{"id":14952,"date":"2013-12-01T12:33:18","date_gmt":"2013-12-01T17:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=14952"},"modified":"2013-12-01T15:22:51","modified_gmt":"2013-12-01T20:22:51","slug":"an-e-publishing-experiment-2-short-holiday-reading-for-under-a-buck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/an-e-publishing-experiment-2-short-holiday-reading-for-under-a-buck\/","title":{"rendered":"An E-Publishing Experiment (2): Short Holiday Reading for Under a Buck"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/50schristmas_modified.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" alt=\"How It Was: Christmas (cover)\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/50schristmas_modified_sm.png?resize=275%2C364&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"275\" height=\"364\" \/><\/a><span class=\"dropcap\">M<\/span>oving right along&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ve had a short story for sale for a week so far, as described in <a title=\"Earlier RAMH post, on e-publishing short fiction\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/an-e-publishing-experiment-short-fiction-for-under-a-buck\/\" target=\"_blank\">this post<\/a>. (The book itself can be found <a title=\"Amazon.com: 'Atmospheres,' by John E. Simpson\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B00GVDQSW4\" target=\"_blank\">on Amazon.com<\/a>;\u00a0that&#8217;s the Amazon US link, although it&#8217;s also available at the company&#8217;s UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, [etc.] sites.) At 99 cents apiece (less Amazon&#8217;s cut), I&#8217;ve sold about a dozen copies of that story to date (one was &#8220;refunded,&#8221; for reasons unknown &#8212; probably a double download).<\/p>\n<p>As I mentioned at the time, I haven&#8217;t really done anything to promote it, other than to announce its availability on Facebook and Twitter. I did a follow-up on Facebook, a day or two later, and &#8212; for what it&#8217;s worth &#8212; sold more copies via the follow-up than from the original announcement. I made a point of <em>not<\/em> urging anyone to spread the word, buy copies for friends and family, and so on; I just announced the story&#8217;s availability, to see what happened next.<\/p>\n<p>From this small chunk of data, so far at least, I (not very earth-shakingly) conclude:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People who\u00a0<em>see<\/em> the announcement are more likely to respond to it. Thus, the timing of the announcement is critical: almost no one can read every single posting in his or her Facebook and\/or Twitter feeds. Follow-up can greatly announcements improve the odds of likely purchasers even knowing about the sale in the first place.<\/li>\n<li>Since Facebook and Twitter (and <em>RAMH<\/em> itself, for that matter) are self-selected population samples &#8212; only people who &#8220;know&#8221; me in one way or another &#8212; presumably all of those dozen sales so far came\u00a0<em>not<\/em> via word-of-mouth, but in direct response to the announcement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know how to encourage word-of-mouth sales without constantly nudging the people who&#8217;ve bought it so far &#8212; remember, people I &#8220;know&#8221; &#8212; and risking wearing out my welcome, so to speak. Especially now, at this time of year, people (even generous friends) simply don&#8217;t want, let alone need, to be badgered repeatedly to buy something.<\/p>\n<p>So, let&#8217;s move on to phase 2, applying some of these lessons (and leaving some of the mysteries unresolved for now).<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">Y<\/span>ou can find my next 99-cent offering <a title=\"Amazon.com: 'How It Was: Christmas,' by John E. Simpson\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B00H0IMJX6\" target=\"_blank\">here, at Amazon&#8217;s US site<\/a>: &#8220;How It Was: Christmas.&#8221; If you&#8217;ve been reading\u00a0<em>RAMH<\/em> for a while, you&#8217;ve seen this (both the overall series, and this specific volume) referenced before. <a title=\"Early RAMH post, on the 'How It Was' series\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/how-it-was\/\" target=\"_blank\">One of my very first posts<\/a> here described the series&#8217; genesis, and what to expect from the individual booklets.<\/p>\n<p>Of all four books, this one is most likely to &#8220;sell,&#8221; I think &#8212; especially at this time of year. I&#8217;ve done a couple of things to open it up a little further:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;ve enrolled the title in Amazon&#8217;s <del>&#8220;Kindle Select&#8221;<\/del> &#8220;<span class=\"explannote\" title=\"'Kindle Desktop Publishing'\">KDP<\/span> Select&#8221; program. This will provide me some promotional opportunities downstream. Chief among these: I will be able to RAISE the sale price, with the intention of immediately offering it for sale at a deep discount back to the 99-cents level.<\/li>\n<li>The book will also be available for free &#8220;library&#8221; lending to Amazon Prime customers. I won&#8217;t get a direct royalty from these so-called borrowings, but I will get a small bit from some kind of Amazon&#8217;s global library promotions.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ll do more than one follow-up announcement on Facebook, and also make a point of following up a couple of times on Twitter. (As ever, I don&#8217;t want to wear out my welcome. If anyone sees me approaching that limit, I hope you&#8217;ll let me know!)<\/li>\n<li>A bigger risk, maybe: I&#8217;m offering the book free of all digital-rights-management constraints. This means that someone who BUYS a copy can simply turn around and give the book file to anyone else. Of everything I&#8217;ve written, maybe, this Christmas booklet is &#8220;most likely to succeed,&#8221; at some point (perhaps years in the future). To the extent that more and more people read (and of course like) it,\u00a0<em>future<\/em> sales of both other\u00a0<em>How It Was<\/em> books and everything else I might e-publish might get a boost.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Again, let&#8217;s just see how things play out. And I&#8217;ll report back on this phase, too, at some point.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks as always for reading anything at all which I&#8217;ve written&#8230; and of course, thanks\u00a0<em>extra<\/em> if you&#8217;ve paid for it, and\/or encouraged someone else to do so. ;)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moving right along&#8230; So I&#8217;ve had a short story for sale for a week so far, as described in this post. (The book itself can be found on Amazon.com;\u00a0that&#8217;s the Amazon US link, although it&#8217;s also available at the company&#8217;s UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, [etc.] sites.) At 99 cents apiece (less Amazon&#8217;s cut), I&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[115,37,36,42,4,209,713,1905],"tags":[27,1806],"class_list":{"0":"post-14952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-advertisingpackaging","7":"category-onlineworld","8":"category-reading","9":"category-ebooks-etc","10":"category-howitwas","11":"category-the-business","12":"category-humor-writing_cat","13":"category-my-kindle","14":"tag-christmas","15":"tag-holidays","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3Ta","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14952"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14958,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14952\/revisions\/14958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}