Congrats on your success CH!
Any ideas what might have caused the initial burst of sales? No backlist, no author recognition, you published a book under a brand new name, and with no promotion, off it went. Any idea why or how to reproduce such results?
I've seen other authors make similar reports -- which makes me wonder: If a title doesn't see immediate sales, has it missed its cover/blurb/sample mark? Will titles that are properly hitting those 3 areas (provided the genre is large enough) always see a few sales from the moment they're live?
That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? I wonder the same thing. Take the first four books I published under a different pen name. Three were in a series starring the same character. They were of a similar length, a similar plot, similar everything. Book one did, eh, not much. But that was okay, because it was the first book. I wasn't expecting much. Then book two showed promise. Yay! Gaining momentum. But nope. Book three was a total dud. To this day, book two still outsells the others by a ratio of 3 to 1.
I've changed titles, changed covers, rewrote the openings. Nothing seems to budge them from this ratio. Sales for all of them are still quite low, but the ratio between them is beyond obvious. Of course, book three was struck by some
bad luck right out of the gate. The "look inside" feature wasn't active for the first couple of weeks, and no one bought it during that timeframe. Then, after the "look inside" was finally live, ALMOST no one bought it. This month, it's sold a lofty three copies in the U.S.
Although I do think that writing the best book you can, writing the best blurb, and generating a compelling cover are paramount, I'm betting there's still an element of luck or a certain thing that no one really understands, and probably never will. Maybe I was on the "also boughts" of some monster sellers fairly soon after the release. Maybe my book fills a sub, sub, sub niche that people (including me) aren't quite aware of. Like everyone else here, I HAVE seen certain books take off like rockets for reasons I don't quite understand.
Some of those books were not my cup of tea. Bridges of Madison County comes to mind, along with the Bridget Jones series. (Not ripping on these amazing books. The sales figures definitely speak for themselves!) Meanwhile, there were other books I loved and devoured for no obvious reason. Twilight comes to mind. I'm semi embarrassed to admit it, but I absolutely love that book. I've probably read it five times. Why? Hard to say. People seem to love it or hate it, without much in-between. Based on my reviews, I'd say my book generates a similar love-hate response. (Now, if it could only generate Twilighty sales, hah!)
Book publishers, agents, writers -- they've been trying to crack the code forever. And there are some incredible misses, books publishers have spent fortunes on, only to see them tank. Then, there are some incredible surprises, like Water for Elephants, which clawed its way to the top mostly by word of mouth, along with a semi-last minute push from the publisher, after it showed such surprising potential. Meanwhile, the author's followup book didn't do a whole lot and might be considered a disappointment, sales-wise. No one really knows why.
To make a long story short (too late for that, huh?), mathematics, algos, timing, are definitely a factor. But as far as that other stuff, it might always be a big mystery. I'm not sure how big of an indicator this is, but this particular book has also done surprisingly well on Barnes & Noble. Not compared to Amazon, of course. But it's sold nearly 300 copies on B&N, to my utter delight and astonishment.
I will say this though. If you're determined to win at this, keep writing, keep publishing, keep going. And as Held for Ransom so excellently advised, choose a niche with a deep pool of buyers. Because you never know which book might surprise you. Or, if you don't "get lucky" and have one particular book break out, the cumulative sales of all your books will build you a foundation that's probably a whole lot steadier than mine right now. At this moment, I have only ONE book that's doing well. It's beyond thrilling, but incredibly risky. If Amazon removed that book tomorrow, my income would dry up to almost nothing.
This, of course, brings me to the usual point.
Must. Write. Faster.
and WOOHOO! This is wonderful news! May it sell thousands more as the days go by! And hey, you've read MFL, right? We all know that instant success isn't as instant as it looks most of the time. So fan-freakin'-tastic that it only took seven. I'm hugely excited for you!
- I am picking my jaw off the floor.
