Building a “Sticky” Digital
Readership
Courtney Milan
New Zealand RWA
August 15, 2014
Half-Assing Promotion
(and still making money)
Courtney Milan
New Zealand RWA
August 15, 2014
Phases of Author Success
• Phase 1: Nobody knows who you are. You have to
work for every sale.
• Phase 2: A few people know who you are. The
algorithms are beginning to work for you.
• Phase 3: Readers are beginning to wait for your
books. You hit the genre lists when your book
comes out.
• Phase 4: The vendors know who you are. You
have a merchandising contact (as a self-published
author).
Where do sales come from?
• Sources external to vendor sites
– Blogs, websites, reviews
– Newsletters, Facebook
– Word of mouth recommendations
• Vendor Algorithms (computer-driven, internal
to vendor sites)
• Vendor Merchandising (affirmative human
choice, internal to vendor sites)
A note about vendor algorithms
Sales
Vendor
Algorithms
More
sales
If you don’t have any sales in the beginning, the algorithms won’t know what to do
with you. You have to have sales to make sales.
This is your book.
This is the landscape of digital sales
This is the landscape of digital sales
This is the landscape of digital sales
This is the landscape of digital sales
This is the landscape of digital sales
Some Disheartening Statistics
(Don’t worry, they won’t last long.)
• The median self-published author made < $500 in 2011.*
• The median earnings on a book sold to an e-publisher are:**
–
–
–
–
–
–
Samhain: $1,700 on a book.
Ellora’s Cave: $2,300
Entangled: $1150
Cobblestone: $650
Breathless Press: $100
Siren: $1700
• (Note: These are both self-reporting, volunteer surveys, where data was
collected over a year ago. Statistics are skewed.)
*Source: Taleist Survey of Self-Publishing in 2011,
http://blog.taleist.com/2012/05/24/report-self-publishing-survey/
** Source: Brenda Hiatt’s “Show Me the Money” Survey,
http://brendahiatt.com/show-me-the-money/
Some Heartening Statistics
• The median self-published earnings are < $500, but the average of
self-published earnings are $10,000—because 10% of selfpublished authors make 75% of the earnings.
• The median per-book earnings from Samhain Publishing are
reported as $1,700, but top earners have made as much as
$400,000 on a single book.
• This talk is about how to get yourself in the top 10%.
* Source: Taleist Survey, blog posts, forum posts, loop posts, from
Elisabeth Naughton, Marie Force, Barbara Freethy, Hugh Howey,
Tina Folsom, and others whose earnings I’m keeping confidential.
** Source: Someone who made $400K on a book from Samhain.
The actual distribution of authors
Why?
• The landscape of book sales are a complex
system…
• …dominated at the bottom end by linear
response…
• …and at the top end by nonlinear responses.
Linear Response
Linear Response
Linear Response
Nonlinear Response
Nonlinear Response
Sales beget sales
• You need to sell copies of your books to
appear on “also bought” lists.
• You need to sell even more copies of your
books to appear on category rankings lists
• You need to sell lots and lots of copies to
qualify for vendor merchandising (this is
‘aliens with a jetpack’)
• The more books you sell, the better you will
do.
Why most self-published authors make
no money
• To a close approximation, you need sales for
your book to be visible.
• You need to be visible to get sales.
The Dreaded Phase One
• Here is what you need to get out of Phase
One:
– You need readers to read one of your books.
– You need readers to like that book enough that
they want to read your next book.
– You need to tell readers how to read your next
book.
Most important thing authors have to
do
• Write books that readers want to read.
• No, really.
• If you’re not writing commercially viable
books, stop thinking about sales and focus on
craft. Seriously. Just leave now.
• The more distinctive your books—the less
exchangeable your books are with others—the
faster this process will go.
• I’m not going to talk about this anymore.
Second most important thing authors
have to do.
• Get readers to read your books.
• I’m not talking about this, either.
• Why? Because (a) lots of other people talk
about that and (b) I went through this phase
years and years ago, and the market is very
different for me. I don’t know what works for
new authors anymore.
• If nobody reads your book, it doesn’t matter
how good it is.
Third most important thing authors
have to do
• Get readers who liked your last book to read
the next book. This is what I call “building a
sticky digital readership.”
• I’m calling it the “third most important thing”
but if you can achieve #1 & #2 it becomes the
most important thing.
• If you get out of phase 1 with Book #1, but
aren’t keeping your readership, you have to
start over.
Getting out of Phase One sucks.
• If, for ever book that you released, you had to
do all the work to get out of Phase one, you’d
spend all your time promoting and none of
your time writing.
• What you need is a way to launch yourself.
A “sticky reader”…
• Is someone who:
(a) wants to read your books
(b) has a way of finding out when your next one is
so that
(c) she buys the next book shortly after it is released.
Get enough sticky readers, and you grease the engines
at the vendors. You send out a newsletter and post to
your Facebook page and you get a thousand sales and
you’re done with promotion.
This happens naturally
• Readers read one book and go out and read
the next.
• Readers enjoy your books and go to your
website to find out when you have a new
release/sign up for your newsletter/like you
on Facebook/follow you on twitter.
• People call this “building a fanbase”
Authors who have a sticky readership…
• Have every book launched into the winds of
discoverability, not just the ones that win the
magic algorithm game
• Have to do very little work to sell their book
and keep on selling it
• Can focus on “just writing.”
Actively encourage stickiness
•
•
•
•
Get readers to attach to you in some way
Make readers aware of your other books
Encourage readers to buy your other books
Encourage readers to tell other people about
your books
• Tell readers the book is out
A side note before we go any further
• The better your books are, and the more widely
appealing they are, the easier it will be for you to
build a sticky readership.
• If you’re writing for a niche, be aware of that and
don’t compare yourself to authors writing in
“big” genres
• If you’re writing in a big genre and you’re
promoting and you do all these things and people
leave bad reviews and don’t stick
around…consider the possibility that your writing
is not there yet.
Sticky readers v. Numbers
• Your goal is not to get as many people as
possible signed up for your
newsletter/following you on twitter/liking you
on Facebook.
• Random people don’t care about your book
and won’t want to buy the next one.
• Your goal is to make sure that the people who
want to buy your next book know when they
can do it.
Strategy #1: The Page After the End
• Someone who finishes your book is more
likely to have enjoyed it. People who aren’t
enjoying it often quit partway through.
• The page after “the end” is the most
important page there is. It says, Hey, Person
who liked my book—here’s how you can stick
to me.
Bella Andre
Marie Force
Lilliana Hart
Debora Geary
Things to have on TPATE
• A link to your newsletter
• A link to Facebook/Twitter/other social media
• A description of the books that are coming
next to get readers excited
• A call for reviews
• A call to lend the book to a friend
• A call to recommend the book to
friends/other readers
Some newsletter statistics
• I did not have a call to sign up for my
newsletter at the end of Unlocked, my first
self-published work.
• Between May and October of 2011 (5
months), I sold 83,000 copies of Unlocked and
had 38 newsletter signups.
• By contrast, I had 328 newsletter signups in
the first month after the release of my latest
book.
“Twitter/Facebook doesn’t sell books”
• You may be using it wrong.
• Use Twitter/Facebook to connect with readers. That’s what they
want.
• You want people to stick, so give them a reason to stick around, and
don’t give them a reason to unfollow.
• Talk about: your day, your cat, your dog, funny stories, the industry,
recipes.
• DON’T: Whine (too much) or bitch about reviews (EVER) or readers
(EVER).
• When tweeting links for other people, think about it from the
readers’ POV. Treat your readers like your friends.
• If I want to give a book visibility, I give away copies of that book.
That way it feels like a “win” for those who follow me, I drum up
interest in that book.
Strategy 2: Linking Titles
• The second most important thing you can do
is to link your titles.
• Make it easy for readers to figure out which
book is next and where it falls in the series.
• Do not make people do additional work to buy
your book!
2a: Back Matter / The Excerpt
• Include an excerpt for another book.
• A few dodgy analytics I’ve acquired:
– Excerpts for any book sell about 2x more copies than a
link to that book.
– An excerpt for a book in the same series as the one
just finished sells about 3x more copies
– An excerpt for the next book in the same series sells
about 10x more copies
– The first excerpt will get 5x more hits than the second
excerpt.
2b. Back Matter/The Linked Title List
A note on active linking
• Always make it easy to buy your book.
• It takes a reader about 20-40 seconds to open up
a web browser, go to a vendor site, search for
your name, and scroll down to the book they
want.
• In that time, they can get distracted by
Facebook/twitter/children.
• Your links should be clickable and individual to
vendors. You don’t want someone to get
distracted before they click “buy.”
We interrupt this slide…
•
•
•
•
To talk about back matter efficiency.
Readers are okay with back matter
Back matter sells more books
Nobody complains about back matter that’s
less than 90% of the book
• Many people complain about back matter
that’s > 40% of the book
• Use back matter in moderation!
2c. The Vendor Description
Note: All authors can change book description
on Author Central. This is buggy right now, but
you should still be aware of it.
The effect of this
• When I released The Duchess War, I got a HUGE
bounce for The Governess Affair. (October sales
for TGA: 2,328. November sales for TGA: 2,238.
December sales for TGA: 10,003.)
• Publishers don’t often do this because they’re
used to physical bookshelves: They don’t want to
scare people away from Book 3 because they
haven’t read Book 1, and Book 1 isn’t on shelves
anymore.
• Your Book 1 is always on the shelves; don’t be
afraid to sell it.
2d. The Website
• The old regime: Place your current release
prominently on your website.
The Website
• New regime: Allow readers to access all your
covers from your website.
The Website
• Explicitly link series order on every book page.
Consider a series page
List books by series on books page
Consider a series page
Goodreads/Shelfari/LibraryThing
• Make sure your series are correct on social
reading websites.
• If they are not, edit them.
Strategy 3: Tell readers how to stick to
you on your website
• The website is the first place people go to find
out about you.
• Your website is the beginning of attachment.
Seal the deal.
Have a prominent newsletter signup
Have prominent links to social media
Have individual pages with all that
information
• Because even though you posted it
prominently on the front page, some people
won’t expect it to be on the front page.
• Make it easy for people to find out about you.
• If you think “people are browsing my webpage
wrong,” you’re wrong.
• Do not be afraid to duplicate information.
Strategy 4: Get good analytics
• Know who clicks on which links. (Use a link
shortener/affiliate codes)
• If you’re using Amazon affiliate codes,
generate separate affiliate IDs for each site:
Facebook, Twitter, your website, the end of
your books.
• This will give you so much power in tracking
data.