Tales from a hybrid author

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girlyswot

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It's been a while since I updated here, but there's been plenty going on.

AN UNSUITABLE HUSBAND peaked at #44 on B&N and it's still selling well over there six months after it came out (and now at the higher price of $3.99). It didn't have spectacular sales elsewhere, and I was particularly frustrated by what happened at Amazon. It didn't get into the sports romance category until the very last day of the 99c promo period, so it never had a chance to take advantage of being at the top of the rankings there.

In June, July and August, FLIRTING WITH THE CAMERA was in the box set organised by Mandy Harbin. I've never done a box set with other authors before and I wasn't sure what to expect. We didn't make a bestseller list, which I know was the goal for some of the authors, but I was glad to get the extra publicity, make some sales, and in particular, get a huge boost to my mailing list.

I've just released my latest short story, NOT MY FIELD, and sent out a mailshot. It's been exciting to see the boost that's given to the book. I offered free copies (in exchange for a review) to the first twenty people who replied, and that's worked really well so far. I expected that there would be a percentage of bounced emails/unsubscribers but so far it's less than 2% of the total who signed up.

I've more or less made the decision not to submit again to my previous publisher, though I do have a book on submission with Mills and Boon. If they're not interested, I think it will be self-publishing all the way from now on. Exciting times!
 

grayworld

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It's been a while since I updated here, but there's been plenty going on.

AN UNSUITABLE HUSBAND peaked at #44 on B&N and it's still selling well over there six months after it came out (and now at the higher price of $3.99). It didn't have spectacular sales elsewhere, and I was particularly frustrated by what happened at Amazon. It didn't get into the sports romance category until the very last day of the 99c promo period, so it never had a chance to take advantage of being at the top of the rankings there.

In June, July and August, FLIRTING WITH THE CAMERA was in the box set organised by Mandy Harbin. I've never done a box set with other authors before and I wasn't sure what to expect. We didn't make a bestseller list, which I know was the goal for some of the authors, but I was glad to get the extra publicity, make some sales, and in particular, get a huge boost to my mailing list.

I've just released my latest short story, NOT MY FIELD, and sent out a mailshot. It's been exciting to see the boost that's given to the book. I offered free copies (in exchange for a review) to the first twenty people who replied, and that's worked really well so far. I expected that there would be a percentage of bounced emails/unsubscribers but so far it's less than 2% of the total who signed up.

I've more or less made the decision not to submit again to my previous publisher, though I do have a book on submission with Mills and Boon. If they're not interested, I think it will be self-publishing all the way from now on. Exciting times!

This is such a good thread, girlyswot. Thanks for all the insight into the ins and outs, ups and downs of hybrid publishing. The idea of collaborating on a box set/anthology is interesting, and you're clearly an awesome marketer. Continued success.
 

girlyswot

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Well, I am trying something I thought I never would.

I hate Select. I hate the idea of it and I hate the way that Amazon use it to control the self-publishing market.

But I am tentatively dipping two toes into it and trying not to hate myself for it. The first 'toe' is a serialised novel. It's a Regency romance which I wrote years ago and published for free on LiveJournal. It was written in instalments then, so it suits the serial format. I've long since taken it off LJ and recently I've polished it up, given it a cover and a new title, and I put the first part on Amazon last week under a new pen name. The second part is currently 'In Review' and should be available soon. The second 'toe' is my other short stories. Sales on these at other stores have dwindled to a non-existent trickle, so I don't feel as though I'm losing anything, though I hate the idea of readers not being able to access them.

The reason for trying both these is Kindle Unlimited. You get paid the same amount for a borrow no matter how short your book or how low the normal sale price is. That's pretty huge. For a 99c book, you can get paid around $1.50 for a borrow instead of 35c for a sale. And because readers are on a subscription system, they're more tempted to try shorter books than they might be if they have to pay for them all separately.

So, we'll see. I have four short stories that I've just unpublished everywhere else. I'll have to wait for the other sites to take them down and then I guess I'll try Select for the 90 day minimum. And we'll see.
 
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Jazen

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Best of luck with your Select experience. Hopefully it'll get you the exposure and sales you're hoping for. :) Look forward to reading your follow up on it.
 

girlyswot

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This is such a good thread, girlyswot. Thanks for all the insight into the ins and outs, ups and downs of hybrid publishing. The idea of collaborating on a box set/anthology is interesting, and you're clearly an awesome marketer. Continued success.

Thanks! I really don't think I'm a very good marketer. I'm hopeless at actually selling my books to someone. I just don't have that much confidence in them. But I try to keep up with the market and see what other people are doing that works and what I could try that might work with mine. I do like having that kind of control over pricing and covers and keywords and things. I've been frustrated a few times with my publisher not moving fast on some of those things with my other books.
 

RevanWright

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Thanks. B&N took them all down today (they'd already disappeared everywhere else) so I've taken the plunge with Select.

Some people have a lot of success with KDP Select. Principles aside, I like it well enough. But I haven't really connected it to many sales, and from perhaps 600 or so downloads while free, I've gotten only 1 review that I can link to that promotion.
Best of luck to you, though. Looking forward to seeing your results!
 

girlyswot

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Well, Bonfire Night was released yesterday and to celebrate I'm having a big promotion of all my self-published short stories that are now in Select - everything is free until Bonfire Night (November 5th). It launched this morning and so far I've had about 80 downloads. Hoping for plenty more! I've submitted to a number of free promo sites, though it's tricky finding places that will accept short stories. I'll let you all know how it goes.


(Also, slhuang, thank you for your lovely comment about my covers. Hope you approve of this one!)
 
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girlyswot

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Results so far:

Day 1
Free downloads: 1453
Paid sales: 2
KU borrows: 1

Day 2
Free downloads: 811
Paid sales: 15
KU borrows: 6

Day 3
Free downloads: 719
Paid sales: 10
KU borrows: 10

Day 4
Free downloads: 1286
Paid sales: 12
KU borrows: 6

Day 5
Free downloads: 1000
Paid sales: 9
KU borrows: 6

The free downloads are spread across 7 titles, though that was enough for all of them to hit top 100 lists in multiple categories. The Regency serial were the most downloaded - nearly twice as many as the next most popular title, a Christmas short story. So that's been very helpful in deciding to keep writing more historicals.

Most of the day 2 sales/borrows were for part 3 of the serial which was only released on that day. I put both parts 1 and 2 free for the Bonfire Night Bonanza, though I'm wondering if it would have been better just to include part 1. Anyway, it's done now. Sales of the other non-free books are trickling in at about the same rate I'd expect without the Bonanza.

What I'm hoping for at the end of the five-day promo is: more sales of the non-free parts of the Regency serial; a few more sales of the other non-free books; some reviews on the short stories. I've already had a couple of reviews of the Christmas story, so that's good. It would be great to give that a boost ready for the holiday season.
 
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girlyswot

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Results are in! A few free downloads are still trickling in from other territories, but it's far enough past the end of the 5-day promo that I'm calling it.

Total free downloads: 5269
Total paid sales: 48
Total KU borrows: 29

I'm really happy with this. That's a lot more sales and borrows than I would normally expect in a 5 day period. Plus, I'm hopeful that there will be some further effect, especially for the rest of the serial as more of those who downloaded the free episodes read them and go on to buy the next part. The final section comes out this weekend. I've seen several reviews of the other stories going up too, which is great.

I don't know if using all the free days for all the eligible books is always the best idea, but I liked being able to do one big promo and throw lots of energy at it, rather than spread it all out. I did use some promo tools. I don't know if any of the free services I sent the info to picked it up. I paid $19 for a promo on Day 3 and $9 for a promo on Day 4. I think both of these had a noticeable impact on sustaining the levels of free downloads. I sent out a mailshot to announce the promo at the beginning and then a very short reminder on Day 4, which also had impact in terms of clickthroughs and downloads. Other than that, I tweeted about it a couple of times and announced it on my website and FB page. That's it. Total expenses for the promo should be more than covered by the KU borrows, so whatever I made on the sales is a bonus.

Short stories are a hard sell, and it's been my goal for ages to bundle them up into an anthology. I finally got round to that a few weeks ago, and have given it quite a different style from my other books. It's also available in paperback which is fun. I'll be very interested to see how this works. Financially, it's a better deal for the reader (4 stories for $2.99 rather than 99c each) and for me (70% of $2.99 rather than 35% of $3.96) so it ought to be a no-brainer. We shall see!

ETA: Day 6 sales (after the promo)

Free downloads: 46 (right at the beginning of the day, due to timezone differences, I assume)
Paid sales: 15
KU borrows: 9

Very happy with this! Going to publish the last part of the serial today and hoping that will also attract read-throughs.
 
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HeatherBeck

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Thanks for posting this because I am also a hybrid author; I've worked with eight different small publishers, but starting my own publishing company has proven far more profitable.

Anyway, I wanted to say be aware when you go from Smashwords premium distribution to Kindle Select, because places like Oyster keep your book/s posted 90 days after they receive your "opt-out" request, if they have already been opened by a subscriber. Then other places, like Flipkart, sometimes don't take the book down at all (especially if they sell well). I've been trying to go from Smashwords to Kindle Select since July 2014 and it'll be the end of December before I'm free to do so. OverDrive is another one you have to watch out for - I've been talking to them for three weeks, and still my titles are listed.

Thanks again for such a great thread! :)

Best Wishes!
Heather
 

girlyswot

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Yes, I've been keeping an eye out. As far as I can tell, the books have come down at Flipkart, Kobo and B&N. I was always opted out from Scribd. I don't know about Oyster and Overdrive, but I also don't know how actively Amazon check against those sites. I guess I'll find out if there's a problem...
 

girlyswot

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Gosh.

You know how sometimes you read stories on here about things which have happened to other authors that you couldn't possibly imagine would ever happen to you? For me, that was always the stories of people getting their books optioned for TV and film deals.

Um, that may be possibly happening.

It's very early days. It might come to nothing at all. It might be an option but nothing ever actually made. It's not going to be Hollywood. But I've been approached by a film producer* who has a good track record (films made that I've heard of with people in them who I've heard of) and specifically a good track record in the kind of film he's interested in making out of my book (TV movie with a Christmas theme). Actually he's interested in more than one of my books, possibly.

It's complicated because one of them is self-published so I hold all the rights, while the other is not self-published and the publisher has the film rights. I don't know how that might affect the negotiations. I mean, it's such early days that there might not end up being any negotations.

But still. Wow. I wasn't expecting that when I got up this morning.

*My first thought: spam email. My second thought: scam email. But it was a well-written letter, included plenty of detail about his experience and intentions, and he'd clearly looked carefully at my books. When I googled him, it seemed to add up. I'm not rushing into anything but at this stage, as far as I can tell, it seems legit.
 
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