marketing

Today

I had a great moment of clarity today after I drove to the airport, found that the Magical Land of Free Parking was still there (yay!), went into the hotel hosting Norwescon, and saw a line to register that wrapped around the entire inner courtyard. In that moment, it suddenly came to me: I don't really want to go to Norwescon this year. Under normal circumstances, I would go, but I feel like it's too soon after that big trip. Professional development is nice, but right now I feel like what I really need is time to focus in on the writing. Honestly, I've go so much on my plate now, book- and audiobook-wise, and it's been put off for so long, that I feel like the very last thing I need is to spend a few days learning about new stuff.

So I left the flyers in the rack and plan to roll my registration over to next year. Hopefully by then I'll be excited to do it again, plus I might actually learn some new things if I let a little time lapse.

In general I feel like I'm much better situated from a knowledge perspective than I once was, and I kind of skim through or neglect most of the self-publishing blogs these days. Things have kind of settled in, you know? Of course, news still happens--Amazon is buying Goodreads, for example. On the one hand, that's one less competitor for Amazon, but on the other, Goodreads was doing such a poor job of being a business that I'm actually kind of relieved.

What am I doing with my days?

Between children, random crap, and a lack of sleep, not much! And Norwescon starts tomorrow! Sorry, new readers desperate for the third book!

But I may add to your numbers, I think. Maybe. I am seeing more of a response to the Facebook ads now--so far more people are clicking than buying, but I did actually sell a copy (yes, one whole copy) at Barnes & Noble!!! Plus, I realized that the money I paid Goodreads was for an advertising campaign, not a single ad, so now I have four ads running on there (one each linking to Amazon, Smashwords, Nook, and Kobo).

Maybe someday enough people will click on the Goodreads ads that I'll actually spend through my pre-pay there. Dreams can come true, people.

(If you want a random laugh, go watch Zico of Block B fail to navigate using a GPS device. I especially like the part where his bandmate explains to him that Riverside Road probably runs along the side of the river. Comedy gold, people. ETA: Or try this one of the entire band failing to do a photo shoot properly. Or two of the group's rappers failing to sing. Or members failing to model. Or more atrocious singing. The Block B guys are a lot smarter than the characters in Spinal Tap, but there's definitely that feel to them sometimes....)

Annoying....

So, I was trying to fix the links in the Kobo versions of the book, which I did. (And I did the ad, finally.) Then I tried to upload the new versions.

Trang didn't go up, and there seemed to be some screwy things with the chapter ornaments, so I redid them and got rid of some weird code, and it worked. Then Trust wouldn't go up, so I replaced the chapter ornaments and got rid of weird code, and it still won't work.

At this point, I'm guessing it's Kobo's problem--I mean, these are basically the same files I posted earlier, so any problems should have come up then. I may try later, but of course the book that needs to have good links is Trang, and that one's up.

Define "work"

M. Louisa Locke has a good post on marketing via KDP Select. I keep seeing these really black-and-white posts about that strategy. You know what I mean: In the Golden Age KDP Select was a license to print money, but since the algorithm change it doesn't work, not even a little bit.

I have to question both sides of that assertion: There were plenty of authors disappointed by KDP Select back in the day, and obviously my experience shows that it can work, if by "work" you mean "improve sales," not "make me a huge bestseller forevermore." It's all a matter of your expectations, I guess--I was actually happy with how the Facebook ads were working. Yeah, BookBub worked way better, but even if it hadn't, I still would have considered the experiment with KDP Select to be a success, both because it improved sales immediately and because it pointed out an approach that I could use to improve sales in the future.

I think a big part of the problem is that people are still looking for the One Magical Thing that they can do for their book once that will take care of everything forever. And you know, that One Magical Thing just doesn't exist. I think the BookBub ad worked because of all the effort I'd put into the book beforehand, and I expect to have to continue to put effort into marketing in order to keep sales going.

Heading home

I go home soon (YAAAAAY!!!), so I went looking at my sales, and yes, they are clearly slowing down even more, despite the fact that the book now has 13 (!) five-star reviews and is now up to a 3.9-star average.

Which, as an aside, I think points to a limitation of those algorithms. I think that, in a perfect world, the fact that there's more data out there now about what kind of person REALLY likes the book should trigger more outreach to likely buyers. But the algorithms seem instead to be very reliant on momentum, so each slowdown in sales begets a further slowdown.

Anyway, I had set all the Facebook ads to run extremely cheaply since I wasn't going to be able to pay attention to them, and sure enough, very few people have seen the ads and almost no one has clicked. Which is far preferable to getting hammered, but since I shall soon be in a position to actually pay attention to the ads, I bumped up the per-click bid a little today.

I also realized that I never did a Kobo ad for Facebook. Gotta get on that (and fix those links) when I get home....

After the bump

So, after the last giveaway, I had about two days of really good sales, and then things basically went poof, at least in comparison to those two days.

But I'm still selling much better than I was before.

It was an interesting little roller-coaster, because at the end, I have to say that I'm doing much better than I was, so that's very good and I'm happy things worked out the way they did. On the other hand, I was surprised at how short-lived the bump was, because I've read talk of a 30-day cliff, and mine was like a 2-day cliff. Of course, all talk about Amazon's algorithms is speculation by outsiders, plus they constantly change, so.... In any case, there's no point in being greedy--I'm happy with how well things went, and of course some those new Trang readers are going on to buy Trust, which is very nice.

So, what to do now? As I may have mentioned, this month is going to be very busy, so I'm trying to set things up so that I can push the 99-cent book without, you know, actually having to do any work. Since it's up on Smashwords now, I've put up Facebook ads for there and for Amazon (I'll do Kobo as well when that goes up)--I've set the per-click bids and daily budget caps low, so hopefully my credit card won't get maxed out while I'm not paying attention. We'll see how it does: Advertising a paid book wasn't particularly effective last time, but now the price is lower and the ranking is higher, so maybe more people will actually pick it up.

Interesting links

David Gaughran has a great interview with David Dalglish where Dalglish talks in depth about how signing a bad contract really caused him some serious problems. He was able to buy his way out of it eventually, so things went better for him than they did for some other people, but the fact remains that, even today, you can really screw yourself by signing a bad contract.

Dalglish says:

The thing is, I knew it was stupid to sign it. My dad argued repeatedly to not do it. I refused to show the contract to several writer friends, because I knew they’d tear it to pieces. I didn’t hire someone like PassiveGuy to go over it and make sure it wasn’t evil. I wanted even that tiny sliver of respectability, and because of that I freaking screwed myself over hardcore.

Man, have I ever been there. Not with a book contract, but with other things. I have learned the hard way that if you're embarrassed to tell people about what you're about to do, you should absolutely NOT do it. That shame is a huge red flag--you are succeeding in fooling yourself, but you know damned well you couidn't fool someone else.

Speaking of Passive Guy, he's got two fun compare 'n' contrast links up today. One is an agent saying that publishers need to brand themselves; the other is an interview with James Patterson, who is quite open about the fact that he is more of a brand than a writer.

Yes, I think it's important to brand. But seriously, who is going to find it easier to create a brand, a publisher or an author? It's hard for a publisher to create a brand for themselves; it's really easy for writers. As a writer, you probably prefer certain genres, and you definitely have a world view and writing style that colors everything you write, whether you want it to or not. Spell your name correctly and don't make your book look like an imitation of someone else's work, and just like that, you have created a brand. (Unified cover looks help, too.)

Wow

I've sold over 100 copies of Trang TODAY. Huh. When Amazon kicks in for you, it kicks in hard, no?

ETA: And Christ, I'm now #5 on the science fiction: series paid list, and actually cracked the top 100 (#73) for science fiction in general. (No, I never show up on the science fiction: space opera list, because that is for paper books.) (EATA: Actually, now I think I'm wrong about the paper book thing, but I don't know.)

The day after the giveaway

So, not shockingly given how much better this giveaway did than the others, I am actually seeing some benefits after having switched back to paid: I'm #19 on the science fiction: series paid bestseller list, which just barely puts me on that all-important front page.

I've also dropped the price to 99 cents, for two reasons. Reason number 1: I still plan to make the book free. Reason number 2: People have suggested that, if you do have a good response to your free days, dropping the price can keep the momentum going.

My previous experiment with the 99-cent price point was a bust, but this time around (when I have more reviews and better placement on the bestseller lists), it's working like a charm--I haven't gone through the old sales reports to do an exact count, but in all likelihood I've sold more copies of Trang today than I did in 2011 and 2012 combined. Of course it's impossible for me to know if I'm really making more money this way than if I'd kept the price up and took the higher royalty, but since I'm planning to make Trang free anyway, I'm OK with making 35 cents a sale if it keeps the book on the front page.

So that's all very nice for me. But I think it points to some larger lessons for all indie writers, which I shall patronizingly spell out in a numbered list because I've got a really big head right now:

1. Prepare. A lot of the stuff I did, like backmatter links, targeting the cover and description, getting into the right Amazon categories, and getting reviews did NOT pay off immediately. Clearly, it was still worth doing, because it's paying off now. (OK, it's not paying off in a financial sense yet--I still have a long way to go before I break even. But you have to crawl before you can run, and the momentum is definitely in the right direction.)

2. Experiment. Do we need to go over how much money I've wasted on marketing that did not work? It's embarrassing when that happens, and if you're me and you know you don't know much about marketing, it makes you feel like this is something you'll never really get a handle on. But if I hadn't been persistent with BookBub (and it took two tries), I wouldn't have had such a successful giveaway. And I doubt that I wouldn't have gotten into BookBub in the first place without all the work I did earlier to get reviews, have a good description, have a targeted cover, etc.

3. Believe. Recently Edward Robertson did a post on giveaways in which he says, Oh, you should be getting thousands of downloads. Which, I didn't before. But the important caveat there is that if you get your book on one of the free book sites you should get thousands of downloads. And you know, once I did, I did.

It can be hard to hear stuff by people who are better established and are saying things like, Oh, just get your book on Pixel of Ink (can't, sorry); or, Just make your book 99 cents (didn't work); or, Don't market. They're trying to be helpful, but when what works for them doesn't work for you--or doesn't work to a level that they would deem acceptable--it can make you feel like a big old loser who has written a crap book.

But there are still differences in the playing field, even on Amazon, even with e-books. Someone with a 20-year career as a novelist behind them is simply going to have an easier time finding readers. Amazon is going to help you a lot more if you've sold 20,000 copies than if you've sold 20.

It's hard starting from zero. But it doesn't mean you wrote a bad book. It doesn't that your book lacks potential. It just means that...it's hard starting from zero. True in any career.

4. Persist. Always the bottom line for writers, right? You can't win if you don't play. 

Hah! Awesome!

So at this very microsecond Trang is the #1 free sci-fi title on Amazon! Very cool! It will fall into complete obscurity again in about 35 minutes, but I'll enjoy what I have now. That's 7,297 copies given away today (ETA: 7,344 by the end)--again, props to BookBub!

And now I feel very good indeed about the cover art and the description....

The final free day

So, today's my last KDP Select free day, and the first time I've used BookBub. The BookBub ad cost $60--so slightly less than my first Facebook campaign, which was $70.

And I've gotten 10 times the downloads!

So, yeah, big ups to BookBub for being a highly cost-effective way to reach readers. Other advantages: They don't shut you out if you don't have a review average of four stars, and (although it costs more and presumably would result in fewer buys) you can buy an ad with them if you simply put a title on sale as opposed to making it free, so you aren't locked into KDP Select.

Oddly, I don't seem to be moving up the Amazon bestseller list like I did in the previous two campaigns (only at #14 now in science fiction: series, but at least I'm on the front page). I'm assuming that just a lag or a glitch, since that number hasn't changed since early this morning (and yeah, you can really tell when that BookBub e-mail goes out).

(Of course, it's possible that it's not a glitch--that Amazon doesn't count the BookBub downloads when compiling its bestseller lists. Which would suggest that, once the book goes free permanently, I'd actually be better off spending $70 on Facebook, because I'd get better visibility on the lists. Interesting.)

Goodreads is still a dog that won't hunt: No clicks so far. At this rate, the $60 I pre-paid them will last into the next century.

By-the-by: Before the giveaway, sales for February were maintaining their January levels, which were substantially higher than I'd seen before (although not high in any non-relative sense).

Moving on to reviews: I picked up three reviews over the past month--all of them were five-star reviews, moving the book from two five-star reviews to five five-star reviews. I happen to believe that psychological factors play a large part in whether people think a book that they enjoyed is worth three, four, or five stars. So, before I thought anchoring was playing a large role in the average star rating on the various Web sites.

This time around I think it's actually a response to those one-star reviews. The new five-star reviews are quite short, and I think what happened is that people enjoyed the book, and decided to have a second look at it on Amazon. Then they saw those one-star reviews, and thought, "That's SO unfair! Those people didn't even read the book! And that one is such a sanctimonious asshole--ooh, this frosts my shorts!" So instead of giving they, say, four stars, they get their dudgeon up and give it five.

Which is a reminder to myself that even jackasses have their uses....

Spring may not be quite as horrible as I had thought

It sounds like things may actually happen on the out-of-state elderly relative front without my having to basically spend the entire spring there, doing every last thing myself. That would be wonderful, plus it would mean that I don't have to buy some kind of portable computing device in hopes of getting anything done, which is good. I may even be able to attend Norwescon!

I'm thinking about some beta tasks to do once the Trang audiobook is done. As it turns out, recording an audiobook is a good way to find typos (at one point Cheep is called Chip--funny how hard that is to catch when you're reading silently, but how glaringly obvious it is when you're reading aloud). So I've been marking those up as I find them, and I'll clean up the e-books when that's done with.

Of course, with the new computer, how should I do the e-book files? I think in the interest of efficiency I'll just use Calibre again--I'll save the learning curve for when I convert Trials.

Speaking of new software, I want to spend a little more quality time sorting out GIMP. Obviously, if I'm doing Norwescon, I'll do some flyers, but the other, more-sophisticated project I have in mind is to re-do the lettering on the cover of Trang and Trust. I think the author name should probably be a bit larger and easier to read, plus the title lettering could stand to look a little more elaborate (which I hope is something this program lets you do--my old program was pretty limited). The tweaking should also give me some practice with GIMP, which I'm going to need when I get around to doing the Trials cover. 

What else? David Gaughran had a good post about the importance of mailing lists--it's nothing that I didn't know, but I've been very lazy about creating one of those, mainly because I just don't think I have it in me to do a full-fledged newsletter. But I could just do new-book alerts and sale alerts--that sort of thing. I'll put it on the list, anyway, along with getting on Pintrest.

Why there is no Lactose Intolerant French Huguenot History Month

I periodically read WhiteWhine--it's funny, but it's also capable of completely destroying any good opinion you may have of humanity, so I try to take it in small doses. Anyway, to celebrate of Black History Month, they have the obligatory selection of "Why isn't there a White History Month?" whines.

Putting aside the fact that these people are assholes, let's rephrase that question and take it a little more seriously: Why is there only Black History Month?

Or rather: Why is that you only hear about Black History Month? Because there actually are a lot of other heritage months and days and whatnot. But they definitely don't get the same kind of press.

Why is that?

Having worked for a multicultural educational publisher, I can reveal the reason to you. As you might imagine, it's an elaborate conspiracy, masterminded by this nation's most-celebrated secret society, The Illuminati! Yup: Jay-Z, Nicky Minaj, and Black History Month--we really are a full-service secret society!

The other reason? Black people buy Black history.

Yeah, that's the real reason. It's not guilt, or political correctness, or African Americans being "superior," or what have you. It's capitalism: African Americans identify as a group with a common heritage, there's a lot of them, they have money, and they don't mind spending it to learn about or to commemorate their history. And what do you know--Black History Month is a big success! There are books and TV specials and concerts and all kinds of things, because these things attract an audience.

Hispanic Heritage Month? Not so much. Women's History Month? Oh my God, if women bought women's history the way African Americans buy African-American history, multicultural educational publishers would be rolling in dough. But they don't.

German American Heritage Month--wait, that's a joke, right? I ask only because a good chunk of my family was Not German. You know about the Not Germans, right? Their ancestors came to this country before World War I from Saxony or Bavaria or Prussia or some place that was Not Germany. Once they came to this country, they called themselves Pennsylvania Dutch or just plain old Not German. When World War I rolled around they changed their names just to make sure everyone knew that they were really, really Not German. My father the amateur genealogist found it easier to handle the revelation that his family owned slaves than he did the revelation that his family's heritage was largely German. Let's just say that I'll be surprised if German American Heritage Month ever makes the kind of splash Black History Month does.

My point is, while it might make seem like a good idea to have a lot of heritage months (especially if you publish multicultural educational books), the fact of the matter is some groups will rally around such products, and others won't.

This is true for the wider world of genre, too. Some people really identify as readers of a particular genre--they read voraciously within that genre, and they even socialize around these books. It's why you have to go to the trouble of putting things into categories, even if you think genre categories are arbitrary and kind of stupid.

And it's why you have to market your book to the categories that already exist, even if that's a little tough to figure out. As Jaye Manus wrote, "[F]ocus your book description on what the readers are actually looking for." You don't want to find yourself stuck marketing "German Pride!" to a bunch of Not Germans (who might, however, buy a book about the Pennsylvania Dutch).

With a pin-pin here, and a pin-pin there

Lindsay Buroker had a recent article on using Pintrest. Once again she takes something I would never have considered doing (Pintrest? For a book?) and notes that with, oh, about 30 seconds of effort you can have a presence on yet-another social media site.

And in one of those serendipitous things, another social-media savvy person I know (who works in the nonprofit sector) linked to this graphic about Pintrest's demographics and how the people on there like to spend money (especially on food, it seems).

The focus on food and the fact that the site clearly skews toward young mothers makes me a little skeptical that it's worth doing for books like mine. (Of course, if I were writing, say, women's literature with recipes, this post would be about how I'm already on Pintrest.) On the other hand, there is Buroker's (eternal, and eternally valid) case that, "I didn’t have to work very hard for those visitors." So I think I will get on there eventually.

Ah--"I didn’t have to work very hard for those visitors." Her lodestone and mine....

Progress report: Pay-attention-to-that-language-advisory edition

The roofers are here! The cats are freaking! I tried doing noise removal on the first half of Chapter 6 of the Trang audiobook, but the banging is just too much--I'm going to try listening to the MP3 files on my earphones instead.

Oh, and I got another 1-star review on Amazon by someone who quit after the first page upon seeing profanity. At least 1. he did not insult me, and 2. he acknowledges that he should have noticed the language warning. But he also says that he "read the blurb up through 'Heinlein.'" Um--where does "Heinlein" appear, exactly?

(I actually do like me some Robert Heinlein, and it is social sci-fi, but I hate Starship Troopers, and I know a lot of so-called Heinlein fans are actually Starship Troopers fans. Which means that they don't like books with actual stories in them, so I assume they wouldn't like Trang. Or pretty much anything else Heinlein wrote.)

I do honestly think people who don't read a book have no standing to review it (not just MY books--every book, and play, and movie, and song, and piece of visual art. The sad thing is, there are "cultural critics" who strongly disagree), but I did not report this guy's review. Mainly because he's a lot less infuriatingly sanctimonious, but also because, once again, I think it will help ward away the prudes and attract the literate.

A quick note about January and Trust

So, since I enrolled Trang in KDP Select, I had one set of free days in late December and another set a few days ago. As I've mentioned, I have given away scads of copies of Trang.

That's all well and good, but it's not like I can make money giving away free copies, right? In my accounting, free copies are not tracked and don't count.

But sold copies count. How has giving away so many copies of Trang affected sales of Trust?

Well, they've had quite the impact! We're still not talking huge numbers here, but in January alone I sold 85% as many copies of Trust as I had in the last six months of 2012 (Trust came out in June). And that percentage is probably a hair smaller than it should be, since presumably some of December's sales happened after the late-December giveaways.

But of course I lost revenue on sales of Trang, right? Actually, it's been a good month for Trang sales--not as good as Trust sales, but good. (Let's hear it for the also-bots!)

Of course, if I make Trang permanently free, then I'll completely lose any chance to make revenue off that book, and as it sells more, that becomes a tougher call. On the other hand, all this is happening because Trang had free days! So I'm still confident that free is the way to go.

Thoughts on targeting ads

As I mentioned, the latest Facebook ad campaign was less efficient than the one before--I had a lot of people clicking who didn't download the book, unlike the last time.

So, how did I target differently? And why do I think it was so much less efficient?

The last time, I targeted two groups: Science-fiction fans who liked stuff I thought was similar to mine, and Kindle owners. It will tell you how naturally adept I am at this that the group that I didn't think to target until the last minute and that I basically targeted by accident, the Kindle owners, responded the most to the ad.

This time around I targeted Kindle owners and many more science-fiction fans. I got many more responses from the sci-fi crowd. Unfortunately, as I've noted, overall that response was more clicks than downloads.

I can't determine which group responded which way, but I'm going to guess that the Kindle people did more of the downloading, and the sci-fi people did more of the looky-looing.

Why? Well, to my way of thinking, the average sci-fi fan is, you know, interested in science fiction. So when they hear of a new book, they go check it out.

How do they check it out? They click (and I pay).

Then once they get to the Amazon page, they see that, yeah, if you've got a Kindle, that book's free. But does Joe Sci-Fi Fan on Facebook actually own a Kindle? Maybe, but maybe not--he'd click anyway, because he's interested in sci-fi.

If Joe doesn't have a Kindle, well, then Trang is $13.99! Oy! That's a pretty penny for a book you've never heard of by an author you don't know! Maybe Joe should get a Kindle. Maybe not. Maybe next Christmas? He'll think it over. In the meantime, he's on to other things.

In contrast, Bobby the Kindle User on Facebooks (they are distant cousins, both members of the storied o'Facebook clan) definitely has a Kindle and is able to pick up that book.

What he's not going to do if he's not interested in that kind of book is click on the link. Period. There are a lot of free books on Amazon, and after an initial phase of gobbling up tons of free books, most Kindle users get way more selective--they realize that getting a bunch of free crap still leaves you with a bunch of crap.

In fact, that greater selectivity probably contributes to looky-looing from the Kindle users as well--Bobby likes sci-fi, decides to check the book out, and then looks at the EIGHTY BILLION unread sci-fi novels on his Kindle and says, Never mind.

But I do think that it's likely that most of the looky-loos came from the sci-fi side. I think the difference between the two campaigns supports that hypothesis, and logically it seems to make sense.

Looking ahead to when I make Trang free everywhere, the nice thing is that you can target different retail populations on Facebooks. I don't know how this works for other online advertising platforms, like Project Wonderful or Google AdWords, but Facebook's targeting is extremely precise. You name the group--Nook users, Smashwords fans, even Sony Reader users (both of them!)--and you can pick it out and market just to it.

Obscenity, thou heaven-born maid!

So, we were discussing that stupid review by that sanctimonious idiot who didn't read the book description, and now that I've calmed down a little I think I'm OK with it staying up. I'm also totally OK with it getting yanked--the bonehead didn't actually read the book, which I think disqualifies any review. But if Amazon doesn't respond to my request for it to be pulled, I'm not going to push it.

Why not? Because three people already marked it as "helpful," and it's now the "most helpful" critical review. And you know, it IS helpful! If you are too fucking stupid to read the book description and heed the clearly-stated warning about the book's language, that review is going to help you heaps. A review complaining that the book is science fiction and written in English might also help.

If you are sufficiently literate to read the description, that review will give you a good laugh. You might even think, "Ah, so morons don't like this book. I'm not a moron--I like it already!"

I think that's better than moving the warning higher up in the description. I don't want the gist of the description to be Trang: A Novel of Obscenity, Containing Many, Many Very Bad Words. For one thing, despite what that patronizing piece of shit thinks, I did not write the book so that I can use bad words and prove that I am cool, so I don't think it's fair to the book to make the profanity sound like a major theme. For another, I once worked a job where I dealt with the general public, and my experience is that the people who are too dumb to heed a warning sign are also too dumb to heed a really big and obvious warning sign.

I am, however, going to record a language advisory and put it in the first chapter of the Trang audiobook. That strikes me as prudent--people who like to listen to stuff hopefully will process spoken information a little better. Although I'm sure some won't.

(If you're curious, what really frosts my shorts about this is that I feel like I've met people who don't like profanity halfway. I put a warning in there because I don't feel like it's my place to judge a bunch of people I don't know whose attitude toward language differs from mine. And what do I get in return? I get repeatedly insulted by a complete stranger.

Fucking asshole.)

Second set of free days: Postmortem

So, the second set of free days is over. On the one hand, it went quite well--two-and-a-half times as many free copies were downloaded as last time, and I got up to #2 on the science fiction:series free list!

On the other hand: Well, let's just say I paid a lot more than two-and-a-half times as much for the Facebook ads!

It's my own fault--I wanted to see what would happen if I really let a campaign run. (I can afford to be dumb with money on occasion.) So I set the budgets and per-click bids high, I broadened the groups that I advertised to, and I never brought down the per-click bid in the course of the campaign.

The result was a LOT of clicks. Wow. Many more clicks than last time.

But fewer of the clickers actually got books--I paid for a whole bunch of looky-loos. (Clicky-cloos?) Before I had many more downloads than clicks, and the volume of downloads tracked the volume of clicks pretty closely, suggesting that last time most people who clicked went on the grab a copy of the book. So I feel comfortable in blaming too-broad targeting: This time around, I managed to reach a lot of people who were interested enough to click, but not interested enough to get the book.

So: Keep your targeting tight--the temptation to broaden it is always there ("Maybe this group will like the book!"), but move slowly and skeptically (unlike meee!) into any area that isn't tried-and-true.

What's the takeaway for me? Since I do intend to have Trang go free, I'm glad to know that I can push the levers and have a result--and now I know which are the more-efficient levers.

Remember my advice to keep the per-click cost as low as possible? Standing by that one. Also, it's interesting to note how much the relative worth of your per-click bid can change. I bid the same amount that I wound up bidding last time, but this time it bought me far more exposure, presumably because there was less post-Christmas advertising to compete with. Likewise, the Goodreads ad was shown to ten times as many people Saturday as Sunday, presumably because more people happened to be advertising Sunday. So, definitely keep close tabs on results and drop your bid if you can.

I have one last free day before Trang gets out of KDP Select, but I'm not going to advertise on Facebook this time--I actually got an ad into BookBub! That surprised me because last time I tried they didn't even reply to me (of course, that was around the holidays, plus I thought something was off with the scheduling calendar), and this time I had the anti-profanity brigade pulling down my overall rating (did you know that if you've been to university, you aren't allowed to cuss?), but they accepted the ad anyway. Maybe that bit of controversy was just what I needed....

Halfway through the second set of free days....

So, I got it together earlier this time around, and Trang is up to #3 on the science fiction: series free list on the first day, instead of not getting there until the second. Yay that.

What's going on that's interesting? Well, just about no one is clicking over at Goodreads--there's no question I'll have to let that campaign run for quite a bit longer to use up the pre-pay. Which is fine, actually--I wasn't going to renew the campaign for the full-price book over on Facebook, so I might as well let Goodreads run. The click-through rate is somewhat lower on Goodreads than on Facebook, but the main reason the number of clicks is so much less is that the Goodreads ad has reached about 1,200 people today, while Facebook ad has reached about 140,000 people.

And I got a one-star review on Amazon because of the bad language. The person was shocked! shocked!! shocked!!! that a book described as containing "some really bad language" would contain...some really bad language! It was especially awful because people on other planets would never use bad language--wow, that is something I did not know.

Anyway, I did something I normally would not do and reported the review. Opinion or not liking the book is one thing; ignoring a warning clearly stated in the book description is something else.

For no particular reason, I'm also going to throw in a link to my favorite recent review. And my guest post on cussing.