My kingdom for a review!
So Powerless is back up to full price; that’s £1.99 on the UK site and $3.99 on the US site.
It’s been on sale (£0.87/$0.99) for a couple of months and I was selling 4-5 a week. Now I’ve pushed it back up to full price I’m lucky to sell 1 a week.
Interestingly, with the book lying around 140,000 on the sales rank, a single sale is enough to bump it up to 40,000, so my guess is that anything lying below 50,000 is not selling anything as long as its rank is on a downward trend.
Anyway, does this sales drop mean I should price it at $0.99 permanently? Because it’s my first novel? Because at this stage I need the numbers of sales (and the reviews that hopefully follow) more than the money from them? Because it’s an unknown quantity no-one is going to plump full price for?
Well, I can discount the last one as people are buying it at full price (which surprises no-one more than it does myself – thanks, whoever you are).
I can discount the first one too. Mostly. Yes it’s my first stab at a novel and there’s probably plenty to justly criticise about it, but that doesn’t inherently mean I should price it less. I’m not going to get into the whole cost vs value thing here, but the essence is that if there are people willing to pay full price for it (and there are – thanks again :)), then that is what it is worth to them.
As for pure numbers of sales, then yes, it would always be nicer to be riding high in the sales charts, which I did briefly during the period the book was on promotion. However no more reviews were forthcoming on the UK or US site during this flurry of selling, so I’m not sure of the overall value of this tactic.
It could be that any reviews will be delayed – I know a lot of people buy $0.99 ebooks on a whim, saving them up like Steam games for when they have the time and/or inclincation to dig them out. Or remember they bought them in the first place. Like Steam games. (Guilty as charged).
Ah well, I’m going to leave it up there for a while and see how it goes. Hopefully when Killing Gods comes out there will be a spike as both books start to advertise the other. At least that’s the plan. That’s what the likes of J.A. Konrath and Hugh Howey keep saying – the more books you have out there, the more it looks like you are a consistent, serious writer and the bigger the fan base you get, the more the sales starts to cross-over and things build up.
I know it’s going to take a while. Especially since I’m only writing part-time, meaning at least a year between books (grindingly slow) but hopefully I’ll start to build up some momentum with book two and the appearances I’m doing this year.
By the way I do love my lone, hilarious 1 star review on Amazon US, although it would be nice to get some proper ones!
