Unicorn – a legendary creature described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead.
So, what have I been up to? I trawled through the long list of Also Bought authors on my Freeman & Phoenix titles, and produced spreadsheets allowing me to produce League Tables. Think Premier Division and Championship, like Football in the UK. (Not every Mystery, Thriller & Suspense author appears in my Also Boughts, but believe me, there are a lot of well-known names in the sets of 65 and 35 names respectively.)
I’m happy with being ten places from the bottom of the Championship with Gus Freeman, and five from the bottom with The Phoenix. Onwards and upwards is my motto, and work behind the scenes will continue in 2023 to move up the tables.
Using statistics readily available about the current state of the Amazon Kindle market: –
One-third of all ebooks are self-published. Three hundred million self-published books are sold each year. Of Authors who have published their first book in the last ten years
- 1200 traditionally-published authors have earned over $25000 per year
- 1600 self-published authors have earned over $25000 per year.
I’ve just read ‘How to Market a Book – Overperform in a crowded market’ – by Reedsy’s Ricardo Fayet.
He says BookBub Featured Deals have become harder to get for indie authors. Also, because of how BookBub operates there’s no sense applying for a Featured Deal until you have a similar number of reviews as the books they’re featuring in your category.
Another point he stresses is that it’s better to Go Wide, because if your book is in Kindle Unlimited it will be much, much harder to land a Featured Deal.
He quotes from BookBub – ‘Between two books with equally competitive platforms and deal prices the editors will always choose the book available on more retailers.’
The Featured Deals in March and September 2020 for Fatal Decision and The Freeman Files Box Set Books 1-3 were for books with less than 15 reviews. I’ve been fortunate to have 9 Featured Deals since March 2019, and every book has been in Kindle Unlimited throughout. In fact, despite the potential risks of having all my eggs in one basket, every one of my titles is in KU.
Ricardo reckons if you get Featured Deals despite being in KU, congratulations, you’re a unicorn.
I must be doing something right. Happy days. What else have I done this month? I ran two successful series promos combined with Kindle Countdown Deals. The blurbs on almost 50 titles have been updated. I’ve refreshed my Browsing Categories to target slightly less competitive areas in the rankings, and I’ve got to grips with BookBub Ads.
I’ve not been idle, but the writing has taken a back seat. As I told you last year, I’ve felt like I was on a treadmill publishing a new title every six to eight weeks. I was drained by the end of December. There will be fewer books in 2023, but I can’t let the quality suffer to fulfil a quota.
I’ll be back in March with further updates
Best wishes
Ted Tayler
