C Gockel Writes

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.

 

 

Have I Found My Forever Email Sending Platform?

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SendyHosting
SendyHosting.com offers support and infrastructure for the Sendy Hosting app at a reasonable cost.

If you’re an indy author, you need a mailing list or you’ll be at the mercy of Amazon, BookBub, and FaceBook to get news of new releases out to your customers.

Unfortunately, if you only publish once every six months a mailing list can become expensive to maintain. I started out collecting emails in a spreadsheet, graduated to MailChimp and took advantage of their free program, and then started their pay-per-email plan so that I could take advantage of auto-responders. By paying $250 I was able to get the cost-per-email to $.01. With only a few subscribers a day, and less than one email send a month, that was not too bad.

… and then my list ballooned.

My list is at 7,000 subscribers (and I’ve got another 4,000 who aren’t very engaged that I hit up every now and then … plus a secondary list dedicated to Box Set lovers that is growing fast.) Sending an email to 7,000 subscribers at .01 a send is $70. For that many people, MailChimp’s monthly plan isn’t any better–it’s $75 a month for a list that size. After researching other popular mailing list management apps I discovered Sendy.

After an initial investment of $59 Sendy costs $1 per 10,000 emails sent. So what’s the catch? There’s actually a few.

That initial investment is for the app–and then you have to install that app on your web server. If you’re not technologically inclined that can get expensive. (Also, you need a website, too, obviously!)

There are no preconfigured email templates and its WYSIWYG editor is very rudimentary. You can download free HTML templates from places like Litmus, but still, if you don’t know HTML it can be tricky.

Segmentation is rudimentary at best. Want to send an email quickly just to those folks who enjoy your sci-fi? Ha, ha, ha … no. You can create custom columns in your list to store details like that, but to send to those people you have to export your list, fish out the folks who fit that criteria, create a new list and send your email. (In its favor, if they unsubscribe, Sendy will take them off the original list.) Sendy does allow multiple lists … but that gets clunky too. I noticed I had customers signing up for both my sci-fi and urban fantasy lists. I’m glad they like both–but I don’t want to annoy them twice with every release announcement.

Lastly … not every web host allows the Sendy app. I got Sendy installed (or actually, my tech guys did) and up and running. I was so happy! And then my website was shut down. Turned out, MediaTemple, my web host thought the Sendy code was “malicious.” (It’s not open source and is therefore encrypted.) My web guys had to do an emergency Sendy extraction and then I was left back where I started–well, except out quite a few pennies for installation and purchase of the app. As Homer Simpson would say, “D’oh!”

I tried some websites that used Sendy to send your emails, but it turns out most of them slapped their own look-and-feel on the Sendy app and actually left me with something less functional than Sendy. (I will not name names because they were very nice, didn’t charge me, provide an inexpensive service, and I hope to be able to recommend them someday.)

On a whim I Googled “Sendy Hosting” and discovered … dun, dun, dun … SendyHosting.com and EasySendy.com. I eventually went with SendyHosting because EasySendy seemed really geared to upselling peeps to EasySendy Pro. It looks like an awesome powerful product if you’re sending out 100,000 emails everyday (Comcast is one of their customers). It also looked really complicated when I signed up for a free account and poked around. Like it-could-be-a-job-just-to-know-how-to-use-it-complicated (if you’ve ever worked at a big company like Comcast you realize sending emails is someone’s job. They do it all day everyday. Have respect for them. It’s a job that takes marketing savvy, and techie and analytical brains.) I just want to send one or two emails a month. (If your’e looking to become the next BookBub, maybe it’s for you though?) To be fair, they did offer me free webinars and support … but I don’t want a webinar, I want to jump in and start sending.

So, with some trepidation after already trying two different email sending apps in a month I signed up for SendyHosting.

It was so easy. And at €12 a month affordable! That cost includes security updates to Sendy … I hadn’t figured those in; but as I would have to pay for their installation, it probably would have been more expensive than Sendy hosting in the long run. I had to create a subdomain for them, and grant a few permissions to AWS (Amazon Web Services, Sendy is their product.) But I was able to do it in minutes and I was right back with the interface I was comfortable with.

TL; DR?

If you are comfortable with HTML and you need a cheaper email app, Sendy might be for you. But check your web hosting provider–they may not allow it–and even if they do, a Sendy hosting plan like SendyHosting.com might be cheaper in time and / or money in the long run.

I a still have a $.01 a send MailChimp service to catch anyone who has a link to my sign-up forms, and for Instafreebie sign-ups, but I HOPE that I’ve found my forever plan for general sending.