Getting your book plucked from obscurity isn’t just a self-publishing nightmare. A writer can be with the best publisher, get solid reviews, or win awards, but it still doesn’t guarantee the kind of success that few writers enjoy. For most, after the buzz of an initial success dies down, getting back in the public’s sphere may take another push. It could be a second successful book, controversy, a movie contract, or such amazing writing skills that reviewers persevere until readers catch on. Few self-published books get there. Andy Weir’s,
The Martian, originally a self-published book picked up by a major publisher, was then optioned for film.
Fifty Shades of Grey, Eragon, Legally Blonde, and, coming soon, Hugh Howley’s
Wool, were all initially self-published before Hollywood came calling.
However, a self-published author has to work twice as hard to get noticed as some believe that if she were any good, she would have had a publisher to begin with as validation of her talent. (This applies to men too, of course.) I do believe it's harder for women to achieve attention on a grand scale, which is why Sarah Paretsky founded Sisters in Crime to promote women mystery writers.
My first books were published under a pseudonym in the erotic romance genre, and though I’m proud of them, my first love was crime fiction. I'd already written a few hard-edged novels, queried hundreds of agents, and received “Your book is not quite what we’re looking for” responses. When an agent replied with positive feedback, I was elated. Though the agent worked hard, she was a relative newcomer (new agents tend to latch onto new writers) who wasn’t in New York. After some close calls but no editor acceptance, I decided to self-publish.
I had a great deal of success as a self-published author in 2012 and 2013, even 2014, but as the years passed, sales have dwindled. I attribute this to a few reasons, and this is what anyone contemplating self-publishing should take into consideration. Advertising is much harder and more expensive.
BookBub, the gold standard of promotion, was just getting its start back in 2011-12. At one point when I was advertising a free book to generate sales, BookBub GAVE me an FREE ad. Downloads went through the roof, and when the promo was over, the book rocketed to the top one hundred in sales. I even gave Stephen King a run for his money after one promotion. See above. (Note: his book was on pre-order, but so what!) Same thing happened with another book when I bought a BookBub ad. Who wouldn’t put out the money after seeing the success of the first ad? After fifty thousand free downloads, sales again hit the stratosphere, giving me another place in the top hundred, and that didn’t mean only on the sales charts but on the author charts.
So what’s changed?
All those free books that translated into sales a few years ago when readers were hungry for free and discounted reading material were now saturating their Kindles. Readers had hundreds, even thousands of books they’d probably never read, and if they ran out there were always ad pages that gave you a daily summary of deals. I use some of those ad sites to promote a sale, usually at $.99, but only a few of them generate numbers anymore, and I'm lucky if I break even from my costs.
It’s almost impossible to get a BookBub ad these days, especially if you are exclusive to Amazon, which I am. They get paid on click-throughs, and if readers are clicking on one platform only, in my case Amazon, BookBub doesn’t make as much money as if the books were on multiple platforms. Also, their price has skyrocketed. Why? Because they bring results. Also, and this is important, they now have major publishers promoting famous writers, buying ads for double and triple the costs of free book ads. A crime fiction ad reaches almost four million readers. Free it costs, $569, a $.99 ad costs $1,138, $1.99 = $1,970, $2.99 = $2,845, and anything over $3. is $3,983. Of course there are other genres that are less, but the more popular genres cost more. This might be fine if your publisher kicks in some money or pays the total amount, but few indie authors can afford those prices.
Now, after nine books in crime fiction (mystery, thrillers, and romantic suspense) and four in erotic romance, I’ll finish the fifth book in my series, but that might be all. I am trying my hand at a totally different genre, and if I think the end result is good enough and can be the first book in a series, I might try for an agent. Why? Because times have changed, and writers have to change with them.
Am I sorry about the route I’ve taken? If you had asked me in 2012 or 2013, and I’d have said no. It was a great decision. Ask me if I’d do it the same way in 2018, knowing what I know now, I’d have to think long and hard before answering, but I'd probably say yes. I'd just do things a little differently.
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Polly Iyer is the author of nine novels: standalones Hooked, InSight, Murder Déjà Vu, Threads, and Indiscretion, and four books in the Diana Racine Psychic Suspense series, Mind Games, Goddess of the Moon, Backlash and The Scent of Murder. A Massachusetts native, she makes her home in the beautiful Piedmont region of South Carolina. You can visit her website for more on Polly and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
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