On 9th July I made a big ol’ public declaration to sell a thousand copies of my fantasy novel The End of Magic by Christmas, and I promised to keep folks in the loop with the ups and downs of sales and marketing with a weekly update.
A few caveats…
- I can only do this in the USA… Unbound have the UK rights and I have no visibility on sales other than the twice yearly statements.
- I’m going to stick with Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
- I’ll be counting both Kindle and Paperback sales.
- Here’s week six!
Not much to report this week as I was mostly at Worldcon in Dublin, but a Facebook ad with a video was running in that time (here it is)…
… and here are the resulting sales…
Not a sausage! And here’s the FB ad analysis…
Well, that’s thirty-four quid I won’t be seeing again!
There are no quick fixes here. I’ll look at the ad and see how I can improve it, but I’m losing faith in the ads approach. I spent much of yesterday contacting bloggers to review the book, and I’ll continue to do that today. Reviews and word-of-mouth are essential for a book like this, and it’s working already…
A big thank you to Andy at ebookwyrm for that!
And I was over the moon to get this review on Amazon UK from the wonderfully-monikered Masked Marauder…
Here’s a summary of last week’s “sales” (note the air quotes!)
Kindle units sold: 0
POD Paperbacks: 0
Kindle Unlimited Pages read: 1023
Royalty: $0
Advertising spend total: £34.77 (Facebook)
Yes, some folks are still reading it on KU, which is nice…
And here’s the running total…
Kindle units sold: 96
Kindle Unlimited Pages read: 8588
Royalty: $42.92
Advertising spend total (since 9th July): $464.00 (and £105.81 in GBP)
AMS: $99.92
Bookbub: $272.70
Still 904 units to go!
That’s a little over 6 a day between now and Christmas.
Thanks again for all your messages of support and to everyone who’s bought the book or spread the word.
If you would like to help, then please do any of the following:
Buy a copy here in the US, or here in the UK
Tell your friends about the book
Leave an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads
I still only have six reviews on Amazon.com. They’re good ones, for which I’m very grateful, but ideally I need at least 20+. I like my reviews to grow organically and they have to be honest, so if you’re American and have read The End of Magic a few kind and honest words will go a long way.
If you have any thoughts or comments on what I might be doing wrong, do please leave them below! Until next week…
Mark Stay Writes 
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