Once you publish your first ebook, you’ve got to promote it, right?
Naturally! But…sometimes we get caught up in marketing and blogging and checking sales stats obsessively (I never had this problem, of course… *cough*) that we get distracted from writing the next book.
Most authors doing well with e-publishing, however, have multiple titles available. When we looked at the most popular genres out there, we also learned that most of the indie authors selling 1,000+ ebooks a month had three or more titles out.
While book promotion is important, it seems planting one’s butt in one’s chair and spewing words onto the screen is the best thing you can do for your e-publishing career.
I published my first ebook in December, obsessed over promoting it, and got depressed if it failed to sell at least a copy a day. Then I released Encrypted and a free short-story ebook, and my sales picked up across the board, and they have remained steady since then. Of course, I’d preferred they’d be steady at a higher level, but that will (I hope!) come in the future.
Let’s take a look at a few benefits of having multiple ebooks out there:
- There are more doorways into your worlds — If you only have one ebook, there’s a limited number of ways people will stumble across it. With different ebooks, perhaps in different genres or sub-genres, there are more search paths that can lead people to your work.
- Fans can go on to buy more from you — If one only have one ebook, you can only make one sale per person. With more work out, there’s the potential that someone will want to read everything.
- You can see which of your books becomes most popular — One of the things I’m loving about e-publishing is how quickly you get feedback. Three months into this adventure, I’ve already had reviews, sales, and quite a few folks writing to ask about sequels. Compare that to a traditionally published book where an author will be waiting for a couple years from the time she finishes to when the first reviews come in (and even longer to get sales figures). In the meantime, she’ll start working on subsequent books without any idea of whether the first will be a winner or not. As an e-publisher with multiple titles, you can quickly see which ones take off and may be deserving of sequels instead of just guessing.
Okay, you say, those benefits sound good, but…
What if you’re not a prolific writer?
This is how it is for most of us. Even on days where I have free time, I don’t always get a lot written. I’m one of those folks who needs to enjoy spending time with the characters and “feel” the next scene in order to write. I think I might be able to publish two full-length novels a year, but I won’t know for sure for a while.
Some folks don’t have the time to write more than one novel a year. Most of us, traditionally published print authors included, do this part-time, if that, so that’s just the nature of the beast. One option you do have with e-publishing is to release shorter works in the interim.
I have two short-story collections out at $0.99. They don’t sell as well as my novels, but they do sell. As we’ve talked about before, some people are making money simply selling short stories for $0.99.
Though $0.99 isn’t much, it does seem steep to me for a short story, but I decided to try an 18,000-word short novella at that price point. I have no idea how it’ll do, since people seem to prefer novels, but it was a nice break from the 100,000-word book I’m working on, and the length means it wasn’t a big investment insofar as editing and such goes.
I’ll talk more about it when the novella is out on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but I published Flash Gold, a steampunk fantasy, on Smashwords late last night.
So, if you’re not prolific, but you want to get more work out there, you might give shorter fiction a try. There are no rules to length when it comes to ebooks.
Should you write a series or publish stand-alone ebooks?
I may do a whole post on this eventually, since there’s a lot coming to mind as I write this section, but for now let’s just say that a series has its pros and cons.
On the positive side, having a series means that, for folks who like the first book, it’s a no-brainer as to whether they should pick up the second (and third and fourth, etc.). It also means you can use the first book as a loss leader (AKA sell it cheaply, such as at $0.99 cents) to draw people into your realm and encourage them to go on to buy other books.
On the negative side, it’s hit or miss with a series. If people aren’t crazy about the first book, they’re not going to go on to buy others. Also, new people aren’t going to start with a middle book, so essentially you’ve only got that first ebook as an option for folks. You could have ten ebooks out, but if it’s a series, it’s almost as if you only have one, because nobody is going to try the other nine if they don’t love the first one.
Either way, there are a lot of arguments for planting ye olde rump in ye olde chair, and getting the typing fingers moving.
What do you think? Do you have multiple ebooks out and has it made a difference for you?
I’ve discovered that I’m buy an author’s cheaper e-book to see how much I like them before I’ll buy the higher priced book. I think collections of short stories and flash fiction are great “hooks” to get your audience to buy your novels. I think Amanda Hocking is a great example of how this model works. Her older books in a series are cheaper than the later books, and if she hooks you, you easily buy the others. I think it’s a brilliant strategy.
I have a ton of ebooks out. Haven’t come anywhere close to a 1000 books a month with all of them combined.
Of course, I hate marketing at all.
Still, I annoyingly tweet the books out of Amazon since that’s where I can count sales the best.
Hint: Pull your distribution from Smashwords to both Amazon and B&N. Their respective Kindle and PubIt systems are easy to use, and you don’t have to split the money.
I look forward to having you on my blog on 4/5, Lindsay. I’m reading the Goblin brothers stories now.
I think we have a lot in common both being eclectic genre-hopping authors.
@Gurina on Twitter
Speaking as a reader… “I’ve read something by this author and liked it” is the #1 reason why I buy a book. So that supports the idea of having multiple works out.
Regarding series, I’ve found that my favourite series are those that are relatively loosely conected, so that you can read one book without knowing the others – “A [seriesname] novel” rather than “Book 3 of [seriesname]”. The way Encrypted and The Emperor’s Edge connect is a nice example (that’s why I asked if there isn’t an overarching name for that setting).
What seems to me not so appealing when an author has several books out is when it’s wildly different genres. For example if someone has one thriller, one paranormal romance, one “normal” romance, and one fantasy adventure, I might like their fantasy adventure, but the writing would have to be utterly brilliant for me to pick up any of their other books.
Oh, and *I* do like novellas for $0.99. 😉
Thanks for the comments, guys!
Shelli, yeah, that Amanda Hocking gal seems to be doing something right. 😉 I could definitely see pricing a first book in a series at $0.99 and then doing latter ones at $2.99 or $3.99.
Marva, yay, I just turned in my guest post for your blog for next week (don’t know if Judy has forwarded that to you yet). Now, I kind of wish I’d written about my goblins instead of about blogging, hah. Thanks for checking those guys out! I have samples of your space opera romances on my kindle, though haven’t had much time for reading lately. Someday! 🙂
Anke, I’m the same way as a reader. If you write fantasy, I’m game to try any type of fantasy, and probably SF, too, but I’m less likely to jump to a completely different genre. I remember feeling betrayed, back in the day, when David Eddings (one of my favorites as a teen) published Losers. I thought…what the heck is *this*? 😀
I like the idea of “A [seriesname] novel” for labeling a series. Sort of like Bujold’s Vorkosigan Universe/Saga. I’ll have to think about that before the second EE book comes out, hm!
These are great points! I am working on an adult mystery novel with a supernatural twist, and a YA science fiction book as well. They will both be a series, but I find I’m spending too much time researching everything on the internet, and not enough time writing my stories….
I am buying your Encrypted novel now, and can’t wait to read it 🙂
Thanks, Jennifer! Hope you like it!
“I find I’m spending too much time researching everything on the internet, and not enough time writing my stories….”
Sounds familiar. 😉
“Flash Gold ” has, by far, the best cover of all of your books. Great!
In answer to your thought: “Makes me wonder if I should stick w/iconic [covers].”
No, it wasn’t the iconic design that I loved; it was the illustration style. Frankly, it was so far above your other covers that at first glance I thought that you were doing a review of someone else’s book. If it’s true that a book’s cover can increase sales, you should get absolutely rich off of this one.
I’m absolutely convinced that having multiple books out can make a big difference. You hit on the key reasons. But mostly it’s not based on personal experience since my numbers are so small. That said…
I have one novel and one half-novel (37K words) for 99 cents each. Then I have two ebooks collections of three short stories each, plus one standalone story, those all for free.
On Amazon, where the free books aren’t available. I am pretty sure that sales of one have helped the other at least a small bit.
With the free books, I’ve found that they have definitely triggered sales of the paid books on the iBookstore and on Sony. Not on Barnes and Noble however. I plan to put out quite a few more free short stories over the coming months and see how that goes.
I also have one more novel planned for June release. By then I hope to have started either another novel or half-novel. The more content, the better at this point.
Thanks for the comments on the covers, Peter! Glendon from http://streetlightgraphics.com/ did this one, and I believe it’s all photo-based rather than illustrated.
Edward, I want to release more free stories too. That’s made a big difference for me with B&N, Sony, and Smashwords. Just need more time to write, muhaha!
My thoughts on comparing the covers: Flash Gold is the one that looks most professional.
The ones for Emperor’s Edge and Ice Cracker II look like they were made by re-using illustrations not made for a cover, and adding title and author (the way the title partly covers Amaranthe’s head on both cases; with Emperor’s Edge the way there’s both bright yellow and dark background behind the title, making it hard to read).
The Goblin Brothers Adventures title is all squished together and not easily readable.
Encrypted… maybe it’s just my bias against photomanipulations, but the illustration seems rather dark and muddy, with the black blotch of the underexposed peaked cap right where it draws the eye. The colour of title and author don’t fit well with the illustration, too, and the title’s a bit close to the top of the cover.
By contrast, the Flash Gold cover is all of a piece. I think the fact that the title is embedded into the whole graphic, rather than just some font overlaid on an illustration, makes a big difference there, too.
Were the previous covers made by people who primarily do illustration rather than design?
Your blog helped motivate me to e-publish my middle grade sci fi…just made it available a couple days ago. Thanks for the inspiration (I think)…and funny, I’ve told my husband (who did the formatting, etc.) not to tell me where to find my sales numbers!
I’ll finally start writing again on Monday…thanks for the reminder that I need to do that!
Thanks for the feedback, Anke. There are precious few folks out there who advertise themselves as being cover art designers (I guess this whole indie e-publishing thing is still pretty new), and most of us just muddle through things, finding artists on Deviant Art or through recommendations. Most of us are working on a budget, as well, so going with a professional who does illustrations for Tor or Wizards of the Coast just isn’t in the cards.
Anita, that’s great. I hope the story does well for you. What’s the name of the ebook? A MG SF might be up my alley. 🙂