Tuesday, April 06, 2021
Web Marketing XIV
First I should be clear that this is simply a record of my thinking of how to get my books out there. I had like nine collections of short stories dropped on the infinite sea of self-published work, and people were pretty much ignoring it. Now, I drop a free promotion on Twitter and Facebook, and people will at least read it. That's an improvement but not as good as having what they call sales.
There are some people who brag about selling hundreds or thousands, or some such thing. I don't believe them. I have seen the other side, people desperate for a sale, and the web just moving on. They drop these book promotions on the promotion sites, one after another, and people don't respond, they just pass them by. I often just read the promotions, check out the author, see what they have, see whether it's on kindle unlimited or not. But even if it is, I don't have time. I'm busy reading things where people have offered me read-exchanges.
Slowly, through read-exchanges and the right promo moves, I have come to feel that some people are at least reading my books. And that, as I said above, is an improvement whether I make money or not. In fact I am making some money, but nowhere near what would be necessary to pay for the time if I were using the money to eat, etc. No way could I justify putting four, five hours a night into writing for the kinds of returns I'm seeing. So I have to say, I'm not doing it for the money, I'm doing it because I want to be a writer, and say yes, I have a novel and some stories out there, and they're doing ok.
I am realizing that there are several distinct markets out there that I am shooting for, and I'm doing very poorly in some of them, but ok in others. First is the ACX/audible market. I don't know why I put that first except that I know I'm not doing nearly enough to market what I have. Second is the paperback market. How many people actually buy paperbacks and have them sent to them? A few people are buying mine but not many. And I don't know if those people go anywhere different for their marketing than anyone else. Seems to me if you have cash in hand and are having the book sent to you from either Amazon or B & N, you are as likely to go to one as the other, depending on what you want.
As far as the kindle versions go, I've become more conscious of them, and have even geared myself to them, trying to make my kindle versions clean for a change, and next, trying to get better images for the kindle version. On kindle there are two different markets, on kindle unlimited, and not. If you are on kindle unlimited my books are free and all I have to do is get you to try one. They're free all the time. I get some minuscule amount for your "read" if you read past 10%, and I have no idea if I could possibly make a living off that or not. If I give you a book free, I make nothing, and, you can do whatever you want with it. So the "free" market is not much of a market.
But if you grab a few free ones and then buy one, on kindle, downloading it because you don't have ku, then you're giving Amazon a couple bucks and I'm getting maybe one. This is why I give away "free." I am hoping the buying-kindle audience will like me and fork over a few bucks for the next kindle version.
Now that you have a picture of the distinct markets (the one I didn't really mention is the "free-only" market - they will always download anything free, but nothing else) - the next question is, how much of the market is each kind? I'd love to know. Can't even venture a guess. I only know I'm underserving some markets, and could do better.
