The Nats won! It was very exciting but I’m glad it’s over. What a time suck, to watch a four-hour baseball game. I allowed myself that luxury, though. It was fun to watch, and the girls got to watch it too.
I can’t believe it’s October 31. I’ll be signing off after today until December. I’ve got a huge hill to climb and I’ll need every ounce of creativity and whatever to go into writing Lucky Day. So here’s where I’m at with everything with Naughty Week…
The book is published. It is available in paperback, hardback, and ebook. As of this writing I have sold 78 copies of the paperback on Amazon. I have sold 1 Kindle edition. Through KDP, I have earned a total of $338.85 in the first month. A big chunk of that was earned in the first few days.
On the IngramSpark dashboard, I can see that I have sold 14 hardcover copies and 1 paperback. The ebook store outlets like iBooks and Nook have not reported yet, so I don’t know what I’ve sold there. But from what I can tell, this book is not popular on e-readers. It makes sense. It’s a book for kids. Kids still prefer hard copy books over ebooks. Parents reading to kids might want the hard copy of the book. Anyone supporting me, friends or family, would likely order the paperback or hardcover. Also, the ebook is priced fairly high for an ebook at $4.99. I’ve considered changing that, but I decided I won’t until I release the next book. Big lesson learned here is that this type of novel doesn’t do great as an ebook.
In three ad campaigns, I have spent a total of $202.11 and have sold $269 worth of books. I have sold 20 books through Amazon ads. My profit before taxes is around $80. I would not consider this ad campaign a success. The total ACOS is 75.13%. I’ve spent too much. But if the measure of success is to create awareness, then I have succeeded. Total impressions in the month of October was 318,426. That’s pretty good.
In regards to advertising, I can no longer afford to run AMS ads. I am going to take a break from running my ad campaigns to see how the book sells in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. It might sell, it might not. I am going to send out a newsletter to around 450 people. Some of those people have purchased the book already. Most have not. I should get some kind of bump. If 10% of those people buy a book, that’s 45 copies. I doubt that will happen. This isn’t so much about selling books as it is about creating awareness.
Going forward, I will probably hold off on running AMS ads until December, if I can afford it. The email newsletter will be more effective I think. And then if I can afford to, I want to run a Facebook ad around Thanksgiving. The only issue is finding the money.
The audiobook is done. I received a message yesterday. I still need to review most of it. I have reviewed something like 12 chapters already. There are 60 chapters. I’ll take as long as it takes because I don’t have the money to pay for it.
My email list is built. I have about 450 emails on there. I need to write a newsletter. The plan was to send it out November 1. I might wait a week on that. I haven’t decided. I want the newsletter to be solid.
The Easter-egg Twitter account @DaRealGeorgeElf doesn’t seem to have been found yet. I might mention it in the newsletter, or hint to it. There has been at least 1 tweet per day on the account since it started. Right now there are 38 tweets. The account follows 5 accounts. It has no followers. It might be a failed experiment, but I can’t give it up because it’s in the book. There was some engagement with a Chicago deep dish joint, but they didn’t follow. Boo.
The book currently has five reviews on Amazon, all of which have been requested by me. Four of the reviews are five stars. One is four stars. I’ll take it, but I know I’ve requested more, so more might be coming. I have a list of people that I’ll request reviews from and the list should grow as I hear about people buying the book.
The Nats won the World Series last night. My writing partner and I have a manager working out of Belgium. I finally got the raise I was promised at work. I am starting a new book tomorrow. And as I write this, Congress is voting on whether to impeach the president. As of a few days ago, I was convinced I’d be heading toward a midlife crisis. It’s a weird time.
