Erock87
Regular Contributor
Not a problem at all! I do not have any reservations about details - I have learned much from people's threads, so I will attempt to be as transparent as possible! A short disclaimer about my wife's story - I haven't read it yet. She went ahead and published it after having her and a friend read / review it, so I can't advocate for it.
My best selling story Deviant Desires (if you want to call it that, it only sells about a copy a day) is about 19k words and priced at $2.99.
My next best selling story (Forbidden Lusts) is about 18k words, and also priced at $2.99. These are our only works priced at $2.99, and they sell more copies than our other works.
The story I published a week ago that is just over 30k words is priced at $0.99, and it has sold 3 copies this week. This one might be a bit different as it's the first story by this author.
It's weird - I generally try to price my stories off what I think they are worth. If I have a hard time editing it, and I just don't think the story panned out as well as I had hoped, I'll do my best to make it respectable and then publish it for $0.99. If I love the way the story read, and I think it's genuinely worth the $2.99, then I'll do that. However, our $2.99 stories definitely sell more than our $0.99 stories - not sure if it's because people are price-conscious or if it's just by coincidence. Our sample size is too small I feel to make an accurate assessment, but that's a rough recap of it.
I'm trying to avoid having people pay $2.99 for a story that they may value as only $0.99, and leave a negative review for it (I had someone leave a review on one of my short stories that it was too short...even though I outline word counts in my descriptions, including this one!).
COS - you mention finding the balance between building a library and producing lengthy, arguably higher quality works. Whereas you have undoubtedly experienced exponentially more success than me and I am grateful to just have you poking around my thread once in a while, I am likely not a great source of knowledge for this. Our current strategy is to build a catalog of 20 or so stories, all ranging in length from 10k - 30k words. They aren't award-winning by any means, and I'm sure we'll produce even higher quality works once we slow down a bit, but we have had people email us and say they enjoyed the stories.
And you are right that I would love to become established as a publishing house - look at all the indie authors out there! But I want to find success with my own work before I start helping others - blind leading the blind leads to headaches for everyone.
I hope this has been somewhat helpful. I am not shy, secretive, or embarrassed. We aren't experiencing the levels of success almost every other author / publisher is experiencing, but we are being transparent. I could fudge numbers and lie to you guys, but I get nothing out of that. This is a business venture, and if it doesn't pan out in 4-5 months, then we'll chalk it up to a good effort and see what else is out there for us.
My best selling story Deviant Desires (if you want to call it that, it only sells about a copy a day) is about 19k words and priced at $2.99.
My next best selling story (Forbidden Lusts) is about 18k words, and also priced at $2.99. These are our only works priced at $2.99, and they sell more copies than our other works.
The story I published a week ago that is just over 30k words is priced at $0.99, and it has sold 3 copies this week. This one might be a bit different as it's the first story by this author.
It's weird - I generally try to price my stories off what I think they are worth. If I have a hard time editing it, and I just don't think the story panned out as well as I had hoped, I'll do my best to make it respectable and then publish it for $0.99. If I love the way the story read, and I think it's genuinely worth the $2.99, then I'll do that. However, our $2.99 stories definitely sell more than our $0.99 stories - not sure if it's because people are price-conscious or if it's just by coincidence. Our sample size is too small I feel to make an accurate assessment, but that's a rough recap of it.
I'm trying to avoid having people pay $2.99 for a story that they may value as only $0.99, and leave a negative review for it (I had someone leave a review on one of my short stories that it was too short...even though I outline word counts in my descriptions, including this one!).
COS - you mention finding the balance between building a library and producing lengthy, arguably higher quality works. Whereas you have undoubtedly experienced exponentially more success than me and I am grateful to just have you poking around my thread once in a while, I am likely not a great source of knowledge for this. Our current strategy is to build a catalog of 20 or so stories, all ranging in length from 10k - 30k words. They aren't award-winning by any means, and I'm sure we'll produce even higher quality works once we slow down a bit, but we have had people email us and say they enjoyed the stories.
And you are right that I would love to become established as a publishing house - look at all the indie authors out there! But I want to find success with my own work before I start helping others - blind leading the blind leads to headaches for everyone.
I hope this has been somewhat helpful. I am not shy, secretive, or embarrassed. We aren't experiencing the levels of success almost every other author / publisher is experiencing, but we are being transparent. I could fudge numbers and lie to you guys, but I get nothing out of that. This is a business venture, and if it doesn't pan out in 4-5 months, then we'll chalk it up to a good effort and see what else is out there for us.
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