Yesterday I had an epic day in Facebook ad response – 29 books sold across two series, earning $54 there and then with more to trickle in over today and tomorrow, on $65 worth of spend. Almost getting to the breakeven point? I had some great responses to ads, and as I learned from Michael Cooper, every comment on your ad increases its relevance in Facebook’s eyes. My challenge blurbs are raising a few hackles, but more people are saying they’ve gone on to buy the books in question because of the boldness!! Someone compared me to Levar Ball. Huh? …
Facebook ad success?!?
Two weeks back I wrote about how I was getting back into Facebook ads. Well, I have done that with a vengeance, and while spending $500 from Feb 1-15 I have experienced some of my best results yet. So am I making money? Technically, no. But maybe yes? Let’s break it down. After reading Michael Cooper’s book ‘My Facebook Ads Suck’ I got wise to the importance of knowing your readthrough payments. If you know what any single first-in-series book is worth to you overall, as in how much money you’ll make from a certain proprtion of people who read …
Calculating readthrough on the Last Mayor series
Readthrough is a fascinating concept that may seem a little complex and alien at first, but is actually super obvious and essential to know when selling books in a series. You’ve probably heard Mark Dawson banging on about it. Maybe you’ve had a crack at calculating it. It basically means – what percentage of people who read your first book in series go on to read the later books? I’ve had a go at this before, and came up with something like a 50% readthrough for my whole Last Mayor 9-book series. It’s important because it helps you determine the …
Fresh Mr. Ruin blurb!
Oh boy, the lessons never end! Recently I’ve been talking and thinking a lot about the interest/excitement factors in my writing. In brief – I’m great at evoking interest, through wacky world-building and lots of deep character hints – and not so great at evoking excitement, through conflict and danger and etc… Well – in this post I get punched in the face again, and come back asking for more. I’ve been rewriting Mr. Ruin to punch up the excitement and dial back the interest, and feeling like I’m succeeding. I’m thinking I have a killer blurb to reflect that …
Facebook ads promising…
The two Facebook ads I posted a couple of days ago have been selling books like gangbusters! And making a profit? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves… It’s the best pay-per-click ad response I’ve ever had. My targeting is nothing different from what I’ve done before, just the ads are different. I’m targeting US and UK, to similar authors mostly. Yesterday I sold 18 books, including one reader who bought the whole Last Mayor series in one go – 9 books. Normally I sell 1 or 2 a day. From Feb 1-5 I’ve spent 65 pounds on ads and …
Why am I not a millionnaire author yet?
This question popped in my head the other day, and hasn’t been far from my thoughts since – begging to be turned into a full-bore navel-gazing blogalysis (blog analysis) of all my past books in summary and why they didn’t go large. I’ve done this before, in bits. For instance, I’ve blogalyzed in detail all the book covers I’ve ever had – and come up with the unsurprising conclusion that they were always bad. So chalk that one up: Bad book covers The Saint Ignifer covers were illustrated and weird for the epic fantasy genre. The Ruin books were just …
International bookbub day!
Today The Saint’s Rise is having it’s International Bookbub! It’s too early to talk about results – but the FB campaign reached a high of 8 copies sold already today, so that’s a nice starting point. Here’s the copy BB used: They call the Rot a black lava, which it’s not, but it doesn’t really matter because I suppose it could be. Otherwise it’s pretty nice. Maybe I’ll use it, or the structure of it, for future ads! Also Sen is a boy at the start, a teenager later on, but probably ‘man’ converts better with this audience…
1 day before International bookbub – Marketing Report
My Facebook ad for The Saint’s Rise continues to deliver, though the price of clicks has increased. I was getting them for less than 20p, now it’s closer to 25p. Tomorrow is the Bookbub, and I think I’ll just switch the FB ads off for the day – then maybe turn them back on in the aftermath, to try and maintain rank. On the 7th, 8th and 9th I spent 32 pounds on FB ads. I switched off the Bookbub ads as I got nothing. On those days I sold 15 copies of The Saint’s Rise on Amazon uk and …
3 days before International Bookbub – marketing report
My ad on Facebook continues to perform pretty nicely, in the last 4 days since ads started it has sold 8 copies on amazon, half of those at the full 4.99 price, half at 99p, and 4 copies through iTunes, half at full price, half at 99p. So I’ve made about 20 pounds, for an outlay of 40 (at 10 a day). A 100% loss of 20 pounds. So why so chipper? These are better results than I’ve ever really had with a Facebook promo before, and my goal here is not to make momey (yet), it’s to juice the …
New ads for The Saint’s Rise
With my International Bookbub on The Saint’s Rise coming up in 6 days (Jan 10), I’ve started up a couple of new ads focused on the UK market (my biggest market after the US) to try and juice the ranking ahead of time. Here’s the FaceBook ad: I’ve never tried putting all retailers links in the body of the ad before, or leading with the major audiobook headline. I also rewrote the story summary – before it was primarily about the bizarre world, but now: All Sen’s young life he’s been hunted – by the pitiless King and his nightmare …