Crunching the numbers
So Hotel Flamingo has been on sale for two weeks now, and it's time to look at the sales figures and hits to work out what to do next.
And I certainly have to do something. 'Cos right now this isn't hitting the big time.
So far I've had 21 sales in two weeks. Which sounds okay (well, I guess - I have nothing to compare it to) until you look at the sell dates. 14 of those sold the day I released it, 6 more over the next two days, one more by the end of the first week - then nothing at all for the second week. Speaking of that first day, there were 250 page views on that first day, which I can probably pretty safely lock in as the combined audience of my LJ/Facebook/Twitter, along with a few personal contacts.
So that paints a picture of almost everyone that I can easily reach having investigated the ebook within a couple of days, and close to 10% of them/you buying a copy in that time. I'm not unhappy with that - it's really gratifying to know that y'all are checking the novella out - but it does tell me that I've gone as far as I can expect to go with just making low-effort noise through standard social media channels. The next step has to be getting the word out to people I don't know personally.
Smashwords are helping with that by adding the book to their premium catalogue, which is the set of ebooks they distribute to places such as the iBookstore and Kobo databases. That opens up the novella to a much larger audience - but it doesn't solve the problem of how to let the audience know it exists and encourage them to buy it. Plus, there's a time delay - it 'ships' out to those stores at the end of this week, and becomes available 1-2 weeks later in most cases - so it won't improve the situation for a while. Still, knowing that means I can start working on improving visibility now, hoping that it'll have an effect in time.
How to do that? Hmm. Good question. One thing I need to do is some outreach to different venues - talk to people in the emerging writers community, get some blog interviews, grab some time in the street press or something. Fucked if I know much about doing that, but I'm sure I can work it out.
Next is word of mouth, which (I'm told) is one of the best ways to get attention and success for low-level things like this. To that end, I ask - okay, I beg - any of you who've read and enjoyed Hotel Flamingo to recommend it to even one other person, preferably someone I don't know (or at least who you think I don't know). Even better would be writing a short review for the book on its Smashwords page (an honest one, mind you, that talks about the novella's flaws as well as its strengths), but that's more effort and I won't be annoyed if people can't spare the time.
Third is getting more material out there. I'm already assembling stories for a short anthology - which will include one completely new, never-before seen story, along with existing pieces - and will hopefully get that up by the end of the year, depending on the time required for the cover. To go with that, I'll also put up a completely free short story for download, and see if that leads to purchases of either book, or at least more pageviews.
And I also should start getting more involved with the writing community, both online at Smashwords and here in Melbourne. I generally squat like a hermit in my office and never talk to other writers, but that's hardly conducive to my career - and nor does it help me help other writers in the same boat. So more of that - more commenting and reviewing on other ebooks, more involvement in festivals and projects, more generally kibbitzing on blogs and forums.
In the old days, I understand one just wrote the book, and the publisher did all the hard yards. Kind of wish it still worked that way. But such is life.
And I certainly have to do something. 'Cos right now this isn't hitting the big time.
So far I've had 21 sales in two weeks. Which sounds okay (well, I guess - I have nothing to compare it to) until you look at the sell dates. 14 of those sold the day I released it, 6 more over the next two days, one more by the end of the first week - then nothing at all for the second week. Speaking of that first day, there were 250 page views on that first day, which I can probably pretty safely lock in as the combined audience of my LJ/Facebook/Twitter, along with a few personal contacts.
So that paints a picture of almost everyone that I can easily reach having investigated the ebook within a couple of days, and close to 10% of them/you buying a copy in that time. I'm not unhappy with that - it's really gratifying to know that y'all are checking the novella out - but it does tell me that I've gone as far as I can expect to go with just making low-effort noise through standard social media channels. The next step has to be getting the word out to people I don't know personally.
Smashwords are helping with that by adding the book to their premium catalogue, which is the set of ebooks they distribute to places such as the iBookstore and Kobo databases. That opens up the novella to a much larger audience - but it doesn't solve the problem of how to let the audience know it exists and encourage them to buy it. Plus, there's a time delay - it 'ships' out to those stores at the end of this week, and becomes available 1-2 weeks later in most cases - so it won't improve the situation for a while. Still, knowing that means I can start working on improving visibility now, hoping that it'll have an effect in time.
How to do that? Hmm. Good question. One thing I need to do is some outreach to different venues - talk to people in the emerging writers community, get some blog interviews, grab some time in the street press or something. Fucked if I know much about doing that, but I'm sure I can work it out.
Next is word of mouth, which (I'm told) is one of the best ways to get attention and success for low-level things like this. To that end, I ask - okay, I beg - any of you who've read and enjoyed Hotel Flamingo to recommend it to even one other person, preferably someone I don't know (or at least who you think I don't know). Even better would be writing a short review for the book on its Smashwords page (an honest one, mind you, that talks about the novella's flaws as well as its strengths), but that's more effort and I won't be annoyed if people can't spare the time.
Third is getting more material out there. I'm already assembling stories for a short anthology - which will include one completely new, never-before seen story, along with existing pieces - and will hopefully get that up by the end of the year, depending on the time required for the cover. To go with that, I'll also put up a completely free short story for download, and see if that leads to purchases of either book, or at least more pageviews.
And I also should start getting more involved with the writing community, both online at Smashwords and here in Melbourne. I generally squat like a hermit in my office and never talk to other writers, but that's hardly conducive to my career - and nor does it help me help other writers in the same boat. So more of that - more commenting and reviewing on other ebooks, more involvement in festivals and projects, more generally kibbitzing on blogs and forums.
In the old days, I understand one just wrote the book, and the publisher did all the hard yards. Kind of wish it still worked that way. But such is life.