# 6 Months... almost 13,000 sold and no idea what I'm doing????



## Author (Jul 31, 2013)

So,

I'm a bit late to the party as I've been hitting the publish button on KDP for a bit over 6 months and managed to sell about 13,000 books across 6 titles (All between 70 and 80 pages) and just recently found this forum. I guess, I need to start figuring out how to make this work now. 

Currently I sell about 80 units per day and have been as high as 125 per day for about a month. (No idea how or why) I don't think I'm a particularly gifted writer, although some seem to like my stories.

I lost my day job back in May and decided to just continue to write as a career. I have read plenty from the ultra successful self pubbed authors out there and have even friended a few on FB. 

Oh yeah, I haven't really done any marketing or promo just yet. I guess I just took the advice to write the next book.

Now I just need to figure out how to take it to the next level. 

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for listening and for this AWESOME forum!


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## olefish (Jan 24, 2012)

Get thee a mailing list sign-up inside your books.


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## Wansit (Sep 27, 2012)

Congrats!! It seems like you're doing AWESOME just on your own. The pub button is working wonders for you. So you published about a title a month?


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## olefish (Jan 24, 2012)

Congratulations. I can only hope to reach the kind of success of you have.  So here's my small opinion. 

Your staying power very much depends on having a direct line to your fans so that you won't be at the mercy of Amazon algos every time you launch hence the importance of a mailing list.  Social media too is important. 

Have you thought about extending yourself through social media? Instead of facebook profile you have, you should consider a facebook fanpage instead,  which would separate your personal life from your writing life.  Then you post news about releases and book related news on your facebook fanpage.

Some would say that you should write long works because readers prefer it and you can charge more for it.  However in your case, your serial is raking it. I wouldn't want to rock the boat.  Your readers are used to certain frequency from you. You don't want to risk slowing down and losing their attention. I'll say you should keep churning out serials of different titles but in the same genre.  Then bundle them up when finished.  I think you should experiment with pricing and see if you can charge a more than 2.99 for a bundle.  I wouldn't keep a serial going for too long.  You should prioritize a breadth of titles in your backlist. 

Also I'd say you shouldn't jump genres.  Try to keep a consistent brand or the readers would grow impatient. 

Have you uploaded to places other than amazon?  More reach is good.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

At those sales numbers, you can give _us_ advice


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Jeff, your books look great!  I really like this concept, kind of like episodes of a connected show like Lost or Homeland. Seems like your readers like it too!  Your opening pages drew me right in. Reminded me of the Brad Pitt movie I saw this Summer and really enjoyed, War of Z I think it was called.


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## Guest (Oct 17, 2013)

Anya said:


> At those sales numbers, you can give _us_ advice


Yes, please do.


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## CEMartin2 (May 26, 2012)

13000 in six months... In horror... With no marketing?

AWE-SOME!

Thanks for inspiring me!


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

I have been doing this for over a year, and I *think* I've sold around 2,500 books in that time. Feel free to school me on what to do, my friend!


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

Your covers pop.


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## K.R. Harris (Jan 25, 2012)

Those are awesome numbers! Congrats!


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

Pff, no words of advice. I'd say mailing list, but the others got there first. You're doing fine. Keep on keepin' on, and congrats on how well you've been doing!


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## whatdanwrote (Oct 18, 2012)

Congratulations! I think you should be the one giving out advice, as others have mentioned.

I think you've done a good job with your covers, if i may say so. To me they really spell out in a glance zombie serial, so maybe in terms of marketing you've hit on something there.

I had to buy a copy for myself, so add that to the totals.


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## whatdanwrote (Oct 18, 2012)

Just wondering, have you thought of trying for a Bookbub ad? Might give your sales a nice boost, as everyone seems to say.


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## Guest (Oct 17, 2013)

Jeff Olah said:


> So,
> 
> I'm a bit late to the party as I've been hitting the publish button on KDP for a bit over 6 months and managed to sell about 13,000 books across 6 titles (All between 70 and 80 pages) and just recently found this forum. I guess, I need to start figuring out how to make this work now.
> 
> ...


Some count downloads as 'sales', so does amazon in reports, so freebies are included. Is it 13K units PAID or just 13K paid/free. Big difference.


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## WG McCabe (Oct 13, 2012)

Looking at his Amazon rankings I'm going to go out on a limb and say 13K sales.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

Just a thought - you could raise your prices from $1.49 to $1.99 on all, except for the first one. Maybe then set the first one permanently free and package the other 4 into one and sell it for $5.99 (while still having the single titles for sale). At $5.99 for the package of 4, you'd be making over $4 each sale. Having the first title free could accelerate your sales even more.

You currently make around $2.40 when a customer buys the whole set, while your customers currently pay $6.95. 
In the scenario above, they could have it for $5.99 while you make approx $4.20 - which is better for them, and better for you.

(All figures approximate. If I have my maths back-the-front, someone please step in and correct me )

(As I said, it's just a thought - author experiences of price changes and freebies etc vary wildly, though it works very well for many.)



Patrick Szabo said:


> Looking at his Amazon rankings I'm going to go out on a limb and say 13K sales.


Agree.


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## Jade Jez (May 11, 2013)

wow, I have no advice, I'm just...wow....congrats on the selling!


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

I don't even see any free books in his catalog.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

smreine said:


> I don't even see any free books in his catalog.


I was just thinking that - and was off with my calculator... probably getting the maths all screwed up in the process...


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## whatdanwrote (Oct 18, 2012)

Jeff Olah said:


> I haven't tried them yet. What type of results should I expect?


There are always posts on here about how authors get incredible results from advertising with them. Apparently, it's hard to even get accepted and not cheap, but it seems like the results are amazing. Your books have lots of reviews and great covers, it seems like something they would take on. It might be especially effective when the last episode comes out, generate lots of sales for the series. But there are others here who I'm sure know more about it. Or look at some of the threads on people's bookbub ads, they're usually impressive.


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## Guest (Oct 17, 2013)

Anya said:


> Just a thought - you could raise your prices from $1.49 to $1.99 on all, except for the first one. Maybe then set the first one permanently free and package the other 4 into one and sell it for $5.99 (while still having the single titles for sale). At $5.99 for the package of 4, you'd be making over $4 each sale. Having the first title free could accelerate your sales even more.
> 
> You currently make around $2.40 when a customer buys the whole set, while your customers currently pay $6.95.
> In the scenario above, they could have it for $5.99 while you make approx $4.20 - which is better for them, and better for you.
> ...


How would you bundle and box a series of 3 at those prices? And how about higher? I don't like having anything priced at $1.99 anymore.


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## Austin_Briggs (Aug 21, 2011)

Great numbers and great covers!  

I've started to publish mid-2011, and by the time some folks on this forum who began at the same time had become millionaires, I've just finally started putting out enough quality and quantity to steadily sell several books a day. 

And hereby lies my learning: over-deliver on quality (superb editing is the point of entry), produce good quantity, and advertize. This is all.


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## Book Master (May 3, 2013)

keep doing what you don't know you're doing because it is working.
I think between the cover design, a long series and a scary one at that, is making the sales for you.
I like that series cover set-up you have there, I really do!
Maybe run a few paid ads, keep writing and throwing em at the wall. You already had a following in 13k sales and apparently you just started one here.

BM


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## Leanne King (Oct 2, 2012)

Yeah, look at your prices, but steer well clear of $1.99, it's the 'black hole' of pricing:

http://kobowritinglife.com/2013/09/16/a-dead-price-point/
http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/05/new-smashwords-survey-helps-authors.html

In your position, I would run a week long trial at $2.99. Bear in mind you can sell fewer than a quarter as many copies at that price point, and still make more money than your current $1.49 (?) price. Sure, some readers might be put off paying that much for an 80 page ebook, but it could be well worth a try. (I'm assuming your goal is profit rather than readers, otherwise I guess you'd be free.)


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

Greg Strandberg said:


> How would you bundle and box a series of 3 at those prices? And how about higher? I don't like having anything priced at $1.99 anymore.


My thought was to bundle books 2-5 together (4 books) for $5.99 as i thought the series was finished - but Jeff later said he's planning on writing more in the series, in which case, that wouldn't work.

My thought in regard to raising the prices of the single titles from $1.49 to $1.99 was to make the bundle look more attractive to readers (which is in the readers favour, as they would be spending less for all books if they buy the bundle - even if the books were left at the price of 1 x 0.99c and 4 x $1.49. I'm always in favour of a good deal for readers. Yes, the $1.99 price point can be a difficult one though.)

But, if Jeff keeps releasing titles in the series, they will eventually hit more than $9.99 if he bundled them all (and over $9.99 you get a .35% royalty rather than a .70% royalty) In that case, small bundles are better, and have just noticed he already has one (books 1-3 at $2.99) so he's already winning at this game


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Congratulations! I for one welcome our newbie overlord.


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## Izzy Hammerstein (Jul 6, 2011)

Nice going.  Those numbers are looking sweet.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

Welcome to KB! And...



Jeff Olah said:


> I'm only with Amazon for now, *trying to spend a majority of my time writing.*


...I'd say you have 90% of it figured out!

Mega-congrats on the success, man. Your covers really pop, and they stand together, which increases awareness. I'm guessing you write well, as that seems to count for something with readers.  Definitely on my TBR list, now. Keep up the great work and keep sharing your successes with us!


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## davidwwright (Apr 1, 2012)

Hi, Jeff. A friend alerted me to your post, so I figured I'd weigh in with my experience. First, congrats on the sales you're doing right now. 

As for the particular nature of serials and pricing, this is something I've given much thought to since we launched Yesterday's Gone in 2011. We've got six serials running at the moment, and have tried several different pricing methods.

What's worked best for us is something we call season pricing, where we'd collect six books (just like The Green Mile, our original inspiration) into one volume called a season. We sold single episodes at .99 during the season, and then raised the prices to $2.99 once we released the full season at $5.99. 

As others have pointed out, it's tough to sell short works at $2.99. Many readers will feel ripped off paying $18 for a full "Season" if you have six "episodes" at $2.99 each. But at the same time, it's hard to make a living with .99 or $1.99 books. 

Our rule is that nobody will ever need to spend more than $5.99 for a full season, no matter how they decide to buy it. So you keep the single books at .99 during the initial run,  cheaper option so you're not punishing readers who want to buy each of the serialized books as they come out. If you decide to later raise those single episode prices, you should update the sales page to let people know there is a cheaper option available. (The mailing list also helps here, as you can explain your pricing to readers).

I would suggest experimenting with the best way to bundle your books. Perhaps three bundles (two books each) at $2.99 and a full season at $5.99 (which would be a discount versus the $9 they'd spend on three bundles) and see how that works. 

Now, there's one issue you may run into if you bundle all of your books into one volume and that is how most people are buying your books.

You would effectively ONLY have one full-sized book out (if all the parts are of a whole season). When people finish it, you need to have something else for them to read (if you don't already). 

As for Bookbub, they're great, and well worth the investment. You should most certainly make your money back at worse. From what I hear from other authors, it's tough to put ONE short book on sale with them. They are selective in what they accept. They also limit authors to once per 60 days, and titles at once per 90 days. So you have to be strategic in your use of BB.

Your best bet is to put a bundle or full season book on sale. And time it for when you have new stuff coming out. If you've only got one bundle, I'd wait until you have more published (particularly in the same series), so the exposure of the ad will transfer to your other titles.

Again, congrats, and don't be afraid to experiment. Just always remember to communicate well with your readers, and keep them in the loop on what you're doing.


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## DL Pearl (Oct 15, 2013)

I'm with everyone else, you should be giving US advice! Congratulations for sure, your covers truly are catchy.


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## KerryT2012 (Dec 18, 2012)

Seriously in 6 months you have sold 13k and you don´t know what to do. This is a joke right?


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

I'm curious to know what you did to sell so many in so little time. Were you publishing a book a month?  If so, are you doing your own editing, cover design, and such? Or are these books a backlog of already completed works?


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## Guest (Oct 17, 2013)

smreine said:


> I don't even see any free books in his catalog.


If a title is in Select, it's only free 5 days and you use those days with say bookbub to get 50K or 100K kindles getting a title, even if you use select only on amazon, a free 5 day can get a title 500 to 2500 or more usually just on Amazon alone.


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## Guest (Oct 17, 2013)

Jeff Olah said:


> I ran a couple of free days back in May, although the 13,000 is all sales.


Exclusive to Amazon means select, so you get top royalty and 5 free days a month. Did you average 500 to 2500 downloads on title during free days? So you can now see new fans from that IMO.

The only thing you need to do is invest 50 to 150 bucks into bookbub, run the promo to a free day on your Select title and get 25K to 100K free downloads and make sure you have front and back links to an authors site and/or amazon titles. On your author site make sure you have a blog you update at least twice a week and use the email widget for newsletters to get your mailing list.

13K paid sales is great, and once you realize 70% royalties and 5 free days to attract more fans, you will be doing all you can without outside media pushes.


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## kwest (Mar 16, 2013)

Wow...great job!


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## MorganKegan (Jan 10, 2013)

I'm jumping on the bandwagon here by saying your covers are awesome! Great branding, lots of punch, and they totally convey the genre. If you did them yourself, you're like a cover genius, and should totally be giving us lessons.


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## BEAST (Mar 31, 2012)

Can't stress the newsletter thing enough, especially since you plan on writing and publishing longer works. You have a following and they will grab you novel length works as soon as you shoot them an email announcing the release.

Also, and only do this if you can spare the time from writing, look into authors in your genre who sell how you are selling (based on rankings) and see if they are interested in cross promoting. Exchange a blog post here, plug each other's work on social media or even run Raffle Copter giveaways together like Elle Casey, Mimi Strong and the New Adult juggernauts. You can check out any of their pages and look at the giveaways to see what I mean.

At the end of the day, don't lose focus, you're doing great and remember that your publishing at a quick rate is your BEST advertising.


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## ElHawk (Aug 13, 2012)

olefish said:


> Get thee a mailing list sign-up inside your books.


This! This is your next step. Congratulations on your success -- that's a very auspicious start to your career. 

I'd recommend you read (if you haven't already, and apologies if somebody else has already recommended it) Let's Get Visible by David Gaughran. I found it extremely useful. The Naked Truth About Self-Publishing also had many interesting ideas in it which made me think about where I could take my business practices next to maximize promotion and maintain reader interest...you might find it useful, too!


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## lazarusInfinity (Oct 2, 2012)

Congrats on the success!


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## Jan Thompson (May 25, 2013)

davidwwright said:


> As others have pointed out, it's tough to sell short works at $2.99. Many readers will feel ripped off paying $18 for a full "Season" if you have six "episodes" at $2.99 each. But at the same time, it's hard to make a living with .99 or $1.99 books.


But writers still do it, don't they, i.e. sell their shorts for $2.99 because that's the minimum to get 70% royalties, right?

Didn't I read in many places that $1.99 is the black hole? Nothing sells in this abyss.

I have a few short stories I hesitated to price at $2.99 because they are only 30-35 pages long, but Amazon might have left me with no choice. Smashwords has been saying since May 2013 that price points are all rising...


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## LeonardDHilleyII (May 23, 2011)

Congrats!


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

I haven't read through the whole thread yet, but I'd love to ask you a question or two if you don't mind.

1- Could we have an estimate on your word counts for these volumes? I actually tried to do something similar, and ended it a few months ago. My stories only averaged around 10k - 12k per story, though. That could have been where I went wrong.

2- Have you literally just been writing these and hitting the publish button? No marketing or promotion at all?

3- About how long does it take you to write a volume? It usually takes me a few weeks to write a 12k short. 

Lastly, I just checked your author page on Amazon, and WOW! You have readers begging you for the next volume each time you release something. That's awesome. Congrats!


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

Congrats on the success! Very awesome. A book a month certainly helps a lot with Amazon's algorithms. Those of us in the book every three months cycle don't get that benefit.

You said 70-80 pages ... pages is a metric that means nothing to me!  If you don't mind, how many words are we talking here?


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## twilcox (Oct 16, 2012)

I'm curious of word count too, and how you planned your series out. Congratulations by the way  I know you opened the thread looking for answers and didn't expect that you'd be the one doing most of the answering. I hope your success continues and this really is an inspiring thread.

One more question, I am planning on checking out your series for myself but I'd like to try to write one and I'm wondering how you handle your characters. Series usually follow quite a few characters around. Do you have any tips/suggestions on how many characters to introduce at a time w/o confusing the reader.


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## Mike Dennis (Apr 26, 2010)

Jeff Olah said:


> March 9th - March 23rd 2013: Wrote and proofed Volume 1. Loaded it to KDP and hit publish. Sort of ran around laughing and generally being happy. Went to work on Volume 2.
> 
> May 4 2013: Release Volume 2. This one took a bit longer as I was working 12+ hours a day at the day job and wanted to grow as a writer at the same time. About this time I received my first constructive review. Wanted to quit writing and throw myself into a volcano. With the addition of a couple more reviews regarding the editing (with no money to spend I had a family member do the editing for me and paid the price in the reviews) I found an editor and had them do both books and all the others since.
> 
> ...


Jeff--
Thanks for sharing your incredible story and your timeline. Congrats on your wild success.

I have a question. What did you do to go from zero sales -- debut book from a completely unknown author -- to 125 books/day in the space of eight short weeks? It seems like an almost impossible achievement, especially since you say you did absolutely no marketing during this time.


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## KevinH (Jun 29, 2013)

Congrats on your success!


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## williamvw (Mar 12, 2012)

Question, Jeff: Forgive me if I'm misstating anything because I haven't read your books yet, but it looks and feels like zombie fiction, which I totally dig. However, Amazon has you categorized in Science Fiction > Dystopian rather than a horror genre. From following Dean Wesley Smith, I know that SF is a more popular category than horror. Was this classification intentional on your part? Do you feel it could be helping your results?

And, of course, congratulations!!


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## Mike Dennis (Apr 26, 2010)

Jeff Olah said:


> Mike,
> 
> I had 4 sales my first 24 hours. I bought one and I can only assume 3 family members bought one as well.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the quick reply, Jeff. Good luck in the future.


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

Thanks for taking time to reply to my question, Jeff. It's appreciated!


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## ToniD (May 3, 2011)

Nothing to add except keep on doing what you're doing--and get that mailing list.

"If I had to guess, I would say that my covers, descriptions and first few pages are enough to get the reader interested and coming out with a new title fairly regularly is what Amazon likes."

I'd guess so, too.  

Great covers, great attitude, great approach. Congrats and welcome to the cafe!


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## KarenNZ (May 2, 2013)

Hi Jeff. I read your series last night for a break from reality (halfway through a novel) and to take some notes (joking, I write romance). 

Well done, you have seen deserved success with your story, when is the next part being released?

One thing I noticed was that at one point you have Randy singing some lines from Roxanne by The Police. Just wanted to check whether you were aware that if you use song lyrics you have to obtain the permission to use them from the copyright owner. You may know Sting or have already obtained permission, I don't know. 

Anyway, here is a link to The Passive Voice website where they discuss this - [URL=http://goo]http://goo.gl/kzsY8h[/url]


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## VEVO (Feb 9, 2012)

Congrats on your success.

This thread is highly recommended by everyone (mailing list)

A very quick, short, and dirty guide to slowly building sales
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,124433.0.html

I'm trying to collect all the great threads into 1 here, might worth a look to see if any threads pop

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,163703.0.html
Authors new to self-publishing: essential must-read Kboards threads

As for pricing, this is most ideal but I have no idea how it would be achievable....

Volume 1: $0.99 (like you have now)
Volume 2-3: $2.99
Volume 4-5: $2.99
Volume 6-7: $2.99

Volume 1 at $0.99 will get readers to try it out. Some authors like the first book to be perma free.

$2.99 will get you 70% royalties for all your subsequent works. $2.99 is a good price for 200+ pages covering 2 volumes.

Is it possible to add volume 3 to volume 2 in the mobi document?

Change the title of Volume 2 to "Volume 2-3."

Then increase the price of Volume 2-3 to $2.99.

Then delete Volume 3.


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## VEVO (Feb 9, 2012)

or just do this instead

As you have now

$0.99 volume 1
$1.49 volume 2
$1.49 volume 3
$1.49 volume 4
$1.49 volume 5

$2.99 volume 1,2,3


But from now on, do this

$2.99 volume 4-5
$2.99 volume 6-7
$2.99 volume 8-9 etc...

Release 2 volumes at a time...and at $2.99 for the 70% royalties.   

Just my opinion.  I might be very wrong on this however.


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## Kitty French (Dec 3, 2012)

Congratulations Jeff! Great numbers, and I'm not surprised. Your covers are awesome, your blurb sizzles, and I've just read the preview and one-clicked book one because I need to know what happened to Justin.  

You reeled me right in, and I don't even read horror. Looking forward to seeing where this leads for you.


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## jimkukral (Oct 31, 2011)

Congrats on your success! Keep it going!


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## jjfoxe (Apr 24, 2013)

Hi Jeff

Been a lurker here for a few months and this is as good a post as any to make my debut here on KB!

First, congrats!

Second, great thread, there's some great learning here (especially for me as I'm about to launch a project that's very similar in many ways - just not zombies or post apocalypse!).

Third - brought Episode 1 and 2 as a thank you!  Looking forward to checking them out later!



JJ.


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## A. S. Warwick (Jan 14, 2011)

Welcome aboard and congratulations.  

Whatever you ae doing, keep doing it. I think I can safely say most of here can only dream of a start like you've had.  I've even picked up a few ideas on how to do things better myself from what you've done.


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

Great work, Jeff, you rock! I'd kill to be in your position, but your books look great so you obviously deserve your success.

My only advice (and its pretty minor, because I'm a small fish telling a big fish how to swim!) is to remember that there will be peaks and troughs. You might be selling tons now, but this time next year you could be selling nothing. I've seen it happen, and I've seen authors broken by it. Keep adding product, and keeping working on improving your reach. You'll do fine.


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