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Analysis of Sales of The Great Scottish Land Grab Part Two

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Yesterday I started an analyis of what worked and what failed as I attempted to market my first fiction ebook: The Great Scottish Land Grab.

Today I want to look in more detail at what I was doing to market the book and what results it had.

The chart below shows the lifetime sales of Land Grab book one since June 2014:

First thing to point out is that Orange/yellow shows sales where I got paid, blue is sales of the book after I set the price to free.

One of my biggest mistakes was not making book one free right away. Instead I priced it at 99p.

I was marketing Land Grab every single day during the summer of 2014. I printed up business cards, approached random strangers at village fairs and at train stations. I posted on Facebook and Twitter and while I sold over a hundred copies, look at the difference in numbers from October 2016… I did almost no marketing at all for the three months from October 2016 and people still found and downloaded the book!

I wonder how many more downloads I might have had in 2014 if I had enticed people in with a free offer.

The next two charts show life-time sales for books two and three respectively:

The numbers are not huge so I can’t make any hard and fast statements about what worked and what didn’t work, but it does seem to me that releasing Land Grab as a series did allow people to try at a low price and then free, and then go on to buy the other books in the series.

Both in 2014 and since October 2016, I’ve seen people go on to buy book two and three after downloading book one.

The chart for the full trilogy looks very different:

The fact is that I still carry business cards with me and still give them out or leave them in cafe’s and other venues for people to find. The business cards only advertise the full novel and I think that people who are intrigued by the cover image on the cards or maybe by something I’ve said will go on to buy the full novel.

Contrast the final chart with the first three and you see that huge dead area from November 2015 till August 2016. Without advertising I don’t see sales.

That’s a really important statement. Early this year I had an offer from Facebook. A £30 credit towards Facebook advertising. I used £12 of that voucher to advertise The Great Scottish Land Grab and later worked out that I made a slight profit off the back of it. (In reality a full profit as Facebook gave me a free voucher, but looking to see whether I would make a profit in future, it was small, but there.)

Tomorrow I’m going to try and round all this up into some sage advice to anyone thinking about how they can sell their book.

Analysis of Sales of The Great Scottish Land Grab Part One

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On 13th June 2014 I published my first fiction book: part one of a planned four book series titled The Great Scottish Land Grab. Published solely as an ebook through Amazon KDP, I fully intended to cash in on the hype surrounding the rapidly approaching referendum on Scottish independence.

This post is intended as an analysis of what worked and what failed as I attempted to market my first ebook.

Here’s the high level sales figures:

Total downloads:

The Great Scottish Land Grab Book One …. 227
The Great Scottish Land Grab Book Two …. 58
The Great Scottish Land Grab Book Three .. 56

Total sales receipts:

The Great Scottish Land Grab Book One …. £33.66
The Great Scottish Land Grab Book Two …. £74.75
The Great Scottish Land Grab Book Three .. £73.29

All these numbers are up to the end of May 2017, effectively three years worth of sales.

Somewhere during editing book two I realised that I would only manage to write three books before the referendum and so books three and four became one book.

On 24th September 2014, I released the full trilogy as a complete novel.

Total downloads:

The Great Scottish Land Grab …. 43

Total sales receipts:

The Great Scottish Land Grab …. £87.93

So, in total, in three years I’ve sold 384 books and made £269.63 from these ebooks.

I confess that at times it has been extremely depressing to know how few copies I’ve sold in a three year period. However, I’ve had a large number of readers contact me to tell me how much they enjoyed the story. I enjoyed writing the book and even enjoyed the rush of trying to market it at the time. It has been a worthwhile learning experience and I was able to go on to write a much better second novel in Fallen Warriors.

And I’ve gained knowledge about how not to market a book which does seem to be helping as I concentrate on Fallen Warriors. Tomorrow I’m going to look at some of the lessons I’m still trying to learn and apply.

Neglecting to Advertise

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When I set out to publish Fallen Warriors, I told myself that I would learn from previous mistakes. My first novel – The Great Scottish Land Grab – did sell and continues to be sold today, but I failed to keep advertising it and so for long months, no books were sold.

It is a fact of modern life that we are bombarded with advertising all day, every day. I have no desire to contribute to that tsunami we all face, yet I know that if I don’t advertise my novels, few people will hear of them.

Last month I launched my first Amazon Marketing Services campaign for Fallen Warriors in America. This ad resulted in 66,862 impressions over five days (impressions being where your ad is shown on screen.) 43 actual clicks from those ads and 2 sales actually putting me in profit for my $5.55 total spend!

The system is quite neat. Amazon only charge you when your ad is clicked by a customer. If that customer then goes on to buy your book, it is recorded as a sale.

You can enter as many keywords as you want which can be book titles or author names and if someone searches for that keyword (or phrase) then you then compete with other advertisers for your book to be shown. Whether you win or not is down to your CPC Bid which is the maximum amount you are willing to pay for your ad to be shown. And this can be set against each keyword…

For my first campaign I entered 38 keywords each with a $0.25 CPC bid.

For some reason it’s a whole lot harder (more expensive) to advertise on Amazon in the UK. They seem to be wanting a Vendor Code before you can set up an account to advertise which costs £25 a month. I’m looking into whether it is possible to avoid that monthly payment. More on that later…

I’ve been thinking that I need to take advantage of the ability to write posts in series. This week I’m going to carry out some analysis of sales data for my novels and other books. Tomorrow I’ll look at sales of The Great Scottish Land Grab and see if I can learn some lessons.

Why would God want us to be obedient?

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Obedience. There seems to be a real antagonism in UK culture to the idea that the God who created us should dare to demand our obedience. I see that antagonism reflected in government policy and media indoctrination that questions the idea that parents have the ultimate responsibility to teach their children to be obedient to them.

If you don’t have children and maybe even if you do, you may not want to teach your children to be obedient. You may feel that it is enough to love them. Even that if you love children they will naturally learn how to be the best they can be.

I doubt many parents can avoid the need for some training of their child to obey commands. Parents who do not teach their children to be obedient, at least in some ways are likely to watch their children suffer in miriad ways…

Burns inflicted because they got too close to a fire…

Fingers sliced after picking up a kitchen knife…

Broken bones after falling down stairs…

I could go on.

As a father I have taught each of my children to be obedient to me in order to protect them from danger until such time as they are able to discern and avoid that danger themselves.

It makes perfect sense then that the God who created us and sees himself as our Father in Heaven would have a perspective that wants us to obey his commands, in order that we are protected from danger that we might be unable to perceive.

Yet in our arrogance, like a stubborn child, we all too often think we know best, or simply just want to do something and do not care about the consequences.

I choose to believe that the God who created fathers, who sees himself as a father, has our best interests at heart.

Happy Fathers Day

Flash Fiction: The world is ending

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All my life savings, that’s all it took to save me from the end of the world. I still can’t believe my luck, that I managed to get away. The boat was the most expensive thing in the end, I had to buy it. No-one was willing to rent, everyone was too scared…

Fortunately I was able to buy supplies. Not food of course, food wouldn’t last. A harpoon, several knives, water filters, purification tablets, first aid kits… The real essentials.

I steer the boat carefully through the reef, conscious that this is my only means of transport if I ever want to leave this island again. White sand stretches in a bow ahead of me, gradually widening around me as I approach the shore.

Looking over the side, I see sand under the aqua green water, almost luminescent in the sunlight. A fish and then another and then a whole shoal of them swim underneath the hull.

Unless they succeed in poisoning the oceans I’ll be able to eat for a long time.

I run the boat up onto the shore, it’s flat bottomed so it doesn’t tip over. I pull up the engine and secure it, take a rope and tie the boat to a rock that serves as a useful anchor point.

My new home for the rest of my life.

The first few days I set myself busy building a shelter, getting used to the routine of fishing, trying to get used to the silence.

I’ve brought large plastic containers to store rain water. I cut down large leaves from the islands palm trees to put a roof over my shelter and try to arrange them so rain water will flow into the containers. I won’t know if it works until it finally rains.

One of my most precious supplies is a carefully sealed container of matches. Thousands of them. As long as I can keep them dry I’ll be able to boil water and cook the fish I catch.

Day 5

I sit on the white sand, looking out to the surf. It’s possible that others will come to this island, fleeing from the war and troubles that I’ve left behind. The world is ending and while I may have been one of the lucky ones, I hope there are more who got away.

Day 10

I’ve walked round the whole island now. Checking to see what resources are available. Mango trees and coconut will supplement my diet. I’m already starting to weary of my daily portion of fish.

Company is what I miss most. It’s been growing inside me each day.

I sit on the beach, the sand that hasn’t been trodden on for who knows how long.

The sand stretches out under the water for at least a hundred metres, maybe more, changing eventually to a dark blue, slightly darker than the sky in the distance. White clouds periodically block the sun, but here at the equator the temperature remains constant.

It is paradise and I have no-one to share it with.

All I can think about is what I’ve left behind, about what must be happening back home. So many have died and here I am living a dream vacation I might have killed for twenty years ago.

I never wanted to kill anyone.

But I knew if I stayed I would have to.

Day 14

I haven’t eaten all day.

I don’t even feel hunger, just lethargic. The motivation drained from me over the last few days. Yesterday all I did was sit on the beach waiting.

We were all to blame. Sure it would have been easy to blame the politcians, the leaders, but each of them represented us, each of them came from us. We got the governments we deserved and it seems we deserved to die.

At least no-one had pressed the button, at least before I left. Some semblance of rationality kept anyone from launching a pre-emptive strike, but who needs nuclear missiles when you can poison. When your conventional weapons are just as powerful as the smallest nuke, when you have a million men at your command all of whom seem to care nothing about their lives.

I left my family, I left my friends knowing that they would die.

Pleading with them to come with me, but none of them would.

It seemed like they were locked in to some strange feeling of destiny.

So I left. And every day I wonder what has happened to them. Is there anyone left?

Day 18

Today I forced myself to eat. Made myself sleep. I should be able to relax by now. I take long walks. I busy myself, building a stronger shelter, preparing for the long haul, but all I can think about is home.

I longed to come here, ever since I saw a poster of this view, heard about these islands, but I am not able to enjoy it.

Day 21

I don’t look back.

I doubt I will ever be able to return.

Maybe some lucky soul will find the shelter I left behind, the supplies buried under the floor, but for me, I realise that I was not destined to die alone.

The longer I was away, the greater my desire grew to do something, to try and stop the madness.

Maybe the world is ending, maybe all I can do is help it end faster, but I have to try.

I have to do something…

Copyright Mark Anderson Smith 2017 http://www.dragonlake.co.uk/ You may link to this post from http://www.dragonlake.co.uk/2017/06/flash-fiction-the-world-is-ending/ or share on a non-commercial website so long as the full copyright notice and this statement is included.

If you liked this story, or if you didn’t, let me know…

A Quarter Quell

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Today will be my 25th post in my 100 day challenge to write 100 words a day. I decided I would review my progress every 25 days.

So far I’ve made good progress, managing to publish at least 100 words a day. I’ve written almost every day, excluding Sundays when I take a day off which means for the 21 days I’ve actually been writing my average daily word count has been 410 words.

However, that only includes published posts. I had a look at draft posts I’ve added, but not published – there are 24 of those – and taking those into account I’ve written an average of 600 words a day.

Total words written and published: 8617
Total words written inc draft: 12,753

All this in a little over three weeks which is encouraging as one of the reasons I wanted to restart this blog was to get into a daily habit of writing.

I haven’t been keeping track of time spent writing though. I timed myself last night and estimate from that that I’m spending 15 minutes writing and editing every 100 words. If that is accurate, I’ve spent 31 hours writing on this blog over those 21 days.

That’s not great. Ultimately I want to spend the bulk of my writing time working on my next novel and if I only need to spend 15 minutes on this blog each day, that means I’m losing 75 minutes that could be towards my novel word count. I only posted two posts during this time that were exactly 100 words long.

Over the next 25 days I should make an effort to time myself while writing and make sure that I’m prioritising time to work towards my longer term writing goals.

It’s worth my noting what impact my blog is having.

I’ve had one blog post which has been highly relevant to a lot of people and am still seeing people turning to it for information. However, the rest of my posts are falling into a vacuum:

Ultimately I want to build up a readership, but will have to do some research into what people actually want to read.

It might make sense to focus on posting flash fiction to draw readers who may want to buy my novels, but if so, I need to find a way to do that. If I’m going to market myself and advertise, it would make more sense to advertise my novels directly.

That’s enough for now… If you have any feedback on this blog, do let me know.