Category Archives: Depraved Difference
I keep getting emails asking how sales are going, and decided a quick post was in order. In rapid-fire bullet form:
- In the first 5 days of June, I outsold April.
- I’ve sold 143 copies so far in June (it is now the evening of the 9th), almost equal to my May sales.
- I’ve spent most of the past two weeks in the hourly top 100 for police procedurals in the US (Amazon.com). At this moment in time, I sit at #89.
- I peaked at #72 on this list, and #96 on the overall police procedural list that includes printed books.
- I am selling anywhere from 6 to 25 copies a day. A bad day used to be none, a good day 5.
- I had thought this was related to the Memorial Day long weekend, but it has now stretched far beyond that. I think the sales could be coming from the fact that I am in the top 100, so I am getting “discovered” and sampled by people, who then buy later. If this is true, it would seem to confirm my theory that getting into the top 100 is key, and self-sustaining to a point.
- The Police Procedurals list is only about 1600 books, so it won’t generate a huge amount of sales unless I can get much higher.
- A few minutes ago the daily list was updated, and I went from 113 to 96th. The higher on this list I go, the more likely I am to be discovered, since I am now at the bottom of page 8, as opposed to the middle of page 10 (which again was up from last week).
- I found myself on the Suspense list as well (it took a lot of searching). This list is much larger, closer to 20k books.
- On the daily suspense list, I am #612. As sales are driven by the PP list, I hope to move up the suspense list (I’ve moved up over 150 spots on this list during the past few days, with only a 19 spot move on the PP list).
- The suspense list is big enough that if I could get near the top 100 on that, I think it would mean significant sales.
- Ego stroke: seeing my book outselling books by Grisham and Crichton, amongst many other big names in the industry, is too impossibly cool to describe!
So that’s the latest news from the book selling front.
Rob
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Leave a comment | tags: 99 cent books, Depraved Difference, eBooks | posted in Depraved Difference, eBooks, Indie Publishing, Kindle
Lots happened in May. I’ve been extremely busy with non-writing things like life and the day job, so not as much on the writing front happened as I had hoped. Here’s a run down:
- I did manage to edit and release a new short story, To Be With You in Heaven.
- Smashwords is still not live. It’s back with them for I believe a fifth attempt. The last rejection was due to two hard carriage returns in the licensing message that was copied from their own website. They should rename themselves to Analwords, or better yet, AssWords. Here’s a suggestion from someone who has been in business for twenty years: do one review, identify all the reasons for rejections, then reject. That way, the author fixes everything, and your employee wastes his time only once. This would bring the process down to tops two weeks, rather than two weeks each round. We are now in month three of trying to go live on Smashwords. Amazon Kindle method: 1 day. Result: hundreds of sales and revenue for both parties.
- The print edition is live and selling slowly as I expected. Print books from unknowns don’t sell–this is more a vanity thing for friends and family (have you bought yours yet?!?!?)
- Sales are doing great in my opinion. Specifics below.
- I set up a Twitter account. Please follow me: @jrobertkennedy
- Amazon.com killed book tags (more in a separate post).
- Amazon.com moved all promotional discussions to a separate board which at first concerned me. My sales however have increased dramatically. Not sure if there is a correlation.
Sales Summary
Sales were great. In May I sold 161 digital copies of Depraved Difference, plus 5 copies of my short story, Loving the Ingredients. Considering LTI is a short story and the same price as a full-length novel, I think that’s a good indicator that if I were to have more books available, there would be significant spin-off sales.
Memorial Day long weekend saw huge sales, with several days in a row selling 15+ copies a day, which would be a 500 a month pace. I’m curious to see what happens in June since it is my assumption that it was holiday related. That being said, yesterday was a great day as well, with 16 sales and it wasn’t a holiday.
I peaked momentarilly it seems at #94 (I have the printouts to prove it!) on the best sellers list for Police Procedurals in the US. And I do mean brief. So brief it only showed on the book page, but none of the actual bestseller lists which I guess are updated on a different schedule. Since this was so brief, I wasn’t able to test out my theory of “top 100 generates its own sales to keep you in the top 100″. I am now at 206th which I still t hink is phenomenal. In the UK I keep floating between 28th and just out of the top 100.
So overall sales to date:
241 Depraved Differences
8 Loving the Ingredients
Am I still happy with these numbers? Very! My sales for May were almost double April’s with the only promotion being once-a-week postings on the Amazon discussion boards, and the occassional tweet or blog post.
Looking forward to seeing what June brings!
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Leave a comment | tags: 99 cent books, Depraved Difference, eBooks, indie marketing, indie publishing, J Robert Kennedy, kindle, Print Editions, self-publishing, short stories, SmashWords, To Be With You in Heaven | posted in Depraved Difference, eBooks, Indie Publishing, Kindle, Marketing, Print Edition, Self Publishing
Depraved Difference
Since I have so many friends around the city, country and world, I keep getting asked, “How can I get a signed copy?” In response, I have set up a page on my website for your to order.
Here you can order a signed copy using PayPal. I set the shipping for the US at $10 because I don’t know what it will be. Once somebody orders, I’ll adjust it, most likely down, and refund the excess if it is ridiculously over.
So, all you friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers, fan-boys, etc., here’s your chance to show your support and order a signed copy of Depraved Difference.
Here’s the full link:
http://www.jrobertkennedy.com/order_autographed_copies.htm
Thanks for your support!
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
1 comment | tags: Depraved Difference, indie publishing, J Robert Kennedy, Print Editions, self-publishing, Signed Copies | posted in Depraved Difference, Indie Publishing, Print Edition, Self Publishing, Uncategorized
One feature of Amazon is they allow products to be tagged by their customers. This allows other customers to search by keywords such as “mystery” and find products that other customers have tagged with this word. It’s a great feature if products are tagged properly. Customers can agree and disagree with tags by clicking on checkmarks beside each word. The more customers that agree the higher in the list your product appears.
But here’s the bad part. Anybody can add anything to your product and the conventional wisdom on this is that there is nothing that can be done. Take Depraved Difference for example. The other day I checked the book and noticed the following tags had been added overnight:
- dharma
- god
- hinduism
- karma
- love
- marriage
- ram
- romance
- short stories
- short story
- sita
- tulsidas
- v?lm?ki
Clearly these have nothing to do with my book. Once I saw these I remembered the horror stories from other authors when this happened to them, sometimes with far worse words than those above.
But, rather than panic, I contacted Amazon with the following message:
Last night somebody improperly tagged my book Depraved Difference (ASIN: B004UB8OJE). These tags have nothing to do with my book and are not “opinion” tags. The tags are:
dharma, god, hinduism, karma, love, marriage, ram, romance, short stories, short story, sita, tulsidas, v?lm?ki
Can you please remove these tags, as they are inappropriate, and are clearly either an error, or a spamming attempt.
Thanks in advance,
Rob
Within less than a day I had a response, and all of the tags disappeared over the next 48 hours. except for “romance” and “love” because another customer had gone and agreed with those tags. Oh well, there is a little bit of that in the book, so I guess I can live with those.
Bottom line: don’t panic when something like this happens. Do a professional, polite email to Amazon with a cogent argument, and they just might agree and help you out. Afterall, they are there to sell books, not be Facebook.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Leave a comment | tags: Depraved Difference, indie marketing, indie publishing tips, reviews | posted in Depraved Difference, Indie Publishing, Indie Publishing Tips, Reviews, Self Publishing
Oui! C’est vrai! Ok, not sure if that is right, but I think I just dispelled one myth that all Canadians speak French. Non, ce n’est pas vrai. Most of us don’t.
The Depraved Difference paperback is now for sale in France for all mes French amis:
http://www.amazon.fr/dp/1461075858/
And wow! They even have free shipping on just one book. I guess when your entire country fits inside one of our provinces, you can do that.
Rolling Rrrrr… Robert
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Leave a comment | tags: Depraved Difference, indie publishing, J Robert Kennedy, Print Editions | posted in Depraved Difference, Indie Publishing, Marketing, Print Edition
For all of my Canuck friends, family, co-workers and dare-I-say fans, the paperback edition of Depraved Difference is now available to order on Amazon.ca. Here’s the link:
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/1461075858/
Again, this make a great gift, coaster, bullet resistant vest, and, since it’s for sale in Canada, it is of course maple flavoured (<– Canadian spelling)!
Rob
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Leave a comment | tags: Depraved Difference, indie publishing, J Robert Kennedy, Print Editions | posted in Depraved Difference, Indie Publishing, Marketing, Print Edition, Self Publishing
It’s not much, but it is a milestone, and doesn’t include the paperbacks which have been flying off the proverbial shelf here at my office. I only have one left so I’ll have to bring in a bunch more tomorrow. A later post will share how you too can order an autographed copy.
What’s the next goal?
I guess 200.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Leave a comment | tags: 99 cent books, Depraved Difference, eBooks, indie publishing, J Robert Kennedy, kindle, Print Editions, self-publishing | posted in Depraved Difference, eBooks, Indie Publishing, Kindle, Print Edition, Self Publishing
So you’ve got your Kindle Edition live, you now have your CreateSpace (or other POD publisher) print edition live, so how do you link them like the pros?
Just send Amazon an email through their support links.
If you drill down properly, you’ll actually see an entry in the list for linking two editions. Give them the ASIN for your Kindle Edition, the ISBN for your print edition, and they’ll do the rest.
It took about 2 days for them to be linked, and about another week for the reviews to be linked (apparently–this part is still in progress as of this writing).
Now a single search for your book will show the reader that you have both available, and will look much more serious than those who haven’t bothered going to print.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Leave a comment | tags: eBooks, indie marketing, indie publishing, indie publishing tips, kindle, Print Editions, self-publishing | posted in eBooks, Indie Publishing, Indie Publishing Tips, Kindle, Marketing, Print Edition, Self Publishing
Ever wondered who’s stocking your book? Visit http://www.gettextbooks.com/, enter your ISBN number, click Go, and wait a few seconds for the results. This will search over 100 stores and find all locations selling your book. Right now mine is only on Amazon.com, but that should expand over the coming weeks. Note that this only works with print books as far as I know.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Leave a comment | tags: indie publishing, indie publishing tips, Print Editions, self-publishing | posted in Indie Publishing, Indie Publishing Tips, Print Edition, Self Publishing
Another busy week. Here’s what happened:
- Depraved Difference managed to stay in the top 100 in the UK Police Procedurals for most of the week. It keeps dropping in and out each day. I had hoped to get it into the top 25, but never had time to do the promotion necessary.
- Sales were about the same as the previous week, but I decided to only promote on the Amazon discussion boards once a week, rather than almost every day, which saved me a lot of time, and seemed to have the same results as promoting every day.
- The print edition has been approved and the first batch has been shipped.
- The print edition is now live on Amazon.com.
- I think I might have finally got the SmashWords to work. I won’t really know for at least a week.
Here’s the sales figures:
Week 4: 29 new, total 91
Week 3: 27 new, total 62
Week 2: 16 new, total 35
Week 1: 12 new, total 19
Week 0 (partial): 7 (5 of which were friends/family/review copies)
This week will be another crazy week at my day job, so I don’t expect to get much done. This week I just want to try to get some things cleaned up on the Amazon site, so I can finally put that behind me and move forward.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Leave a comment | tags: 99 cent books, Depraved Difference, eBooks, indie marketing, indie publishing, J Robert Kennedy, kindle, Print Editions, self-publishing, SmashWords | posted in Depraved Difference, eBooks, Indie Publishing, Kindle, Print Edition, Self Publishing
