Great Sales in self-pub without doing ANYTHING at all?

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writer_mccall

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I did absolutely nothing for my first two books. Just wrote them and put them out there.
Sold reasonably well the first three months and slowly dropped off.
My third book I had everything, Twitter, facebook, blog, more time and effort into editing, beta-reading and cover and have only sold 10 copies, while my other books still sell from time to time.
Its weird, but the biggest explanation I can think of its genre. You have to pick a hot genre (And yes this can backfire sometimes) and also get lucky
 

girlyswot

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I don't think it's possible to do literally nothing and get great sales. Or at least, it's not wise to try. I do think it's possible to do it with some savvy things that aren't actual promotion. In particular: get a great, eye-catching, professional cover; research how to use keywords and other metadata well; write a blurb like a pro; write a lot and publish frequently; write a series and make the first an attractive proposition with a low price.

That's not a guaranteed method to bestsellerdom, but things which can get your book some traction in sales without needing to advertise or promote it.
 

RikWriter

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Actually you did several of the things I suggested.

I did them later...a year later, after I released my third book.
For the first two books, I, lacking any experience or guidance, slapped them on Amazon for Kindle with crappy covers I made from a couple photos I had taken and that was it. The closest thing to advertising I did was to mention the books' existence in a post on a website I frequent. That was it. It was only after I decided to write a sequel to one of them that I started working on advertising at all and it wasn't until well after I released that sequel that I started trying to get more professional-looking covers, etc...
 

brainstorm77

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It also depends on what you consider success to be since it varies from author to author in terms of sales. One might consider a couple of hundred copies sold to be great while another might need to sell in the thousands to feel the same way.
 

Batspan

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Rikwriter -- That's encouraging. Made my morning.

I've been stressing for weeks on how to raise funds to launch my second eBook, a Gothic horror novel, and it's not coming together. This morning, for the first time, I considered dropping my plan to publish it in December. Your post gave me perspective. It's disappointing, yet it may be better to publish the novel without the budget for a better cover and promo.

It took me a long time to take the plunge into self-publishing, and I'd hoped to launch a few eBooks this year. Publishing the second one before the anniversary of the first one would be more satisfying than putting it off.

I'm thinking about adding non-fiction eBooks to my list. I keep trying analyze what might sell, but there's no way to know for sure. Years ago I experimented with monetized non-fiction posts. Topics that I expected to be the most commercial didn't do well and stuff I did for enjoyment with no expectation of money are still bringing in revenue.
 

RikWriter

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Batspan, a lot depends on your genre. I write military SF and space opera and there's a big market for self-published books at a bargain price in those genres. They're both genres that are underrepresented on the shelves nowadays because of the prevalence of urban fantasy and zombie apocalypse books out there. Not that there isn't a lot of military SF out there, but it's all written by the same few writers and it's very hard for a newb to break into that sub-genre.
I don't know much about Gothic horror, but were I you, I would research how well self-published books do in that genre before slapping it online.
 

Arpeggio

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On Amazon: I had 2 non-fiction books in a niche with 0 reviews that sold 20 print per month. With Christmas sales also it was £1000+ in a year.

Eventually I got the odd customer review at 4 stars, real people don't give more than 5 stars as much as the internet makes it look. Since then my sales went down, possibly because 4 stars is lower then average and / or maybe the former customers were buying on different criteria therefore the reviews are now "noise" for them?

Another reviewer gave 4 stars with a comment that was the equivalent of complaining that a caravan isn't fast enough or a sports car doesn't have enough boot space or a vegetarian dish doesn't have enough meat (whichever example you prefer), they were talking about a different book as though mine should be that as well (if I added what they wanted with the higher page count at the same price I would be making a loss.) Since that review was posted about a year ago I have sold none whatsoever of that book.

So yes I've had good sales on a couple of books without doing anything (until I got a couple of good reviews).

People who I look up to in my field who are world class (and actually kind of famous) evidently don't appear to care about similar issues with their books on Amazon, having between 0 to the odd misinformed review here or there and low sales on Amazon.
 
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Batspan

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Rikwriter -- Thanks. That's helpful. I think the Gothic horror has a shot because it's sexy -- and early on I found a few horror and mystery books with 19th c. settings doing well. The novel has crime and detective elements, so it may have appeal beyond the horror readership.

I've been spending more time on the Kindle boards and there are some inspiring threads there about the types of books that do well. I have some experiments in hotter genres in the works. You're right, it pays to check the competition and selling trends.

Arpeggio -- Bummer about the plummet in sales. I wonder if it was all to do with the reviews. There might be more competition in your niche or other factors -- just curious. Maybe it would be worth publishing updated editions. You were doing so well with them, I hope you keep on.
 

AnthonyJones

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The only thing I hate about self-publishing is the marketing. By far the hardest part and time-consuming. If somebody did extremely well without much promoting, then we need their secret.
 

Arpeggio

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Arpeggio -- Bummer about the plummet in sales. I wonder if it was all to do with the reviews. There might be more competition in your niche or other factors -- just curious. Maybe it would be worth publishing updated editions. You were doing so well with them, I hope you keep on.

Thanks. The visibility is pretty much the same as not much more competition has entered the niche since I started in it.

The book that has had 0 sales since its 4 star "This vegetarian dish doesn't have enough meat" style review, actually had 2 sales (print) at the exact same time as that book's webpage on my site was social shared.

This kind of co-incidence has happened several times with my books, so not just the above example. One of the folks I had in mind in my last post isn't even on Amazon and they literally sold out of print from popularity. I'm no where near there yet, while the kind of purchases of which I speak still don't trump "Amazon discovered" sales yet, unfortunately.

About half of book purchases on Amazon are planned:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwchar...f-of-amazon-book-sales-are-planned-purchases/
 

Batspan

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That's rotten about the strange review and drastic sales drop.

Thanks for the Forbes link. That's helpful information. I've been haunting the Kindle Boards and all over planning my strategy for upcoming releases. That article puts all that advice about Amazon ratings in perspective.

One helpful thing I learned before I published the first one was to put my mailing list link at the end of the text. As the article points out, best not to be dependent on Amazon. I've also been looking at Smashwords, D2D and selling on my website.

An encouraging habit I see in authors I follow on Twitter and KB is they keep getting more books out. All of this is so unpredictable, it makes sense to improve the odds by enlarging the list.
 

Arpeggio

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That's rotten about the strange review and drastic sales drop.

Yes, the film industry is willing to spend $1000's on advertising and posters that mention their 4 star reviews by professional critics. On amazon customer reviews, 4 stars is less than average of course.

Since we last spoke, for one eBook I now make slightly more money from sales on my own website than on Amazon. I don't link to amazon at all including for print versions.

Since we last spoke, on Amazon I obtained a one word negative review with no context, qualification or evidence they actually read the book, which like the majority of the other millions of Amazon reviews is anonymous and from someone that nobody knows from a hole in the wall.
 
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