Adara VS One Month Post Debut Thoughts: March 24
Hello, and welcome to this podcast style episode of The Canopy! Today I'm talking about the process of debuting as an indie author after 5 years, now I've have a month to think about it. I'm talking sales, tactics and expectations.
Visual Description:
Visual description: a graphic showing a starry sky above the black silhouette of a forest, with a lady standing on the left side of the page. Text reads: Writing my story one day at a time. The Canopy. wwwadaraspence.com And in the center is a graphic of a microphone.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Canopy! This is my vlog channel.
I'm Adara Spence, a chronically ill author and my debut novel Drawing Red came out on the 1st of March 2024.
If you like we werewolves, vampires, space, artists, and tree spirits, then check it out at www.adaraspence.com/books
One of my illnesses is chronic fatigue, so every now and then you'll get a video like this one where I'm too tired to film myself, so instead feel free to turn off the visuals, and simply listen in the background. As per usual captions are available, and a full transcript will be available on my website. Link down in the description. I'll be talking about my emotional ride of publishing, what went better than I expected, and what I couldn't have ever imagined happening.
By now I think most people know that I started writing as it was one of the only things I was able to do after becoming severely unwell back in 2017. As an author, the world of Drawing Red had lived in my head for years. Letting people into that world felt strange, but it felt like the time was right. I'd been longlisted for a couple of writing awards, and just before Christmas I'd bought myself a group of 10 ISBN as a promise to myself, that one day I was going to be published.
Writing the first draft of the second book had stalled, and I realized I probably needed a break. By New Year's Eve I was committed to a 1st of March book launch. I regained my drive and purpose, and made a giant to-do list with a timeline. Thus began the emotional ride of publishing.
Will people know about my work to buy it? What will arc readers think? How do I market my novel without seeming too cheesy or intruding on people's social media timelines too much?
My plan was somehow to target five different social medias and update my website as I went, so no matter where people came across me, I was able to funnel people to my website. So that way I could measure the traffic of engagement from different marketing techniques that I was deploying.
Then the pre-order started to trickle in. First came the eBook sales as that pre-order launched first. I was surprised at how few there were, assuming the digital books had taken over the world, especially with the rise of eBook first publishers sprouting up, especially in paranormal romance which was my genre.
I then had a short sharp pre-order for the physical books paperback and hardcover, which having separate additions itself was a choice. But I wanted to appeal to as many people as possible. Some people prefer discrete covers and I respect that, so I figured my hardcover could fit that role. I was incapable of running a pre-order of the large print edition, so the figures I was keeping an eye on were for the paperbacks and hardcover.
Although my books can be found everywhere, my printer Ingramspark ran my pre-order for me, and I wasn't told how many sales were from each individual store or region, beyond country. What I do know though is that on Amazon my books had entered numerous best seller lists in their categories, which gave me a hint that something was happening, but I still had no numbers so I couldn't confirm it, and I didn't know what.
One morning I woke up and all of a sudden I had a bunch of hardcover sales reported, but no paperback sales. I was surprised given the price difference between the editions. I recognized that the number of sales overall was pretty good for a one woman publishing team, but I was still confused because the hard cover version was much lower down on Amazon's bestseller list than the paperback. Another day went by and a few other hardcover sales came in. Once again. I looked at Amazon rankings. My hardcover was in the top 50 in the listings, but my paperback had reached number 26 in the in category ranks, and it had reached number 3 in the new best sellers, and upcoming best sellers, and entered the top 10 in people's most wished for lists in the categories; so something was rumbling behind the scenes, I just didn't know what.
I distracted myself in the usual ways: by writing alternate descriptive text for my marketing materials as I made them, listening to audio books, playing Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch, and doing jigsaws.
Then the next morning came and the paperback figures had arrived. I almost fell through the floor. It explained how my books was so high up in the rankings, among traditionally published books that had 6-9 month pre-order times as opposed to my 10 days.
Thought one: where had these people come from, to put down money to buy my work?
Thought number two: panic!
Have I actually written the novel I'm advertising? Are people going to get what they paid for? I reached out to a number of different people at that point. The consensus from other authors was that they felt the same thing every time they heard their sales figures. The consensus for my non-writer arc friends: shut up! Yes, you wrote the book you said you have. Now pull yourself together! The tough love was well received.
Then to address the where did these people come from question... Before starting to write my novel in 2019, I spent a year learning about writing craft and watching large amounts of authortube. Yes, I've been a lurker that long. Anyway, one piece of advice that has always stuck with me from those early days was by the author and authortuber Alexa Donne. She works in marketing, and said, 'Hope is not a marketing strategy'. The second thing is that soft selling a product i.e. giving your audience something then offering the main product as a side instead of hard selling it to them directly, was more beneficial in the long term. I'd done both.
The hard sell came in the form of official reviews, a product photo shoot, and countdowns to build hype. But from the moment I signed up to Twitter in January 2019, asking people advice about plotting, I had been soft selling my novel there for 5 years, offering my writing journey up, with daily updates, and comments about the book. People became just as has invested in my journey as in my writing, and the final product. They say it takes people three times to see something to remember it. I've been logging in there almost daily for over 5 years so people will have seen it from pitching competitions, answering people's questions, and asking other people questions about their work and replying in kind.
I also have a feeling that some of the sales have come from simply being so high up in the rankings on Amazon. Pretty much the day after the release of my book, secondhand copies began to be sold online. For example, there was a $40 hard cover version of my novel in the US! I have no doubt that there are some businesses out there who simply buy books that there are hype about in hopes of reselling them on for profits.
As for why the paperback sold so well, people do still appreciate a good looking novel, and I also deployed something known as price anchoring. £8.99, the UK price seems like quite a lot of money in comparison to, for example, the eBook sales. The eBook sales being £3.99, once again in British Pounds. However, you make that £8.99 seem much smaller by having a much pricier option; in my case the hardcover. The hardcover because of the extra materials including dust jacket, costs a fair bit more including for postage because of the weight. So that drove the price of that up, which makes the price of the one in the middle seem much lower, and therefore the one that people should go for. I would say that the price anchoring definitely worked. The majority of my sales were paperbacks, and since that's my favorite version I am thrilled. Absolutely thrilled!
Ultimately though, success is subjective. Being indie I was almost too close to the process, and still in work mode for a lot of the time to actually celebrate my book release. Instead of a launch party I was working out what the best time of day was to update my website to say 'book now available' after the US went to sleep but before the UK woke up.
Admittedly, yes, I did look up articles and reddit posts to see how many copies other authors had sold. Some said a handful, which to them was a success. Some people have videos saying, "How I successfully sold X amount of books on launch day." That one was from an authortuber with a much larger following than me (although looking at my subscribe count, who isn't?!). Anyway, I recognize it's a start, and that I'm slower in my output than most people .I'm happy that my figure beat out the two examples I just gave. If anyone is curious or has any specific questions about this, feel free to DM me on X or Instagram, or email me at AdaraSpence@gmail.com. I don't want to accidentally add to comparison-itis if people are trying to avoid those things for their own mental health, so I'm not going to quote precise figures here.
I was still looking at the situation with a marketing head on, to the point where I don't think I let myself over this past month enjoy the success. I saw traditionally published authors cry tears of joy when their 'opening my arc' videos came out, while I simply opened, mine examined it, and then made a giant to-do list of things to fix. I saw people show off book-birthday cakes for launch parties. I didn't have a launch party while I was stressing about marketing, and if last minute changes to my novel would be made in time before orders came through and Ingramspark accidentally printed incorrect versions.
Side note: Ingramspark used to have a policy of not printing orders until 10 days before launch day. Now they reserve the right to start printing as soon as they receive receive an order, including pre-orders which caused me no end of stress after they prematurely launched my hardcover version. Going between them and Neilsen Book Data (who sell UK ISBN numbers) to fix that, was a living nightmare.
In the end I was burnt out, but life continues. While I was able to carry out my timeline and publish on time, I couldn't predict everything else immediately afterwards. I had two household members in hospital: a human and a cat, plus a large 28 page admin form to complete, as well as my usual health issues. So, for the first time in over 5 years, this month I stepped away from social media. This helped me greatly and while I didn't capitalize on the 'golden one month after publishing sales' phenomenon, as my marketing had pretty much stopped, it gave me time to appreciate what I've achieved.
With Indie publishing there are many many more books and stories out there, waiting to be read alongside traditionally published. So as long as there are more people reading books than writing them, then there is no competition or stealing other people's readers. People will always crave a good book, and often times are looking to buy more. All hail the TBR list! If I think your book is similar to a one that I like, I will go and buy that. Please recommend it to me! That is always so helpful to a reader.
So that now book one is definitely out of the way, it's time to continue with book two, and I started to write again. In April I hope to write more. I definitely plan on reading more, and I'm looking forward to receiving a couple of posters featuring my novel in the the post.
So what did you get up to in March? Leave a comment below, like, subscribe if you feel inclined. That's it for this video. I have to go now as I have reading and writing to do, as I continue to write my story... one day at a time.
Credits:
Thumbnail, central and ending images created free using canva.com.
Music credit 1: ending theme – Adara Spence Music
credit 2: Beloved - Sakura Girl https://soundcloud.com/sakuragirl_off...
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