C Gockel Writes

Mistakes were made …

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So this year I’m looking at making approximately 26k less than I made last year. Thankfully, I made more than I needed last year, didn’t spend the money on hats, and am going to be fine.

*Leaves chair, knocks on wood*

Okay, I’m back. Anywho, in the interest of full disclosure and helping to save others my pain, here’s what I think went wrong:

Mistake #1: A new series in a new genre that might not be a fit for me

I had this grand idea that I could release standalones in my I Bring the Fire universe and then have four different books to advertise and use as funnels for I Bring the Fire. I also really wanted to write these books, too. It wasn’t just “give me the money!”

Anywho, in September of 2017 I released Soul Marked, After the Fire Book 1, a standalone, PNR-ish, fantasy in my I Bring the Fire Universe. It got great reviews, but it took three months to earn out in Kindle Unlimited (unlike Archangel Down which I released at $3.99 and earned out first month.) Granted, I released Soul Marked at 99-cents but didn’t promote it to anyone but my list and a few NL swaps. I was planning on saving the advertisers for book 2.

In April I released Magic After Midnight. It has gotten more love and gushing from my fans than just about anything I’ve ever written. A “wicked” stepmother, a Night Elf (please don’t call him a vampire!), two villains getting their happy ever after … What is not to love? Well, no one but my really devoted fans picked it up.

I think both books maybe lacked the “beats” of a romance, and are more fantasy maybe? But they’re too romantic for a lot of fantasy lovers. (Although my male fans who read them really enjoyed both, so I don’t know …)

Which brings me to my next mistake …

Mistake #2: Not releasing Magic into Kindle Unlimited

I don’t have 1,000 peeps who will buy a book in a new series right away. I made the USA Today List, but that was on the back of a BookBub on a box set of the first four books in IBF. I need peeps who’ve never heard of me before to read my books. KU really helps with that when it comes to new readers.

I thought that I wasn’t going to be able to release Magic into Kindle Unlimited because part of it exists wide in an anthology. I have since gotten written permission from Amazon to put it in KU since less than 2% of Magic After Midnight is actually out there. It may be less, I’ve added a lot of detail, changed things up, including the POV in scenes that exist in the short story.

To help propel it out there “in the wild wide” I released Soul Marked wide for the first time and booked ALL the advertisers … and even got a 99-cent BookBub too!

Gonna say right here … all the 99-cent ads except for BookBub were a huge waste of money for a wide book in a two book series.Without the page reads, I did not come close to earning out. (BookBub did earn out.) I wouldn’t have booked the smaller sites but I never thought I’d get a BookBub on Soul Marked. But sure enough, I went wide, and boom: BookBub. The lesson here is apply to BookBub first.

Mistake #3: Not going into Kindle Unlimited immediately after BookBub

If I’d gone immediately into BookBub while my rank was still high I think I would have made a lot more simply by virtue of page reads. Soul Marked and Magic in particular are both long books. But I didn’t. I wanted to see if I could make it without KU. I released just as page reads were getting stripped, and I was nervous. (I am back in KU and STILL nervous.) I tried using Instafreebie magnets to get people to the books. The original Magic short story definitely helped … but not enough. The preview I put on IF didn’t help at all.

Mistake #4: Kindle Unlimited box sets aren’t going to be a savior anymore.

Back in 2016 I was in an amazing box set with Lindsay Buroker, Chris Fox, M.R. Forbes and others. It did phenomenally well, better than I could have done on my own. I thought after the only exclusive content rule was announced (enforced?) that I could always put my standalones in EXCLUSIVE box sets when sales started to lag. I did that with Soul Marked from January 11th-April 11th. In the end, I made about as much money in the box as I would have on my own and it was a lot more work. There just aren’t enough folks with a standalone novel to put into a box set, and we didn’t meet the 3,600 page limit and didn’t max out page reads.

Mistake #5: Not writing a longer series

Every single download of Archangel Down (the first book in my sci-fi “trilogy”) is worth 60% of a single Wolves download (the first book in IBF my USAT series.) I have only two paid books in the Archangel series. In IBF I have one novella, two short stories, and five novels. The thing is it’s HARDER and more expensive to get sci-fi downloads. It seems to be less popular than UF, and newsletters don’t perform as well. If I earn more on each download, it will even out. The way to earn more is to write a longer series.

Mistake #6: Advertising Blitzcrieg changes

Every month from late 2013 thru the end of 2017 I would have advertising Blitzkriegs. I would line up a heavy hitter like Freebooksy, Robin Reads, BookBarbarian, BookSends, Riffle, or BookGorilla with some not so heavy hitters that are good values. I would never use any advertiser more than once in 6 months. This year, I decided I would try something new: lining up all the non-BookBub advertisers over the course of a few short days. This isn’t a good idea. I didn’t get the absolute number of downloads I expected and now I can’t advertise either Archangel or Wolves with newsletter services for another few months. Which means that the new book I have in the Archangel series will have to wait until October to release it if I want advertising of my first in series to be effective.

Mistake #7: Standalones don’t sell as well (unless you’re a better writer than me?)

Archangel and IBF have overarching storylines. I think that really helped drive sales to the next in series. Also, it really makes permafree a viable strategy. 99-cents is so much more expensive to advertise with and the results are so much less spectacular.

A few things that went right:

  • Archangel Down is doing well wide. Two series that do decently is a pretty monumental achievement. I’m overwhelmed and grateful to all my fans.
  • Soul Marked is a great funnel to I Bring the Fire despite few shared characters. The month I got the 99-cent BookBub I did no other advertising for I Bring the Fire and my downloads didn’t go down but my sell-thru increased. So my original idea wasn’t totally daft. Sadly, except for BookBub (and probably ENT) it was still too expensive to advertise at 99-cents with a wide book.

How I’m adapting:

  • I’m writing more in Archangel. I’ve got book 4 with my beta readers right now, and I’m about ready to start writing book 5.
  • Book 4 in Archangel is a STANDALONE, I’ll be able to advertise it everywhere, even FKTips when the time comes but it will still be on the same series page.
  • Book 5 might be readable as a standalone too. Same characters, but I have in mind an awesome action packed intro sequence that might explain the characters and universe pretty well.
  • Soul Marked and Magic are in KU. I plan to advertise Magic and Soul Marked with Countdown deals. Hopefully that will make advertising at 99-cents not as expensive and boosts downloads of I Bring the Fire.
  • Returning to my previous advertising schedule/strategy.
  • Getting cheaper health insurance this fall. I may go with an HMO with the good hospital near my house instead of the POS I currently have that doesn’t cover the good hospital, isn’t as convenient, and is more expensive.
  • Learning to update WordPress myself. I used to be a techie.  >:(

I will probably come back and write one more book in the After the Fire trilogy, because there is a character/situation that won’t get out of my brain. But it might be a few years. It will be a standalone though, and the series has no momentum anyway, so I think it will be okay. Then I’ll box up the whole trilogy, and hopefully get a ‘Bub on it and more sales to IBF. Funnels are still king!

So you want to be a writer …

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A tweenager recently sent me an email asking me some questions about being a writer. I thought I might post them below, as I’ve been asked them before. 

  1. What made you want to become a author? 

    I did not want to become an author. I enjoyed writing non-fiction and fiction when I was your age, but I didn’t think I could make a living as a writer. I like food, and not worrying about how to pay bills. I still think about getting a “real” job a lot. Coding isn’t necessarily more lucrative, but it is more dependable.

  2. Do you have any advice for becoming an author?

    There are three pieces of advice I’d give to any writer.
    The first is to read and write! Read anything you like–fiction or non-fiction, in your native language, or your second language if you are studying in school. Think about what it is in the books and articles you read that makes you like them. And write. Always write. Not for the hope of being famous or for money, just because you love writing. If you don’t love writing, don’t become an author.
    The second piece of advice I would give is to find something else you enjoy doing, something that will pay the bills while you build your writing career. For someone your age, that would translate into not just studying creative writing, but also studying history and science (fantastic for story ideas!), art or photography and at least take a music appreciation class (studying the appearance of things and sounds will help you describe scenes more vividly),  and mathematics. The last one, mathematics, makes artists groan, but it is so important for all artists of every type, especially if you want to make a living with art. So many artists don’t understand money, and they wind up getting taken advantage of, or they aren’t capable of analyzing their sales to make informed financial decisions.
    Working hard at all your subjects achieves two things–you learn how to work hard, and you might just find something that you like and are good at that makes a fine “day job” while you build your writing career. It turned out, I am a decent coder. I know writers who were lawyers, accountants, nurses, editors, graphic designers, marketing directors, businesswomen, and more. There are only a few writers out there who just emerged from high school or college as writers. You might be that person, but most likely not. Prepare for the not.
    The third piece of advice I would be is to live your life. Travel, make mistakes, meet people, talk to them, fall in love, and have children if you want children. These are things that should help your career in the long run, not hinder it. It will give you a greater understanding of the human condition and will allow you to write with greater empathy and compassion.

  3. What is your favorite genre to write about? 

    I love fantasy with a sci-fi element, and writing technology as though it is magic in sci-fi. I like all my fiction to have historical references. I can’t write without writing adventure. And I love romance that is integral to the plot, but not the whole plot.

  4. What is your favorite book that is not one of your’s?

    I cannot name my favorite book–that’s like asking a mother who her favorite child is.

    The first book I remember reading was Pirate’s Promise when I was just out of third grade. (I have dyslexia and reading came late for me.) I loved the adventure in it, and the hero who was determined to do the right thing. It also made me realize that adults could be stupid. At the end of the book, the boy who was avoiding becoming an indentured servant goes to live with a family in the deep South–a place with slaves! Couldn’t he have gone to someplace like Massachusetts?

    Black Beauty was the next book I remember reading–I love writing from non-human points of view, and maybe that is why. (Sleipnir has his own story in I Bring the Fire, it is called, The Slip. Carl Sagan, the ten-legged, venomous alien weasel … err, “werfle” from my Archangel Project series has his own story, too. It’s called Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe.)

    I read all of Robert Aspirin’s Myth series soon after those–mostly because a friend I met at camp was his niece and she had a box of Advanced Reader Copies. Those taught me that books could be funny. I read all those books the summer between third and fourth grade. I read The Prydain Chronicles and the Westmark Trilogy by Lloyd Alexander soon after fourth grade started. Those taught me that books could be funny, lyrical, exciting, and deep. And then I just took off on a tear!

    There were many books I read between fourth grade and when I began writing. I think On A Pale Horse by Piers Anthony probably influenced my desire to write from the misunderstood immortal’s point of view. Dr. Zhivago made me realize I could like a human who did things I’d normally find distasteful. (The title character was unfaithful to his wife.) Dan Simmon’s Hyperion Cantos, Lois McMaster’s Bujold’s Paladin of Souls, and Raising the Stones made me realize I could use sci-fi and fantasy to discus theology in ways that were more fun than discussing theology. (Not to diss Bujold’s Vorksigian Saga. Shards of Honor has one of the best love scenes ever.) I really enjoyed several non fiction books about China and Japan: Wild Swans in particular, and a lot of really dense texts, Death Ritual in Late Imperial Early Modern China particularly stands out in my memory. I read books about economics and psychology too: Charles Wheelan, Steven Pinker, Daniel H. Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, Hernando DeSoto, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen Dubner) and Sharon Brownlee all can make non-fiction riveting. (Lately I’ve discovered Alexis Clark’s Enemies in Love. Fantastic historical documentary of racial segregation during WWII.)

  5. Do you have any writing tips?

    The only tips I have for writing are to write something every day. It doesn’t have to be fiction. It can be a letter, or an email, a book report, science report, anything. Also, don’t be afraid of feedback. It’s a hugely essential part of growth; as is learning which feedback to heed and which to ignore.

I hope this has been helpful. Now get writing!

 

I’ll be releasing my next book in Kindle Unlimited

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I want to release Soul Marked at 99¢, it’s the first book in a brand new series, and I want to make it as affordable as possible.

Soul Marked: After the Fire Book 1It’s almost time to release Soul Marked, the first book in my After the Fire paranormal romance series. The After the Fire books take place in the I Bring the Fire Universe, and there will be cameos from familiar characters, but they’ll all be complete standalones, with no previous knowledge of I Bring the Fire or the other After the Fire books required.

After the Fire will be filled with the same mix of action, adventure, and “sci-fantasy” that I Bring the Fire and Archangel Project fans have come to expect, but they are paranormal romances, so they’ll have a bit more romance, and each book will end with a Happily Ever After for the characters featured. Like I Bring the Fire and Archangel there will be adult themes, but there will be no onscreen sexy times.

At 99¢ I can reliably count on 200 sales at release from my fans on Amazon, and about 40 sales combined on all other vendors. Even if I was to price at $2.99 that wouldn’t be enough to recoup the $1500 I have invested in editing, covers, and promotions for Soul Marked. That’s assuming I’d sell 240 books in a new series the first month at a higher price point, a huge assumption!

So I need NEW fans. By releasing at 99¢ and remaining there for a few days I hope to rank higher and get more visibility. The visibility should attract enough Kindle Unlimited subscribers to help me recoup costs within the first few months. (Hopefully by Christmas!)

Because a condition of Kindle Unlimited is exclusivity, I will not be releasing the ebooks immediately to all vendors (paperbacks will be available everywhere.)

I have been agonizing for months over this decision. I’d really like to sell my book wide and release immediately to OverDrive–the library lending system and the only way all my books are truly “free.” At the same time, I have to make business decisions based on what is best for my family, and I need to break even as quickly as possible.

If you are not a Kindle owner Kindle does offer a FREE app for smartphones, tablets, and PCs. It can be downloaded onto the new Samsung Nooks as well. I have used this app on my late and very ancient iPhone (retired just this year–an iPhone 4! The app worked terrific!) And I use it now on my new Samsung Galaxy phone.

Which leaves Kobo readers … There are ways to convert Kindle MOBI files to ePubs with Calibre. I also know that some Kindle Unlimited authors offer ePubs to fans that prove they’ve purchased on Amazon. I’m looking into the feasibility of this–primarily trying to determine if it will break Amazon’s Terms of Service. I will get back to you!

For those of you who won’t get the novel on your preferred reader, I hope the 99¢ introductory rate is at least a small consolation–I hope a story you love is a bigger consolation. (Fingers crossed.) I may at some point release wide, I just to have to see where the series stands in a year or so, see what read-thru is like, and what the demand would be on other vendors. Decisions like this are some of the worst in self-publishing, and I thank you for your understanding.

Orphans in the Black (a new home for Murphy’s Star)

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Get it FREE as part of Kindle Unlimited at Amazon U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and Australia

A few years ago I wrote a short story called Murphy’s Star. It’s about a scientist traveling to a distant planet who picks up an alien *koffs* passenger during cryosleep.

Murphy’s Star launched my career. But lately, it has fallen into obscurity. I decided to give it a new home. I wanted the new home to have awesome stories that my fans who’d read Murphy’s would love. So, Orphans in the Black was born. This is a collection with a ton of heart. There is plenty of adventure, but the really big battles are internal. There are authors I know some of you love already: Lindsay Buroker, Christine Pope, M.R. Forbes, and others. There are also lesser known authors I think you’ll fall in love with.

I loved putting this collection together. I’m sure you’ll love it too. This collection is available for 99¢ for a limited time and is FREE in Kindle Unlimited.

A Tale of Two Promos

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Recently, Archangel Down, the first book in my Archangel Project trilogy and my I Bring the Fire Box Set were both on sale for 99¢. The sales for both started at the same time, and ended at the same time, and both are still currently at $2.99. Besides the obvious difference in the number of books in each “sale”, Archangel is in Kindle Unlimited and I Bring the Fire is wide. Also, I Bring the Fire had a BookBub, and Archangel Down did not (it had a BookBub December 23rd–I stacked promos during this sale because I couldn’t have another BookBub for my recent release of Heretic, the conclusion of the trilogy.) Archangel Down was not running a Count Down deal, so it only earned a 35% royalty.

Here are the profits so far:

Although I earned more overall on the I Bring the Fire box, I earned more per dollar spent on the Archangel Down title.

Takeaways: this promo makes me really hesitant to take my Archangel Project out of Kindle Unlimited anytime soon. That said, the recent account closings due to scammers picking up KU books and getting authors accounts pulled has me hesitant to put I Bring the Fire into Kindle Unlimited. As you can see, I do earn about 1/3 my income  “wide.” If I were to experience an account shut down, I would at least have a small revenue stream during the weeks that it took me to get my account re-established.

Here are the promo line-ups for the sales. Besides what you see here, I spent roughly the same on AMS ads for each book. I think they were around $20? But I forgot to track.

The newsletter swaps / FB and newsletter mentions were really effective. I will probably try to line up more of those in the future.

2016 Novelist Income Survey Results, Part 1 – by Jim Hines

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I participated in a survey of novelist earnings. I’m lucky to fall in the top 30% of authors who make a good income. I feel very lucky, and most days I feel like I’m living in the Talking Heads Song “Once in a Lifetime.” I’m as surprised as anyone to be where I am.

To all my readers, thanks for helping me get here! For anyone interested in the business side of this gig, check it out.

 

 

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