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BB eBooks Newsletter – September 06, 2013
Dear Friend,
This month has been one of the busiest moments in our production department. Our staff have been working very hard to produce the professional eBooks for our clients. For every job you have given us, we truly value your trust in our service and it is our privilege to witness your success through your writing endeavors. Every phone call, Facebook message, email, and tweet will continue to make us help our clients succeed.
Genre Diversity
Substance B is one of the examples of BB eBooks’ exclusive service. For the past few months that we have kept the website up and running, BB eBooks clients have come forward and utilized Substance B to connect with their fans extensively. Several authors have given away their inscribed copies of their eBooks that their fans requested through their author page. So far, there are 42 authors sharing information of nearly 108 books in 14 different genres These genres include Crime/Noir, Erotica, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Literary, Military/War, Non-Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction, Self-Help, Thriller, Travel, and Young Adult. Please check our website regularly for more details of fascinating books of your choice. Our current featured author, Katherine Logan, is promoting her latest book, The Last MacKlenna, which is a sequel to The Ruby Brooch. You can buy her book online and connect with her on Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Amazon Publishing Icons
Onto the industry updates, Amazon Publishing hit the headlines when they planned to release their latest imprint “Icons”. Basically, Icons is the series that present biographies of well-known figures like Jesus, Josef Stalin, Lucian Freud, J. D. Salinger, Edgar Allan Poe, and many other famous figures. Jesus will be the first subject to be published in December this year. The Icons series will be co-edited by James Atlas and Ed Park.
Top-Earning Authors of 2013
Forbes’ list of top-earning authors of 2013 shows us some insights into how readers have cast their votes. Being the unprecedented winner based on her immense success, there is no doubt how E.L. James’ fortune has amassed $95 million. The sales data is estimated between June 2012 and June 2013. Although her writing might not receive the fanfare among the critics, she has shown what the actual readers really need from their pastime of reading. Jill Guccini of Book Riot confirms how this list denotes a “smack of reality” that shows what readers are willing to spend their time enjoying and buying. Apart from James’ enviable success, one more thing we can learn from the list is genre diversity. Among the best-selling authors are Suzanne Collins, J. K. Rowling, Jeff Kenney, Rick Riordan, and Bill O’Reilly, whose several genre-based works include erotica, young adult, and non-fiction. Michael Pietsch, CEO of Hachette Book Group stresses the importance of ‘surprise’ and ‘originality’ that will “lead to the giant scale.”
Real Success Stories from Self-publishers
The article from BBC confirms what the latest scenario in self-publishing looks like. Two successful self-publishers give a good account of their success stories. Paul Pilkington utilized the rigorous quality control and brought his first eBook to top the free download chart on Amazon. In the post-giveaway period, he had sold more than 160,000 books excluding the stellar 2.2 million free downloads. Now he has just signed with a publisher to continue his success. The second self-publishing guru, Joanna Penn, started her self-publishing career when she realized that her love of reading took over the day job’s interest. Having exposed herself to technology, she began to craft her writing skills in thrillers. Later on, Joanna started to sell her own books and help other fellow self-publishers to better market their books. The most current success story comes from Barbra Annino. Four of her books were in Amazon’s Top 100 Paid chart. Her success story was not paved with rose petals when she revealed her hard work learning new skills. She admitted that she needed professional help in editing. “Don’t trust it’s perfect because your mom said so,” Barbra said. With regards to marketing your book, there are book recommendations platforms you might want check out to increase your book’s discoverability. Although Substance B is not listed in one of the top 10 yet, we have confidence in our simpler and cleaner interface plus the inscription service for both authors and readers to explore the growing catalog comfortably and pragmatically.
Effective BookBub Promotion
To understand what a book recommendation platform-BookBub- can do to help promote your books, author Lindsay Buroker recounts the first time she was approached by BookBub. Initially, she doubted that the website was capable of providing her with some promotion. It did not take long for her to witness how the actual sales number exceeded her expectation. Mystery/Thriller author Ryan Casey discussed his experience promoting his book on BookBub and how he combined it with KDP select to achieve better results back in April. He managed to give away 40,775 books and eventually rose to top Amazon’s overall charts. Another successful Sci-Fi author, Michael Hicks, was approached by BookBub to experiment with its service and decided to sacrifice “fifteen cups of Starbucks coffee” for their service fee. He knew that reaching out to a massive number of potential readers of 460,000+ readers would definitely boost his sales. When his book was on the promotion run, he was surprised to learn how his book was put in Action/Adventure instead of Sci-Fi/Horror as usual but eventually his book was picked up by a group of new readers. Back to Ryan Casey, he carefully traced how BookBub can help him last month. With more diverse experience regarding promotional methods, he gave away more than 56,000 copies of the same book he had had eminent success in April. Not only that, more subscribers sign up for his mailing list and that will benefit him in the long run.
Reader’s Interpretation of Different eBook Prices
Following last year’s Smashwords’ analysis of different eBook prices, Dear Author website explains what each eBook price range means for readers. Regardless of what Mark Coker said about the lower price range, $0.99–$2.99 may result in a decline of sales whereas the $2.99–$4.99 price range seems like a good choice. In this price range, readers seem to take everything into consideration before buying (e.g. cover, blurb, book review). The $5.00–$7.99 range seems to be reserved for established authors who have a solid fan base. According to the website, readers are not likely to take a chance on aspiring authors’ works unless they are highly recommended by a credible source in this price range. The highest price range $8.99 is for dedicated fans who are willing to pay whatever the price is as long as they can own a book written by their favorite author whose works they have been familiar with. The larger the author’s fan group is, the higher price the author can charge. Apart from each price range’s interpretation, readers voice their comment that the lower price range can motivate the “impulse” purchase.
Yours sincerely,
The BB eBooks Team
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