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Take KeithDB's wife for example. She writes Romance which is different animal than traditional adult fiction, Non fiction, or Young Adult (which is what my wife writes). Romance authors can make a boatload self publishing whereas its a little more difficult in other genres.
Brenda's
Starstruck series of books are young adult science fiction romance and at the moment (more on that later) the first book, Starstruck is Amazon's #1 young adult download and in the Top 10 overall. It's also #1 in the science fiction romance category.
The problem with the dog gone YA market for independent publishing involves a couple of things. First, the book has to be ordered, generally for ebook download. You can order paperback versions of the
Starstruck series, but that costs more and still has to be mail ordered. The kids themselves generally don't have credit cards or Amazon accounts of their own, they would have to go through their parents for that, and what kid wants to do that? An indie book is thus at a disadvantage from the mainstream published book that a kid can walk into a store, pick up off the shelf and then pay for with baby sitting cash.
In addition, the kids (ironically enough) still generally prefer paper copies over ebooks. It's a status thing that helps identify them and say who they are to their friends. So they want their friends to see them with their books, or see the books on the bookshelf of their room.
But the real tough thing about the YA market is that there's just no way to reach those dang kids. They are notoriously resistant to advertising, they don't like being advertised to (at least about books). They hear about books from their friends, which creates a real "chicken and egg" problem. Basically if you aren't already a name in the field its hard to get in. Sure, my wife has published a bunch of historical romances, and had some of those big name bestseller lists, but that does not mean jack diddly snot to the YAs out there. It might even hurt as it means Brenda is identified with books their parents read, and what teen wants to read what their parents read?
Still Brenda's four YA books are doing fairly well. Obviously not Harry Potter/Twilight/Hunger Games/Divergent well, but they are her biggest sellers this year and we expect what's happening this weekend to only make that bigger. This is partially because the YA market isn't really just YAs. At least half the people buying YA books are past their teens. Most aren't the same population as her historical romance novel readers, but there is some carry over and it helps word of mouth get out.
But we have also worked hard to market in the few mediums where you can connect some with the kids. There are blogs, and lots of them, and most are free (or will review the book for a free copy of the book). One breakthrough was in making the first book in the series,
Starstruck, free. That's something you can do as an Indie publisher that you can't do when publishing mainstream. It's obviously a cynical ploy to suck you into the buying the rest of the series, and it has worked spectacularly well, with sales of the remaining three books in the series going up 10X after she made Book 1 free.
Then there are the paid for mailing list promotional services. You have to be careful because there are a lot of these and only a few are worthwhile. But the ones that are worthwhile can be very worthwhile (I'll ask Brenda for a list when she gets back tonight). The big one, the 800 pound gorilla, is "Bookbub" and Bookbub is what happened yesterday with
Starstruck.
In that regards, I know there's curiosity about such stuff so I'll share some real numbers. Without such promotional boosts
Starstruck averages about 100 free downloads a day. Not bad. Enough to keep it ranked around 1,500 on the overall Amazon free book list and enough to support sales of about 30 books a day (total) of the remaining three books in the series. This makes her about $100/day in sales profit off her
Starstruck series books (she averages so far this year close to $200/day counting all her other books). So nobody's getting rich here yet, but its good money.
Okay, yesterday (and so far today)
Starstruck went from that around 1,500 overall on Amazon all the way up to #8 putting it as also #1 in a variety of categories to include YA and science fiction romance. What numbers are associated with that?
Yesterday on Amazon
Starstruck had 14,804 downloads on Amazon alone. While we don't have hard numbers from the other sources, such as iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, etc these generally add about a third more. So Starstruck probably had about 20,000 total downloads yesterday, roughly 200 times the usual daily average. The bounce is continuing today as people open the emails from yesterday and because of the visibility the book is getting by being ranked so high on Amazon and iBooks etc. As of 9:15 Eastern time this morning it had 875 more downloads today on just Amazon. It will probably finish this weekend with at least 30,000 total over Saturday and Sunday.
So why doesn't everybody just get a Bookbub boost and shoot to the top of the ebooks charts? Well for starters, Bookbub costs money. A few hundred dollars, generally. How much did we make on those downloads yesterday to pay for that? $0. It's a free book. We are just hoping that once people read it enough will be interested in the rest of the series to pay for it. The data we have supports that it will, but one never knows.
But more to the point, Bookbub is highly selective, which is why it works so well, the readers who sign up for the service know it rigorously screens books for them. Simply put, many apply (all willing to pay) and few are accepted, most in the industry say it is about 10%.
Starstruck was rejected at least six times before getting accepted this time around, and circumstances of that suggest Brenda got lucky and applied just as a previously accepted work dropped out (probably didn't pay). Though even that is a lesson on perseverance and not giving up on it.
That's the thing about Indie publishing as opposed to the mainstream publishing. The good news is that you get to control the marketing. The bad news is that you have to do the marketing. And it's like football recruiting, you can't ever let up on it. It's constant and it requires a lot of work. Brenda is actually considering letting me retire so I can help her with it full time. Towards that end, I'll actually be going with her to one of her conferences in a couple of months.