Wow...tried a giveaway for a week

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Old Hack

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As you already have a thread about the pricing of this book, Rik (Wow...tried a giveaway for a week), I wonder if it might be better to merge the two threads together, to provide better continuity.
 

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I've merged your two book-pricing threads, Rik, to give greater continuity. If you want to edit the title of the thread you can do that yourself but if you can't work out how, give me a shout and I'll sort it out for you.
 

RikWriter

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The sales for the next two books in the series seem to be picking up a little bit.
I also increased the prices of all my books and it seems, so far, as if I will be selling fewer copies but making a bit more money. Don't know if that's worth the trade-off or not, but I decided to experiment with it for a month and see.
 

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Always one more than it has, I'm afraid. Ha!
 

RikWriter

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How many reviews do you think a book needs for it to start making an impact?

I couldn't give you an exact number, but I do know that when I am shopping for a new book, I usually will pick one that has a lot of reviews. For me, probably at least 25-30 and preferably somewhere north of 50.
 

plumone

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Wow, that's a lot more than I would have thought.

Thanks!
 

KTC

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Chiming in as someone who always scans the free books on Amazon and picks them up often...

I do like to find self-published nuggets and then pick up the other novels by the same author. I like discovering novelists. I've done this a couple of times where the author has later gone on to have representation and book deals. Most recently, KA Tucker and Jay Crownover. I read both of these authors when they were self-published, and they both captured the attention of an agent and their books went on to be big six published.

I do believe there's a lot of worth in giving away your novel for free for a few days when you have other books available for purchase. It's marketing that works...as I am one of the readers who have gone on to purchase the rest of the author's works.

(-:
 

benluby

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So based on what I am reading on here should I go ahead and do a giveaway now or wait until I get book two in the series done?
 

RikWriter

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Rik-

Any update on continued sales from the next week after the giveaway? I'm curious.

Sales have remained pretty steady, right around 40 units a day of all my books, give or take. However, I raised the prices on the books at the beginning of the giveaway and raised the price of the book I was giving away once the promotion was over, so my actual royalties have gone up although sales have stayed steady.
 

Old Hack

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That's really interesting, because many people are claiming that if you lower prices you get more sales, and more money overall. It's a particularly popular claim in the discussion re Amazon and Hachette.
 

J. Tanner

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That's really interesting, because many people are claiming that if you lower prices you get more sales, and more money overall. It's a particularly popular claim in the discussion re Amazon and Hachette.

Yeah, I've seen that too. Even Amazon qualifies it to some extent. They've coincidentally (?) recently released the tool to self-publishers through the KDP dashboard. I think it's discussed in another thread here. Basically it shows you the price point where similar books maximize revenue. It's not always lower. For example, my collection says revenue is maximized at $2.99. Of course, their royalty (commission) structure kind of guarantees that in this example where I'm on the border of 35 vs 70, but a number of authors have mentioned the tool recommending 4-6 dollar prices as maximizing revenue over 3 for their books.
 

RikWriter

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I used their pricing tool and they recommended a price of $7.99 for my books, but I wasn't quite ready to go that high. I am experimenting with raising the prices of the two books I had at 99 cents to 2.99 so I can get the 70% royalty, while I raised the second book in the trilogy to 2.99 as well and the third to 3.99.
As I said, it's been more lucrative so far. I will give it the month to see how it works out. If sales fall off, I may lower the prices again, or perhaps just wait a couple months and then do another free promotion with the first book in the trilogy to drum up more sales.
 

SamCoulson

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I used their pricing tool and they recommended a price of $7.99 for my books, but I wasn't quite ready to go that high. I am experimenting with raising the prices of the two books I had at 99 cents to 2.99 so I can get the 70% royalty, while I raised the second book in the trilogy to 2.99 as well and the third to 3.99.
As I said, it's been more lucrative so far. I will give it the month to see how it works out. If sales fall off, I may lower the prices again, or perhaps just wait a couple months and then do another free promotion with the first book in the trilogy to drum up more sales.

Yeah, the Amazon estimator tool is interesting.. I just checked again (since they have been changing it) and it just told me that if I changed my price from 3.99 to 6.99 the result would be:

Author Earnings: +15%
Books Sold: -35%

But likewise it's telling me if I dropped the price to 2.99 it projects:

Author Earnings: -15%
Books Sold: +15%

(If You go under 2.99 you fall into the 35% royalty category and your earnings drop by 60% while sales go up 30%.)

Assuming Amazon is being mostly honest and the algorithm is somewhat sound, it's interesting data. Though, looking at it, makes me feel like 3.99 is a happy medium on the pricepoint.

That's really interesting, because many people are claiming that if you lower prices you get more sales, and more money overall. It's a particularly popular claim in the discussion re Amazon and Hachette.

While this is true given the data on Amazon's estimation tool, you also have to take into account that on Amazon if you drop below the 2.99 pricepoint you fall from 70% royalties to 35%. So, though your sales may go up--unless you're selling a book cheap to get your name out there/hook the readers on a series, it's a steep loss. So more sales, yes, but more money? No. (At least if you're within KDP rules).

If authors are making the same % regardless of pricepoint, then yes, more sales clearly will = more money.
 
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SunshineonMe

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Wow congratulations!! That's a huge success. 40 books a day is amazing!
 

Dave.C.Robinson

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I used their pricing tool and they recommended a price of $7.99 for my books, but I wasn't quite ready to go that high. I am experimenting with raising the prices of the two books I had at 99 cents to 2.99 so I can get the 70% royalty, while I raised the second book in the trilogy to 2.99 as well and the third to 3.99.
As I said, it's been more lucrative so far. I will give it the month to see how it works out. If sales fall off, I may lower the prices again, or perhaps just wait a couple months and then do another free promotion with the first book in the trilogy to drum up more sales.

I don't know how it's been doing, but I wonder if you might want to raise the second to $3.99, too?

I know that personally, while I like a series where the first volume is less expensive to draw readers in, I find that a trilogy where the third volume is more expensive than the second is a turnoff.
 

RikWriter

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Just an update on the promotion. I wound up getting about 8 new reviews of the book from the giveaway. More may come as people who haven't read it yet get around to reading it. Sales have tailed off a bit as the third book in the trilogy has hit its fourth month of release. That's par for the course with my other releases and no big surprise.
I am eligible for another free promotion in October and, as that is when sales usually start to slow way down (the fifth month of release) I am considering doing it to give things another boost then.
 

Dallionz

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Very interesting! thank you so much for sharing! I've only got one book available so far so I don't plan on doing the free promotion at this point.
 
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