The Anatomy of a Book Launch 4
TRANSPARENCYBOOK LAUNCH
So starting with book 3, I have done one of these posts for each book I have had come out. This post will include stats from all the books launches, even ones I didn't do posts for however, so you will get the full picture of just what's happened to date.
Now let's dive in!
The Process
So I messed up. Usually when I upload the book for the last time, after all the fixes are made, I go ahead and set my sale days. But July was a crazy month, and it slipped my mind until the morning of what was supposed to be my launch day. So I ended up 'launching' on the 31st, but no sale actually occurred until the 2nd. And that...sucked. No two ways around it, that hurt me.
What I did by way of prep work was:
Setting my books to go on sale. I set them to Free/.99/.99/1.99/1.99 for 1-5.
I ordered my proof copy well in advance.
Messaged the Fantasy subreddit for permission to post on launch day with the content of my post. It was approved.
I set up the omnibus to launch at the same time, but I did not put it on sale. But it did get a few purchases, which was nice.
This launch day was on a Wednesday, so not long after I got up I posted to r/fantasy, r/urbanfantasy, a few facebook groups, and my social media. Over the ensuing days I posted to my social media each day.
I was also once again blessed to be shared around by bigger name authors, or to be allowed to post in their reader groups. C.N. Rowan for example let me post in his much larger groups, and I know that helped. Stuart Jaffe and Rachel Brune both shared, and they are much larger names than yours truly, so that was nice. I know more did as well (it got shared a good bit), so I know I am forgetting a ton of people.
And how did those sales go?
Pretty Good.
In a repeat of the book 3/4 cycle, book 5 sold noticeably better than book 6. I am sure my misstep on the launch was partly to blame, but the other issue is that for whatever reason, the reddit posting didn't do as well this launch. I don't know why. I've since heard that this time of year isn't a good time to launch, but who knows! Totally anecdotally, book 4 had worse sales than book 3, and it was an August launch as well. Hmmm. Sales were definitely good, just not as good as I wanted. I really had it in my head that this would be my first 1k launch, especially after the last launch came so close, but alas!
I also had a lot fewer 'free' downloads. I wonder if I have saturated my market such as it were. I've given away around 5k free copies of book 1 at this point, and it may be that the places I commonly post, the bulk of potential folks have already gotten the free book. And since they have, they pay less attention to my sales? Not really sure.
One odd little stat: it's shaping up that I had under half as many orders and free downloads as last launch. But my money rather than being under half as much as you would expect, is actually at 2/3rds of what book 5 was. So that's been neat to see.
First, a quick clarification: I am going to lump July 31 and Aug 1 under my day 1 stats. These are mostly preorder sales, that if I hadn't messed up, would have gone on the sale day anyway. But...yeah. Anywho.
The data from the launches will be formatted like this:
Book 6 Data (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, Book 4, Book 5)
Launch week order numbers:
Day 1: Paid: 238 (43, 14, 181, 142, 500) Free: 351 (0, 0, 623, 720, 832)
Day 2: Paid: 107 (3, 8, 34, 59, 147) Free: 71 (0, 0, 96, 158, 258)
Day 3: Paid: 30 (6, 3, 22, 17, 25) Free: 66 (0, 0, 74, 62, 76)
Day 4: Paid: 5 (2, 2, 7, 8, 27) Free: 107 (0, 0, 35, 26, 51)
Day 5: Paid: 4 (1, 2, 3, 10, 21) Free: 1 (0, 0, 4, 6, 3)
Day 6: Paid: 6 (1, 1, 6, 6, 6) Free: 0 (420, 0, 0, 0)
Day 7: Paid: 6 (0, 0, 2, 9, 4) Free: 0 (141, 0, 0, 0)
Total Paid: 396 (56, 30, 255, 251, 730)
Total Free: 595 (561, 0, 832, 972, 1,220)
KENP:
Day 1: 4,322 (175, 28, 334, 544, 1,622)
Day 2: 1,672 (10, 116, 592, 559, 1,479)
Day 3: 1,697 (307, 516, 1,341, 1,284, 1,733)
Day 4: 1,010 (0, 383, 1,264, 1,176, 2,137)
Day 5: 1,479 (0, 116, 818, 570, 3,065)
Day 6: 491 (53, 141, 2,015, 258, 2,807)
Day 7: 1,341 (265, 79, 1,428, 1,287, 2,216)
Totals: 12,012 (810, 1,379, 7,792, 5,678, 15,059)
Launch Totals:
Book 1: 131.72
Book 2: 87.09
Book 3: 451.29
Book 4: 364.42
Book 5: 960.31
Book 6: 623.19
Launch Month Sales Totals
Book 1: 141.72
Book 2: 150.14
Book 3: 461.29
Book 4: 456.16
Book 5: 1,257.49
Book 6: TBD
Launch day plus 30 days Totals:
Book 1: 170.91
Book 2: 158.72
Book 3: 536.94
Book 4: 521.64
Book 5: 1,349.72
Book 6: TBD
Day of Week/Month for Day one of the Launch:
Book 1: Sunday/August
Book 2: Saturday/November
Book 3: Wednesday/January
Book 4: Tuesday/August
Book 5: Wednesday/March
Book 6: Wednesday/July-August
Sale Price Strategy
Book 1: Set to Free 5 days after launch.
Book 2: Nothing.
Book 3: Free/.99
Book 4: Free/.99/.99
Book 5: Free/.99/.99/1.99/3.99
Book 6: Free/.99/.99/1.99/1.99/3.99
