ALLI Self-Publishing Advice Conference

The good folks behind the Alliance of Independent Authors are hosting another virtual conference called The Self-Publishing Advice Conference starting tomorrow (Saturday Sept 14th)

I have been a presenter/speaker at this conference in the past and love how valuable it can be to authors to consume and enjoy at their leisure, without having to leave their home or office.

This is because, for this conference, the alliance host 24 video sessions over 24 hours, bringing authors the latest self-publishing news and interviews, webinars and presentations, live to authors everywhere. This year, their conference theme is Sell More Books.

There are going to be top authors like Brian Meeks, Michael Anderle and J. Thorn as well as top companies like Bookbub and Findaway voices, and all sharing their very best strategies, tactics, and techniques for selling more books.

                                                              

At The Self-Publishing Advice Conference, you’ll learn:

                

·      How to grasp and master Bookbub’s CPM ads

·      How to copy write like a pro and crack your Amazon sales page

·      Why your book isn’t selling and what you can do about it

·      How to sell more audiobooks

·      Top tips for video marketing 

·      How to become an Instagram influencer

·      Who can benefit from AMS ads and how to master them.

And much more.

The best part?

The Self-Publishing Advice Conference is totally FREE to attend live and for the following 48 hours.

We all know there are a lot of courses, resources, and virtual summits out there for writers, but this one is unique…

You see, The Self-Publishing Advice Conference is focused exclusively on helping you sell more books.

This conference is about making YOU a better marketer, period.

To join in, all you need is a pen, some paper, and the drive to sell more books.

I’m really excited by the line up the alliance has managed to bring together to show you how to sell more books.

If you want to learn from people who have ‘been there, done that’ and can show you what to do (and what not to do) to achieve book sale success, then…

Check out “The Self-Publishing Advice Conference” (FREE for a limited time):

These conferences are free to ALLI members, but if you aren't a member, outside the window, an ALL-ACCESS PASS can be purchased for $199 and it offers access to this conference, previous and future sessions.

Having worked in this industry since 1992, I benefit from constantly learning. I know that I'll be learning more from this wonderful 24 hour virtual conference, and I'm sure that you will too if you check it out.

Mining for Ghosts

Last week I was back in my home town of Levack, Ontario, helping my mom with painting a few rooms in her home. Because Alexander had a PD day off school, we managed to get up there earlier in the week so I could get the work done.

So when I was in town, I recorded a short video at Levack Mine, referencing a chapter from my book Spooky Sudbury. I did this as part of my ongoing #FreeFridayFrights weekly series of live Facebook videos where I either read a story (FICTION) or relay a true tale (NON-FICTION).

In the short video I recalled, mostly off the top of my head, the tale about an eerie encounter from the 1970s at the mine in Levack that I wrote about in a chapter called "Haunted Level 2650 at Levack Mine"

I was startled to find that, within just a few days of posting it, the video has already had more than 2,600 views. I also, of course, realized I had goofed up and used incorrect terminology when relaying the story. So, when I did the post-live video upload (where I add sound effects, graphics and other enhancements to the video, I thought it best to record an introductory apology for getting the terms wrong and then also a conclusion where I read part of that chapter to share the proper and more full story.

I have been doing the Free Friday Frights videos every week since April 6, 2018, but this one, by far, has been the most watched video of all. I was delighted to see how many folks from my home town area commented, shared and then re-shared the video.

It reminds me of an old adage that my friend, fellow author Robert J. Sawyer said years ago and which stuck with me. He said it was important, when marketing yourself as an author, to define yourself as a big fish in a small pool.

The idea is that, as a writer of thrillers, horror and ghost stories, if I compare myself to Stephen King, I barely make it onto the radar. But if I compare myself to all the other thriller, horror and ghost story writers in the Sudbury area, at least I rank a spot on the charts. (There actually are a few authors who write those same things, but at least my presence, compared to them, is a lot more even than my comparison to Stephen King)

I find it fascinating that my largest success from writing always related back to my home town. When I launched my first book, One Hand Screaming there in 2004, there was a line-up of people, the newspapers and radio featured the release. And then, of course, in 2013, when Spooky Sudbury was released, the support from local media and the local public was truly overwhelming. Jenny and I sold out at both the Chapters and the Coles on the day of our book launch, and the following day, I spent 8 hours at the local Costco and sold most of a skid of books.

And, reflecting back on the comparison to Stephen King, it was awesome to see that, at least in one city in one afternoon in one store, I outsold the master of horror. (Of course, I was there signing copies, and he wasn't. Let's ignore the fact that, if King had been there signing copies of his book the only thing people might be looking at me for would be directions to the restrooms or where to find more copies of his books, because the skid sold out yet again. But best NOT to focus on that.)

Sales on that particular title continue to dominate my annual royalties, even though the local population of the City of Great Sudbury (about 165,000) is far smaller than the cities of Hamilton (550,000) and Ottawa (950,000) where a couple of my other books are set. A smaller community seems to take much more pride either in celebrating the accomplishments of a home town boy, or wanting to read about their home town itself.

For writers, the lesson is important. Focusing on defining a smaller and more focused target audience seems to be a consistent key for larger success.

Amazing Things Do Happen

An amazing thing happened several months ago.

C.C. Chapman visited Kobo's head office and his good friend Mitch Joel interviewed him for a Kobo in Conversation video.

It was one of those serendipitous moments that couldn't be planned, and yet it was likely based on an ongoing stream of constant and consistent community building.

Authors regularly ask me questions about marketing and how to get the word out about their book.

Photo courtesy of C.C. Chapman

What nobody who asks that question ever really wants to hear is that it's hard, there are millions of other books and authors out there and the thing that works best isn't a single gimmick or a quick one shot bullet.  What works best is building and engaging in a community -- in particular a community that can benefit from the type of thing that you are writing.

Working on that, focusing on how you can add value to the community, add value to those who are potentially within your target audience demographic, is the main thing to focus on.  And I'll use C.C. Chapman as an example - particularly since his he seems to exude the principle of giving.

C.C. has been blogging and podcasting and sharing his enthusiasm for life in an open and up front way for many years. He has consistently been giving to the community, and, he hasn't been broadcasting using social media - he has been engaging with them.  He hasn't been using the community, he has become a relevant and desired part of it. He has offered, and given, and shared and connected.

And he has done it in such a generous and honest way that, as James A. Owen said so beautifully in the Drawing out the Dragons talk he gave at Superstars Writing Seminars last week, people can hear it in his voice, see it in his face, and seem to automatically want to help him.

It might have been a single innocent tweet that C.C. sent out which led to Kobo inviting him to come to our office, to bring in his good friend Mitch Joel to interview him, and to make a special day out of it -- culminating in this video -- but that single tweet stemmed from years of engagement by C.C.

Sure, I saw the tweet in which he was asking for some simple advice about Toronto, responded to C.C. and began a conversation with him.  But that conversation never would have happened without C.C.'s initial investment in the digital community he harvested and stays engaged with. 

C.C. might thank others for something like this, but he is really the spark that made it all happen.

But, despite the fun had that day of finally getting to meet him in person, the best part is that I found a great new book (Amazing Things Will Happen) that I can recommend and purchase - one that, along with the Dr. Seuss book "Oh The Places You'll Go" make an excellent gift for any graduate.

Check out CC Chapman's books at Kobo.

Check out Mitch Joel's books at Kobo.

Can They Sell? Listen Bub . . .

In the interest of exploring various ways to promote the sale of ebooks, I'm always up for experimentation.

I was thus delighted when my better half gave me permission to invest some marketing money towards a relatively new ebook promotional company to try to generate some sales of one of my ebooks.



BookBub is the place.  (Thus explaining the old 1970's Spider-Man theme song that I was riffing on for the title of this post)

One of the things that I love best about BookBub is that they allow you to do a promo on ALL the platforms.  Most of the ones out there are all Amazon centric as if they are the only place where people can buy ebooks. But those of us with our eyes and minds open realize that while Amazon Kindle is popular in certain circles, that Kobo, Apple (iBooks), Barnes & Noble (Nook) and Sony are other large players in the eBook space.  There are, of course, dozens more, nay hundreds more, but the larger ones in the English speaking world are typically Kindle, Kobo, Apple, Nook and Sony.

BookBub allows readers to identify the platform they read on and sign up to receive notification for free and bargain titles in a particular category. They also allow authors the ability to buy promotion space in the emails.









I did a bit of research, checked to see if other authors had any success uses their services, and determined, that, based on the pricing schedule, I would book in an ad for a backlist title that had gotten some decent reviews, but not much attention.

Campus Chills, which retails for $20 as a print book and $4.99 for the eBook, came out in 2009. So it's not new. And while it had been reviewed quite nicely (how could it not with such a fantastic line-up of writers?), it was under-read, under-discovered.

I booked it for a Horror promo on January 10th (with a price of $0.99) and it cost me $110.  I was fully prepared to lose that money or, at the very best, make my $110 back in sales.  For the promo, I linked to Kobo and Amazon.

A few interesting things happened:

• I made my money back in about 6 hours

• I increased my sales on Kobo in the US 

• I ended up trending high on the Amazon US sales rankings and author rankings 

• I would have made more money if not for Amazon's guerrilla pricing strategies (and issues with aggregator data updates)

Here are a few details related to those point

I made my money back in about 6 hours

For my sales at Kobo and Amazon, I started to see a slight pick-up in sales when the posting went live on BookBub's website that morning.  But it wasn't until their email blast went out mid-afternoon that my sales really picked up.  Within 6 hours of BookBub's email going out I had earned my $110 back.

In all, because sales continued to remain solid for several days, and even trickled down such that they continued in a slow but steady way (and at a higher rate than previous to the promo) for a couple of weeks, I earned a little over $300 in total for the promotion.  (It would have been more if not for issues with data feeds and price matching, which I'll talk about below)

I increased by sales on Kobo in the US

Campus Chills had, historically, only sold in Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand via Kobo.  I hadn't sold a single copy in the US.  However, when this promo launched, I saw increased sales in all the "commonwealth" markets as expected, but a startling thing happened.  I went from absolutely zero sales in the US to a moderate handful of sales in just a few hours.  That was pretty cool.

On the flip side, while my sales on Amazon US increased wonderfully, I saw no lift in my Amazon UK sales, and still haven't sold a single thing off of Amazon's newly minted Canadian Kindle site which they launched in late 2012.

I ended up trending high on the Amazon US sales rankings and author ranking

Here were some cool sights on Amazon due to the lift in sales that I saw.

Bestseller Ranking appearing on CAMPUS CHILLS item page

CAMPUS CHILLS hit #5 in Fiction Anthologies

I even hit relatively high on the Amazon Author Rank for Horror

Amazon Author Rank (Horror) - spotlighting a few other titles, which is cool

I would have made more money if not for Amazon's guerrilla pricing strategies (and issues with aggregator data updates)

While I did the price promo on Amazon and Kobo, I wanted to be fair to the other places, but given the fact that my data is submitted to Apple, Nook and Sony via Smashwords, I couldn't guarantee that the price changes would take effect in time for the promotion.  So I didn't include them.

But, to be fair, I did change the price on Smashwords to 99 cents.

I shouldn't have done that. 

The price update took almost a week to hit B&N and Sony -- (it made it to Apple almost immediately -- perhaps 24 to 48 hours later), but then it took a couple of weeks before the price on B&N and Sony was fixed (again, while Apple's update happened relatively quickly)

This damaged me, because, after a full week promo, I updated the price back to $4.99 on Kobo and Amazon and Smashwords.  And it was still selling moderately well (due to the higher trending, the fact the item was in more customer libraries and was thus having an "also bought" effect in searches, etc)

One thing I didn't notice when I flipped my price back up to $4.99 on Amazon is that they don't automatically adjust your pricing back to the full 70% royalty for you.  You have to manually adjust that. I find it interesting that while they automatically adjust down to 35% when you lower your price, they don't automatically adjust back up when you put it back in their prefered pricing range.

Royalty selection for Amazon

Tricky bastards.

I ended up selling at least 100 units at this value (bringing in $1.75 rather than $3.44) -- oh yes, don't get me started on the delivery costs - this means I wasn't really getting 70% but rather 69% -- yes, it's only a few cents difference, but consider that difference when you're looking at thousands of units.  Spread out over all their author sales, they can likely easily fund their KDP Select program funds directly from that 1% they keep from authors.

But then, a few days later, I got the predatory warning from Amazon that they had spotted sCampus Chills at a lower price on Sony.  I immediately fixed my price on Amazon back to 99 cents for fear of the Amazonian Gods coming down to smite me.  And then I waited, and waited, and waited until both B&N and Sony fixed their pricing.  Then I waited another full day (for good measure and to ensure that the search engines that the Amazon pricing bots were likely reading would be updated) and re-adjusted by Amazon price back to $4.99

Amazon then, for some unbeknownst reason discounted Campus Chills by 80%, in effect selling it for 99 cents and paying me based on the lower price.  They are giving me 70% of $0.99 (well, not quite, because they're still taking the $0.07 delivery fee, meaning I'm getting 65%) but it is really frustrating.

I have learned that, next time, I won't include Smashwords (much as I want to support them) due to the challenges of getting my price updates downstream to B&N and Sony. (But not Apple - they seem to process their Smashwords data very quickly) It's too bad I couldn't make a price change at Smashwords (which is instant) and have it NOT flow downstream, so I can also include Smashwords in my next promo, or selectively choose, so I could include Apple as well.  (I'm an inclusive sort of guy)


In any case, I learned a few lessons, I have been able to increase my author brand in markets where I had no presence, and I made back more money than I invested.

I would thus call BookBub a worthwhile endeavour.

I have read reports from other authors who have been even more successful with BookBub.  And I have also read reports from authors who haven't had much success.

I suppose, like most things, we should always consider the following type of disclaimer:

Your mileage may vary.