Creating my Fastlane with fiction books

[Lex DeVille]

You might have had higher sales at .99 cents but a big part of that is because any amount below $1.00 is psychologically insignificant to most people. Less than $1.00 = pocket change and causes a shift in perspective. At .99 cents you're encouraging people to buy on impulse, but you're also doing something that may negatively impact your sales. Right now people have seen your books at .99 cents and have come to expect that price. In essence you're undervaluing yourself.

There's a psychological principle that says we associate the first price we see, as the "appropriate" price for an item, and this may be why your sales are low right now. If you leave your prices above $2.99 for a while, then you'll allow time for new people to see your book and associate your writing with a higher price/value. Your sales will increase as people accept this price and aren't put off by it when you release future books.

The idea here is to raise your value, and people often judge value based on price. For instance many people think the NINJA blender is the best thing since sliced bread. It costs several times more than the average blender. Personally I think it's a piece of crap based on actually using it, but most people buy it and rave about how awesome it is. They do this because anything else goes against their ego. Admitting that the product is crap is admitting that they were wrong and wasted a lot of money on junk. Instead they talk about how great it is and then they buy more NINJA crap. The value is determined by the price they paid.

 

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[Karla]

Thanks SinisterLex! Your help is highly appreciated. Yes, I think you are right and I made the mistake to put my stories for 0.99 first. Even if I sell only 20 books a month I still earn double than selling them for 0.99 where I had to sell 160 (!) for the same income. I just should`t panic about the fact that I will sell less books (at least for now).


I won`t make this mistake again and just stick to it. I will see what happens in 2-3 month. Unfortunately most of the other books in this genre are only 0.99. But as you said people buy stuff for a higher price even though its crap. Perceived value has nothing to do with the actual value. Since I hope that my books are no crap I still feel that 2.99 is not too expensive.

 

[Karla]

Hi,

I just wanted to post a quick update:
In August I noticed an increase in book sales. All books combined (kids books and my fitness books) made around 850€ (about 1100US$). I am pretty happy about this (although about 70% are from my fitness books and are considered company money ).I just published another kids story and I am currently writing the next one.
I am also building my email list for the kids stories. So far I have 11 subscribers....wohoo ....not a lot but I just started.
I don´t think one story will earn more than 30-40€ (50$) per month so it`s a number`s game. I already put 4 of my stories together to sell them as a bundle (haven`t published this book yet).
I am also thinking about writing novel but honestly don`t know what genre I´d like and whether I should use a pen name for this.

 

[Karla]

So far I have 5 kids stories published (one more is on progress). In the beginning they are all doing fine. But then after a few month I see an significant drop in sales. Anyone having the same problem? Any ideas what to do about it?

 

[Lex DeVille]

What genre are they? You might try moving them to a categorie outside of childrens books. One of my picture books got a lot more sales when i did this. I plan to test it more soon.

 

[Karla]

What genre are they? You might try moving them to a categorie outside of childrens books. One of my picture books got a lot more sales when i did this. I plan to test it more soon.

Thanks, SinisterLex! Well, in the beginning they are doing well, but then the sales drop. It´s bit annoying to be honest. Maybe I will try to move them to another category. But I also noticed the same problem with one of my books in another genre.

 

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[Karla]

Hi everyone,

I have published another 4 kids stories so far. Not I´ve got 10 in total now. They are doing ok but not great. To reach my goal of 2000€ per month I´d need to have more than 60 stories. I will keep writing short stories for kids, but I also decided that I will participate in nanowrimo this November. I have planned my plot and I am very excited to write my first novel ;-)!

 

[pz4ever]

Hi Karla,

Thank you for sharing your journey! I am very interested to keep on reading about how it is going for your books sales wise.

I have a few questions to you,
- Did you notice if the illustrations you added to your children books made any difference in sales?
- How do you promote your children books?
- What is the average price for other children books in your genre?

Hope I didn't ask anything that already been said in the thread, looking forward to your reply!

 

[Karla]

Hi pz4ever,

I am happy to answer any questions.

I am publishing children books (these are short stories of around 4.000-4500 words). This means that they are for kids 5 years or older (since the stories are quite long for younger children ;-)). In the beginning I published them without illustrations but the feedback from my readers told me that a children book needs to have illustrations. I think I agree ;-). I then started to illustrate my books (4 pictures per story). I am quite talented when it comes to drawing so I did the illustrations myself. I then had them vectorised which cost me 10$ per illustration (wichich makes 40$ per book). Like I said, my first goal is to reach 2.000€ per month from writing. This means I have to publish a lot of kids stories (over 60 !). Writing them is not a problem, but doing all the illustrations myself would be too much. So now I outsourced the drawing. Funnily enough now one illustration only costs me 5$ instead of 10$. Although I like them, I still think that my own illustrations are a better fit for my stories ;-).
I don`t do a lot of promotion. I know from my first business how important it is to build an email list. So that`s what I´m trying to do with my children books as well. I also have a Facebook fanpage for my books where I post when I have a new story online. I also used Amazon`s KDP which helped me to get more visibility.
In the beginning I priced my books at 99 cents. At the moment they are all 2.99. I might try with my new story to put it at 99 cents again to be able to compare.
I love kids stories and they are great fun to write. But I think that they are maybe not the best genre moneywise. That`s why I will write my first novel this November. It will be a love story ;-).

Hope this helps ;-)!

 

[Bananas]

Hi pz4ever,

I am happy to answer any questions.

I am publishing children books (these are short stories of around 4.000-4500 words). This means that they are for kids 5 years or older (since the stories are quite long for younger children ;-)). In the beginning I published them without illustrations but the feedback from my readers told me that a children book needs to have illustrations. I think I agree ;-). I then started to illustrate my books (4 pictures per story). I am quite talented when it comes to drawing so I did the illustrations myself. I then had them vectorised which cost me 10$ per illustration (wichich makes 40$ per book). Like I said, my first goal is to reach 2.000€ per month from writing. This means I have to publish a lot of kids stories (over 60 !). Writing them is not a problem, but doing all the illustrations myself would be too much. So now I outsourced the drawing. Funnily enough now one illustration only costs me 5$ instead of 10$. Although I like them, I still think that my own illustrations are a better fit for my stories ;-).
I don`t do a lot of promotion. I know from my first business how important it is to build an email list. So that`s what I´m trying to do with my children books as well. I also have a Facebook fanpage for my books where I post when I have a new story online. I also used Amazon`s KDP which helped me to get more visibility.
In the beginning I priced my books at 99 cents. At the moment they are all 2.99. I might try with my new story to put it at 99 cents again to be able to compare.
I love kids stories and they are great fun to write. But I think that they are maybe not the best genre moneywise. That`s why I will write my first novel this November. It will be a love story ;-).

Hope this helps ;-)!

It won't take 60. On your way to 60 you will build momentum, gain more readers who purchase your work when it's released, and each book always has a shot at taking off and going beyond what your previous work has done. I'd make a guess at 20 or 30 books to 2k.

 

[Karla]

It won't take 60. On your way to 60 you will build momentum, gain more readers who purchase your work when it's released, and each book always has a shot at taking off and going beyond what your previous work has done. I'd make a guess at 20 or 30 books to 2k.

Thanks Bananas, this is what I`m hoping for. I will keep publishing kids stories anyway (even though I started with my first novel). What I don`t understand is, that in one month one story is doing well, the next month it only sells half of the copies. Well, maybe this is part of the game. Also if you have enough books than it doesn`t really matter if one isn`t doing that well. I am very excited about my first "real" book tough. I never thought it is that much fun ;-)! It´s become almost like an addiction ! When I´ve written at least 1.500 words I feel great.....well, I guess there are worse addictions out there

 

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[Mattie]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GFWQ9Y8/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

On your comment above about reviews. I thought this book was helpful on discussing what happens on Amazon. Which I was hit by one of those people because she was a competing poet, and she used the same exact words he pointed out in the book. So, basically you have to learn what they're doing to knock you out of competition, but she didn't exactly knock me out. You just have to know you're going to get hit by other authors. And ignore it, and don't react to it, because in the writer community because I guess there is a bad behavior author list, and once you're on it, I guess your kind of the outcast with major reviewers and professionals that are in the press.

 

[Mattie]

On create space, that is my next experiment, because from what I've been reading and listening to from other authors it makes sales go up. I messed with it, but need to find another template, which I have an idea where, but have to see if it works there. Seems fairly easy though from doing it, but the kindle template for e-books won't work because the formatting etc. Is off.

I'm probably going to go on smash words too, but I need to buy photo shop so learn how to make my own covers. Little bit different. There's many avenue's I see, but stealing my work is the case on pdf's. It locks on windows, but not on macs. My bf has a mac and you can rip off the content.

 

[Karla]

Update: Last month was the first month I made over 1.000€ with my books. This is not a lot of money but I think it is promising. As I told you already I started writing my first novel. I am 10k words in now and I am very much enjoying ist. I am aiming for 60-80k and should be finished by beginning to mid of December. I just love the way the story developes a life all by itself. I kind of plotted it before I started writing but it seems to lead me in different directions . I am not expecting to make a lot of money with my first novel. But I made a promise to myself, that I will keep on writing until I do ! Keep your fingers crossed please !

 

[Karla]

Update: I am 26k into my first novel. I will have written a bit over 50k words end of November. I want to publish my book before christmas. I think 60k should`t be a problem ;-). I am also busy finding a nice design for my cover. I just know that having a book cover will push me (because it`s real) and who knows maybe I will be able to write more than 2k per day ;-)

 

[Karla]

Hi everyone! Quick update: I just crossed the 50k word mark, which feels awesome ! My novel hash´t come to its end yet though. I think I will have to add another 2-3k before I am happy. After that I will edit my text and get a nice cover. I will also have to choose a pen name. Any tipps how to choose the right name? How did you close your pen name? Any helpful advice?

 

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