Courtney Milan RT Convention May 16 2014 Half Assing Promotion and still making money Courtney Milan RT Convention May 16 2014 Phases of Author Success Phase 1 Nobody knows who you are You have to work for every sale ID: 380585
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Slide1
Building a Sticky Digital Readership
Courtney Milan
RT Convention
May 16, 2014Slide2
Half-Assing
Promotion
(and still making money)
Courtney Milan
RT Convention
May 16, 2014Slide3
Phases of Author Success
Phase 1: Nobody knows who you are. You have to work for every sale.
Phase 2: A few people know who you are. The algorithms are beginning to work for you.
Phase 3: Readers are beginning to wait for your books. You hit the genre lists when your book comes out.
Phase 4: The vendors know who you are. You have a merchandising contact (as a self-published author). Slide4
Where do sales come from?
Sources external to vendor sites
Blogs, websites, reviews
Newsletters,
Facebook
Word of mouth recommendations
Vendor Algorithms (computer-driven, internal to vendor sites)
Vendor Merchandising (affirmative human choice, internal to vendor sites)Slide5
A note about vendor algorithms
Vendor
Algorithms
Sales
More sales
If you don’t have any sales in the beginning, the algorithms won’t know what to do with you. You have to have sales to make sales.Slide6
An analogy: This is your book.Slide7
This is the landscape of digital salesSlide8
This is the landscape of digital salesSlide9
This is the landscape of digital sales
Phase 1Slide10
Why?
The landscape of book sales are a
complex system…
…dominated at the bottom end by
linear response…
…and at the top end by
nonlinear responses.Slide11
What the heck is “linear response”?
It means: you get out what you put in.
In mathematical terms:
Sales = C * (effort in promotion)
The harder you try, the more sales you make.
The instant you stop promoting, sales drop to zero.Slide12
Linear ResponseSlide13
Linear ResponseSlide14
Linear ResponseSlide15
Nonlinear ResponseSlide16
Nonlinear ResponseSlide17
Your Goal
Most authors are down in that pit.
They work for every sale.
When they stop working, they stop selling.
This is why the median self-published earnings are less than $500: because the author has to work for every one of those sales.
This is also why the top 10% make 75% of the earnings: because once you can get out of that pit, you barely have to work to sell books. Slide18
Sales beget sales
You need to sell copies of your books to appear on “also bought” lists.
You need to sell even more copies of your books to appear on category rankings lists
You need to sell lots and lots of copies to qualify for vendor merchandising (this is ‘aliens with a jetpack’)
The more books you sell, the better you will do.Slide19
The Dreaded Phase One
Here is what you need to get out of Phase One:
You need readers to read one of your books.
You need readers to like that book enough that they want to read your next book.
You need to tell readers how to read your next book.Slide20
Most important thing authors have to do
Write books that readers want to read.
No, really.
If you’re not writing commercially viable books, stop thinking about sales and focus on craft. Seriously. Just leave now.
The more distinctive your books—the less exchangeable your books are with others—the faster this process will go.
I’m not going to talk about this anymore.Slide21
Second most important thing authors have to do.
Get readers to read your books.
I’m not talking about this, either.
Why? Because (a) lots of other people talk about that and (
b
) I went through this phase years and years ago, and the market is very different for me. I don’t know what works for new authors anymore.
If nobody reads your book, it doesn’t matter how good it is.Slide22
Third most important thing authors have to do
Get readers who liked your last book to read the next book. This is what I call “building a sticky digital readership.”
I’m calling it the “third most important thing” but if you can achieve #1 & #2 it becomes the most important thing.
If you get out of phase 1 with Book #1, but aren’t keeping your readership, you have to start over.Slide23
Getting out of Phase One sucks.
If, for ever book that you released, you had to do all the work to get out of Phase one, you’d spend all your time promoting and none of your time writing.
What you need is a way to launch yourself.Slide24
A “sticky reader”…
Is someone who:
(a) wants to read your books
(
b
) has a way of finding out when your next one is
s
o that
(
c
) she buys the next book shortly after it is released.
Get enough sticky readers, and you grease the engines at the vendors. You send out a newsletter and post to your
Facebook page and you get a thousand sales and you’re done with promotion.Slide25
Actively encourage stickiness
Get readers to attach to you in some way
Make readers aware of your other books
Encourage readers to buy your other books
Encourage readers to tell other people about your books
Tell readers the book is outSlide26
Strategy #1: The Page After the End
Someone who finishes your book is more likely to have enjoyed it. People who aren’t enjoying it often quit partway through.
The page after “the end” is the most important page there is. It says,
Hey, Person who liked my book—here’s how you can stick to me.Slide27
Bella AndreSlide28
Barbara FreethySlide29
Hugh HoweySlide30
Debora GearySlide31
Lilliana HartSlide32
Marie ForceSlide33
Courtney MilanSlide34
Things to have on TPATE
A link to your newsletter
A link to
Facebook
/
Twitter/other social media
A description of the books that are coming next to get readers excited
A call for reviews
A call to lend the book to a friend
A call to recommend the book to friends/other readersSlide35
Some newsletter statistics
I did not have a call to sign up for my newsletter at the end of
Unlocked,
my first self-published work.
Between May and October of 2011 (5 months), I sold 83,000 copies of
Unlocked
and had 38 newsletter signups.
By contrast, I had 328 newsletter signups in the first
month
after the release of my latest book.Slide36
“Twitter/
Facebook
don’t sell books”
You may be using it wrong.
Use Twitter/
Facebook
to connect with readers. That’s what they want.
You want people to
stick
, so give them a reason to stick around, and
don’t
give them a reason to unfollow.Talk about: your day, your cat, your dog, funny stories, the industry, recipes.DON’T: Whine (too much) or bitch about reviews (EVER) or readers (EVER).
When tweeting links for other people, think about it from the readers’ POV. Treat your readers like your friends.If I want to give a book visibility, I give away copies of that book. That way it feels like a “win” for those who follow me, I drum up interest in that book.Slide37
Strategy 2: Linking Titles
The second most important thing you can do is to link your titles.
Make it easy for readers to figure out which book is next and where it falls in the series.
Do not make people do additional work to buy your book!Slide38
2a: Back Matter / The Excerpt
Include an excerpt for another book.
A few dodgy analytics I’ve acquired:
Excerpts for any book sell about 2x more copies than a plain link to that book.
An excerpt for a book in the same series as the one book the reader just finished sells about 3x more copies
An excerpt for the
next book
in the same series sells about 10x more copies
The first excerpt will get 5x more hits than the second excerpt.Slide39
2b. Back Matter/The Linked Title ListSlide40
A note on active linking
Always make it easy to buy your book.
It takes a reader about 20-40 seconds to open up a web browser, go to a vendor site, search for your name, and scroll down to the book they want.
In that time, they can get distracted by
Facebook
/twitter/children.
Your links should be clickable and individual to vendors. You don’t want someone to get distracted before they click “buy.”Slide41
We interrupt this slide…
To talk about back matter efficiency.
Readers are okay with back matter
Back matter sells more books
Nobody complains about back matter that’s less than 90% of the book
Many people complain about back matter that’s > 40% of the book
Use back matter in moderation!Slide42
2c. The Vendor Description
Note: All authors can change book description on Author Central. This is buggy right now, but you should still be aware of it.Slide43
The effect of this
When I released
The Duchess War
, I got a HUGE bounce for
The Governess Affair
. (October sales for TGA: 2,328. November sales for TGA: 2,238. December sales for TGA: 10,003.)
Publishers don’t often do this because they’re used to physical bookshelves: They don’t want to scare people away from Book 3 because they haven’t read Book 1, and Book 1 isn’t on shelves anymore.
Your Book 1 is always on the shelves; don’t be afraid to sell it.Slide44
2d. The Website
The old regime: Place your current release prominently on your website.Slide45
The Website
New regime: Readers are searching for backlist titles as much as
frontlist
titles.Slide46Slide47Slide48
The Website
Explicitly link series order on your webpage.Slide49
Consider a series pageSlide50
List books by series on books pageSlide51
Goodreads/Shelfari/LibraryThing
Make sure your series are correct on social reading websites.
If they are not,
edit them
.Slide52
Strategy 3: Tell readers how to stick to you on your website
The website is the first place people go to find out about you.
Your website is the beginning of attachment. Seal the deal.Slide53
Have a prominent newsletter signupSlide54
Have prominent links to social mediaSlide55
Have individual pages with all that information
Because even though you posted it prominently on the front page, some people won’t expect it to be on the front page.
Make it
easy
for people to find out about you.
If you think “people are browsing my webpage wrong,” you’re wrong.
Do not be afraid to duplicate information.Slide56Slide57
Strategy 4: Get good analytics
Know who clicks on which links. (Use a link
shortener
/affiliate codes)
If you’re using Amazon affiliate codes, generate separate affiliate IDs for each site:
Facebook
, Twitter, your website, the end of your books.
This will give you so much power in tracking data.