Thread: Author Earnings looks beyond Kindle
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Old 10-14-2015, 10:34 AM   #123
Cinisajoy
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks View Post
That was why I put Under Witch Moon in KU, but so far, I can't tell a difference. It's only been 3 weeks, however. I have had better/more reads with Under Witch Moon than with Soul of the Desert (Soul is standalone. I did it at the same time as Moon partly for comparison and partly to see if it helped visibility of the book. I wanted to do Catch an Honest Thief because it's more in the style of the Sedona series (so while it's stand alone I thought it might lead to sales of the Sedona series) but I couldn't get it off flipcart, the India site (via smashwords) because there were support issues.

All in all, the same rules of visibility apply in or out of KU: More sales/reads leads to more visibility and more sales. Amazon's algos reward sales/reads, but you have to hit a certain threshold before they kick in to help. But if that threshold ever kicked in, I suspect that it would help sales of the other books. There are a lot of authors who use "free" to try to get there, but Amazon has virtually stopped counting free downloads towards visibility in any other (paid) category. It still helps, but nothing like it used to. There's been a lot of discussion on the writer forums about ROI with ads--if the free "sales" no longer get you "paid" visibility there is a lot less value with ads for free books (very, very little). This comes at a bad time because the ad places, from what I saw of applying, are putting free ahead of paid books. I was recently turned down for an open spot and one of the reasons given was that a cheaper book was available for advertising in that spot on that day (competing with mine for the one open slot left in fantasy/urban fantasy). Since my book is scheduled to be 99 cents on that day, I assume a free book won out.

I get the value in free for readers and I do giveaways, but of course, that can't compete with the simple download at Amazon.

Also, for those interested, there is some rumor (and a bit of evidence) that the also boughts and visibility is now partially tied to whether or not a book has a "recent" review. Recent reviews also help an author "qualify" for an ad. It's crazy. I thought if I had my money, ad places would take it. But NO. Some places require 50 reviews. When Executive Dirt came out in Aug. I planned to do ads. NO ONE and I mean NO ONE would take it without 10 reviews and a 4.0 rating. I don't generate that kind of quick turnaround from readers. One place said they would do the ad if the first in the series had 50 reviews. (It has 41 on Amazon and 104 ratings on GR. Not good enough).

Shrug.
Maria,
I once saw a discussion about whether a particular advertiser works. 3 were complaining that no they saw no or less than 5 sales. Several others said they got hundreds of sales from the same advertiser. The only difference was the first set of books were not really good. The others were better written. Oh have you tried bknights on Fivver?
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