John August

The Variant

What free gets you on Kindle

Follow Up, Snake People, The Variant

Last week, I ran an experiment to see what would happen if I took one of my existing Kindle titles and made it free for three days.

Snake People got a lot of downloads. Over the three days, it “sold” 654 times. It climbed the charts, topping out at #7 on Kindle’s free short stories list.

Since returning to its normal price of 99 cents on Saturday, it sold seven more copies. It no longer shows up on any of the best-seller charts. In no way did it catch fire.

However, if you compare those seven copies to how many it would have sold in a normal week — 2.2 copies on average — the free promo seemed to at least bump the needle. There was also a fair amount of spillover to my other Kindle title (The Variant), which sold 13 copies, up from its average of five.

In another week or two, I suspect Snake People numbers will be back where they were before the promo. I’ll post another update if I’m wrong.

So, was going free worth it? Hard to say.

It certainly increased sampling, and it was gratifying to see readers tweet about it, particularly those who stumbled across it on the best-seller chart and took a chance. I strongly doubt it cost me any buyers; the people who got it free hadn’t been holding off, waiting for a sale.

In the end, I’m hesitant to even label this an experiment because the numbers are so sketchy. I’d hoped to provide a graph showing how many copies were sold based on which spot it reached on the best-seller list, but I can’t. Amazon’s sales figures are maddeningly murky. You can’t be sure how often they’re updated, so any correlation is suspect.

As Snake People was rising on the best-sellers chart, the dashboard report would only show five more copies had sold. An hour later, 100 more sales showed up. Were those additional sales the cause or effect of moving higher in the best-sellers chart? There’s no way to know.

Most writers are probably better off writing new stuff than spending a lot of time gaming the Kindle publishing platform. That said, the spillover effect from one free title to other paid titles probably merits some attention, particularly for authors with many titles available for sale. If I had 15 books for sale on Kindle, rotating free sales periods among them would be a way to increase exposure and probably bring in new paying readers.

Spelunking the Kindle market, cont’d.

Books, Follow Up, Snake People, The Variant

I’ve written several times about my experiments with self-publishing on the Kindle, mostly concerning my short story The Variant, which briefly hit #18 on the overall bestsellers list.

Overall, I found Amazon’s ebook tools satisfactory, but the price structure was frustrating:

Amazon doesn’t distinguish between free and paid content on their Kindle bestseller list. In fact, 19 out of the top 50 books are free. There’s nothing wrong with free, but it’s a semantic and tactical mistake to include them on a “bestseller” list.

They’ve fixed that.

Free books are now listed separately, and with the introduction of the KDP Select program, self-publishers can finally price a title as free for up to five days. (Before this, only major publishers could set the price at zero.)

snake people coverAfter reading David Kazzie’s post about his experience with KDP Select, I decided to try it out on another one of my short stories, Snake People, which had gotten nice reviews but never achieved the traction of The Variant.

To enter KDP Select, you have to promise that the title isn’t available for sale anywhere other than Amazon. Unlike The Variant, I wasn’t selling Snake People as a PDF, so there was nothing to take down.

Dropping the price is handled through a pop-up box called the Promotions Manager. The only option listed for me was “free book,” but the system seems to be designed for more-extensive campaigns. You’re allowed to be free for up to five days total, divided however you want.

Snake People went free yesterday (February 1st), and as of this writing sits at #20 on Kindle’s free short stories list, with 75 copies “sold” in the last 24 hours.

The list is everything

From our experience with Bronson Watermarker, we’ve learned that where you fall on the lists has a huge impact on sales. The higher you’re ranked, the more people see you. The more you’re seen, the more you’re purchased. Winners keep winning.

The pure ranking matters, but even more important is where the page breaks.

For Bronson, we made the front page of the Mac App Store in the “New and Notable” section. For the two weeks we were there, our sales were ten times normal. Once we fell to the second page of “New and Notable,” we quickly regressed to the mean.

I realize that writing about Snake People while the experiment is still running will inevitably corrupt the data. Some readers will click and buy it because hey, it’s free.

And that’s okay. I mostly want more data to answer correlation questions: If 75 copies lands a title at #20, how many copies is the #1 short story “selling?”

In my initial experiments with The Variant, I was able to estimate how much Stephanie Meyer was bringing in off of her Twilight books. (A lot.) I’m curious what the numbers mean in Kindle’s new free ecosystem.

So if you haven’t checked out Snake People, go get it before the promotion ends on Friday. I’ll publish a follow-up on Monday with numbers.

Writing Faster

Snake People, The Variant, Writing Process

Michael Agger looks at scientific studies on writing to figure out why it’s so damn hard:

Kellogg terms the highest level of writing as “knowledge-crafting.” In that state, the writer’s brain is juggling three things: the actual text, what you plan to say next, and — most crucially — theories of how your imagined readership will interpret what’s being written. A highly skilled writer can simultaneously be a writer, editor, and audience.

All that mental shifting slows writers down.

Since writing is such a cognitively intense task, the key to becoming faster is to develop strategies to make writing literally less mind-blowing. Growing up, we all become speedier writers when our penmanship becomes automatic and we no longer have to think consciously about subject-verb agreement.

I can attest to screenwriting getting easier and faster with practice. The form is so esoteric and strange, with special formatting and rules to follow, that the first few scripts you write are mostly about getting comfortable with the shape of screenplays.

Once you start to recognize the rhythm of the page — how action interrupts dialogue, how to change locations while staying in a story thread — a lot of the frustrating craft stuff melts away. Decisions you used to consciously agonize over get taken care of before you’re even aware of them.

(Or, more geekily, it’s like your brain develops a graphics card to ease the strain on your main processor.)

I really notice the difference when I write prose fiction. I’m happy with both The Variant and Snake People, but they were exhausting to write, because I found myself far too conscious of every choice.

Sales figures for The Variant

Follow Up, The Variant

questionmarkJust wondering if you’d be willing to share sales figures on “The Variant.” How many copies sold? I’d like to get a gauge on how feasible using the digital market is over print copies.

— Jeremy W. Bouchard

answer iconThe Variant, a Borgesian spy-thriller short story, was my first experiment with self-publishing on the Kindle platform. You can find it on Amazon here.

As of March 31st, I’ve sold 4,608 copies through Amazon at 99 cents. I get 35 cents on each, earning me $1,613.

The majority of these sales came in the first six months. I now sell between 10 and 45 copies per month.

variant sales chart

I also sell The Variant as a direct download, for which I give up only a small transaction fee. I’ve sold 740 copies, earning $732.

I haven’t tried selling The Variant through iBooks because, honestly, it’s a massive pain in the ass. As annoying as Amazon’s DTP scheme can be, Apple’s is byzantine. There are aggregators (like Lulu) that take some of the sting out of it, but for a surprisingly large cut of the action.

If self-publishing were more than a hobby for me, I’d definitely focus more energy on getting the maximum value out of both The Variant and its successor, Snake People. (Which, by the way, is desperately in need of some reviews. If you’ve read it and liked it, I’d appreciate some feedback on its Amazon page.)

I have a few book-like projects I hope to put out this year, but I haven’t made firm decisions about what form they will take. They might be physical books like A Book Apart‘s great little tomes, Kindle-able ebooks, PDF/ePub combos, or even iOS apps. Ultimately, it will depend on what’s best for the content, and which can best reach the audience.