focus on because it has a lot of advantages over AMS.) But at least I can experiment with it fairly rapidly to see what's working and what isn't.


----------



## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> I don't think that. I don't know where you got that idea.
> 
> But I also think you will agree the conventional wisdom for the last six or seven years has been "the best marketing is to write another book." Since 2016 it has been "write to market." I'm fairly certain I don't have to go back and link all the threads where that advice was offered. My question is since the best marketing is no longer just writing another book and/or just writing to market, what is?


Maybe I misunderstood you. But you asked for examples of people who are successful without advertising and a newsletter. It seemed like you were conflating the need to advertise with the death of WTM.

The concept itself has been around since long before 2016. Writing what people want to read is just a smart idea and has been for a very long time. I mean, if you don't write what people want to read, no one is going to buy your work. Writing to market really just means writing stories that you already know have a large audience.

Also, I know that the 'write the next book' advice has been thrown around for years. But I don't think it can be taken as the magic bullet independent of everything else. Writing the next book works if other things are already in place. If your editing is good, and your cover is eye-catching, and your story is well-written, and you can get eyes on your book, and it's a story that people want to read, then writing the next book will help you sell more books. But writing more books and expecting them to sell without making an effort to get eyes on them is very likely not going to work.

The store is way busier now than it used to be. I think there are something like 7 million kindle books alone, and many have probably never sold a single copy. There are also lots of people using Amazon ads, which help them sell more and add to their visibility. Writing the next book isn't going to compete against someone who's got a $100/day AMS ad budget and a dozen novel length books.


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Luigi said:


> My best guess as to why having a large backlist is the only thing working is because of the binge factor. People who like to read will keep reading books that they've liked from the same author, and they will buy the next and the one after that...
> 
> Of course, this is all speculation.


Not speculation, really. If your Also Boughts is loaded with your backlist, you've got true fans.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Of course it couldn't be you it HAS to be something else. Ams, bookbub, amazon,readers,bad reviewers, weather. Let me know how passing the blame increases sales. Genuinely interested in your approach and results.


The first book in my military science fiction series outsold the Bookbub I linked earlier. It did so with no advertising or marketing of any kind. I wrote it because military sci-fi was popular at the time. If it's no longer popular now, fine. If the field is too crowded, fine. That would be useful information, because the other four books in the series (three novels and a collection) have not sold well, even though they have the same covers, characters, setting, blurbs, genre, etc.

Coming into my thread to assign blame isn't useful.



> For someone flying off the handle and crying victim


I'd appreciate it if you'd excuse yourself from the thread. For one thing, I can't see you with that chip on your shoulder, and you're obviously only interested in picking a fight.


----------



## munboy (Apr 13, 2018)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> The first book in my military science fiction series outsold the Bookbub I linked earlier. It did so with no advertising or marketing of any kind. I wrote it because military sci-fi was popular at the time. If it's no longer popular now, fine. If the field is too crowded, fine. That would be useful information, because the other four books in the series (three novels and a collection) have not sold well, even though they have the same covers, characters, setting, blurbs, genre, etc.
> 
> Coming into my thread to assign blame isn't useful.


I don't have anything useful to add to the conversation. I just wanted to say we named our dog Lochlan. Not after you or anything. We just came across it while searching for an Irish name and liked it. He's a border collie. And he's a pain in my butt. lol


----------



## Trioxin 245 (Dec 29, 2017)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Coming into my thread to assign blame isn't useful.


Just to clarify for sake of conversation. Poor sales can be blamed on Amazon, Ams, Bookbub,also boughts, audience, algorithms, and everything else...but not you or your books you offer for sale? That is a no blame area so look elsewhere?--


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> You can only help someone who wants to be helped.


I didn't ask for help, Domino. I assert six figures is successful because here in sunny Southern California, that's a minimal living at best for someone putting in full time hours and then some.

The fact that after eight years Amazon has only produced 1000 such people is intensely distressing to me on a number of levels. Basically, it means that there are more people earning six figures south of the El Toro "Y" in Orange County than all the authors in the world published on Amazon.


----------



## VirginiaMcClain (Sep 24, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Who? According to Amazon, in their recent shareholder letter, only 1000 authors are earning in excess of six figures. Perhaps your definition of "quite a few" and my definition are different.
> 
> In the meantime, is it your position that simply writing books to market and publishing them is enough to build a successful career as an author? (Successful defined as not needing one or more day jobs) Can you provide examples of authors who are currently doing that without AMS ads, Bookbubs or five-figure mailing lists?
> 
> On the subject of Bookbubs, we have Virginia, who paid handsomely, no doubt, for a Bookbub only weeks ago and now has a rather attractive-looking cover on a book south of 400,000 in the rankings. Should she not be improving at this point and not sliding into obscurity again?


Woah there, buddy! Are you saying the definition of success is making upwards of six figures? Ha! Yet, in your next sentence you admit that successful is defined as not needing one or more day jobs, so which is it? According to http://authorearnings.com/report/january-2018-report-us-online-book-sales-q2-q4-2017/ "quite a few" authors seem to be earning at a rate that would allow them to quit their day jobs. Of course, every person's exact situation is different so, who knows what the exact numbers are, but I think those figures are useful in relating how many indies are actually succeeding at writing full time (and far more useful than amazon talking about how many KDP authors made upwards of six figures).

And I never suggested that success could be had _without_ BookBubs, advertising, and mailing lists. Those all appear to be key ingredients to success at the moment. What I don't understand is why that seems to upset you so much.

Also, what's with throwing muck at me for upcoming releases that are on pre-order just because I haven't ramped up my marketing yet? Or was the "sliding into obscurity" comment directed at my first book? Either way, the fact that I haven't built up enough momentum to keep my books selling without paying for visibility isn't indicative of anything except that I haven't gotten there yet. It's impossible to sell books without visibility.

And yeah, I paid for a BookBub featured deal, but it more than paid for itself over the course of the feature, and the next two months were better than any I'd had previously. I only had two full length books out then, though, so they didn't keep the tail going. I also failed to shell out for advertising while my rankings were still high, which would have made the whole thing last longer. I'm still figuring out the whole marketing thing, and also trying to balance writing full time with raising a toddler full time... oh and I was the lead in a local play in July and that ate up a bunch of my work schedule.

You might consider how defensive you're getting of everyone who dares to question your post, when you claim to have been asking for a sincere dialogue.


_edited, PM if you have questions -- Ann_


----------



## Trioxin 245 (Dec 29, 2017)

Domino Finn said:


> I thought that was an honest and helpful response, Crystal.
> 
> . I personally disagreed with 10 different things in the OP but can already see it's not worth my time to discuss.


I should learn to read other post before posting. Your comment is valid, lesson learned on my end.


----------



## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

...


----------



## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

...


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Also, just because authors aren't making six figures on Amazon doesn't mean they're not when including the wide vendors. Amazon isn't privy to that information. So who is to say that someone isn't making 60K on Amazon and 40K on the other vendors? In most parts of the United States, six figures isn't necessary to provide a good life.


_edited, PM if you have questions -- Ann_


----------



## wilsonharp (Jun 5, 2012)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Who? According to Amazon, in their recent shareholder letter, only 1000 authors are earning in excess of six figures. Perhaps your definition of "quite a few" and my definition are different.


Let's address a few things and we will start with this one. 1000 authors are earning in excess of six figures ($100,000) which is $40,000 higher than the U.S. household average of $59,039. I'm pretty sure if you get down to the U.S. national average, it will be significantly more than 1000 authors earning in excess of six figures.

Moreover, this is the number of authors earning this money through Amazon. I'm not sure if this figure is simply for e-books, but even assuming it's not, Amazon has about a 70% share of the e-book market, and if an author is wide, we can make an assumption that they only make 70% of their sales on Amazon. This further heightens the number of authors earning an average household income or higher.

Now onto the "Chris Fox says..." comments. Fox indeed tells writers to write to market. He also tells them to have big mailing lists and to keep building them. He also tells writers to advertise on AMS and Facebook. He also encourages them to write in series and have a large catalog. In fact, he tells writers to promote themselves in every way which provides a good return on investment.

Those writers who have good sales on their fiction books are the ones I want to take advice from. Since you brought up Chris Fox, I will point out that he is #83 in Science Fiction authors currently on Amazon and his best selling book is sitting at #4, 414 in the store. So when he tells me how he does it, I tend to listen to him.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> You might consider how defensive you're getting of everyone who dares to question your post,


I'm not being defensive. I'm not daring anyone to question my post, either. There is not one mote of evidence anywhere in this thread of my being "upset" "crying victim" or "flying off the handle" either. I am asking important questions and I'm offering facts and evidence to back my assertions.

Allow me to offer the following evidence most of the people in this thread agree with me:



> *But writing more books and expecting them to sell without making an effort to get eyes on them is very likely not going to work.
> *


That was my original point only a few hours ago. My question is since this is obviously the case, what is the path forward?

I think we can safely conclude at this point nobody knows. Nevertheless, I'd like to discuss the topic, because it's important to me and many others I'm sure.


----------



## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

Edward M. Grant said:


> It is if they're not good books. Again, all the marketing in the world won't convince me to buy a book that's obviously bad or mediocre (and if it does convince me to buy one that turns out to be mediocre, odds are I'll never buy a book from that writer again).
> 
> Fundamentally, we're all trying to get our books in front of the people who want to read them. Amazon has wrecked most of the organic means of doing so over the last couple of years, so advertising has become more important. But the writer needs to be advertising something that people want to read, and that bar has risen substantially over that couple of years, too.
> 
> I think part of that is the whole 'write to market' fad: too many writers have believed they just need to copy whatever everyone else is doing and they'll sell, even if the book they end up with isn't very good... and often that worked, for a while, because readers were desperate for any new books in their sub-sub-genre. These days the book more and more needs to be both marketable and good.


I'm assuming that anyone who has a hundred dollar a day ad budget is probably making money from their writing already, and so they've probably written decent books.

And no, of course a crap book won't get someone to part with their money. But crap is in the eye of the beholder. And there are more than enough good authors with big ad budgets to knock out the people who don't advertise, so the bad books don't really matter.


----------



## LindsayBuroker (Oct 13, 2013)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Now that write to market has faded into history after 22 months, can we safely assume the new and exciting business model for authors is to frantically produce as many books as possible in order to develop a massive backlist, and then pour every last dime into covers and AMS/Facebook ads promoting book one in the series as an ersatz permafree?


We regularly get guests on our podcast who have done well by writing to an underserved market. In 2016, it was military SF. In 2017, it was LitRPG. This year, it's been reverse harem. It's not so much write-to-market as write-to-an-underserved-market-full-of-hungry-readers, and once the cat gets out of the bag, and other writers flock to it, the switch flips and it's no longer underserved. That's definitely happened with military SF, and LitRPG is getting there if it isn't already. That's when you're advertising and advertising and just don't feel like you're getting reasonable results. (When it's truly underserved, you often do well even without a lot of advertising.)

So, what's the next underserved market waiting for new writers? I don't know, but if I were a WTM kind of person, I'd be scouring the lists and trying to figure it out. If you can find something that qualifies, you can still rock it with the same old tactics.

Of course, the more reliable path is sticking to one genre that you love, learning to write stories that stand out from the rest in some way, and gradually building up a fan base of folks who will buy anything you put out. If there's a big drop-off in readership/reviews from one book in the series to the next, then there's a craft issue to address. It's tough to succeed even with WTM (past the first book) then.

Good luck.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> We regularly get guests on our podcast who have done well *by writing to an underserved market*. In 2016, it was military SF. In 2017, it was LitRPG. This year, it's been reverse harem. It's not so much write-to-market as write-to-an-underserved-market-full-of-hungry-readers, and once the cat gets out of the bag, and other writers flock to it, the switch flips and it's no longer underserved. That's definitely happened with military SF, and LitRPG is getting there if it isn't already. That's when you're advertising and advertising and just don't feel like you're getting reasonable results. (When it's truly underserved, you often do well even without a lot of advertising.)


Leave it to Lindsay to provide accurate and workable information. This explains why my MilSF and LitRPG sold in 2016 and 2017.

Allow me to also point out another gem from Mr. Grant:



> we're all trying to get our books in front of the people who want to read them. *Amazon has wrecked most of the organic means of doing so *over the last couple of years


I think this is a brilliant observation, and I'm sure most would agree. Hopefully this information will be useful to other authors, experienced and new.


----------



## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> That was my original point only a few hours ago. My question is since this is obviously the case, what is the path forward?
> 
> I think we can safely conclude at this point nobody knows. Nevertheless, I'd like to discuss the topic, because it's important to me and many others I'm sure.


Given what a bunch of people have said, I'd say the answer is to advertise, and build a mailing list, and keep writing.

Do you have a mailing list? Do you do AMS ads? Those would be good places to start, I think.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Do you have a mailing list? Do you do AMS ads?


My mailing list were the only people who bought my latest book. I have AMS ads with 460 keywords running right now.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Commercial success in indie publishing (for _most_ people, at least) requires using more than one tool. They include:

- write to market
- release frequently
- use covers that reflect genre
- create appealing descriptions
- use AMS/FB/BB ads
- maintain an email list
- participate in newsletter swaps
- use an ARC list to launch with positive reviews

No rational author would say "_Just write to market and you'll enjoy commercial success_." That'd be like saying, "Just join a $100 satellite and you'll win the World Series of Poker (h/t to Chris Moneymaker)." It can happen, but as general advice it's claptrap.

It's not that writing to market "has faded into history after 22 months." Writing to market is just giving an identified group of customers what they want to read. But it's just one ingredient. Commercial success requires more than one (again, for _most_ authors).

Doesn't mean an author _has_ to write to market to be commercially successful. There are lots of other tools to use. Mix and match. The point is, you're probably going to need to use more than one.


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

What is the path forward?

For crying out loud, advertise! Build that mailing list. Build that audience that will follow you after the apocalypse wipes out Amazon and you're now forced to survive from sales on Google Play... in Poland. 

But first and foremost, work on a product that people want to buy. Not as many books as possible, but make them as good as possible. The pretty cover, blurb and snazzy ad are just the veneer. Are people happy with the book? If they are, do they buy the next book in the series? If they do, do they like the next book in the series? If not, why not? If not, hire a developmental editor to fix where the series is not meeting reader expectations. If you have a series and your sellthrough and reviews are poor, the problem is always with the books.

Once you are satisfied that the books meet market expectations, advertise the hell out of them.

In my personal opinion following slavishly what someone says never gives results you want, no matter who this person is.


----------



## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

locking for review -- multiple reports.


Having had a chance to read through, we're re-opening the thread. Note that some comments have been edited or deleted. So consider this a warning and a reminder: name calling will not be tolerated, nor comments that seem intended to belittle. And criticism of a person or their work without having been invited to comment on it is bad form. (So far, I don't think anyone in this thread has asked for criticism of their work.  )

If the thread has to be locked again, it'll probably stay that way.


----------



## ibizwiz (Dec 25, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Anyone got a business plan for those of us without an R2 unit?


*Yes*.

But for a dozen or more reasons, it will be viewed as inapplicable to almost all fiction authors and Indie publishers. So I've chosen not to discuss it here. And will not until after at least a year of testing. I have fifty years of marketing experience and testing is what we do before we talk any details.

Why respond to Shane's post now, then? Because I am intensely empathetic with his plight, as I am with all the new writers wondering how and even if they can get a foothold on the slippery slopes of Mt. Amazon.

All I can say for now is a few conclusions I've reached after the past three years. We will not qualify for BookBubs. We will not go into Select. We will never spend money on AMS ads. We won't give away a single book permanently, or price it way down. We won't be sucked into the "people who want a book are in Amazon!" truism. We won't rely on bookstores that prevent us from learning our buyer's email address. We won't rely on a "product page" that has become a cesspool of competing interests, all with the purpose of selling something, anything! But not necessarily your thing. And we won't assume that today's genres are like some sort of religious order. Pray to play. Hah!

We're working overtime, seven days a week to put the new business model into effect. *IF* I'm satisfied with the final cover, ad, website, and reader communications images in two weeks, our maiden series of three full novels (270K total) will go global in all stores and our website next month.

And no, you won't be aware of it. We've designed a "stealth launch". Before we throw precious dollars at engaging readers who've never heard of us. But we'll be "visible" out of the gate to millions. You see, we're not selling books; we're offering entertainment.

This, after three sweaty years of research, trial publishing in KDP/Select, securing the funding, team building, double and triple editing, and months of endlessly frustrating post-production work. In parallel, months of painful audience research, working out a comprehensive "engagement" strategy using the best ideas of the brightest experts, finding a breakthrough in reader web page design, developing an innovative Facebook advertising strategy, coming up with a complex (to develop) but simple (to the reader prospects) pricing scheme, out-of-the-box ad designs and landing page copy, and what we hope will be a killer post-engagement reader community building strategy.

And since Shane asked, based on my decades of winning - and losing! - business, product, startup, and venture planning experience, designing a business model and launch plan that anticipates all the barriers I and my advisors can think of.

Oh, and the writing? Don't even ask. Many here are enviably proficient at writing fiction. But I often wonder what % here are writing "true" fiction, meaning stories set up in a made-up world. Romance, UF, YA, SciFi, thrillers, cozies, mysteries, paranormal whatever, fantasy, fantasy-historical, the list goes on?

I ask because we're publishing "truth" fiction, realistic stories set in the real, corrupt, mind-crushing, hope-burning, dream-killing world of right now, on the entire planet. Greed, lust, deceit, false promises, exploited women, betrayal, creepy corporations and the creeps who run them.

And writing it as a great big romantic comedy, in no way divine.

Clearly, I had no choice but to invent an alternative way to make and market books, because we're writing what the vast majority of people will never want to read.

So, first the books. Except, all you who ask yourself Shane's sincerely framed questions, it is NOT the books.

It's the audience That MUST come first. *Listen to Pattie Jansen*!

Very few authors define their audience first. They want to write a certain kind of story, and that's that. But the first rule of marketing is targeting: know who you're aiming to convert. The writers don't do this. They assume enough others share their taste. Or, they assume Amazon will "discover" their audience for them. Or they get caught up in spending money on advertising without doing the targeting properly. Or they simply don't care to do what the many successful authors here say: "write what people want to read." And therefore don't bother finding out what that is.

Many simply say "write to market" meaning to the parameters of some established, popular genre.

*We're writing to an audience, which is not at all the same thing as a genre*.

And yet, we're NOT writing what the vast majority of readers want to read! How can that make sense? Because I'm a marketer. While all of you are chasing the tiny proportion of reading adults who have time to waste in Amazon, looking for free or almost free books, I've focused on "discovering" the many tens of millions who are not finding what they want to spend their precious after-work hours consuming.

If our attempt to find and engage our audience fails, in a year, you'll know about it. And if it succeeds, likewise. I can't predict, either way.

What I *can* promise is that I'll never write a how-to book on this, or go into the "course" business.

Life is too short. Especially for an old monster like me.


----------



## Aloha (Jun 5, 2018)

GeneDoucette said:


> ...I'm more interested in the first thing: the market slowing down. I think the future of self-publishing is that it will become much harder to succeed quickly, and much harder to succeed at ALL if you are a mediocre writer.
> 
> I don't mean by this that the OP or anyone else IS a mediocre author; I mean that the industry allowed mediocrity to succeed for a long time....
> 
> ...


----------



## AliceS (Dec 28, 2014)

I'm reading along with interest because I'm there, too. What worked once never works the same way again. It's like that old saying about dancing faster so that when they pull the rug out from under you, you won't fall. I feel like every time I learn a new thing it's practically obsolete by the time I've tried to use it. A couple times I've had a great promo and think that I finally cracked that nut and in a week or two sales dwindle down again.

I've come to the conclusion that there is no plan, no logical steps up the ladder. The industry is changing and morphing faster than I can keep up with it. So I will stick to what I can control - keep writing to the best of my ability. Keep learning about marketing and try to get ahead of it.

And accept that my sales will be a rollercoaster, never an always increasing ziggurat to success. Sigh.


----------



## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Lorri Moulton said:


> Find readers who enjoy your books, grown an organic following and keep writing. Work the day job for a few more years and then retire. That's my plan, but I have an R2 unit staying in my barn...just in case.


This is my plan, too! *fist bump*

I've been eagerly reading this thread and do agree with the OP on one point: years ago, those of us who were innocent and fresh on scene read the advice of other authors and believed if we just did steps 1-10 that we would succeed quickly in this business. Of course that's totally unrealistic and now we know. Has it ever, though, been easy for writers throughout history? Just the other day I read an article about Louisa May Alcott and how she wrote pulp fiction in order to survive (Little Women was her passion project). We've always had to do what we've had to do. There has been no magic bullet, no easy road, no easy anything. No author here on Kboards has ever said this was easy. Sure, we've read success stories about authors who've put a book out that's done well and then they quit their day jobs. Gosh, those books resonated well with their audience though. It's hard writing a book like that!

OP: I'm not certain if you're just venting or pointing out flaws in the system or both...but just keep writing your stories because you love it. I'm sorry that your latest publication has sunk into obscurity. All I can say is to take it back to why you started writing in the first place. Your book is not a failure and neither do you suck. Making a living writing books has always been difficult. 6 figure writers work their freaking butts off.


----------



## PenNPaper (Apr 21, 2016)

What most people don't want to talk about is that at the heart of every successful writer is a great storyteller. If you can't tell a good story, readers aren't going to care about your great covers or snappy blurbs or rapid releases. And to make matters worse, if you pair a mediocre story with shoddy editing and/or poor formatting and just an okay cover, you're doomed.

Writing to market works great. But only if the story is good. Advertising does wonders. But only if the story is good. Rapid release is like printing money. But only if the--you get were I'm going with this, right?

So. Are your stories good?


----------



## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I'm wondering when, in recorded history, more than 2,000-3,000 writers have made six figures or more per year from book sales. (The best guess I've heard, based on Author Earnings and on Amazon saying there are 1,000 authors making six figures on Amazon alone.) 

When did people start thinking that anybody and everybody could earn at that level, and keep earning, by writing books? It's never been true. It will never be true. If it were, everybody in the United States would be quitting their day jobs to write books. 

Not everybody can play sports at a professional level, be a nuclear physicist, ride bulls in the rodeo, or support themselves by dancing, singing, acting, or visual arts, either. Even though most people know "how" to play baseball, ride a bike, dance, sing, and draw something, and can enjoy it mightily. My sister spent her entire career supporting herself as a professional dancer. My aunt spent some years as a professional flamenco dancer. That means I've probably got genetic gifts, right? HA. Good luck to me earning my living that way! 

As others have said above--you have to be able to tell a story people want to read, in a way that they enjoy reading it. Just because you haven't done that yet, though, in a breakout way, doesn't mean you can't. That's the tricky part. How do you know whether you're right around the corner from it, or whether you don't have that x factor at all? But it also doesn't mean that people who are doing that got where they are only through "luck," that somehow everybody has the same basic talent at it. Why would that be true, if it's not true for singing, dancing, or bull riding? That's not how humans work. We all have different talents, before you factor hard work into it. (That dancer sister of mine? She spent hours and hours a day on it from the age of 10 or so, putting in the kind of disciplined work that kids just normally don't do, all self-directed.)

All the marketing in the world won't sell a book people don't want to read, not beyond the first burst. However, if you get the book and the presentation right, marketing is much, much easier. 

How do you do that? All kinds of answers, from coloring firmly within the lines to striking out and doing something a little different, a little special, while still providing a satisfactory reading experience. There are all sorts of paths to success in this business, and no "one right answers." There are best practices, though. After that, it's on the books. And on continually striving to get better. There's not a lot of resting on your laurels in this business. You have to keep writing, and keep writing better, to grow your audience. And presenting better, too. It's a mature market, and what was good enough in 2012 isn't good enough now.


----------



## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Edward M. Grant said:


> Back in the days when I was still following the trade-publishing world, there would often be discussions about how many fiction writers made a living at writing in America, and they usually ended up with something in the region of 4,000. Of course, they probably didn't all make six figures, just enough to live on.
> 
> So, no, there's nothing unusual about the current situation. Odds are there are more writers making a living from writing today than there were ten years ago... just not that many more. I'd say the big difference today compared to five years ago is that it's much harder to make $1,000 a year than it was back then, because books either take off or don't.


The numbers basically double at each level, per Author Earnings. About 2,500 authors make $50,000+ per year just on their Amazon earnings, and nearly 5,000 make $25,000+, so you can figure it's quite a bit more overall. I'm pretty sure the number is higher than it was in the days of tradpub only, and that the number of writers who make GOOD money is significantly higher. I remember how shocked I was (since I started out indie publishing) to find out how many Harlequin authors, people who had books published every month or two, still had day jobs. That's changed, and that's wonderful.

Oh: Here's the May 2016 Author Earnings report that laid these numbers out, if anybody would like to see them. http://authorearnings.com/report/may-2016-report/


----------



## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

(All "yous" general, not aimed at any one person)

The world is awash in probabilities, but human neurology wants certainties. Human minds would like "do A, get B." The closest we usually come is "Do A, get B nearly all of the time."

As soon as we enter into the world of business, which is really just an impossibly complex arena of probabilities that happen to involve commerce, nothing is ever certain again. The best we can do is say "Do A, get B most of the time."

But there's what's called metaprobability, and second-order, third-order and higher effects. Let's take AMS as just one example. A second-order probability to using AMS is the possibility that Amazon tweaks the algo, and "Do A, get B" changes underfoot--at the very time that the first-order probabilities change, creating a multiplied variability where you can't unravel what just happened, and never will. Then there's the possibilities of third-order and beyond effects, such as Amazon suddenly suspending your account, and fourth-order possibilities, such as the AMS servers getting hacked or flooded or hit by a meteorite--and so on and so on. And this is an extremely simple example.

Now multiply that by every single arena of indie publishing, every process that intersects, multiplied by every other piece of life that affects us--and probabilities change radically.

But they never really disappear. They just change.

So, if the strategy outlined by the OP "doesn't work" anymore, it merely means maybe the odds have dropped significantly--not that it's impossible to beat the odds. So, arguing that something "doesn't work anymore" is always a false argument, and should be called out, as people have above. But that doesn't mean there's not truth to the idea that strategies get harder (and easier) all the time. In fact, they never stop changing.

So we see, the two ends of the spectrum are always false, and in fact, for anyone who wants to stick around in this business, they need to be avoided and repudiated--the two ends being "This always works" and "this never works." The OP argues in his original post, essentially, "This never works" (anymore). False, of course. But he's identified an obvious truth, if overstated: that "This always works" is also false.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, by definition. The real trick is

1) figuring out the odds,

2) playing the odds so that you have a decent chance of making it,

3) don't play only one set of odds (diversification)--even if you're all-in with KU, there are other ways to spread your bets, such as multiple marketing avenues, translations, etc--

4) hedging your bets by being prepared to change, quickly if necessary

5) keeping a healthy reserve of both time and money (don't overcommit yourself in either time or money)--both for business, and personal use

6) not seeing a setback as cause for despair

7) if nothing seems to be working, keep looking for other strategies or tactics and be willing to change, because obviously some people are being successful

 if you just can't deal with it any more--quit! Yes, quit, or at least quit pouring effort into something that's destroying your happiness. Step back and look at life and decide to do something entirely different. Much of life is subtractive--figuring out what NOT to do. Maybe indie publishing should not be the focus of your life. Maybe it should just be a hobby. Not everybody will succeed commercially, no matter what they do. Or, they might succeed for a while, and then not succeed later. Look at juggernauts of business that have nevertheless gone the way of dinosaurs.

See: Who Moved My Cheese. https://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Mazing-ebook/dp/B004CR6AM4


----------



## MyCatDoesNotConsent (Sep 11, 2017)

I do not consent.

Cupcake ipsum dolor sit amet sesame snaps chocolate cake. Chocolate chupa chups powder pudding ice cream caramels caramels. Sweet drag�e cupcake jelly beans biscuit topping. Lollipop lollipop chocolate cake. Cheesecake cupcake tootsie roll sugar plum ice cream chocolate cake jelly dessert gingerbread. Sesame snaps croissant pastry apple pie gingerbread sesame snaps carrot cake halvah. Pudding chocolate jujubes bonbon biscuit pastry biscuit icing. Marzipan gummies gingerbread sweet roll dessert. Muffin jujubes biscuit tiramisu cupcake brownie dessert cupcake cheesecake. Sweet roll sweet roll carrot cake sesame snaps. Icing lemon drops chocolate cake cupcake toffee croissant croissant icing. Tiramisu donut caramels.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

David VanDyke said:


> (All "yous" general, not aimed at any one person)
> 
> ...
> 
> See: Who Moved My Cheese. https://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Mazing-ebook/dp/B004CR6AM4


I think my intelligence just doubled.


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

David VanDyke said:


> if you just can't deal with it anymore--quit! Yes, quit, or at least quit pouring effort into something that's destroying your happiness. Step back and look at life and decide to do something entirely different.


That's the toughest call of all. You've given it your best, used all of the marketing gimmicks, your covers and blurbs have been peer-reviewed and approved, and at the end of a couple years, you have eight books ranking in the millions. Ouch.

So when should you call it quits? My guess is, two years is long enough to know whether writing will work for you as a livelihood. Things didn't click for me until I was seven months in. If things hadn't turned around, I doubt I would have lasted a year.


----------



## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Dpock said:


> That's the toughest call of all. You've given it your best, used all of the marketing gimmicks, your covers and blurbs have been peer-reviewed and approved, and at the end of a couple years, you have eight books ranking in the millions. Ouch.
> 
> So when should you call it quits? My guess is, two years is long enough to know whether writing will work for you as a livelihood. Things didn't click for me until I was seven months in. If things hadn't turned around, I doubt I would have lasted a year.


A year? Really? I suppose to each their own but that doesn't sound like a very fair timeline to reach an audience or build a strong back list.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Cassie Leigh said:


> If I write Book A and I write Book B and Book A is written to a hungry market and hits the needs of that market, it is going to more easily get visibility than Book B which is my own little mash-up of ten genres that hits all my buttons and no one else's. People will actually be looking for Book A whereas I have to put a lot more effort into getting Book B in front of those people. (I recently wrote a whole book about my thoughts on all of this called Achieve Writing Success if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of my thoughts on writing to market and the role of advertising, etc.)
> 
> IMO any book will benefit from advertising because there are always going to be those readers who aren't actively looking for that book who will give it a shot if you get in front of them. But some need it more than others.
> 
> ...


In all fairness, a new writer who tried the Amanda method would not see nearly as much success today in 2018, because the market is much more crowded. It may also fail in other genres. You can always apply general principles from another author's success, but the specifics might not work. A good friend makes tons from her AMS ads and can't get FB ads to work for her paid titles whereas I can't get AMS working for me and I'm very heavy on FB ads.

There are many very business savvy people amongst successful authors. IME, successful authors who aren't business savvy tend to have much more erratic incomes, and they usually started when things were less competitive. On 2018, authors can't afford to do things blindly if they want to make a living.


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Rose Andrews said:


> A year? Really? I suppose to each their own but that doesn't sound like a very fair timeline to reach an audience or build a strong backlist.


It took a lot of grit to get through seven months of crickets, but sure, everyone is different. What timeline _would_ you use to measure success or failure? I'm curious.


----------



## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Dpock said:


> It took a lot of grit to get through seven months of crickets, but sure, everyone is different. What timeline _would_ you use to measure success or failure? I'm curious.


I don't have a timeline. Writing and publishing books is what I've dreamed of since I was in the 3rd grade. You could say that I am living my dream right now even though I have to freelance in order to fill in the financial gaps. Also, my husband makes a good wage. I am very fortunate to have made back the investment costs I went into for covers and editing initially-- but even when I was working full time and in college I still wrote. So I'll probably never quit unless my hands fall off.


----------



## jb1111 (Apr 6, 2018)

The main problem with analyzing things like this is that every author's idea of success is different, every author's expectations are different, and not every author is cut out to play the marketing game the same way.

A lot of indie authors seem to really get into the formula: write to market (whatever that is -- I think the definition truly changes from author to author), release a certain way, ARC's, newsletters, mailing lists, AMS, blah blah blah. But as we all know, even doing all of those things is not going to guarantee sales.

I think the core task of an author is to make sure one's book is well written, and make sure it appeals to the readers you either want to attract, or the ones you want to keep. Also make sure it starts out with enough of a bang to get a new reader's interest, and is also able to maintain such interest. One should also make sure it's a genre the author actually likes.

Of course, these things go without saying. The problem is that indie publishing is a business, and often the other business-related things can sometimes get in the way of the core task.

I'm not saying the OP hasn't done this: his products look fine. I'm just speaking generically here.

Another factor in success in any venture is luck. I think luck plays more of a part than mentioned in this thread so far. You can tweak luck, but you can only tweak it so far. Some ventures -- books included -- are just going to fizzle for some reason. The book buying public are not something you can just play by pulling on a chain, or pushing a button, and telling them "buy!" They often have their own ideas.

I also think some genres may be a little more stable than others. I'm not sure how it is in the sci-fi, LitPRG or whatever worlds, but in some genres perhaps there is a little more stability available for authors to establish themselves.

I've had good months and bad months, good years and poor years, books that sold well and others that didn't sell so well. I keep my expectations a bit lower than many, probably because of that.


----------



## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Dpock said:


> It took a lot of grit to get through seven months of crickets, but sure, everyone is different. What timeline _would_ you use to measure success or failure? I'm curious.


I know this wasn't addressed to me, but my skewed perspective measures it against not having any readers for six years. That's the time between when my first agent couldn't sell my novel (Immortal), and when it was first indie-published and people started buying it. This is a roundabout way of saying the fact that we CAN now self-publish and sell books directly to the readers without an agent/publisher combo getting involved remains a vast improvement over the manuscript sitting in a drawer, unsold and unread, for years or forever.


----------



## VirginiaMcClain (Sep 24, 2014)

David VanDyke said:


> (All "yous" general, not aimed at any one person)
> 
> The world is awash in probabilities, but human neurology wants certainties. Human minds would like "do A, get B." The closest we usually come is "Do A, get B nearly all of the time."
> 
> ...


Sensible.


----------



## LL2018 (Jun 9, 2018)

Deleted.


----------



## R. C. (Apr 13, 2018)

VirginiaMcClain said:


> Sensible.


Sensible is sensible.

Cheers,
Ruairi


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> Odds are there are more writers making a living from writing today than there were ten years ago... just not that many more.


Amazon has a list of every single person alive who wants to buy your book, plus their e-mail address and credit card number. Yet they charge you by the click to find those people again on your own.


----------



## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

kw3000 said:


> I'm on a 50-year plan to succeed by lightning strike.
> 
> I'm going to write something so glorious that it can't be ignored and will require zero marketing or much effort on my part outside of hitting 'Publish'. All it takes is that one magnificent idea, that one story premise that readers will marvel over so vociferously they'll raise me up on their shoulders like a golden idol of storytelling, thrusting me into mega-bestsellerdom based on the strength of my out-sized intellect alone.
> 
> Uh, yeah, check back with me in 2068 and see how that went.


This is *my* business plan, who snitched?


----------



## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


----------



## M.W. Griffith (Oct 13, 2015)

Let me help you out here.  Nobody has the answer.  At least, not yet.  You want a new strategy?  Create one.


----------



## BonafideDreamer (Jul 22, 2018)

ibizwiz said:


> *Yes*.
> 
> But for a dozen or more reasons, it will be viewed as inapplicable to almost all fiction authors and Indie publishers. So I've chosen not to discuss it here. And will not until after at least a year of testing. I have fifty years of marketing experience and testing is what we do before we talk any details.
> 
> ...


Whatever you're working on sounds very interesting!


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

LeanneLeeds said:


> When you start up a business, in the first year you almost always lose money. In the second year, you start to profit somewhere. The third year, generally, you start to make back the buckets of cash you invested in the first year to try and make profitability in the second. So, to me, profitability at 18 months is a good, average expectation.
> 
> I'm often kind of surprised that author/owners expect profitability faster than any other business would be generally expected to have it. Maybe it's just because I came from the business world.


Yeah, I've never really warmed to the "it's a business" idea. Hopefully, it becomes one, but it's not such a useful concept starting out. You don't yet know if you've got a product (talent) and a market (audience) to sell to until you've got a few books up and have tested the waters.

After a year, if your rankings wallow in the millions (and you've done all the right marketing stuff), there's no reason to assume a bounty is sure to come by year three or even year five.

In fact, thinking so could be counterproductive. Patience is not a virtue here. You need to figure out--right now--how to get those first books moving off the digital shelves. Your rankings are like the stock market as they indicate the perceived "market" value of your shelf. It is not useful to pretend otherwise.

But low rankings could just mean the shelf hasn't attracted the right eyeballs.

That was my problem. I didn't know my audience. It took a fourth book to turn the tide, along with major rewriting of the first three and massive retargeting. Time only proved how misguided I'd been initially, which means it was wasted. I should have responded to low sales by the second month, not the seventh. If instead, I'd told myself, "Oh, be patient now, you've got a three-plan", I'd still be harvesting crickets.

Once I had a good cash flow is when I said, well, I've got a business now. I'd better make some spreadsheets and forecasts. You can't forecast anything accurately until you've gauged your talent and have found your market.

You can play around, of course, using sales calculators to figure out how much you'd make if you had ten books ranking at #10,000 on Amazon. I did a ton of that.

The reality is, holding one book at a rank of #10k is no cake walk. I could have thrown my first book out my window and found more readers. A three-year plan wouldn't have been useful. It would have obscured the truth. My books weren't going to sell unless I responded urgently.


----------



## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

I've seen some misunderstanding about how Chris actually defined WTM. So a few clarifications:

WTM means finding an underserved genre _that you enjoy as well._ Chris explicitly said in his book that you need to find that intersection between what you enjoy and what readers want. Trend-chasing is just looking at whatever's popular and jumping on the bandwagon regardless of whether or not you like it.

Nowhere in WTM did Chris ever say that all you had to do was write books in an underserved genre and you'd be successful. Advertising is still necessary. Competitive pricing strategy is still necessary. Mailing lists and strategies to get readers on those lists are still necessary. Good covers that fit the genre are still necessary.

You can't just put out a book in a popular genre and then sit back and expect Amazon to do all the work for you. In his books, Chris repeatedly talked about using smart advertising to get the right authors in your genre into your also-boughts so that the Amazon algorithms will start recognizing you.

OP, if your books aren't selling, then you need to start by taking a hard, critical look at your books. How are your books priced compared to others in the genre? How do your covers compare? What advertising are you doing? Pointing fingers at others might feel cathartic, but it's not going to increase your sales by a single cent.


----------



## spellscribe (Nov 5, 2015)

LeanneLeeds said:


> When you start up a business, in the first year you almost always lose money. In the second year, you start to profit somewhere. The third year, generally, you start to make back the buckets of cash you invested in the first year to try and make profitability in the second. So, to me, profitability at 18 months is a good, average expectation.
> 
> I'm often kind of surprised that author/owners expect profitability faster than any other business would be generally expected to have it. Maybe it's just because I came from the business world.


I need to keep reminding myself of this. I was in the Black the day my second book came out - so, 60 days into publishing. I've never listed a loss on my tax return. I started slow and I spent carefully, probably at the expense of much faster growth.

When I kick myself for not being further along, this is something I need to keep in mind


----------



## Bodie Dykstra (Jul 21, 2017)

Perry Constantine said:


> OP, if your books aren't selling, then you need to start by taking a hard, critical look at your books. How are your books priced compared to others in the genre? How do your covers compare? What advertising are you doing? Pointing fingers at others might feel cathartic, but it's not going to increase your sales by a single cent.


This. This is the answer. If the product isn't selling, there's probably an issue with the product. I'm avid reader of military science fiction---it's my favorite genre and one I specialize in editing---and I consider myself firmly in OP's target audience. But I haven't bought any of his books. And I probably never will. There are several reasons for that besides the issue of visibility on Amazon.


----------



## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Those who think that following a formula entitles them to a certain amount of success, in any field, are always going to be bitterly disappointed.

Writing and marketing books isn't a step-by-step process to earn riches.

The premise is: _not every book has an audience. _

The write-to-market strategy is a broad concept of tailoring what you want to write to the largest segment of potential readers... to think that strategy is "over" is adorable.

Writing to market is common sense if you want to sell books.


----------



## writerlygal (Jul 23, 2017)

I agree that due to a changing self publishing market and Amazon having more & more control over that market, it is hard now to sell books organically. The best way is to advertise & market well, both so that you can continue to build up a following and also so that the newest books do well. For me, marketing & packaging has made all the difference. Self publishing is truly a business in which these things count just as much or if not more than the art or craft of writing.


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

MyraScott said:


> The premise is: _not every book has an audience. _


To a degree, but a lot depends on whether you're selling plots or your voice. I don't care what my favorite authors write about, and read everything they write, even if the topic isn't on my list.


----------



## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Shelley K said:


> Most successes in indie publishing, and everything else, have spent more than a year getting there. Often considerably more.


I agree.


----------



## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

Shelley K said:


> Most successes in indie publishing, and everything else, have spent more than a year getting there. Often considerably more.


Most successful *authors* in indie publishing have spent more than a year getting there, but not most successful *books* in indie publishing. I could be wrong, but I think Dpock was talking specifically about books. As in if your book is still in phone number rankings after a few years and you have been marketing it that whole time, you shouldn't expect it to suddenly start selling. Instead, you should work on new books. That's what most successful authors have done. They put out a book (or a series), it failed, and then they put out another one. And another and another and another.


----------



## LL2018 (Jun 9, 2018)

Deleted.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Indie publishing moves fast. Having a specific plan more than 6-12 months out is more a hindrance than a help. You need a general direction, but you need to keep things loose enough that you can pivot if necessary.


----------



## Rafael Pombo (Aug 7, 2018)

My plan is to keep throwing money at the computer screen and see what happens.

Also: writing.


----------



## Rafael Pombo (Aug 7, 2018)

Nicholas said:


> You hear a lot in these forums about how to tickle the Amazon algorithm, how often to release, how to perfect AMS etc. It's true that the more actionable and effective those strategies are, the more likely they are to be crowded out. But I still believe the vast majority of potential remains untouched.
> 
> What I don't hear as much of is how to *master Instagram for selling books*. That's how the milk and honey book (rupi kaur) managed to become Amazon's 2nd best selling book of 2017. Two years from now we're all going to be complaining about how we didn't take advantage of the golden age of marketing books on Instagram. You don't hear people talking about fresh ways to use Reddit, which has hundreds of millions of monthly readers and is largely untapped. *You don't hear people talking so much about building relationships with Youtube book reviewers.* It's easier than you think. Or how to market your book to influencers rather than readers. You don't hear about Medium or Quora.
> 
> When it comes to book marketing, we're still in the dark ages.


Curiously, that's much more common here in Brazil. Amazon still doesn't allow ads for books written in Portuguese, so indie authors here rely heavily on Instagram and YouTube book reviewers. Bookstagrammers and booktubers, as I think they are called.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Nicholas said:


> You hear a lot in these forums about how to tickle the Amazon algorithm, how often to release, how to perfect AMS etc. It's true that the more actionable and effective those strategies are, the more likely they are to be crowded out. But I still believe the vast majority of potential remains untouched.
> 
> What I don't hear as much of is how to master Instagram for selling books. That's how the milk and honey book (rupi kaur) managed to become Amazon's 2nd best selling book of 2017. Two years from now we're all going to be complaining about how we didn't take advantage of the golden age of marketing books on Instagram. You don't hear people talking about fresh ways to use Reddit, which has hundreds of millions of monthly readers and is largely untapped. You don't hear people talking so much about building relationships with Youtube book reviewers. It's easier than you think. Or how to market your book to influencers rather than readers. You don't hear about Medium or Quora.
> 
> When it comes to book marketing, we're still in the dark ages.


Or maybe the audience isn't there? My readers are definitely not on Reddit. Maybe some are on Instagram, but it's not really the ideal platform for my genre (too young and too hip). Plenty of people are doing Instagram ads btw. You can serve your FB ads on Instagram.


----------



## LL2018 (Jun 9, 2018)

Deleted.


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

I think the major thing that people dance around in these discussions is that in order for marketing, any marketing, innovative or not, to make a decent return, you first need to have a book, but preferably a catalogue of books, that people want to buy. Often you will see success attributed to "marketing genius" but nope, that "genius" (or WTM or write to trend, for that matter) was worth nothing if there wasn't a product that a decent number of people found attractive.

That means:
- It has to look attractive (aka "packaging": cover, blurb, look inside)
- It has to be shown to the correct audience (targeting ads)

But that's just for an initial flurry of sales.

But most importantly of all (and rarely talked about here), it needs to satisfy those who have already bought it. Because word of mouth is still the most important, but most nebulous, way in which people find out about books.

Now it would be really easy to just throw up your (general you) hands and call everyone meanies who just hate certain books and enjoy pissing on authors, and it's all because the big bad bully Amazon favouring people who already sell and, you know, ALGORITHMS. You can scream on social media: OMG they're all saying my book sucks, they're such terrible people. But TBH it misses the point by about thirty lightyears.

Alternatively, you can take a long step away from the keyboard and try to figure out, clinically and methodically, where a particular book is going off the rails. When you've interpreted what's happening and the likely cause, you can then shrug and chalk it up to experience, keep it in your catalogue and try to do better next time, or you can pull it and get some people in to help fix it. 

The crux is that you really can't go on an emotional injured swan rampage blaming everyone except the book, because it teaches you (general you again) nothing.

Few people are natural storytellers. It's a skill that needs to be learned. I know of no one who has never benefited from a continued craft learning process.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

ParkerAvrile said:


> Reddit readers BUY books. They are great fans for people who sell to people who want to BUY and own something and re-read it many times. Think vinyl music buyers, think offering something special someone wants to possess. And that's enough clues.
> 
> I agree with the OP's original premise that hunting up some random supposedly underserved niche that anybody else can find just as easily with various tools for sale & then writing that & hoping to profit is no longer a profitable strategy. That was always a gold rush time-limited grab. If you want to sell YOUR books at the price YOU choose, you will have to become something special. I might be an acquired taste but _my_ readers can't find another author with Parker's voice by thumbing through KU. Same for my other authors/pens. They are unique. If somebody wants THEM, no free substitute on KU will do.


Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if Reddit ads were good for sci-fi/Fantasy but there's no way they work for romance based on my experiences browsing Reddit.

There is merit to trying different strategies, but you need to be selective about it. You can't do everything.


----------



## memememe (Feb 16, 2016)

David VanDyke said:


> (All "yous" general, not aimed at any one person)
> 
> The world is awash in probabilities, but human neurology wants certainties. Human minds would like "do A, get B." The closest we usually come is "Do A, get B nearly all of the time."
> 
> ...


Poetic and profound. I've just found a new person to stalk follow


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Lorri Moulton said:


> This. All day long. Word of mouth sells books.


Yeah, but sales drive word of mouth. The more people who read your book, the more people who recommended your book. There always has to be some initial visibility.


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Crystal_ said:


> Yeah, but sales drive word of mouth. The more people who read your book, the more people who recommended your book. There always has to be some initial visibility.


That's what you do with your ads. You expand your audience to new people. If you've done your job well and the book is satisfying, then word of mouth will start rolling and aiding your ads.


----------



## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

As others have said, if my books weren't catching I would first take a long look at my writing and do everything I could to find out what wasn't working. If I'd done any marketing and just got crickets I would blame MYSELF not Amazon or anyone else.

This is a business and it's VERY competitive. I just got my second bookbub one month ago and still seeing double digits books sales daily (I'm wide. This month I've gone from 3-10 Amazon sales per day plus a combination of Kobo, B&N, and ibooks).

A lot of those sales are read through to books two and three. If I was more dedicated I would have already finished book four and my ROI would be even higher. That's my bad, not Amazon. I occupy shelfspace in their "store" but I need to bring people to it...if I do they MIGHT help a little.

No guarantees. Enjoy the ride.


----------



## smikeo (Dec 1, 2014)

Dpock said:


> That's the toughest call of all. You've given it your best, used all of the marketing gimmicks, your covers and blurbs have been peer-reviewed and approved, and at the end of a couple years, you have eight books ranking in the millions. Ouch.
> 
> So when should you call it quits? My guess is, two years is long enough to know whether writing will work for you as a livelihood. Things didn't click for me until I was seven months in. If things hadn't turned around, I doubt I would have lasted a year.


It took me almost two years until one of my books actually sold enough to earn out. I didn't know I was so close to the edge


----------



## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

Nicholas said:


> You hear a lot in these forums about how to tickle the Amazon algorithm, how often to release, how to perfect AMS etc. It's true that the more actionable and effective those strategies are, the more likely they are to be crowded out. But I still believe the vast majority of potential remains untouched.
> 
> What I don't hear as much of is how to master Instagram for selling books. That's how the milk and honey book (rupi kaur) managed to become Amazon's 2nd best selling book of 2017. Two years from now we're all going to be complaining about how we didn't take advantage of the golden age of marketing books on Instagram. You don't hear people talking about fresh ways to use Reddit, which has hundreds of millions of monthly readers and is largely untapped. You don't hear people talking so much about building relationships with Youtube book reviewers. It's easier than you think. Or how to market your book to influencers rather than readers. You don't hear about Medium or Quora.
> 
> When it comes to book marketing, we're still in the dark ages.


The reason you don't hear about these things is because people haven't cracked that nut yet. It doesn't mean they're not trying, it just means they're not sharing their failures. I've tried my hand at Twitter and Reddit ads a few times, but the results have always been crickets. So I'm not going to write a post about how much I suck at Twitter and Reddit ads. I've tried Instagram ads through Facebook ads, but those have always gotten almost zero clicks.

Could I find a way to make those things work? Possibly. But right now I've got some things that are working for me and with a finite amount of hours in the day, there's only so much time I can devote to this stuff.


----------



## LD (Aug 29, 2018)

I feel like OP has made some very big jumps in his conclusions.  Writing to market has always been around and will always be around.  This is why it's so hard for people going the traditional route.  They may have a great book, great writing style, but they can still get turned down due to it not being marketable.  

It doesn't matter if you have a stellar hit on your first book.  It doesn't matter if it carried through to the next book or the next or the next.  Each new book you put out has to grab the readers.  Just as easily as you gained a fan, you can just as easily lose them.  If your sales are not what you were hoping, you really need to first take a good, HONEST look at your books and/or your marketing.  YOU may think your books are hitting all the marks, but do the readers think that?  If you're following trends, you might miss the little nuances that make up what the readers look for, just because you're not as familiar with the market as you think you are.  No, following trends is not the same as writing to market, and what you are doing is writing to trend, not writing to market.  It also does have a shorter lifespan of writing a profitable book.


----------



## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

I just launched a pen name with no mailing list out of KU that has made me nearly $5K in three weeks. I'm not telling you what genre it was in. Y'all already know about it. Other people have reported success with it. It's a niche, though, and if everyone pours in there, it will all stop working.

That's why, I think, WTM doesn't "work" anymore, at least in some genres/niches. Once a niche gets crowded, and it's all with books that are ticking the boxes, then you're just drowned out by the crowd. I also think that some people write slick-looking books with the right blurbs and covers that aren't actually written to the market. But these books, unless they break the genre hard, are still successful, sometimes more so, because they are usually launched by people willing to spend lots of money. 

Lots of you guys know me. I had a huge hit in NA romance back in 2013, made five figures a month for a few months and then it all died and I was back to making $700 a month nine months later. I puttered along until 2016, when I broke out in UF, again started making five figures a month for a while and that faded. Luckily, I had a hit in thrillers right after that. Cue amazing money for a while. 

Then crickets. 

I think these kinds of crashes happen to a lot of authors. Most of them give up.

I'm not much of a giver upper. So, I just keep trying stuff until I figure it out again. Never give up. Never surrender. Never stop writing. Also, I should add that I lurve writing. The actual act of it. I love that part. So, I'd be doing that anyway, even if it wasn't making money. But it's cooler when it does.


----------



## Aloha (Jun 5, 2018)

Phoenix61 said:


> ...I believe success(monetary), in any creative venture comes down to basically two major components--trends and saturation...
> A genre or genres become saturated when the trend slants in a particular direction. I hear many authors on here espousing the commonly accepted truisms that certain tropes should be followed in order to gain success as a writer. To my mind, that may be true to a certain extent, but does that not generate a type of cookie-cutter fiction? Maybe forcing the readers to accept it as the gold standard?...
> 
> ... With that many anglers/authors, the fish will certainly be more choosy. .. . No amount of marketing will guarantee you that readers remember your work...


But there is always, always, always an audience for mediocrity. It does not matter whether they prefer music, movies, TV, plays, or books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yog8qXhQR2U


----------



## Trioxin 245 (Dec 29, 2017)

Here is some general advice about WTM,Advertising and so on from my own experience. I have been writing less than a year so do with it what you want.

Guru Bob writes a book entitled "77 steps to the top of the bestseller list'." Loads of people buy it, soon its discussed on message boards and everyone swears by it. It sounds great then reality hits. You did every single step and your launches are failing. You write Guru Bob and he tells you stick with it, which you do, because* 'his plan' *must work for you since it worked for him. And that is where it all falls apart. IMO most of those type of books should help you steer away from what you shouldn't be doing rather than what you should be doing. Depends how you interpret the data.

You can follow all 77 steps (instead of developing your own plan) but if your writing fails, it doesn't matter. Its one of the reasons why people spend thousands on ads with less than stellar returns. The hot genre atm could be 'Alien Hookers on weight loss program Romance'. Its a hungry market and you can charge 5.99 a book. But then the reviews come in, and no one is buying your second book. Nor the third. To sum it up, this is about a product, and you can wrap it up in a four hundred dollar cover, a fancy blurb and your cousin and grandmas glowing 5 star review. But when the customer opens that product and you did not deliver what you promised, its over.


----------



## mike h (Dec 6, 2017)

valeriec80 said:
 

> I just launched a pen name with no mailing list out of KU that has made me nearly $5K in three weeks. I'm not telling you what genre it was in. Y'all already know about it. Other people have reported success with it. It's a niche, though, and if everyone pours in there, it will all stop working.


I checked out the opening to _Witch Slap_. Great voice.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> That's what you do with your ads. You expand your audience to new people. If you've done your job well and the book is satisfying, then word of mouth will start rolling and aiding your ads.


My point is word of mouth isn't happening unless you already have sales. A lot of people will imply that a good book is all it takes because word of mouth. But you always need those initial sales and, in most cases, you need to be the one making that happen.

A book not selling isn't reflective of its quality (or even the quality of its packaging) if it has no visibility. Now, a book not getting sellthrough, that indicates a quality problem. But sales are much more about visibility and packaging than anything else.


----------



## m123xyz (Oct 16, 2015)

really interesting/informative thread. 

From my POV nothing actually "works" for 98% of authors. If 100 authors wrote to market, had amazing covers, stored 5 books then rapid released, AMS yada yada. maybe 1-5 would make enough to earn a salary. That would actually be an interesting experiment and I think sort of the idea behind 20books/50k.

That said, the other 98% will probably make more than would've without doing those things. 

This may be a bit of a "tip of spear" type conversation about what will work...next.

Hopefully it will provide insight. 

thanks for the good read


----------



## AjaxMinoan (Oct 30, 2011)

I got my own market strategy. If it ever works I will tell you all about it. Only sold about ten books so far.


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

m123xyz said:


> From my POV nothing actually "works" for 98% of authors.


Maybe 90% (I think there are plenty making $10 grand a year and happy with that. To them, it works).

I suspect 89% of Amazon indies make no money at all but are happy seeing their books on the site, love having a few hard copies on their shelves to show friends, can claim they are "authors", etc. They get to participate in forums, do cover reveals, kick around their blurbs. Whether they sell isn't that important.

What they would do if self-publishing didn't exist I cannot say. They have certainly affected the zeitgeist from a numbers perspective, but how that affects those aiming for sales and a viable livelihood is probably irrelevant. In my view, the real battleground is between #1 and #300,000 in the rankings.


----------



## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

memememe said:


> Poetic and profound. I've just found a new person to stalk follow


I cobble from Taleb. If you really want to, read his books. Amazing stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/Nassim-Nicholas-Taleb/e/B000APVZ7W


----------



## jb1111 (Apr 6, 2018)

m123xyz said:


> From my POV nothing actually "works" for 98% of authors. If 100 authors wrote to market, had amazing covers, stored 5 books then rapid released, AMS yada yada. maybe 1-5 would make enough to earn a salary.


You could say that about a lot of artistic products. When I worked in the broadcast business, every day lots of product would show up -- all well recorded, excellent covers and packaging, and most of it was similar quality (passable for the genres), yet not everything got on the air. In fact, most of the CD's probably didn't.

Then you had those that were added and flopped. I suppose an artist could go "wow, my record got on the air!", but that wouldn't necessarily translate over to monetary success.

There are no guarantees in making money off your art.


----------



## Jack Krenneck (Feb 9, 2014)

m123xyz said:


> really interesting/informative thread.
> 
> From my POV nothing actually "works" for 98% of authors. If 100 authors wrote to market, had amazing covers, stored 5 books then rapid released, AMS yada yada. maybe 1-5 would make enough to earn a salary. That would actually be an interesting experiment and I think sort of the idea behind 20books/50k.
> 
> ...


I think, doing all the things you mention, the ratio might actually be four out of five (there's always an element of luck).

In practice though, people think they're writing to market...but they don't quite nail it. They have a good cover...but maybe it's not spot on for the genre. They believe they have a good blurb...but it could be tweaked. They do AMS...but the ads aren't optimized. Etc.

In short, there are no secrets to success. The ingredients are quite simple and readily available. The hard part is getting them all going at the same time and _nailing _ them.


----------



## Caimh (May 8, 2016)

Write to market strikes me as more of a short-term tactic than a long-term strategy. That's fine if you understand that. It's like investing in more volatile stocks. As long as you can pivot and be constantly willing to chase the next thing, then I'm sure you can do well doing it if you can crank out decent books in those genres. Personally, it doesn't strike me as much fun. I believe in taking as much time as you need to write the very best book you can and then every kind of marketing becomes easier. I also believe in taking the long-term view about growing your list and more importantly engaging with it meaningfully. Again, I see too many people thinking their list is something they activate when a book comes out and then money falls from the sky. It isn't - it is a relationship. 
I think a lot of things get warped because of the thing that you really don't hear said enough in the self-publishing space - how good is the book? I believe that you have to be indistinguishable from a trad published book to have longterm success. I work in stand-up comedy - there's none of the belief there that people who work hard deserve a living. The belief is that people who work hard and are good enough deserve a living. I don't mean that to sound harsh - and I'm not referring to anyone in particular's work, this is just where I think a lot of indies go wrong. The idea that anyone can make a living if they produce X books or write in Y genre is a false god and I think it is hurting more people than it helps.


----------



## jb1111 (Apr 6, 2018)

Jack Krenneck said:


> In short, there are no secrets to success. The ingredients are quite simple and readily available. The hard part is getting them all going at the same time and _nailing _ them.


It's ironic, I read a bio of President Lyndon Baines Johnson and his mantra was "if every single detail is covered, success is guaranteed."

Yet I think we've all seen where that simply isn't the case. You can tweak your luck, but there just aren't any guarantees.

Of course, the opposite -- just throw something out there, and hope it flies -- doesn't work well, either.


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Caimh said:


> Write to market strikes me as more of a short-term tactic than a long-term strategy. That's fine if you understand that. It's like investing in more volatile stocks. As long as you can pivot and be constantly willing to chase the next thing, then I'm sure you can do well doing it if you can crank out decent books in those genres. Personally, it doesn't strike me as much fun. I believe in taking as much time as you need to write the very best book you can and then every kind of marketing becomes easier. I also believe in taking the long-term view about growing your list and more importantly engaging with it meaningfully. Again, I see too many people thinking their list is something they activate when a book comes out and then money falls from the sky. It isn't - it is a relationship.
> I think a lot of things get warped because of the thing that you really don't hear said enough in the self-publishing space - how good is the book? I believe that you have to be indistinguishable from a trad published book to have longterm success. I work in stand-up comedy - there's none of the belief there that people who work hard deserve a living. The belief is that people who work hard and are good enough deserve a living. I don't mean that to sound harsh - and I'm not referring to anyone in particular's work, this is just where I think a lot of indies go wrong. The idea that anyone can make a living if they produce X books or write in Y genre is a false god and I think it is hurting more people than it helps.


That is writing to trend, not writing to market. If you truly write to market then you have an evergreen backlist. People conflate writing to trend and writing to market all the time. They are not remotely the same thing.


----------



## Caimh (May 8, 2016)

I honestly don't know what the difference is supposed to be. Is Writing to Market finding an permanently underserved subgenre whereas writing to trend finding a temporarily underserved subgenre? Is the concept of writing to market as opposed to trend just to find a continuously popular genre? As I'm not sure how that differs to what people have been trying to do since the book was invented.


----------



## Cookie Monster (Apr 6, 2014)

Caimh said:


> I honestly don't know what the difference is supposed to be. Is Writing to Market finding an permanently underserved subgenre whereas writing to trend finding a temporarily underserved subgenre? Is the concept of writing to market as opposed to trend just to find a continuously popular genre? As I'm not sure how that differs to what people have been trying to do since the book was invented.


Writing to market has nothing to do with underserved genres; it's about writing a genre book with strong commercial appeal, one that will continue to attract readers for years. Writing to trend is writing stepbrother romance or reverse harem or LitRPG when they are trendy, underserved subgenres. Some of this work may be evergreen, but it's less likely.

You can write to market in a crowded genre, and many people do. If you succeed at this, you can have more longevity in your career than writing strictly to trend would offer. You can build a fanbase in the genre that looks forward to your work, specifically. Readers of trendy books are less likely to have any author loyalty--they just want their fix of Trend X. But people can and do make a good living writing to trend and jumping from one to the next. That's too stressful for me, lol.


----------



## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

My experience is (and has been) that since October of 2016, all organic mechanisms by which books can be discovered on Amazon have been foreclosed. All my books are now invisible by default, and can only be made visible through paid ads that drive readers to a page where there are 200 things being advertised, the last of which is my book.

I posit the vast majority of authors who have had success in the last 5-8 years have accumulated far more sales and far more mailing list subscribers through Bookbub than they did through Amazon, AMS, KDP Select, etc. In fact, I would assert that both financial and unit sales success for all but a few outliers is almost guaranteed to be directly proportional to that author's number of Bookbub campaigns.

Amazon has a far bigger mailing list than Bookbub's. They could create dozens of six-figure authors a week and make tens of millions of dollars in the process. Yet after what, eight years, they've only managed to produce 1000 such people? And even so, most of those folks got there by getting Bookbubs. Selling books has never been a priority for Amazon any more than tonight's music act is the priority for a bar owner. Throwing a handful of shekels to the band is a means to an end for a bartender. Amazon persuading people to buy traffic for them, on the other hand, is their *top* priority, which is likely the only reason they tolerate Bookbub, and the reason they replaced organic discovery with paid alsobots two years ago.

Far as I'm concerned, from this point forward Amazon is just another retailer.



> none of the marketing levers appear to be connected to anything anymore. *It's all mystery and magic*.


And that is why.



> It's the new vanity publishing, but instead of buying a trunk full of books, it's about *buying visibility*.


Agreed. It's also paycheck-optional traditional publishing run by a robot.



> The hard cold truth about all of this is that very few artists earn a living with their art. It's always been this way and *the internet hasn't changed a thing*.


Not so fast. When the whole digital publishing thing started, the Internet was held up as the thing that *would* change the industry. The Kindle was supposed to change the industry. And they should have. The Internet and the Kindle should have made things better for everyone. But Amazon had other ideas. Amazon simply replaced traditional publishing with a robot and then went back to selling detergent and iPhones.

If I had control of KDP for six months I could create hundreds of new millionaires and generate ten figures in revenue for Amazon. But that parade has already gone by. The only way to make your book visible now is with paid ads. Fair enough. At least now the game has rules instead of robots.

How long before Bookbub starts their own store?

We're still double-price-capped, by the way, so the clock is ticking on the paid ads thing. Get in the boat, Rose.


----------



## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


----------



## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> My experience is (and has been) that since October of 2016, all organic mechanisms by which books can be discovered on Amazon have been foreclosed. All my books are now invisible by default, and can only be made visible through paid ads that drive readers to a page where there are 200 things being advertised, the last of which is my book.
> 
> I posit the vast majority of authors who have had success in the last 5-8 years have accumulated far more sales and far more mailing list subscribers through Bookbub than they did through Amazon, AMS, KDP Select, etc. In fact, I would assert that both financial and unit sales success for all but a few outliers is almost guaranteed to be directly proportional to that author's number of Bookbub campaigns.
> 
> ...


Amazon pushes books that are doing well already. All the time. Constantly. They push books that are selling well, that have good reviews, and that have appeal to their customers. The better the book does, the more they push it.

There are no guarantees, though. Nobody gets pushed forever because they're special.

And, yes, authors blow up without marketing. Less than they used to, because the market is crowwwwded, especially in the most popular genres, but it still happens. They don't blow up, though, without an awesome book with a great hook, a professional cover that captivates the audience and reinforces the book, a great title, and a great blurb.

But, first and foremost--it's on the book. Amazon's priority is NOT "creating six-figure authors." Neither is BookBub's. They're not publishers. Their priority is satisfying their customers by giving them what they want. To sell well, you have to write books that lots of people want to read, and package them so they'll read that book first instead of tossing it on the pile. Whether people get their first book from you free or for 99 cents or pay full price, whether you are wide or in KU, whether you advertise a lot or barely at all, the magic button is the same. People have to want to read the book, they have to want to keep reading it, and when they're done, they have to look for the next one and tell a friend.

Is it harder than it was five years ago? It sure is. I haven't heard many people say it isn't. There are a LOT of books out there. The bar is high. If you're sinking back to six-figure ranks after you DO get a BookBub--that's on the book. Free still sells books. Permafree, advertised, whatever. Does not have to be BookBub. I recently had a great six weeks or so off a free promo on the first of a two-book series with no BookBub, just a few days of stacked ads. Bumped three or four of my series like crazy, bumped my audio, bumped everything. I made probably 20K extra off $500 worth of three-day ads. That was because Book 1 was very hooky, so a lot of people who picked it up read it. It was Book 25 for me, and I've learned a lot since Book 1, almost seven years ago (when, yep, it was a whole lot easier to break out) about writing and presenting a hooky book. In fact, I had just changed the covers for that series to be more attention-grabbing and fun. It worked.

If something isn't working, change it. If it's that the book isn't good enough--change it. Read your reviews and see what isn't working. When I look at and look inside books of people who say the game is rigged, they can't sell, whatever, I can usually see pretty obvious things they could change. Often that is editing, story, and grabbiness or otherwise of prose. If you're writing genre, you need to write hooky, and it needs to read smooth.

Personally, I write to MY market, because it's me, and there are a number of readers like me, fortunately. I'm usually barely aware of trends in my genre. However, other people write to market (or to trend) much more consciously and do great. I think people should do whatever works for them, and I know Chris Fox's books have helped lots of people do better.

Try things. Do more of what works and less of what doesn't, even if it's what other people do. Put out the most polished product you possibly can.

My 2 cents.


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

I've only gotten four BookBubs total (two back when it was easier to get them years and years ago) and none on my top-selling series in years. Most of my series have never gotten a BookBub. I do okay.


----------



## Caimh (May 8, 2016)

BB is great but there are numerous people who have been successes without ever having one.

I sold over 100K books in my first two years on Amazon where I published 4 books in total - I had 2 bookbubs in that time. One did great, one more-or-less made its money back. I actually had a much bigger push from being selected as an Amazon deal of the day. 

I do spend money on AMS ads but it's about I think 15% of gross revenue. 

I also didn't write to market, niche or trend. I wrote what I wanted to write. I appreciate my experience is not the typical but it is also not a complete outlier. There are people selling a whole lot more books than me. 

Write the best book you can, do whatever you can to get it in front of people and ideally, if you can write a series then do so as they're a lot easier to market. These principals have effectively been the same for decades and they can and still do work. Of course it isn't easy but success in any area of the arts isn't easy. I've also worked in TV writing and live comedy, believe me it is harder to catch breaks in those areas. In self-publishing, the barriers between you and a potential audience are a whole lot less.


----------



## Caimh (May 8, 2016)

PaulineMRoss said:


> To be fair to those who talk about WTM and underserved genres in the same breath, this is pretty much what Chris Fox says in his WTM book. In fact: _'What you need is a hungry genre that isn't yet saturated'._ But that's a hungry genre, not a hungry trend.


was the phrase 'write to market' in common use before Chris Fox's book? I've not been around here that long so I am going by when I first heard it on podcasts etc and that was always in relation to his ideas.


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Also, I know plenty of people doing extremely well who have never gotten a BooKBub. We're talking people who write to trend AND who write to market. And, yes, those are vastly different things no matter what some people want to believe. One thing I've noticed is that pretty much everyone who succeeds recognizes the difference between writing to trend and market and adjusts their approach accordingly. It's like a lightbulb going off.


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Caimh said:


> was the phrase 'write to market' in common use before Chris Fox's book? I've not been around here that long so I am going by when I first heard it on podcasts etc and that was always in relation to his ideas.


Write to market has essentially been a thing since people started selling books.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

BB isn't a big money maker anymore, not if you're in select. Since Amazon changed the algos to stop weighing BB downloads, the tail has shrunk. I made 10k from a 2016 BB free run with one other book in the series. Now, I make 1-2k from a .99 BB with four other books on the series. Granted, that series is a little over exposed to BB, but I'm not expecting significant better numbers with my newer series. It's still good money but it's not game changing anymore.

I'm sure it's much better for wide authors/on other platforms. (This is also NA, which is smaller than many other cats, but same general rules apply).


----------



## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Actually, rich heroes are as evergreen as "bad boys" or alpha heroes, but the particular specifics of billionaire come and go.


----------



## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

It's true that some authors can point to Bookbubs as being central to their sales success, but it's also true that there's a reason the books were accepted by Bookbub. They're not throwing darts. BB wouldn't be what it is if they didn't apply a curation process to the proceedings.


----------



## Patrick-Stew (Jun 10, 2018)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Amazon has a far bigger mailing list than Bookbub's. They could create dozens of six-figure authors a week and make tens of millions of dollars in the process. Yet after what, eight years, they've only managed to produce 1000 such people?


Why would Amazon care to make six-figure authors? I don't think it would make them any extra money. All it would do is make them the same amount of money, but just from a smaller pool of authors. Or a much less amount of money because those authors that are now making six-figure sums wouldn't have to pay for advertisement.

That being said, Amazon do use "mailing lists" to an extent to suggest books based on what you've read, or browsed, don't they?

I don't think writing to market is dead. I started writing about five years ago. I released my first book in 2016 and my second book in 2017. While the books were decent and reviews were positive, I actually lost money. Since then, with minor changes, I've managed to tweak my writing to suit the market, and I release a new book every month now. Last month was the first month that I made more than five figures.

I do absolutely zero AMS, or Bookbub, or anything else. I have a mailing list, and I rely on Amazon recommending my book because it's written to market, and people are buying in that market ATM. I don't imagine I will continue to do as well, as markets change, but I'm hoping to make a few fans that will always buy my books.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Shelley K said:


> Rich heroes are evergreen, but I specified "billionaire romance novels where the innocent is his secretary or other employee." That's a trend that got particularly hot after 50 Shades.


Nope, boss/subordinate has always been popular and it always will be popular.


----------



## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


----------



## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


----------



## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

WasAnn said:


> Really didn't mean to derail the thread. I'm a clean SF kind of person, so that isn't my cup of tea and I generally stay out of those threads. In this day of #metoo, it's hard not to think of crying women on the news and remembering running away from a boss around a conference room while no one did a thing. (Also, I hit him over the head with a hat rack, so, that worked out nicely.) I'm sure it's all very romantic and proper in the books, with no lopsided power in which the woman has zero control over her ability to say no, but since I don't read it, I only see the running part. It was merely a comment about the topic in a thread which didn't actually have power-tilt romance in the title.


I've written it, and I specifically wrote into it that she had the power to say no with no repercussions to her job. He was scrupulous about it as well. He starts out being kind of a d*ck, but it shifts pretty quickly as she shuts him down instantly and then repeatedly. The trope was an experiment for me, but because I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a lopsided power dynamic, I wrote it with that in mind. The whole series is an exercise in her slowly but surely balancing the scales.

I can't speak for anyone else, because I'm not a genre-researcher, but I can't believe I'm the only one who pays attention to those issues. I don't like rapey books. Lots of romance readers and writers don't. That awareness in fact can be part of the plot.

/derail, maybe, but it's interesting to me.

Lots of audiences out there.


----------



## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


----------



## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Evergreen things can also be trends. The two aren't mutually exclusive. The difference is an evergreen trope will still find readers once the trend has passed.

I hear rock stars were once trendy. They never were while I was writing them, but they're a solid niche with a dependable fan base. Not the highest ceiling, but certainly workable.


----------



## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

Lynn Is A Pseudonym said:


> On that note, I'll reserve future comments about this topic for another thread. Which I'm sure will pop up someday again and get everyone tied up in knots, again, as we discuss what's appropriate for fiction for women versus what's appropriate for fiction for men. They get all the fun. We get the metaphorical smackdown by other women for liking what we shouldn't.


Tied up in knots is another good one.


----------



## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


----------



## VanessaC (Jan 14, 2017)

WasAnn said:


> Really didn't mean to derail the thread. I'm a clean SF kind of person, so that isn't my cup of tea and I generally stay out of those threads. In this day of #metoo, it's hard not to think of crying women on the news and remembering running away from a boss around a conference room while no one did a thing. (Also, I hit him over the head with a hat rack, so, that worked out nicely.) I'm sure it's all very romantic and proper in the books, with no lopsided power in which the woman has zero control over her ability to say no, but since I don't read it, I only see the running part. It was merely a comment about the topic in a thread which didn't actually have power-tilt romance in the title.


Further thread derail, but I pretty much cheered at the hat rack!! Awesome!


----------



## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Write to market has essentially been a thing since people started selling books.


I agree. For example, when I was trying to sell a science fiction series to a major publisher in 2001, the acquisitions editor asked if I was interested in writing a fantasy series instead ... because that's what the market wanted.

(I said no. I don't regret it, because I only write novels I want to read.)


----------



## Caimh (May 8, 2016)

I absolutely agree that publishers etc have always pushed people towards writing what they think will sell. That's just writing a commercial book though - 'write to market' as most people understand it is how Chris Fox explains it - writing to underserved niches. If you google the phrase 'write to market' it is pretty much all you get, bar inevitable vanity publishing things of course.


----------



## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

1. Life is not fair.

2. Being a writer is hard, and lots of other people will do better than you while working less/being less talented than you/failing less. See number one. (Also, you are probably doing better than someone out there who "deserves" it more than you.)

3. Amazon doesn't give a flying fig about you.

4. Dwelling on this will only make you sad and your books bitter and less likely to sell. (Ask me how I know.)


----------



## Kathy Dee (Aug 27, 2016)

Here's my 2c …

1. To OP, I would respectfully suggest that you lighten up a bit if you don't like what people write. After all, this is an open forum and people are entitled to their views; as indeed are you.

2. A 6-figure income is my goal - always has been. Not there yet after many years, but yesterday I sold 56 books on Amazon - I am still gobsmacked. Anyway, I still believe it's (6 figs) achievable for me and anyone else with the same degree of commitment.

3. As I understand your original point, WTM (together with everything else that is touted here) is not working for you; you want to know what IS working for people, right now. Well, it seems that a lot of people have told you.

4. Sometimes it's hard to grasp the nettle. But, you need to thoroughly re-examine all of your business processes because somewhere in there is your unique opportunity.

Good luck to you.


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Caimh said:


> I absolutely agree that publishers etc have always pushed people towards writing what they think will sell. That's just writing a commercial book though - 'write to market' as most people understand it is how Chris Fox explains it - writing to underserved niches. If you google the phrase 'write to market' it is pretty much all you get, bar inevitable vanity publishing things of course.


That's not true. Chris wrote a book with a title and a lot of people like it but that is not the definition of write to market.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> That's not true. Chris wrote a book with a title and a lot of people like it but that is not the definition of write to market.


This.

I haven't read Chris's book, but I know what write to market means.


----------



## jb1111 (Apr 6, 2018)

Patrick-Stew said:


> Why would Amazon care to make six-figure authors? I don't think it would make them any extra money. All it would do is make them the same amount of money, but just from a smaller pool of authors. Or a much less amount of money because those authors that are now making six-figure sums wouldn't have to pay for advertisement.


Why do they have their own publishing imprints? Why do they do _anything?
_
To answer your question, I would think that the _more money_ authors make, the _more money_ Amazon makes. Right now the Zon makes either 30 or 70 percent (roughly) of an author's revenues. Why wouldn't they want that expanded? The idea behind running a business, even a large one like the Zon, is to make money.

Perhaps making money off of book sales isn't important to them, though.


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

jb1111 said:


> Why do they have their own publishing imprints? Why do they do _anything?
> _
> To answer your question, I would think that the _more money_ authors make, the _more money_ Amazon makes. Right now the Zon makes either 30 or 70 percent (roughly) of an author's revenues. Why wouldn't they want that expanded? The idea behind running a business, even a large one like the Zon, is to make money.
> 
> Perhaps making money off of book sales isn't important to them, though.


Does Amazon care if they have 100 six-figure authors more than they care about 1,000 five-figure authors? I don't think so. They're not invested in individual authors. They care about the whole pie, not one slice.


----------



## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Usedtoposthere said:


> I'm wondering when, in recorded history, more than 2,000-3,000 writers have made six figures or more per year from book sales. (The best guess I've heard, based on Author Earnings and on Amazon saying there are 1,000 authors making six figures on Amazon alone.)
> 
> *There's never been a time. It's always been hard to make a living as a writer, much less live full time on one's earnings. It's only easier to publish these days, not easier to sell.*
> 
> ...


Anyone who gets into writing for a living without researching the job is in for a huge disappointment. It's not easy (though it can look that way from the outside, which I call The Castle Effect -- because how often do you see him writing those instant bestsellers?), there's loads of competition, rules change, reader interests change, we've seen how the SEO geniuses pretty much ruined KU, and it's never going to be any different.

As to another post here, add me to the list of people who want to write what I want to write. I didn't get into this to be a marketer, but to be a writer. I'm not out to make five figures a month, by whatever means necessary. I'll explore genres, but I refuse to write something that's "hot" just to make more money -- and as most of us have seen, that only works if you're in it early on.

I'll put my books where I think I can do the best _for me_, and if people think that's stupid, then so what? Other people don't live my life, and they've got no say in how I do it. I do think of the reader, but I'm the one telling the stories, so my satisfaction comes first. Haul out the tar and feathers if that rocks your boat, but I'll likely be sitting down at the keyboard, heading for that magical 200K+ word count in this darn book.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> you can force the Zon Algo to see you


Something tells me my quality of life will be considerably enhanced if I don't have to tell my wife and kids we can't afford our house payment this month because the "Zon Algo" didn't see my latest book.

The best way to fix it is to stop thinking of Amazon as anything other than just another retail outlet. They're just another double-price-capped retailer, and as such they don't get exclusive rights, they don't get first releases, they don't get special editions or premiums, they don't get ad spends and they don't get paid traffic.


----------



## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Something tells me my quality of life will be considerably enhanced if I don't have to tell my wife and kids we can't afford our house payment this month because the "Zon Algo" didn't see my latest book.
> 
> The best way to fix it is to stop thinking of Amazon as anything other than just another retail outlet. They're just another double-price-capped retailer, and as such they don't get exclusive rights, they don't get first releases, they don't get special editions or premiums, they don't get ad spends and they don't get paid traffic.


Or, as many have pointed out, you can write a book that people want to read. A book that looks appealing to the browser and holds up under the duress of the reading experience. If you do that, none of this other stuff matters. People are telling their friends about your book and people are going out of their way to find it.

You could do that, or you could be like the people who have been paying the rent for years with their book income that have given you all kinds of great advice.

But the whole, make a great product part is on you...not Amazon.


----------



## jb1111 (Apr 6, 2018)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Does Amazon care if they have 100 six-figure authors more than they care about 1,000 five-figure authors? I don't think so. They're not invested in individual authors. They care about the whole pie, not one slice.


All very true.

And it's also true that they make more off of six figure authors' sales than they do off of small time authors like myself.

Hopefully, they do care about the whole pie. But the more success the authors in that pie have, the more money they also make. In theory.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Something tells me my quality of life will be considerably enhanced if I don't have to tell my wife and kids we can't afford our house payment this month because the "Zon Algo" didn't see my latest book.
> 
> The best way to fix it is to stop thinking of Amazon as anything other than just another retail outlet. They're just another double-price-capped retailer, and as such they don't get exclusive rights, they don't get first releases, they don't get special editions or premiums, they don't get ad spends and they don't get paid traffic.


The Amazon algos can be your best asset. If you think of Amazon as an enemy, you're not going to succeed in indie publishing. Even the most successful wide author who gets the smallest percentage of her income from Amazon is still getting a big chunk of income from Amazon.

You (general you) should never make business decisions for emotional reasons. Wide or KU is a business decision. Spending money on marketing is a business decision (and a requirement for 95% of successful author's in today's climate, especially for new authors). Pricing is a business decision.


----------



## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Shelley K said:


> Maybe people have assigned a different meaning to the word trend than it actually carries, but Billionaire books became a trend after 50 Shades by the definition of the word. Something being a trend doesn't mean nobody ever wrote it before or nobody bought and read it before. How many Billionaire _____ books hit the charts before 50 Shades compared to after? Rich guy heroes are evergreen, certainly but Billionaire This and That and Babies and Everything became the latest hot trend everybody wanted to jump on. I'm baffled that this raises even the slightest disagreement.


Ever heard of _Pretty Woman_? There was a huge millionaire/billionaire trend in the 80s. I've got about a hundred of those books on my Kindle by writers like Miranda Lee and Barbara McMahon who wrote them by the dozens because the demand was so high. The boss/baby thing was right there along with it, too. So were babysitters and nannies, etc. Harlequin had special lines devoted to them because they were so popular. All of these things tend to run in cycles, growing and fading in popularity as reader tastes change. But the power imbalance trope has always been a staple of romance, going back to ancient stories like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. The different sub-tropes involving it just become more/less popular depending on the times.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> If you think of Amazon as an enemy


"Just another retailer" and "enemy" are not synonyms. Publishing on Amazon is effortless. My book builder software kicks out a KF8 mobi right alongside all the other formats. And since I have no control over what happens on Amazon, then there's no reason for me to pay any special attention to Amazon, is there?



> Why would Amazon care to make six-figure authors? I don't think it would make them any extra money. All it would do is make them the same amount of money, but just from a smaller pool of authors. *Or a much less amount of money because those authors that are now making six-figure sums wouldn't have to pay for advertisement.*


Couldn't have said it better.


----------



## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Does Amazon care if they have 100 six-figure authors more than they care about 1,000 five-figure authors? I don't think so. They're not invested in individual authors. They care about the whole pie, not one slice.


I think that they do care, because the six-figure authors draw in readers. This is especially important for KU, where Zon has exclusivity on those books. It's excellent leverage to get new readers to sign up for the program. Why else would they bother with All Stars bonuses? It's a way to keep the high earners in the program so their books keep attracting more readers.


----------



## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Something tells me my quality of life will be considerably enhanced if I don't have to tell my wife and kids we can't afford our house payment this month because the "Zon Algo" didn't see my latest book.
> 
> The best way to fix it is to stop thinking of Amazon as anything other than just another retail outlet. They're just another double-price-capped retailer, and as such they don't get exclusive rights, they don't get first releases, they don't get special editions or premiums, they don't get ad spends and they don't get paid traffic.


Do what works for personal-you. That is my advice to everybody. If being in Select makes you more money more easily (it does for me), and it matches up with your personal goals--do that. If you'd rather be wide and it works better for you--do that. If writing to the hot trend works for you, do that. If writing more evergreen books works, do that.

Seriously, we'd have about one-tenth the posts on here if people would just do what works for them and let other people do the same. This is my one and only life and my one and only writing career, so I'll keep doing what works for me and assume others are doing the same.

Doing what works for you isn't stupid (unless you're cheating). It's smart.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> the reason they don't do it is because the REAL money-maker for Amazon is in authors spending up the wazoo for advertising on Amazon's own advertising platform that is being purposefully made more and more of a requirement to use for any kind of visibility while also being made purposefully more expensive at the same time?


I didn't start out to make that point, but it is something we discovered along the way. My main argument is it doesn't matter how fast you publish or how much people want to read your book if they can't find it. This problem isn't unique to Amazon. YouTube and Steam are having the exact same problems, and video makers and game developers are suffering as a result.

All Amazon has really accomplished is to re-invent traditional publishing with a robot in charge. I think authors have mistaken Amazon as a marketing platform over the years only to find out it's really just a warehouse.

It took Amazon 11 years to get to $2.5 billion in annual revenue selling e-books, which works out to about 1% of their gross. It took them six years to get to $10 billion with AMS, which is closer to five percent. (Source: Motley Fool) What's Amazon's priority? One dollar or four?


----------



## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

If Amazon wanted to create more six-figure authors, why wouldn't they just do it? They have all the tools at their fingertips.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

OP, in your opinion what would constitute a "perfect world" for indie publishing on Amazon?


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> OP, in your opinion what would constitute a "perfect world" for indie publishing on Amazon?


Here's a start:

1. Merge Prime and KU. 
2. Give middle grade and YA authors the option to put their books in Freetime with paid promotional options and free samples. 
3. Update the Kindle format and software so it supports everything in the EPUB3 standard and has word-by-word KU measurements. 
4. Full analytics on book pages for authors. 
5. A paid no-velvet-rope mailing promotion option like Bookbub's. 
6. A five-day payout on the first 80% of earnings, rising to 90% after six months. 
7. A foreign language translation service so we can publish native language editions in foreign countries in exchange for a reduced royalty. 
8. No more price caps. 
9. Unlimited permafrees. 
10. Dump the exclusivity requirement and let everyone into KDP select forever. 
11. Premium book pages for everyone including all the nice graphics, extra room for promotional copy and VIDEO. 
12. Print bundles in actual box sets. 
13. Discount codes and free codes I can give away for promos and marketing to include print if I pay in advance. 
14. Hardcovers. *Good* hardcovers like the grown-ups get.


----------



## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

the whole point has me perplexed.

Amazon has always only ever been a distribution channel for indie authors. Not an advocate or a partner.

Amazon does and will always do what Amazon thinks is best for Amazon. If Amazon decides that this means they close KU, shut off KDP, and only sell books from traditional publishers, they can do that. They aren't going to, but the point remains: they are neither our partner nor our publisher. They don't owe us anything.

If we're going to argue that Amazon *could* create a bunch of new six figure authors, but simply do not for *reasons*, I have a lot of questions, like: how precisely do they decide which authors to do this for? Because what I see right now is a company that's run like this: if buyers have shown an interest in buying a certain product, try and sell more buyers on that product. In other words, Amazon promotes popular things at the expense of unpopular things, because that's a good business plan to have. 

I was at an Amazon Books store yesterday, and had a long conversation with one of the employees. I asked about the curation of the store. What she said was, every single title in the store, on every shelf, was put there by someone in Seattle. That someone in Seattle is looking at sales numbers for the online store and working out what books people are most interested in owning, in this area, and those are the books on the shelves in the store. That isn't a gatekeeper function--they're not deciding one author's books are better than another's, and thus more deserving of attention. They're selling what's already popular.

In my opinion, AMS advertising is what we have to do to override the popularity-matching taking place naturally, so of course it costs money. It's no different than a publisher paying a bookstore chain to put a title on display at the front of the store. Showcasing costs money.


----------



## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

GeneDoucette said:


> the whole point has me perplexed.
> 
> Amazon has always only ever been a distribution channel for indie authors. Not an advocate or a partner.
> 
> ...


This point makes too much sense. It'll never catch on. 

Seriously--well stated.


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> They're selling what's already popular


Fair enough, and they are well entitled to do as they please. It's their site. But let's be clear about what this means. Prior to something becoming popular, Amazon doesn't care. They are not investing anything in _making_ it popular.

However, once it _becomes_ popular, then Amazon shows up with a rulebook and their hand out to collect their 30%.



> AMS advertising is what we have to do to override the popularity-matching taking place naturally


Correct. AMS is a video game. It's you against the robot. The robot is trying to make your book invisible. You are trying to make your book visible. The robot is funded by a trillion-dollar company and the combined ad-spends of every other author on Earth. It doesn't sleep. It doesn't feel pain. It doesn't feel pity or remorse, and it will not stop, ever, until your book is out of print and you are back to working two day jobs.

Meanwhile you are funded by your Visa card. See if you can guess who's going to win the game?

I'm going to go ahead and step aside here. I've said my piece. I truly appreciate everyone's contributions to this thread. I think it's really been beneficial for a lot of authors and publishers.


----------



## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

Let's be honest, Amazon could create a lot of seven and eight figure author superstars if they wanted, but then they run the risk of those authors going elsewhere. 

Seven-figure authors, they like the money and do they really want to throw that away or get what they can in case it all ends tomorrow? 

Six-figure authors, we want to be seven-figure authors and we look up the charts at them and go, well, they're all in so I guess I'm staying put. 

Wanna be six-figure authors look up the charts and go, a little more advertising and my page reads will climb - I know I can - I know I can!

Newbies are told, get into KU for the exposure.

Indies built Amazon, and those of us that got in early and reaped the rewards for little outlay have done well out of it, but now it's time to pay the piper, and you can't blame Amazon for wanting something back.

I'm one of those outliers. I pulp books, release fast, have little in the way out outlay with my books, don't have a list, do everything seemingly wrong, and yet make six-figures. But what I do-do is advertise on AMS ( and only AMS - I found everything else to be useless. But that's probably my bad because I'm technologically dumb and as a marketeer I suck.) 

So, you can wail at the system and what it's become, or you can do what the rest of us do and change with the times. If it ain't broke, don;t fix it, and if it is broke, paddle like hell.


----------



## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> It took Amazon 11 years to get to $2.5 billion in annual revenue selling e-books, which works out to about 10% of their gross. It took them six years to get to $10 billion with AMS, which is closer to half their gross. (Source: Motley Fool) What's Amazon's priority? One dollar or four?


When you confuse AWS with AMS, you've lost the argument.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> If Amazon wanted to create more six-figure authors, why wouldn't they just do it? They have all the tools at their fingertips.


Maybe they're too busy creating seven-figure authors?

Amazon, I'm pretty close. If you want to throw a little more algo action my way, that would be great!

But in all seriousness, the algos push books that are selling. It's not author specific. The only thing past success really buys you, algo wise, is Amazon followers. My latest will probably move 1/3 the units of my last release in the same time. It's not bc Amazon doesn't like me. It's the book itself (and the marketing that goes with the book).


----------



## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

> When you confuse AWS with AMS, you've lost the argument.


I didn't confuse them.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/06/is-amazon-marketing-services-already-a-10-billion.aspx


----------



## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> I didn't confuse them.
> 
> https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/06/is-amazon-marketing-services-already-a-10-billion.aspx


1. Amazon didn't make $25 billion last year. That was in one quarter.
2. According to their 10-Q for the last quarter which ended in June, their TOTAL advertising and related services netted a little over $2 billion, of which AMS is only a part. 
3. The article itself admits that even if advertising doubled in 2018 it wouldn't hit $10 billion. And it hasn't.

That article was wild speculation by ONE analyst who was pulling numbers straight out of his a**. Is it really that hard to look at the 10-Q and see what is actually going on rather than using sources like this that are nothing but pure hype? I just hope to god nobody is using that site as any kind of investment guide.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> ...AMS is a video game. It's you against the robot. The robot is trying to make your book invisible. You are trying to make your book visible. The robot is funded by a trillion-dollar company and the combined ad-spends of every other author on Earth. It doesn't sleep. It doesn't feel pain. It doesn't feel pity or remorse, and it will not stop, ever, until your book is out of print and you are back to working two day jobs.


My perspective:

AMS is like the house that hosts a poker game. It gets a rake. Every player accepts the rake as a condition.

Authors are like poker players. They're competing against one another. Over time, the skilled and savvy players beat the unskilled and naive players.



Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Meanwhile you are funded by your Visa card. See if you can guess who's going to win the game?


AMS wins.

The credit card companies win.

The skilled and savvy advertisers win.

The only ones who lose are the unskilled and naive advertisers. Some learn the ropes, hone their chops, and join the winners. Some don't. That's how it works in every business. That's how it'll work long after we're all dead.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

AMS and KDP are different departments. There's no reason to believe they're colluding to punish authors who don't use AMS. I rarely use AMS bc my covers are too sexy for their liking and I still have plenty of successful releases. The success of failure of my releases shows absolutely no correlation to AMS spend.

It can be a useful tool, certainly, but it's in no way necessary for success. No one advertising tool is necessary for success, but a combination of some advertising tools is.


----------



## Sam B (Mar 28, 2017)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Correct. AMS is a video game. It's you against the robot. The robot is trying to make your book invisible. You are trying to make your book visible. The robot is funded by a trillion-dollar company and the combined ad-spends of every other author on Earth. It doesn't sleep. It doesn't feel pain. It doesn't feel pity or remorse, and it will not stop, ever, until your book is out of print and you are back to working two day jobs.


I think you're attributing too much intention to the robot. The robot isn't a villain, it's indifferent. You want to be noticed, and so do a few million other people. Not all people who get it pay for it, and not all people who pay for it get it. AMS ads might point buyers at a book, but the quality of the book is still going to decide its fate.

I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure I give Amazon credit for that kind of evil scheming. I mean, they saw an opportunity to make more money and took it, sure. That doesn't mean that they're deliberately making it impossible for people to succeed without giving them more money.


----------



## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


----------



## Starry_Knights (Sep 15, 2016)

Anarchist said:


> OP, in your opinion what would constitute a "perfect world" for indie publishing on Amazon?


I'll tell you what would make me happy: if when I click on a category down in a books ranking info, Amazon would let me keep on going past the top 100. It used to be possible to do that. I found great books that way, but now I can't. The top 100's don't have the best books, just the authors with the biggest ad budgets and best marketing skills. That's not something I care about when I'm looking for a book to read. Since the categories are fairly useless and the search function is crap, the only way I find books on Amazon is when I'm looking at generators, drill attachments, bras, or orthopedic pillows, and they suggest a book to me in the search results for some unfathomable reason. But that would make everybody's books more discoverable, for free, and they aren't going to do that.


----------



## Avis Black (Jun 12, 2012)

Lilly_Frost said:


> I'll tell you what would make me happy: if when I click on a category down in a books ranking info, Amazon would let me keep on going past the top 100. It used to be possible to do that. I found great books that way, but now I can't. The top 100's don't have the best books, just the authors with the biggest ad budgets and best marketing skills. That's not something I care about when I'm looking for a book to read.


I strongly agree. I've also found out that if I change my Amazon location from the US to the UK and look at the also-bots and also-reads for certain books, I find much better recommendations. The also-bots and -reads for some of these same titles in the US store tend to be a real junk drawer of stuff I couldn't care less about.


----------



## Starry_Knights (Sep 15, 2016)

Avis Black said:


> I strongly agree. I've also found out that if I change my Amazon location from the US to the UK and look at the also-bots and also-reads for certain books, I find much better recommendations. The also-bots and -reads for some of these same titles in the US store tend to be a real junk drawer of stuff I couldn't care less about.


Hmmm, I will have to try this; thank you so much for the suggestion.


----------



## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


----------



## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

What works best for me is still, as always, a free book. Supported by whatever direct-mail free-book service I can get (BookBub or, more recently, not so much.) If the book and presentation are grabby, that gets me readers. Every time. If it doesn't get me enough clicks and then readers, there's probably something wrong with my cover, because the books have a lot of reviews, and I'm good at blurbs. 

When I changed covers on my first two series to be more in tune with current trends, they got much LESS grabby. I changed them back, and bingo. On a more recent series, I changed them and got much better engagement. 

Try things and see. Look at your own stats HONESTLY and see what you need to improve, and do it. 

I agree that it's harder. Obviously, it's harder. We all know it's harder, especially for new writers. What are you going to do? Give up, or adjust. Those are the two choices. Amazon doesn't care what you think, I think, anybody thinks. (If you think they care about individual authors, even 6- and 7-figure ones--not so much.) They care about doing what's best for them in the aggregate. Fortunately, you still have the power to do what's best for you.


----------



## Felix R. Savage (Mar 3, 2011)

WasAnn said:


> As a reader, I totally agree. I now use the categories, but on the side so I get the poplist instead of the BS list. I've found some goodies that way. I really don't like the book pages where they've removed all but four of the alsobots. Hate those. They've done that back and forth with mine sometimes, but usually when it's trending upward, so I have zero idea why they do that. Alsobots used to be my go-to for finding new books to read.
> 
> I shudder to say it, but I've also started actually googling "books like..." It doesn't always work, but sometimes.


I believe the old carousel of also-boughts is still there, way down after the customer reviews.


----------



## Jack Krenneck (Feb 9, 2014)

I don't understand the point of this thread. But I do understand this...

There has never been a better time in human history to be a writer.

Tens of thousands of people have left their regular jobs to live the dream as pro writers.

Hundreds of thousands of people are earning significant money that pays for holidays and cars etc.

Amazon has provided this opportunity.

Amazon doesn't care if we succeed or fail. If one author fails, another five step up.

I don't expect Amazon to care. It's not their job. It's _my _job.

Time was when advertising wasn't necessary to launch a book successfully.

Times change.

But even now there couldn't be many businesses in the world with lower start up and operating expenses than indie publishing.


----------



## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

> 7. A foreign language translation service so we can publish native language editions in foreign countries in exchange for a reduced royalty.


And how are you going to pay for that? Translators don't work for free, you know? Good translations cost a significant chunk of money, which is why comparatively few indies do them. Besides, Amazon does translate plenty of books, including indie books via amazon Crossing. However, they only pick books they believe/know will sell in the target market.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

kw3000 said:


> Shane: self-publishing = The Terminator
> 
> Anarchist: self-publishing = The Hunger Games


To clarify, my previous post was about AMS rather than indie publishing in general.

There are lots of opportunities to cooperate for mutual benefit when publishing and promoting books. But AMS is different. It's a king-of-the-mountain effort.


----------



## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> 2. Give middle grade and YA authors the option to put their books in Freetime with paid promotional options and free samples.


This would never work unfortunately because the shifter erotica writers would start shoving their books into middle grade and YA to take advantage. Amazon would have to hire a lot of people to police the content if they want to keep it clean. It would be too expensive, and some things would still slip through the cracks.



Shane Lochlann Black said:


> 7. A foreign language translation service so we can publish native language editions in foreign countries in exchange for a reduced royalty.


How is Amazon going to pay for that? You realize that translating a work of fiction takes every bit as much talent and skill as writing the original one in the first place PLUS being fluently bilingual? Why would Amazon foot the bill for translations of everything that Tom, Dick and Harry throw up on its site, much of which may never sell a single copy?

[rant]Unless you mean they can cheap out with machined translation or farm it out for pennies on mTurk? People who read in non-English languages don't want to read pitiful works with poor grammar and awkward sentence structure any more than English readers do. There are already enough books--both originals and quality translations--in most languages to keep anyone busy for the rest of his life. Why do some people think that anyone wants to read shit translations of English books by authors he never heard of over the plethora of literature already available in his language? If you want to sell translations, have enough respect for readers to at least _try_ to get a decent one.[/rant]


----------



## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

WasAnn said:


> Seriously?
> 
> Listen, half a dozen people have hinted why you're probably having problems. Amazon isn't sticking their tongue out and snatching the visibility carpet from you because they want your 2.50 in ads per day. They aren't saying, give me the price of a grande plain coffee or else I'm going to ruin you, you powerless author of indescribable masterpieces!
> 
> ...


Hear hear.

I've been biting my tongue for a while, but I'll second this. The OP is all doom and gloom and conspiracy theories. I could speculate on why, but that would just be kicking a guy while he's down.

We get that he's down. What most of us don't get is the insistence that there's no getting up--not for him or anyone. That's flat-out wrong. In fact, it's dangerous to let that kind of dark thinking infiltrate your mind. If there's a power to positive thinking there's also a power to negative thinking--and the OP's continuously negative thinking has gone beyond a reality check, and is now nothing but bitterness and despair--and is in stark opposition to reality.

Lots of us are doing fine--with a lot of hard work, but we're making it. The OP could make it too, IMO, but not with a despairing approach.


----------



## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Well, in my opinion, Amazon is not a finished product and never will be. How many new things "improvements" if you will, have we seen in the 8 years I've been playing this game? Plenty. There are too many variables to say this works and that doesn't. Our readers are not cookie-cutter people. We choose a genre and then we compete in that genre, build our following, and advertise as best we can to attract new readers. There's no menu to choose from, no magic words, and not one shred of consistency from one author to the next.

I suppose writers will keep looking for the key to the door and some will never understand that the door is constantly moving.


----------



## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> Correct. AMS is a video game. It's you against the robot. The robot is trying to make your book invisible. You are trying to make your book visible. The robot is funded by a trillion-dollar company and the combined ad-spends of every other author on Earth. It doesn't sleep. It doesn't feel pain. It doesn't feel pity or remorse, and it will not stop, ever, until your book is out of print and you are back to working two day jobs.
> 
> Meanwhile you are funded by your Visa card. See if you can guess who's going to win the game?


This comes across as so bitter, and I think it's so totally wrong.

AMS is not a video game and Amazon is not the enemy.

It's not their responsibility to create six figure authors. They are not a publisher. I see this attitude often though and it's always a head-scratcher. Amazon is simply a store. A retail vendor where we sell our books. They also happen to have amazing marketing tools to help us do that.

I see lots of confusion on Write to Market too. It is so often confused with Write to Trend.

Write to Market means know what the reader expectations are for your genre and meet them, better yet, exceed them. Too many do not....they write books that don't really fit neatly into a genre, and then don't understand why the books don't sell well or don't get much of a push from Amazon.....it's partly because Amazon doesn't know who to push them to either if they don't fit neatly anywhere.

As an example---a whale reader in a mystery reader group I am in made an interesting post last week. He was frustrated by all the new cozy books he was running into that weren't really cozies--they didn't meet his expectations. They were too violent or too sexy and didn't have the familiar cozy elements he was looking for. Yet the books were in the cozy category. And many readers chimed in saying they didn't like that either. It was frustrating to them to pick up a book with a cozy cover and discover after getting into the story that it wasn't what they expected of a cozy.

And yet.....I know several new authors this past year, in cozy and other categories that have followed the Amanda model of writing good books that do meet expectations of the genre and are releasing often and these authors are doing very well. One is going to hit six figures next month in her first year of publishing. She has never had a Bookbub, just releases often, has good covers, and is developing a reader base that loves her books because she gives them what they want.

Amazon and the other vendors have given us a real chance to earn a full-time income. Back when I started writing, years ago, hardly anyone was able to support themselves by writing fiction. Now, I know so many authors earning six and even seven figures yearly.

And it's still possible to start doing this now and be one of them.


----------



## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

...


----------



## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

PamelaKelley said:


> This comes across as so bitter, and I think it's so totally wrong.
> 
> AMS is not a video game and Amazon is not the enemy.
> 
> ...


100% agreed.


----------



## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

About 12 years ago I was involved with a product which took off all by itself. No advertising, no marketing .. and it was the only product this company made and sold.

It was short-lived, but fun.

For every other company I've been involved in, including my self-publishing business, it was essential to weigh up the different marketing options, work out what we could afford and try and attract enough business to be able to pay the bills each month. It's a constant struggle, but there's always a hope that the NEXT product will catch on.

So, keep working on the next product. Your previous books will always be available for people to buy, and if you hit it big with your 10th or 20th or 30th novel, all that backlist will earn a pretty penny.


----------



## BrunoMiller (May 10, 2018)

David VanDyke said:


> Lots of us are doing fine--with a lot of hard work, but we're making it.


I couldn't agree more.


----------



## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Writing to market means carefully studying your genre and its audience (your market); it's not at all the same thing as writing to the latest fad. (Right now, reverse harem is hot, for example.)

Publishing quickly has been a tactic for quite a while now. It's not a long-term one, IMO, because you can easily get burnt out. Authors who were publishing monthly years ago are mysteriously vanished today.

My strategy remains: knowing my market and writing good books that my readers enjoy. Slow and steady makes for a lifelong career.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

kw3000 said:


> Ah, I getcha. I made my post mostly in jest, but I do sometimes find myself influenced by the doom and gloom that often pops up on these boards. Some better girding of the loins is in order, I suppose.


FWIW, I laughed. 

Also, I think "doom and gloom" is a matter of perspective. Many authors lament the need to advertise books. Meanwhile, I launched over 500 new AMS campaigns over the last two weeks. And I'm gearing up to launch 1,200 more (I've already researched and organized my keywords).

One person's doom and gloom is another person's thrill ride.


----------



## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Elizabeth Barone said:


> Writing to market means carefully studying your genre and its audience (your market); it's not at all the same thing as writing to the latest fad. (Right now, reverse harem is hot, for example.)
> 
> Publishing quickly has been a tactic for quite a while now. It's not a long-term one, IMO, because you can easily get burnt out. Authors who were publishing monthly years ago are mysteriously vanished today.
> 
> My strategy remains: knowing my market and writing good books that my readers enjoy. Slow and steady makes for a lifelong career.


This. SO MUCH THIS.


----------



## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

David VanDyke said:


> Hear hear.
> 
> I've been biting my tongue for a while, but I'll second this. The OP is all doom and gloom and conspiracy theories. I could speculate on why, but that would just be kicking a guy while he's down.
> 
> ...


Thirding this. Even with all the algorithmic help in the world, it won't get readers to buy a book with a cover that doesn't look as professional as others in the genre, or a book that isn't priced competitively in the genre, or a look inside that isn't compelling enough to get the reader to want to read more.

You could go door-to-door on a hot summer day selling bottled water. But if that bottled water is brown and you're charging $10 per bottle, no one's going to buy it.


----------



## jjj (Aug 10, 2018)

Perry Constantine said:


> Thirding this. Even with all the algorithmic help in the world, it won't get readers to buy a book with a cover that doesn't look as professional as others in the genre, or a book that isn't priced competitively in the genre, or a look inside that isn't compelling enough to get the reader to want to read more.
> 
> You could go door-to-door on a hot summer day selling bottled water. But if that bottled water is brown and you're charging $10 per bottle, no one's going to buy it.


Slap a Starbucks label on it and call it home delivery coffee. Only available in the Bay Area. Voila!


----------



## MyCatDoesNotConsent (Sep 11, 2017)

Я не согласен с условиями T.O.S.


----------



## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

Perry Constantine said:


> Thirding this. Even with all the algorithmic help in the world, it won't get readers to buy a book with a cover that doesn't look as professional as others in the genre, or a book that isn't priced competitively in the genre, or a look inside that isn't compelling enough to get the reader to want to read more.
> 
> You could go door-to-door on a hot summer day selling bottled water. But if that bottled water is brown and you're charging $10 per bottle, no one's going to buy it.


Some people actually pay a lot of money for "raw water" so it's possibly just a matter of marketing and finding your consumer


----------



## memememe (Feb 16, 2016)

Anarchist said:


> FWIW, I laughed.
> 
> Also, I think "doom and gloom" is a matter of perspective. Many authors lament the need to advertise books. Meanwhile, I launched over 500 new AMS campaigns over the last two weeks. And I'm gearing up to launch 1,200 more (I've already researched and organized my keywords).
> 
> One person's doom and gloom is another person's thrill ride.


How much time does it take for you to do this?

I love me some AMS, even though my numbers are abysmal compared to yours - but they take sooo long to set up. I'm talking a whole day or half a day to set up 50 campaigns (with 1000 kw's each)...

If you don't mind me asking, do you have lots of kw's per campaign or just a few? I'm starting to wonder if having fewer kw's would help my tracking.

Also - I really appreciate you sharing your AMS experience. Very inspiring.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

memememe said:


> How much time does it take for you to do this?
> 
> I love me some AMS, even though my numbers are abysmal compared to yours - but they take sooo long to set up. I'm talking a whole day or half a day to set up 50 campaigns (with 1000 kw's each)...
> 
> ...


With my KWs, campaign names, and ad copy organized in a spreadsheet, I can create 10 campaigns in 13 minutes.

Sometimes, Amazon hiccups and tells me that it failed to create a campaign. Nine out of 10 times, the alert is false; my campaign was created properly. Unfortunately, I'm forced to spend two to three minutes to verify as much. It's a PITA, but... first-world problems.

The number of keywords within my campaigns varies by targeting. Some of my campaigns contain fewer than five keywords. Others contain 1,000.


----------



## memememe (Feb 16, 2016)

Anarchist said:


> With my KWs, campaign names, and ad copy organized in a spreadsheet, I can create 10 campaigns in 13 minutes.
> 
> Sometimes, Amazon hiccups and tells me that it failed to create a campaign. Nine out of 10 times, the alert is false; my campaign was created properly. Unfortunately, I'm forced to spend two to three minutes to verify as much. It's a PITA, but... first-world problems.
> 
> The number of keywords within my campaigns varies by targeting. Some of my campaigns contain fewer than five keywords. Others contain 1,000.


Do you concern yourself about kw overlap? ie the same keyword appearing in different campaigns... or do you find it doesn't matter?

Sorry for all the questions but I really appreciate you sharing your experience.


----------



## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

GeneDoucette said:


> *cracks knuckles*
> 
> ... Publishing has spent the last decade stunned by the discovery that it didn't understand its own industry as well as Amazon did, and I think the nimble players in the market have gotten over that shock and are getting smarter. (And again, none of the big 5 are nimble.)
> 
> At least, that's what I think.


Something I have wondered about your success (and I am a big fan) is do you think that your TV shows, the sf shows you wrote, gave you a fan base that knew about you before you turned to novels and then lept upon your novels when you tried your hand at them?


----------



## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

Trioxin 245 said:


> Just to clarify for sake of conversation. Poor sales can be blamed on Amazon, Ams, Bookbub,also boughts, audience, algorithms, and everything else...but not you or your books you offer for sale? That is a no blame area so look elsewhere?--


You think it absolutely has to be his book? Then please explain this: I bought a bookbuterfly ad for my sf novel Zollocco. To my shear joy Zollocco rose to be #1 in Amazon's sf free e-books, #1! But then, other than a few more good reviews there were no paid sales, none, zippo, naught, zero when the book went back to having a price tag (and it's only $2.99). Yes a good book can fail to sell.


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

CynthiaClay said:


> You think it absolutely has to be his book? Then please explain this: I bought a bookbuterfly ad for my sf novel Zollocco. To my shear joy Zollocco rose to be #1 in Amazon's sf free e-books, #1! But then, other than a few more good reviews there were no paid sales, none, zippo, naught, zero when the book went back to having a price tag (and it's only $2.99). Yes a good book can fail to sell.


You mean #1 in your category, not #1 free in the store?

Because the former can be achieved with as few as 1000 downloads, and yeah, unless you have a strong books that's part of a strong series, that may result in disappointing results.

If #1 free in the entire store, I've only ever made it up to #6 in the entire store, and that requires something like 25,000 downloads. Bookbub can do that, and when you have a Bookbub and you get nothing more than a few reviews and not much in the way of through sales, there is something very wrong with your book. Now if you bought a promo that's not Bookbub and went to #1 in the entire store for an unknown book by an unknown author, I would say the service uses bots, and no, those won't give you anything in the way of through sales or reviews.

I do strongly suspect you mean #1 in a smaller category, though.


----------



## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

Lilly_Frost said:


> I'll tell you what would make me happy: if when I click on a category down in a books ranking info, Amazon would let me keep on going past the top 100. It used to be possible to do that. I found great books that way, but now I can't. The top 100's don't have the best books, just the authors with the biggest ad budgets and best marketing skills. That's not something I care about when I'm looking for a book to read. Since the categories are fairly useless and the search function is crap, the only way I find books on Amazon is when I'm looking at generators, drill attachments, bras, or orthopedic pillows, and they suggest a book to me in the search results for some unfathomable reason. But that would make everybody's books more discoverable, for free, and they aren't going to do that.


I so totally agree with this! I find most of the books I buy now through the kboards! I click on the books on of the authors who post.


----------



## Guest (Sep 12, 2018)

CynthiaClay said:


> Then please explain this: I bought a bookbuterfly ad for my sf novel Zollocco...other than a few more good reviews there were no paid sales, none, zippo, naught, zero...


The answer is in your question - you used BookButterfly. You might want to do your research about where their "millions of subscribers" come from and how exactly they get their guaranteed clicks/sales. It's not surprising at all that there were no follow through sales, I'm more surprised that you weren't ranked stripped.


----------



## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

Patty Jansen said:


> You mean #1 in your category, not #1 free in the store?
> 
> Now if you bought a promo that's not Bookbub and went to #1 in the entire store for an unknown book by an unknown author, I would say the service uses bots, and no, those won't give you anything in the way of through sales or reviews.
> 
> I do strongly suspect you mean #1 in a smaller category, though.


It was bookbutterfly, not bookbub, and it was many, many, many thousands of downloads, so perhaps it was all bots. At least that explains the high download rate. 59% of the reviews are five stars, 24% four stars which I think indicates reader satisfaction, but there are only 12 reviews. Thanks for the explanation!


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

CynthiaClay said:


> It was bookbutterfly, not bookbub, and it was many, many, many thousands of downloads, so perhaps it was all bots. At least that explains the high download rate. 59% of the reviews are five stars, 24% four stars which I think indicates reader satisfaction, but there are only 12 reviews. Thanks for the explanation!


I'll be bookmarking this because it's the first clearly provable case I've seen that this service might indeed use less savoury tactics.

There's been a lot of speculation, but I haven't seen any proof and this is as close to proof you'd get.

I wouldn't recommend that service because of the obnoxious defensiveness of the owner, and despite a lot of mumbo-jumbo from him, it was never clear where their downloads were coming from, but because they took a big hit a few years back (and never recovered, as far as I know), I assumed their downloads came from a multitude of Facebook groups, and Facebook has the tendency to kill algorithms every so often.


----------



## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> You mean #1 in your category, not #1 free in the store?
> 
> Because the former can be achieved with as few as 1000 downloads, and yeah, unless you have a strong books that's part of a strong series, that may result in disappointing results.
> 
> ...


Hmm, I wouldn't expect a ton of sellthrough from BB on Amazon today. I saw good results back in 2016, but my 2017 BBs didn't show much sellthrough. In one case, I had two BBs on the same book, so I don't think it was the book itself (though, of course, I expected and got less downloads the second time around).


----------



## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Crystal_ said:


> Hmm, I wouldn't expect a ton of sellthrough from BB on Amazon today. I saw good results back in 2016, but my 2017 BBs didn't show much sellthrough. In one case, I had two BBs on the same book, so I don't think it was the book itself (though, of course, I expected and got less downloads the second time around).


The reply says "no paid sales at all". That's not normal for a Bookbub, or "thousands and thousands" of downloads.


----------



## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> The reply says "no paid sales at all". That's not normal for a Bookbub, or "thousands and thousands" of downloads.


Agreed. If you buy a promo from a legitimate promotion service and you've gotten thousands of downloads, you should get _some_ sell-through. Might not be as high as it once was, but should still be more than nothing.

This is BooksButterfly we're talking about, though. And...well, just do a search for them on the board if you don't know what I'm talking about.


----------



## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

CynthiaClay said:


> Something I have wondered about your success (and I am a big fan) is do you think that your TV shows, the sf shows you wrote, gave you a fan base that knew about you before you turned to novels and then lept upon your novels when you tried your hand at them?


I actually never got a show made, so probably not...! My experience as a screenwriter was, while comprehensive, largely not fruitful. My plays had some success, but that success was in the 1990's. I have carried a fan base with me from my early 2000's blogging, but that's not what I'd call a huge fanbase, and it wasn't for fiction.


----------



## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

memememe said:


> Do you concern yourself about kw overlap? ie the same keyword appearing in different campaigns... or do you find it doesn't matter?


I clean my KW lists to prevent duplication across like campaigns (i.e. campaigns where the KWs have the same starting bids and same ad copy). But duplication still happens. I maintain hundreds of KW lists, and am always creating more. I could keep them 100% clean, but expediency (currently) outweighs the benefits of doing so.

Besides, my approach to KW-based PPC (it's not just launch and audit) makes duplication a nonissue.


----------



## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Crystal_ said:


> Hmm, I wouldn't expect a ton of sellthrough from BB on Amazon today.


Is that for a freebie BB or a BB deal at 99c?

I had a bookbub just over two weeks ago now, and my daily/weekly sales are still twice what they were in the month leading up to the BB. 60-70% of those sales (by value) are titles other than the one featured in the BB.

Obviously just one data point, and that was my first BB featured deal for 5 or 6 years so there might have been a 'new' factor.


----------



## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> I'll be bookmarking this because it's the first clearly provable case I've seen that this service might indeed use less savoury tactics.
> 
> There's been a lot of speculation, but I haven't seen any proof and this is as close to proof you'd get.
> 
> I wouldn't recommend that service because of the obnoxious defensiveness of the owner, and despite a lot of mumbo-jumbo from him, it was never clear where their downloads were coming from, but because they took a big hit a few years back (and never recovered, as far as I know), I assumed their downloads came from a multitude of Facebook groups, and Facebook has the tendency to kill algorithms every so often.


I'd like to step in and say that I used BooksButterfly early on for SF, romance and thriller books that on other occasions had hit in the Top 10 Free overall backed by BookBub features. Some (romances and thriller) had hit #1 Free overall. However, I never saw *thousands* of DLs from Butterfly. I also never ran a campaign that was exclusively Butterfly, so can't tell you how many follow-on sales I did/didn't get from that venue.

I think Butterfly's owner does a LOT of spin when he cites numbers. As I mentioned in another thread, many of his subscribers are app-based. The owner of FKBT also claimed 750K Fire app subscribers several years ago, and his app was verifiably consistently in the Top 100 on Amazon. App subscribers, however, do not seem to equate with email subscribers. I'd put the active numbers of each at roughly 1:10 (a 750K app list equals about the same DL numbers as a 75K email list).

I'm also not impressed with some of the arguments the Butterfly owner has made. That's no secret -- he and I have had our share of debates here. Nor am I impressed with his attitude.

I am, however, impressed with others of his observations.

I stopped working with Butterfly 2 or 3 years ago because their spammy tactics were escalating, and I no longer wished to be associated with them simply for that reason. Secondarily, our books had begun doing poorly with them. The owner believed it was because 1) the books and authors had been curated picks multiple times, and 2) most of the books had already run on BookBub. However, I know running multiple times on BookBub doesn't cause a drastic dropoff in DLs there because of Bub's sheer numbers of *email* subscribers, so that argument doesn't play well with me.

Now I won't stake my reputation on it, but I don't believe BooksButterfly employs bots. They have gotten spammy via FB DMs and via email, and they use a lot of spin and other tactics that are, imo, distasteful. But outright black hatters? If I did believe that, my arguments with them here would have been of quite another sort.

As you say, Patty, Cynthia's is the first case I've seen of Butterfly getting 1000s of DLs over the past 4 or 5 years. Results like that should be easily spotted and be easily replicable. They aren't. So there must be something else at play *in this particular case.*

I think there needs to be a whole lot more evidence before pulling the scam trigger on a service provider.


----------

