# two books, two launch strategies - 90 days later



## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Today is the release day for my second novel. I published my first novel (no story-relation to the second) about a year ago. I've taken different approaches to each launch, and figured I'd start this thread to try to summarize strategies and results, in hopes of better understanding the differences between them.

First Novel

--basic info: Epic Fantasy, about 115K words, launched as a KDP select title in late May 2013 with a $4.99 sales price

--expenses: paid about $500 for an ebook/print, cover/format bundle deal

--marketing: sent a mass email to friends and family

--launch results: sold around 50 copies the first day (Amazon rank around #6500, I think), about 30 more copies in the two days following, maybe 15 more copies before the end of the first 30 days, and only one or two per month after that

--other notes: I went with the higher price because I'd read an interview with Leland Artra that made some very convincing points about not-undervaluing your work. I went with KDP Select because I'd read about the massive success JA Konrath had had using Free days. I ended up dropping the price to $2.99 after about a month because I wasn't getting many sales, and I took the book out of Select after the first 90 day period because I liked the idea of trying out other distributors. After finding my way to kboards in December 2013, I started running advertisements for the book in January. I've sold about 400 more copies since then, mostly because of those ads. At this point, I think the book has pretty much broken even with the money I've invested in it, and I'm looking into getting a better cover.

Second Novel

--basic info: Zombie Apocalypse, about 140K words, launched on both Amazon and Smashwords today (August 4, 2014) with a 99 cent sales price

--expenses: paid $30 for a premade book cover, spent $169 on advertisements for the book's first week

--marketing: mailchimp email to my (7 member) list, post on my blog, ads at the following sites: BKnights and Flurries of Words (Aug. 5), BargainBooksy (Aug. 6), Kindle Nation Daily (Aug. 7)

--launch results: none yet, will update

--other notes: This book was originally published as a five-part serial, releasing each episode as I finished it. The earnings for those episodes have been set aside to pay for marketing and other costs--my plan is to only spend money that has already been earned. I decided to release at 99 cents because I figure I'll probably end up running sales on it later, and I wanted my (very few) fans to be able to get the book for the cheapest price if they wanted it now. I'll probably raise the price to $2.99 later on. The idea to line up ads for the book's first week was inspired by Darren Wearmouth's launch strategy (http://rockingselfpublishing.com/episode-07-the-7-day-launch-strategy-with-darren-wearmouth/), though I wasn't able to replicate his actions entirely because certain sites are now requiring reviews. If I can get some reviews for this book, I'll run more ads.


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## A.C. Nixon (Apr 21, 2011)

Good luck with the new book.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Thanks for the interest and well wishes, Dwallock, A.C., and Anwen. 

Day 1 Results (August 4, 2014)
marketing = personal email list
Amazon sales (all sites) = 6
Amazon.com rank = 52K
Smashwords sales = 3


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

M.F. Soriano said:


> Day 1 Results (August 4, 2014)
> marketing = personal email list
> Amazon sales (all sites) = 6
> Amazon.com rank = 52K
> Smashwords sales = 3


You have 7 on your email list and 6 of them bought your book? That's a Hell of a conversion rate!

Philip


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Philip Gibson said:


> You have 7 on your email list and 6 of them bought your book? That's a Hell of a conversion rate!



I don't think all 6 sales came from the list. Mailchimp tells me that only 5 people actually opened the email, and only two clicked through. Some of the sales probably just came from people stumbling across it. Or maybe Amazon sent an email out to the people who've signed up to be notified of new releases? Does anyone know if that actually works?


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 2 Results (August 5, 2014)
marketing = bknights & flurries of words
Amazon sales (all sites) = 11
Amazon dot com highest rank of the day = 21K
Smashwords sales = none.

From here on I'll only mention vendors if a copy sells there. It looks like the book has shipped to a few more places, liked Scribd, so hopefully I'll have some new numbers to post, soon!


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## Writerly Writer (Jul 19, 2012)

A.C. Nixon said:


> Good luck with the new book.


Love your covers. They look like the promo for a movie :--)


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

KJCOLT said:


> Love your covers. They look like the promo for a movie :--)


I agree, A.C.'s. covers are great! Very cinematic, and stylistically very clearly linked to each other.

And yours are pretty awesome, too. K.J. I especially like the cover for "Concealed Power". Very eye catching!


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 3 Results (August 6, 2014)
marketing = BargainBooksy
Amazon sales (all sites) = 27
Amazon dot com highest rank of the day = 10.5K

The book is now showing up for sale at Kobo and the Apple iBooks store. I'm hoping it'll show up at Nook soon--the greatest sales for the individual episodes came from Nook.

I expect Day 4 (today, August 7th) to be sort of a grand finale of this launch run. The book's being promoted by Kindle Nation Daily, and I expect more sales from them than from the other sites.

I also submitted to a few "no charge to advertise" places, like AwesomeGang (to run on August 8th) and eBookLister (to run on August 9 - 12), in hopes of keeping some of the momentum going. And I purchased a $5 spot on eBookSoda for August 11.

This might be the last update I can do for a little while, though. Two hurricanes are expected to hit O'ahu in the next few days, the first today at 2 p.m., so we might lose power here.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 4 Results (August 7, 2014)
marketing = Kindle Nation Daily - Kindle Fire Book of the Day deal
Amazon sales (all sites) = 93
Amazon dot com highest rank of the day = 2861

Good results for this ad. It was enough to get the book into the 30-40 range on the bestsellers pages for Post-Apocalyptic and Dystopian. And when I checked the book's page this morning, I noticed that the book had crept up to 2605 and that I'd made the #93 spot for Amazon Horror authors. Making the top 100 on an authors' list is a first for me, so I've gotten a bit of a thrill from that! 

Unfortunately, I don't have any more ads to back this one up, so I'm guessing the book will slip down into obscurity in the next few days. Or maybe ranking high in the book's first days in the Amazon store will help the algorithms keep it propped up? One can hope!

It's been a learning experience, if nothing else. My strategy was to schedule the ads in order from smallest-estimated sales to largest, and that's the way it played out. But now I think that a better strategy would be to start high and use the lower-number ads to try to sustain a higher rank. If KND can get a book 90+ sales in a day, and push it up into the 3000 range, that book will probably gain a number of residual sales the next day from that alone. If you couple those residual sales (say, 20 or so) with a smaller ad that would normally get you 25 sales, you end up with 45 sales for the day instead of 25, and your ranking will be higher. If you alternate between high-result and mid-result ads, you might be able to sustain high ranking for longer.

I'm taking note of that, and I'll be trying a promotion run on my older novel--the Fantasy I mentioned at the start of this thread--after the new cover is finished. Right now, my dream promotion lineup would be something like: Day 1 KND, Day 2 BargainBooksy, Day 3 ENT, Day 4 Booksends, Day 5 Kindle Books and Tips. It'll be interesting to see how the algorithm reacts to a ranking boost for a book that already has a year+ of history.

The hurricane I mentioned in my last post has degenerated to a tropical storm, and we've still got power. If anyone is interested, I'll put up a few more daily posts to illustrate the after-effects of this promotion. Let me know!


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## Scott Zavoda - Author (Feb 23, 2014)

I also love your covers. I'll have to price compare. I've been happy with TheCoverCollection.  Your post couldn't come at a better time! Thank you for being so informative. My own launch is scheduled on Aug 20th and I have literally done almost the same things as you have (minus the free sites.) 

I have a 7-day banner with Digital book today staring on day one and a KF-KND with Kindle Daily nation on day 4. 

I'll be interested to compare the results!


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## Max Sebastian (Aug 10, 2014)

Don't forget to factor into your calculations that it takes about a week for Amazon's recommendation system to kick in when you publish a new title, so readers interested in similar titles see your book recommended too.


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## Sharon Austin (Oct 13, 2010)

Congratulations. Best of luck.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

This was very helpful. Thanks for posting the comparison, and best of luck with your future sales.


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## susan_illene (Aug 10, 2014)

Thanks for posting your results!  I've got a $0.99 sale planned for my first book later this month and I've been researching all the best ways to promote it.  The novel has been out for a year and a half, but I've never reduced the price.  I'm hoping it will do well with the right advertisements.


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## K.A. Madison (Feb 28, 2014)

Thanks for posting.  This is very helpful as I figure out the best way to market and launch my upcoming book.


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## Michael La Ronn (Jun 17, 2013)

Nice work. That you've already broken a profit on your first novel is excellent. I wish I could say that.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Thanks for checking in, everybody.  I'm glad that people are finding some value in this thread. Here are the stats for the past few days:

Day 5 Results (August 8, 2014)
Amazon sales (all sites) = 22
Amazon dot com highest rank of the day = 2,278

Day 6 Results (August 9, 2014)
Amazon sales (all sites) = 7
Amazon dot com highest rank of the day = 3,528

Day 7 Results (August 10, 2014)
Amazon sales (all sites) = 19
Amazon dot com highest rank of the day = 6,587

I'm guessing the sales on Day 5 were the tail from the KND ad on day 4. Day 6, the second day with no promos, was the lowest sales day since the book went live. Today the sales bounced back a little. Max Sebastian mentioned that it takes about seven days for the book to start appearing in the also-boughts for other books, and right now that's my best guess as to why the numbers improved today.

Despite receiving confirmation emails from AwesomeGang and eBookLister, I haven't actually been able to find mention of the book on their sites, so I'm guessing that if they did mention it, it had no real effect. I do have one final ad coming up tomorrow with eBookSoda, but nothing after that until Kindle Books and Tips next month (September 20th). Still haven't heard back from ENT.

Also, the book still doesn't appear in the Nook store, though I think it's showing up in most of the other places that Smashwords distributes to. Maybe I'll send Smashwords an email tomorrow, asking them to follow up with B&N. Historically, B&N customers have been the biggest supporters of this series.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

susan_illene said:


> Thanks for posting your results! I've got a $0.99 sale planned for my first book later this month and I've been researching all the best ways to promote it. The novel has been out for a year and a half, but I've never reduced the price. I'm hoping it will do well with the right advertisements.


Good luck with your promotion, Susan!



Michael La Ronn said:


> Nice work. That you've already broken a profit on your first novel is excellent. I wish I could say that.


Well, I've just started working with an artist to re-do the cover, so that book is now officially back in the red!


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 8 Results (August 11, 2014)
marketing = eBookSoda
Amazon sales (all sites) = 29
Amazon dot com highest rank of the day = 9,940
Smashwords sales = 1

So far, this was the second best day of sales since launch! 

I'm not sure how many of those sales resulted from the eBookSoda ad, but I'm guessing that I owe the Smashwords sale to them, and probably at least a few others.

The book still hasn't shown up at the B&N Nook store. I contacted Smashwords, and they told me that it often takes more than a week for a book to appear in affiliate stores, and that they think it's too early to be concerned. They did say they'd make a note to reship the book to B&N, though, just in case.

Since Day 5 (August 8th) I've been getting the rankings from KND's EBook Tracker site (http://tracker.kindlenationdaily.com/). I'm not sure why the ranking is higher today than yesterday despite having sold more copies. Maybe yesterday's highest ranking was pulled right after the day began (like 12:01 am), and the book still had a higher rank holding over from the bigger sales on Day 4?


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## Andie (Jan 24, 2014)

Nice! Thank you for sharing your results.


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## JavierCabrera (Jul 21, 2014)

Did you break even yet? You spend a hell of a lot of cash in promotions! ;-)


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

JavierCabrera said:


> Did you break even yet? You spend a hell of a lot of cash in promotions! ;-)


Not yet.  I'm about halfway there. 35% of 99 cents takes a while to add up to notable numbers.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 9 Results (August 12, 2014)
Amazon sales (all sites) = 33
Amazon dot com highest rank of the day = 6,750

Sales crept up a little more, which was enough to put me back on the dystopian and post-apocalyptic top 100 lists. I'm holding my breath, hoping that they keep climbing.


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## H.M. Ward (May 16, 2012)

If you don't me offering a tip-try to schedule promos in triplicate or higher, rather than one per day. Creating a spike generally has a better ROI b/c the spike creates visibility, which also makes the tail end is longer. I've tried doing it your way to try and sustain it at a lower rank with a long term strategy, but the spike tends to check that long term box too. YMMV, but thought I'd mention it. The best run Ive had was with a novel priced b/t 99 cents-$3.99. I played eith the price. It stayed in the top 100 for over 100 days. I spiked that sucker and it stuck. The spike n stick is golden. Most of my spikes have a two week tail recently. Books don't seem to stick the way they had a year ago.

Congrats on your new launch!


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

H.M. Ward said:


> If you don't me offering a tip-try to schedule promos in triplicate or higher, rather than one per day. Creating a spike generally has a better ROI b/c the spike creates visibility, which also makes the tail end is longer.


Thanks for the tip! I've been wondering if the book's current ranking is just the tail from its knd ad, or whether the sustained boost from the smaller ads has something to do with it. I've had one day ad spikes (with another title) that didn't seem to have much of a tail, but maybe that's because the spike wasn't high enough. Combining multiple ads for a one day super spike is something I've never tried. I'm starting to plan out a promotion for an older title that I've commissioned new cover art for. Maybe I'll try the super spike approach.

After all, you seem to know a thing or two about selling books.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 10 Results (August 13)

Amazon sales (all sites) = 24
Dot com rank =  about 9000

After three days of climbing, sales took a bit of a dip today.  I'm hoping tomorrow's better, and I'm starting to think about raising the price to $2.99 in order to gain the 70% royalty. My main thought is to wait until day twenty, with the hope that the 99 cent price will keep the ranking steady, and that twenty days will be long enough to make the book sticky at that ranking. And then go for the higher royalty before the dreaded thirty day cliff.

Anybody have any thoughts?


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## SunshineOnMe (Jan 11, 2014)

I am so impressed! Great job! We published at the same time, and my ranking is in the 50k. You are a success! Enjoy.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

SunshineOnMe said:


> I am so impressed! Great job! We published at the same time, and my ranking is in the 50k. You are a success! Enjoy.


I'm excited! I've never had a book hold a rank like this for more than a day or two before. Of course... I still haven't made back the money I spent on ads. 

And 50k is a great rank! It's higher than all ten of my other books!


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 11 results

Amazon sales on all sites = 40
Amazon dot com rank = about 6000

A bit of a bump to make up for yesterday's dip.  

Sales seem to be holding on their own (keeping my fingers crossed!). I'm not sure if it's due to visibility in the store, or if it's from word of mouth. Still no reviews, but maybe that's because the book is so long, and people haven't had a chance to finish it yet?


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 12 Results

Amazon sales (all sites) = 52
Amazon dot com rank = around 4500

Day 13 Results

Amazon sales (all sites) = 74
Amazon dot com rank  = about 3700

Almost a week since the last promotion, and sales are starting to climb a little faster!    I wonder if the book is starting to benefit from word of mouth.  Or maybe it's because the book shows up in fellow kboarder andyroo's Vessel also boughts, and his book is selling like crazy!  

Still hasn't shown up on Barnes and noble nook...    Smashwords says they shipped it almost two weeks ago, so I'm wondering what the hold up is.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 14 results
Amazon sales (all sites) = 73
Amazon dot com rank = about 3000

Day 15  Results
Amazon sales = 62
Rank = 3300

Day 16 results
Amazon sales = 64
Rank = 3250

After two 70+ sales days, it seems like things are on the downward side of the peak. I'm thinking I'll try to switch to 2.99 today or tomorrow, to try to get some sales with the higher royalty before the book loses visibility. Still no reviews.


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## Ethan Jones (Jan 20, 2012)

Thanks for sharing. Some good intel in here.
Ethan


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Ethan Jones said:


> Thanks for sharing. Some good intel in here.
> Ethan


You're welcome.  I'm glad you found some value in it.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 17 Results (August 20) - *Switched to $2.99*
Amazon sales (all sites) = 37
Amazon dot com rank = 3500

Day 18 Results (August 21)
sales = 23
rank = 7000

Day 19 Results (August 22)
sales = 34
rank = 6000

Day 20 Results (August 23)
sales = 39
rank = 5500

I switched to $2.99 on August 20th, and I think that most of the sales from that day came before the price changed. The next day saw one of the lowest sales totals since the Kindle Nation Daily ad two weeks before, and the book dropped off most of the top 100 lists it had struggled onto, but the higher royalty rate meant that it was the highest earning day for the book thus far. (It's amazing to think of how much of a difference royalty makes. 20 books at $2.99 = 120 books at 99 cents!) The book has crawled a little higher with each of the subsequent days, and is fingernail-dangling at the bottom of some of those top 100 lists again.


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## Dean F. Wilson (Aug 15, 2014)

Congrats on your promo. Looks like it has done well so far


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Dean F. Wilson said:


> Congrats on your promo. Looks like it has done well so far


Thanks, Dean! 

Day 21 Results (August 24, 2014)
Amazon sales (all sites) = 39
Amazon dot com rank = 6200

There are now two reviews on Amazon dot com, a 4 star and a 1 star. The 1 star just went up this morning. They called the book "THE WORST ZOMBIE BOOK EVER WRITTEN," and said they stopped reading halfway through because they hated the protagonist's behavior (he's an antihero--a failed poet with a drinking problem--who hits rock-bottom at the halfway point and then starts to rise-to-the-occasion afterward). I'm curious, and somewhat apprehensive, about how sales will be affected by this review. With just two reviews up, the total review average shows as 2.5, which is pretty low.

There's also a 5 star review up on Amazon UK, which calls the book "a great read," but that doesn't show up on the dot com site.


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## coolpixel (Sep 17, 2012)

Marcos  you can mention that review in the book description and refer the review to the UK site. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

coolpixel said:


> Marcos you can mention that review in the book description and refer the review to the UK site.


Good idea, coolpixel.  If no other reviews show up, this is probably what I'll do. Unfortunately, it won't change the rating average, and that's what I'm most worried about.


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## C Ryan Bymaster (Oct 4, 2013)

Been reading along since the beginning of your posts and I got to congratulate you on the success! And, thank you for the much needed info you've shared so far


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

C Ryan Bymaster said:


> Been reading along since the beginning of your posts and I got to congratulate you on the success! And, thank you for the much needed info you've shared so far


Thank you! 

Day 22 Results
Amazon sales (all sites) = 32
rank = 8000

Day 23 Results
Amazon sales = 33
rank = 7900

A few more reviews have come in, and they haven't all been great.  The common complaints are that the protagonist is a loser, and the plot is unbelievable/cliched (or, to be more exact, less believable/more cliched than the plot of a regular zombie story). I'm feeling a bit panicked about it all now, because writing about losers in unbelievable scenarios is sort of my preferred niche!

It's been a bit of a surprise, too, because the individual episodes were well reviewed (like a 4.2 rating over 25 reviews; whereas the omnibus average is currently a rating of 3 over 5). Perhaps this is a potential downfall of reaching a larger audience--people who wouldn't normally be interested in the book will pick it up and then hate it. I did a better job with using keywords with the release of the omnibus, and that got the book onto the post-apocalyptic and dystopian lists--which the individual episodes never appeared in. But maybe the folks who read those lists aren't the type who'd like this story. Maybe they want _I Am Legend_ but I'm going for _Shawn of the Dead_.

It's hard to know for sure, but my guess is that the poor reviews have been affecting sales, though less than I would have thought. The two days before the reviews saw 39 sales each, the two days since the first negative review appeared saw 32 and 33 sales, respectively.

I'll be watching to see what happens with reviews/sales over the next few days, and I'm curious to see what happens to sales after the 30 day cliff, when the book falls off all the Hot New Release lists. But I started this thread to compare this launch with the launch of my previous novel, and I've already come to a few tentative conclusions about that. Here they are:

*Visibility is the key.* It's the single most important part of any book's sales success. I invested more time and money in my first book (including money spent on professional formatting and custom covers), and the book has received much better reviews, but the second book has sold more than twice as many copies, in three weeks, as the first book has sold in a year and a half. There are plenty of differences between the two books that might contribute to that disparity in sales, but I personally attribute it to visibility more than anything else.

*The book has certain visibility-benefits in its first month, and taking advantage of them is crucial.* I've run promo's at a lot of the same places for the first book as I did for the second, but I didn't run them until after the book had already been languishing in obscurity for more than half a year. Those promos usually resulted in one-day sales spikes that faded away almost immediately, and didn't lead to any future sales. But this time, later sales did result. I think it's because of the boost the book gets for being new.

I've been dreaming of earning a living as a writer for nearly twenty years now, and haven't made it there yet. Sometimes it starts to feel like a desperate struggle, and I'm tempted to cling to whatever feels like a truth or a key that will help me somehow crack the code. Maybe the conclusions I've listed above are just more of that--I'm sure there are more successful people out there with different thoughts. So please take them with a grain of salt.

Having said that, from a sales perspective this month has been by far the best month I've ever had, and the above mentioned conclusions are my best idea of why. I've gained a lot from being a member of this forum, and I wanted to share what I think I've learned.


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## jdrew (Jul 27, 2012)

Scott Zavoda - Author said:


> I also love your covers. I'll have to price compare. I've been happy with TheCoverCollection. Your post couldn't come at a better time! Thank you for being so informative. My own launch is scheduled on Aug 20th and I have literally done almost the same things as you have (minus the free sites.)
> I have a 7-day banner with Digital book today staring on day one and a KF-KND with Kindle Daily nation on day 4.
> I'll be interested to compare the results!


So Scott, what happened?

And Marcos, thanks tons for the rundown, conclusions and helpful thoughts. I should be launching my next novel in a month or two and will be looking closely at what you've done in order to get the most traction I can from that initial release. All the best for more and better.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

jdrew said:


> And Marcos, thanks tons for the rundown, conclusions and helpful thoughts. I should be launching my next novel in a month or two and will be looking closely at what you've done in order to get the most traction I can from that initial release. All the best for more and better.


You're welcome, jdrew! I'm glad you found some value from this thread.

And just in case you haven't already been following andyroo's thread about his promo launch for Vessel, here's the link: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,191128.0.html His promo was very well organized, and he's had massive success with his launch. I think the key thing I learned from it is that it's better to line your promotions up from largest estimated result to smallest, to go big and then try to sustain.


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## jdrew (Jul 27, 2012)

Marcos Fenton said:


> You're welcome, jdrew! I'm lad you found some value from this thread.
> 
> And just in case you haven't already been following andyroo's thread about his promo launch for Vessel, here's the link: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,191128.0.html His promo was very well organized, and he's had massive success with his launch. I think the key thing I learned from it is that it's better to line your promotions up from largest estimated result to smallest, to go big and then try to sustain.


Thanks for the link to Andyroo's launch thread. I had not seen it. Now I'm watching you both and scheming my own launch which I should be ready to have a go at in October. Keep us up to date as time goes by.


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## Andyroo (Aug 1, 2014)

Thanks for the link! I think what's helped with my numbers was getting reviews in early from advanced readers and having three big-hitter advertisers at the beginning, middle and end of my two-week promo. Having the impact and duration seems to have convinced the amazon algorithms that my book is one it can make money on, so it's being posted on popular lists as well as charting prominently. I've a feeling that once it takes, it's a spiralling effect that only gets bigger so long as the positive reviews keep coming in. We'll see!


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## coolpixel (Sep 17, 2012)

Marcos, are these results with promotions with just 4 sites, over three days?  those are very good results, if that's the case. most of the other launches have had the promotions stacked over a wider range of sites for a longer period.


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## Ryan Sullivan (Jul 9, 2011)

I often see people who've set up ads to run in the first day or three of release, but how do you do that if the book isn't out yet to link to?


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## Roberta Nicholls (Jul 23, 2014)

Well done with your results! I'm going to start marketing my book soon and I'd love results like yours x


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

jdrew said:


> Thanks for the link to Andyroo's launch thread. I had not seen it. Now I'm watching you both and scheming my own launch which I should be ready to have a go at in October. Keep us up to date as time goes by.


You're welcome, and good luck with your launch in October!



coolpixel said:


> Marcos, are these results with promotions with just 4 sites, over three days? those are very good results, if that's the case. most of the other launches have had the promotions stacked over a wider range of sites for a longer period.


I also ran a promo with eBookSoda a few days after the initial run, and I signed the book up for AwesomeGang and eBookLister--though I'm not sure if either of those sites actually mentioned my book.

In all honesty, I wonder if it was the Kindle Nation Daily (KND) ad alone that got sales rolling. There were only 11 sales on my combined Flurries of Words + Bknights promo day, and 27 sales on the day of the Bargain Booksy promo. The KND day saw 93 sales, which was enough to get the book up on several lists (namely: Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian, and Horror). Sales totals plummeted the day after that, but started picking up again a few days later--which may have been a "word-of-mouth" thing. Higher up on this thread, H.M Ward said she's seen her best results from stacking promos together on a single day and aiming for a big sales spike. But then again, I've had notable sales spikes with other books that didn't result in the later climb enjoyed by this particular book.



Ryan Sullivan said:


> I often see people who've set up ads to run in the first day or three of release, but how do you do that if the book isn't out yet to link to?


Certain sites--like Kindle Nation Daily, Bargain Booksy, Flurries of Words, and Bknights--will reserve a spot for you before the book is online. You have to mention it when you first contact the site, and you have to send them the link later on.



Roberta Nicholls said:


> Well done with your results! I'm going to start marketing my book soon and I'd love results like yours x


Best of luck to you, Roberta!


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Day 24 Results
Amazon sales (all sites) = 27
Amazon dot com rank = 8500

Day 25 Results
Amazon sales (all sites) = 28
Amazon dot com rank = 10K

Sales have dropped significantly in the dot com store, and I'm pretty sure it's related to the 1-star and 2-star reviews that popped up on August 25th. The reviews that have come in since then have been better, but the average is still pretty low for Amazon (3 out of 5). I'm still hoping that more positive reviews will come in and skew the average higher, but the 30 day cliff draws nigh, and I expect sales numbers to take another serious hit from that.

Total sales have actually been getting a boost from Amazon dot co dot uk sales, recently. While the book is dropping in the dot com store, it's actually climbing in co dot uk. There's still only one review there--a 5 star. I'm not sure if this is all happenstance, or if it relates to cultural differences. The book has a sort of "community is salvation" theme that might go over better in the UK than in "rugged individualism" USA. Or maybe the UK audience is more tolerant of weird/far-out plots. (I know my love of bizarre stories was very influenced by the British comic-book writers working for Vertigo in the nineties--Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis.) Or maybe I'm reading way more into all of this than I should. 

Interesting note (for me, at least): this is the only time I've had a book get a better review average on Goodreads (3.62 over 8 ratings) than on Amazon dot com. Usually, it seems like Amazon reviews skew higher, and Goodreads reviews are a little tougher.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

The chart above shows sales for the book's first 30 days, and is annotated to show where notable events fell into that time period. (Whoops! I just realized I put KDP for the big spike, when it should have been KND - Kindle Nation Daily.)

The book's been slowly sinking in rank. For the past few days, it's been floating between 12K and 15K in the dot com store. Daily sales have also dropped further since the 31st day, when the book stopped showing up on the Hot New Release lists for Post-Apocalyptic and Dystopian. Yesterday there were 11 sales (in all Amazon stores). Today, so far, there have been 17.

There's been a notable increase in downloads of the (perma-free) first episode in the series (from 10 a day to 40 a day), and a slight uptick in sales for the individual episodes, too. I'm guessing that this all relates to the greater visibility the omnibus has brought to the series.

Once again, the launch of this newest book has been an eye-opener for me about the importance of visibility to sales. Nothing else I've published has achieved even a fraction of the success of this book. I think the difference came from advertising the book in its first few days live.

In a few days I'm starting a promo run on the Fantasy book I mentioned at the start of this thread--which has only sold about a third of the number of copies despite having been out for 16 months. It'll be interesting to see if an older book--with a history of ranking around 400K--can be revived by an effective promo run, or if the established low-rank will prevent the algorithms from changing.

I'll start a new thread to share those results.


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## AisFor (Jul 24, 2014)

Congratulations on some great results so far, and long (and ever upwards) may they continue!


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## jdrew (Jul 27, 2012)

Thanks much for the chart.  Very informative.  If possible can you add a note here when you start the new thread for the fantasy book?  I'm sure many of us will want to follow that too and may miss it otherwise.


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## coolpixel (Sep 17, 2012)

Marcos, the way I see it, your sales seem to be holding steady at 20-30 despite price rise. Will be good it you can let us know results in about a month or so for this book. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

Ariana said:


> Congratulations on some great results so far, and long (and ever upwards) may they continue!


Thanks, Ariana! 



jdrew said:


> Thanks much for the chart. Very informative. If possible can you add a note here when you start the new thread for the fantasy book? I'm sure many of us will want to follow that too and may miss it otherwise.


Good idea, jdrew. I'll add a link to the Fantasy Book Resurrection Attempt thread here. The promo run is scheduled to start tomorrow.



coolpixel said:


> Marcos, the way I see it, your sales seem to be holding steady at 20-30 despite price rise. Will be good it you can let us know results in about a month or so for this book.


Hi coolpixel! The sales numbers have dropped a little lower since the last day shown on that chart. They're still holding around 20 sales a day, but less of those sales are coming from the dot com store (like 8-10 sales a day). To my surprise (and delight!), the sales numbers in the UK store have grown to make up the difference, keeping worldwide totals near that 20-a-day average. Rank in the UK store is about 4K, and in the dot come store it's dropped to around 19K.


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## coolpixel (Sep 17, 2012)

Marcos Fenton said:


> Thanks, Ariana!
> Good idea, jdrew. I'll add a link to the Fantasy Book Resurrection Attempt thread here. The promo run is scheduled to start tomorrow.
> Hi coolpixel! The sales numbers have dropped a little lower since the last day shown on that chart. They're still holding around 20 sales a day, but less of those sales are coming from the dot com store (like 8-10 sales a day). To my surprise (and delight!), the sales numbers in the UK store have grown to make up the difference, keeping worldwide totals near that 20-a-day average. Rank in the UK store is about 4K, and in the dot come store it's dropped to around 19K.


a sale is a sale is a sale, wherever it comes from and it comes at 70% royalty rate, which is great.

if the book is in any top 100 chart in Amazon UK, because of the ranking, you should mention it in the main blurb.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

jdrew asked for a link to the new thread I've started on my attempt to resurrect a dead book. Here's the link: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,194289.0.html 



coolpixel said:


> a sale is a sale is a sale, wherever it comes from and it comes at 70% royalty rate, which is great.
> 
> if the book is in any top 100 chart in Amazon UK, because of the ranking, you should mention it in the main blurb.


I agree 100%. Or maybe even 1000%. In fact, I get a special thrill from the idea that readers in other countries are interested in my book, and I've got a particular infatuation with the UK because so many of the authors and artists I love come from there.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

The book I launched at the start of this thread recently passed the 90-days-live mark. I figured I'd do a brief update here, with some of my current thoughts.

Sales: The book continues to sell a few copies a day, which is better than most of my other titles.
Rating: Has improved. There are currently 15 reviews, with a 3.7 average.
Print version: is out! I ran a Goodreads Giveaway for it--which resulted in around 350 adding it to their "to-read" lists. But the print version hasn't sold many copies so far and doesn't seem to have had an effect on ebook sales.

I'm not sure if the book will continue to move a few copies a day, or if the sales trickle will eventually dry up all together. I've been working on other, unrelated projects, so I haven't been doing anything to try to spur more sales with this book. I've thought about doing a 99-cent price pulse with a BKnights ad, but I'm guessing that'd only bring in a few sales and wouldn't really make much of a difference longer term.

A thought I've had, which I'm more convinced of after watching this book's numbers: *the success of the book's launch has massive influence on later sales*. This book isn't my best reviewed, and it isn't the book I've put the most effort into (either in terms of writing or promoting), and yet it continues to outsell all of my other titles. I attribute that to my launch strategy (detailed at the start of this thread), and the early sales success that strategy garnered.

I've been relating this thought to a recent post by Rachel Aaron, in which she discusses the first two months of sales of her new book _Nice Dragons Finish Last_: http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2014/10/nice-dragons-deserve-numbers-sales.html. What stood out to me most about her post was the idea that the Amazon Algorithm actually manipulates a book's rank during the book's first 30 days. She thinks that the "ascending steps" shown on sales chart of her book (which is shown in her blog post) reveal the Algorithm at work. Basically, when a book does well in its first week, the Algorithm kicks in and locks the book's ranking at a specific level. If the book continues to sell at a rate that merits that level, the Algorithm bumps its ranking up to a new level. It keeps going like that for the rest of the first 30 days, after which the book is left to its own devices. (I might be remembering this wrong; please read her blog post for more information.)

I've often wondered if something like this was going on with my book. As I said before, I've released other titles that were better reviewed than this one, and I've done as much (more, actually) promotion for those books, and yet this book continued to outsell those other books. In fact, this book was hit with some pretty poor reviews early on--the first three reviews were a 5 star, a 2 star, and a 1 star--and yet it kept selling. So I'm wondering if those sales reflect some other force at work--like the algorithm shoving my book in front of lots of eyes.

If anybody else has any thoughts, I'd be interested in hearing them.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Oh hi. Part of what helps is you are a great writer.


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## coolpixel (Sep 17, 2012)

Marcos if you've two books out and are in Kindle Select, you should run a KCD deal on one book every alternating month. KCD will push the books in front of more eyeballs. What's the ranking now if I may ask?


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

cinisajoy said:


> Oh hi. Part of what helps is you are a great writer.


Hi, cinisajoy! Nice to hear from you! And thanks for the compliment. 



coolpixel said:


> Marcos if you've two books out and are in Kindle Select, you should run a KCD deal on one book every alternating month. KCD will push the books in front of more eyeballs. What's the ranking now if I may ask?


Hi coolpixel! The book's current ranking, right now, is 72K. But it's been all over the place --as low as 30K and as high as 150K--for the past few weeks.

I think your idea about juggling countdown deals is a good strategy, and I do have some titles in KDP Select, but the title that I focus on in this thread--which is also the only title I have that seems to make consistent sales--is not in Select. In fact, this book, and the serial episodes it collects, are the only things that I've left in wide-distribution, and that's because they're the only things that have sold well in other places besides Amazon.

And come to think of it, maybe that means something too. I've been figuring that a strong launch is what won the support of the Amazon Algorithm, but maybe that's a conspiracy-theory type of assumption. I mean, B&N's site isn't known for having a helpful-to-indies system, but the book usually sells a few copies a day there too. So maybe people just feel more interested in this book than in my others.

 All I know is that I don't know nothing!


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## coolpixel (Sep 17, 2012)

Marcos Fenton said:


> Hi, cinisajoy! Nice to hear from you! And thanks for the compliment.
> Hi coolpixel! The book's current ranking, right now, is 72K. But it's been all over the place --as low as 30K and as high as 150K--for the past few weeks.
> 
> I think your idea about juggling countdown deals is a good strategy, and I do have some titles in KDP Select, but the title that I focus on in this thread--which is also the only title I have that seems to make consistent sales--is not in Select. In fact, this book, and the serial episodes it collects, are the only things that I've left in wide-distribution, and that's because they're the only things that have sold well in other places besides Amazon.
> ...


so long as all your titles are grouped under your author name in Amazon, running KCD on the Select titles should help a little in crossover.

KCD will not hurt for sure.

i think many multi book authors run a KCD deal once a month sequentially on their books or all titles together.


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## jdrew (Jul 27, 2012)

Marcos, Thanks for the up date.  Just about to launch my next book and based on your thoughts I will be putting more effort into a good marketing plan for the first 30 days.  One other thought is that this idea of the first 30 days being such a sales driver reinforces the plan to have new books coming out more often so you have a new title in the sweet spot more often.  We'll see where it goes.


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## Perro Callejero (Dec 23, 2013)

jdrew said:


> Marcos, Thanks for the up date. Just about to launch my next book and based on your thoughts I will be putting more effort into a good marketing plan for the first 30 days. One other thought is that this idea of the first 30 days being such a sales driver reinforces the plan to have new books coming out more often so you have a new title in the sweet spot more often. We'll see where it goes.


Hi jdrew! It does seem like releasing often would help a writer capitalize on the benefits of those first-30-day periods. Some of the most successful authors on kboards seem to be able to crank out a full novel every month!  For a lot of other writers, that's beyond the realm of possibility, and I think that some people are drawn to writing serials for this reason--finishing a 100K novel every month isn't possible for them, but a 20K episode a month_ is_. And I've heard some really great serial success stories--Viola Rivard's_ Claimed by the Alphas_ comes to mind.

But in regards to serials, I think there's a significant number of readers who prefer novels to serial-episodes, which means that writing a serial reduces your chances of enticing those readers--and possibly increases your chances of getting negative reviews by people who feel burned by all the cliffhangers that serial episodes typically end with. Actually, the preponderance of serials in recent times--after decades of them being a pretty unfeasible story format--strikes me as a very interesting ebook-related development.

The book focused on in this thread is actually an omnibus edition of a 5-part serial. But the individual episodes never had any success to compare to what the omnibus (briefly) enjoyed.

Anyway, best of luck with your next book!


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## jdrew (Jul 27, 2012)

Marcos,
Interesting thoughts regarding serials versus novels.  I wasn't thinking of doing serials and so far each novel I've managed to finish all the way to publishing are unconnected, separate stories.  Prevailing marketing thought says that will hurt my sales but I write what I'm interested in.  The only common factor is that all of them are suspense/thriller sorts of stories.  I have been asked by a scant few readers if I will be doing sequels to particular books and probably at some point I will just not right now.  I agree with you that cranking out a novel a month is not ever going to happen for me.  I think the best I could do is maybe a novel every 4 months or so.  Still that would get my newest book in that 30 day sweet spot 3 times a year.  All that right now is wishful thinking.  I have to write the books.  So, onward I go.  Best of luck to you too and thanks again for the thread.


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