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…
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…
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 three!
Oh dear… oh deary dear… I somewhat dropped the ball this week. In my defence, I’m on holiday and have been mostly reading and napping. I highly recommend it for one’s mental health, but it’s not conducive to sales.
For those of you keeping track, I had intended to try a little more advertising last week with a Bookbub campaign aimed at both the US and the UK to drive visibility. There was a hitch however. When checking my links I got this when checking Apple Books…
Oh, bugger…
I got straight on to Unbound, my UK publisher, who promised to fix it, but it took them nearly a week to do so (it was sorted overnight last night). It was, if you’re interested, a “a playorder error in the toc.ncx document in the epub”. So there.
This delay — along with the reading and napping — meant there was no targeted advertising activity from me this week, apart from the tick-tock of AMS ads. Once again, the VE Schwab ad got me a couple of sales…
However, I did continue to get a few residual sales which I suspect came from the book’s inclusion in the newsletters of the wonderful Ian Sainsbury and Andi Cumbo Floyd.
Here are last week’s sales…
Nine… Nine!!
Not great. The peak came from Ian re-sending his email. I also got a few extra followers on my newsletter, which is very handy. On the upside, the KEDP page reads are still on the rise…
By my reckoning a fair few KU readers got through the book this week…
What’s next? Well, I suspect next week will be similarly flaccid as I’m still on holiday and still reading and napping (really, it’s a fantastic way to live), though I do still have a squeeze page on my to do list. More on that next time. Maybe. If I can get out of the reading/napping cycle.
Here’s a summary of last week’s sales
Kindle units sold: 9
POD Paperbacks: 0
Kindle Unlimited Pages read: 2349
Royalty: $3.15
Advertising spend total: $12.35
AMS: $12.35
Bookbub: $0.00
And here’s the running total…
Kindle units sold: 65
Kindle Unlimited Pages read: 3151
Royalty: $28.01
Advertising spend total (since 9th July): $233.59
AMS: $35.90
Bookbub: $197.69
A piffling 935 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:
Are you looking for feedback on your novel or screenplay? sending to agents? I offer all kinds of services for writers at all stages in their careers. There are more details here and get in touch now for a free ten minute Skype consultation and a quote.
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 one!
I’m starting from a position of very few sold already, so my also boughts on Amazon at the start of the week were basically Back to Reality and a handful of self-pubbed fantasy compilations. Not much to give me a clue as to where I should target my campaign. However, there was a VE Schwab title in my also boughts, and one of the USPs of The End of Magic is that it’s a stand-alone.
I fired-up Publisher Rocket to generate a few keywords and started putting together a couple of campaigns to test the water.
First up was the VE Schwab, which seemed straightforward enough. I figured a quote from the lovely RJ Barker would help readers click on the buy button. So far… not a sausage…
Next was the stand-alone. I used Publisher Rocket and some lists on Goodreads to draw up a list of similar one-and-done fantasy books. And the sales…? Zip.
This was slightly dispiriting, but I realise that these ads sometimes need a little time to get going and may need tweaking. I also ran ads aimed at an indie also bought (the Flame ad with the fab James Barclay quote) and one for Terry Pratchett fans (with a great quote from Julian Barr), but again no sales.
Following the instructions as per David Gaughran’s excellent Bookbub Ads Expert, I started daily campaigns. The first two were aimed at fans of Tad Williams and Brandon Sanderson. The results were poor. Just a few clicks and a handful of sales.
Then I decided to target Terry Pratchett readers. I had an excellent quote from the wonderful Julian Barr to tempt them with…
This seemed to do the trick! Daily sales were picking up, and I had a 1.15% CTR (click through rate), which isn’t bad (anything over 1% is deemed good). I started to run this ad on a daily basis. They peaked after a couple of days, then tailed off. By then my also boughts were improving and I noticed Marie Brennan was second only to Back to Reality, so I tried a campaign targeting her readers. No sales!
That was yesterday. Today I’ve gone back to Sir Terry.
In the meantime, I’ve also been getting great support from folks on my newsletter, on social media and listeners to the Bestseller Experiment podcast. Here’s what the daily sales are so far (that peak on 7th July is when my newsletter went out)…
Advertising spend total: $163.07 – that’s broken down as…
AMS: $10.65
Bookbub: $152.42
Only 963 units to go!
Let’s see, a hundred and sixty-two days till Christmas (taps calculator)… I need to sell about six copies a day to make my target. That feels do-able, though at this rate of ad spend, I could be bankrupt by Halloween.
I’ve had kind messages of support and I’ve been delighted when folks tell me they’ve bought the book, or that they’ll feature me in a newsletter. These will all help and I shall be forever grateful.
If you would like to help, then do please do any of the following:
If you have any thoughts or comments on what I might be doing wrong, do please leave them below! Until next week… onwards, upwards, sideways, backwards!
And here are four essential “learnings” (ugh, what have I become?) from the last month…
A good launch is essential…
… but it’s only the start. The book had the most amazing launch week, thanks almost entirely to the gorgeous, wise and undeniably sexy people who had the foresight and canny knack of knowing-a-good-thing-when-they-see-it to support the book in its crowdfunding stage. When their copies arrived they shouted about it from the social media rooftops. Without doubt, this was the most exciting part of the whole crowdfunding experience: seeing them take ownership of the book and saying lovely things. And then one of them did this…
I mean, that is above and beyond… thanks, Jason…
They came to the book launch at Harbour Books and dressed up and made it a magical evening…
However, these good folk have lives to lead and cannot be called upon to sustain that kind of manic energy for long, and so it is left to you, the author, to continue to pimp yourself and the book for all eternity. You can only ride on the goodwill train for so long, and one of the biggest lessons learned from Back to Reality was that unless you continue to promote your book it’s in danger of sinking without a trace. Every week, new and splendid books come along to draw the eye of the reader, so how can you tome survive in the post-publication wilderness…?
You will need to pimp yourself
Unbound only publicise a few books, and I wasn’t assigned a publicist. It’s been quite sobering to be an author who can’t afford a freelance publicist (I was quoted two grand) and is left to their own devices. You’re definitely at a disadvantage. When I was published by Gollancz, you could be confident of reviews and coverage and festival slots because the magazines and websites know the terms of the unspoken deal: support our debuts and midlist authors and you’ll get the interviews with our big name authors… I had no such bargaining chip. However, I was lucky enough to know a few people and have had some great coverage in the likes of Starburst, BBC Radio Kent, and blogs, and I’ve managed to blag my way into various festivals. It can be exhausting, but it’s been worth it, leading to sales and more coverage.
A couple of weeks after publication I started getting messages from readers letting me know that The End of Magic was featured on a Bookbub newsletter. This saw me hurtling up the various Kindle fantasy charts and let to this little moment of happiness…
Not only that, but I was a Hot New Release (stop sniggering at the back)… and I was riding high in a number of other charts, too. Momentum was building and I had a clutch a really good customer reviews. Then…
Publishers will screw-up…
I’m planning to self-publish the book in the USA. My agent and I discussed this before we signed the contract with Unbound and I wanted to experiment with self-publishing and Amazon ads over in good old United States of America Land, and I was planning to do this after the Unbound edition had been published in the UK.
However, I got a message from a reader in New York telling me that I had been featured in an Amazon.com mailing. I checked and he was right: my book was available for sale in the US. Tut-tut, but these things happen and I dropped Unbound a line asking them to update the metadata on their feed to remove the book from sale in America.
Which they promptly did. And then someone must have ticked the wrong box, because it all disappeared from the UK, too.
For nearly 24 hours the eBook wasn’t available in the UK. I plummeted down the fantasy charts and all that great momentum was lost.
Such is life. To be fair to Unbound, these things are easily done and they responded rapidly… Ah well, easy come, easy go.
Oh, and they put one of the chapters in the wrong place…
But, again, they fixed it fast and that’s all cool, but these little blips can test your nerves. Luckily I have years of experience with these kinds of screw-ups and the best advice I can offer is don’t panic, get on it fast, be clear and concise when describing the problem and never, ever refer to it as a disaster. The Titanic and the Hindenburg were disasters. Something going wrong with your book online is a minor glitch in the greater history of humanity…
What’s next…?
Nothing less than the conquest of America.
Eventually.
One of the issues triggered by Unbound’s release of my book in the US is that Amazon doesn’t believe that I retained the US rights to my book and I now have to prove it, which means sending them scans of signed contracts (which I don’t have) and getting Unbound and my agent involved. It’s a right old faff, but it will get sorted eventually.
After that I shall be using the Amazon and Facebook ad skills I’ve been developing with Back to Reality to send The End of Magic up the amazon.com fantasy charts and start earning some dosh.
Again, a huge thank you to everyone who has banged the drum or left a rating or a review online. You’re all wonderful and you should know that every time you retweet, like, leave a nice review or comment, you make an author’s day and this author will never take that for granted.
My crowdfunding campaign for The End of Magic started on 14th February (how romantic!) 2018and the first pledge was from my aunt Marion. I got ten pledges on the first day… no day after that was ever that easy again! Almost 90 days of crowdfunding to reach my target, then months in the edit, copy-edit, proofread, cover design and then signing off on it and a few sleepless nights where I was sure there would be some disaster like all the pages being printed upside down. And then last week, this happened…
My best George McFly impression…
It’s one of those moments that writers dream of and for me it became a reality and I could not have done this without the amazing support of everyone who pledged and spread the word.
I’d become used to seeing the words on a screen and so to finally get a copy in my hands and see the ink on the grain of the page was really special. And then, my social media started going crazy…
You lot are amazing…
I’m completely overwhelmed by the amazing support I’ve had from you all. I really mean it. There’s so much crap going on in the world, but you’ve proven again and again that there are communities of readers and writers and creators who help each other out and bang the drum for new and shiny ideas.
I thank you all again, and I really hope the book lives up to your expectations.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all my years in bookselling it’s that the launch day is just the beginning. I’m going to be on the sales, marketing and publicity warpath for the foreseeable future and anything you good people can do to help spread the word would be much appreciated: pop a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or social media… let your local library or bookshop know that it’s out… stop random strangers in the street and badger them until they– Actually, you can probably skip that last one…
Whatever you can do, thank you, thank you, thank you. You’re all blimming marvellous and I really hope you enjoy the book and I promise to stop banging on about it…
There will be special guests, magic, booze* of some variety and cupcakes (free while stocks last… though if no one turns up I will stiff my face with them).
*Probably wine… not magic wine… but then who knows where the evening will take us…?
I’m delighted to confirm that the paperback of The End of Magic will have lovely, shiny spot UV finishes that will really make it stand out on a display and look utterly gorgeous in your hot little hands. Compare these two images:
The black and white image shows where the spot UV will be…
So, just imagine this finished cover with all that spot UV shininess…
Behold the cover art for The End of Magic as designed by the magnificent Mark Ecob…
I’m a very happy author and this is everything I had hoped for. There’s still time to pre-order and get your name (or the name of a loved/pet/significant other) in the book and you can do that by clicking here!
A few weeks ago, just after finishing the copy edit for The End of Magic, I decided it was time to see if I could get some advance quotes for the book from authors that I knew. I got some ARCs printed and converted my doc into ePub and Mobi (for Kindle) using a free bit of software called Calibre.
I had drawn up a list of authors I knew, popped them on a Google spreadsheet, and started making contact with an introductory message asking if they would be interested in reading the book and giving me a quote, while acknowledging that they are most likely deluged with such requests. I gave a deadline of the first week of December (when the book is going to print) as it would be great to have a positioning quote on the book’s cover.
A few got back saying they were just too busy, and that was to be expected (I was surprised that wasn’t the reply from everyone, to be honest!), but I was delighted to see that most replied saying they would do their best and get back to me before the deadline.
One author replied saying that they couldn’t get into the book, and again that’s fine. I wanted honest reviews and it’s always a big ask to get someone to read your novel, so I was cool with that. All I wanted was one quote. Just one I could pop on the cover. And then, this week, the quotes started coming in…
Gavin G Smith, author of the superb Bastard Legion series, says… “Mark Stay takes the tropes of high fantasy and uses them to wield an original, compelling and intricately plotted story. With some wonderfully human characters (even the elves) and at times laugh out loud funny, The End of Magic is exactly the kind of fantasy that we need more of.”
And James Barclay, author of the classic Raven series, says… “Mark Stay’s End of Magic is the sort of book you give to people who say ‘prove to me why I should read fantasy’. It’s an intensely human novel, beautifully paced, populated by finely drawn characters and containing startling allegories to the world we find ourselves in today. It deals with tragedy, cataclysm, treachery and hope with equal skill. It asks difficult questions and answers them with clever twists, neat prose and incisive dialogue; delivering a most satisfying conclusion. I loved the humour amidst the tragedy. I was drawn in by the premise, carried along by the unfolding dramas and disasters, the hard, sometimes conflicting choices and inspired by the sheer will of the human spirit to triumph over disaster. A simply terrific read.”
I currently have an ego the size of Jupiter and I am a very happy writer… Also, James’s email was perfectly timed as it arrived just after a note from my script agent telling me I had just been rejected for a gig, so I’m doubly pleased.
With any luck there will be a few more like this before we go to print, but if it stopped right there I would still be happy. However, I might be cheeky and chance my arm with a few more requests. Even post-publication these quotes still have great value. They position the book for the browsing reader and give the book a credibility beyond me begging you to give it a go…
For regular writing tips, news and other stuff to help a writer get through the day, sign-up to my monthly newsletter, and grab a FREE eBook while you’re at it!
Mark Stay Writes 