The last post cut off when I decided sleep was more important than more writing. Starting this one early in the day, in the hope of wrapping this up with all the things I forgot to put in.

First, on advertising – this one might be a bit out there for people who haven’t started in on cost-per-click, but I found this really interesting on split A/B testing using cost per click before then doing an ad campaign on cost per impression. More importantly, it also touches on sell-through when doing advertising campaign in conjunction with discounts, and multiple series.
https://insights.bookbub.com/using-bookbub-ads-drive-series-sell-through/

1.) Measuring sell-through / read-through.

Ideally, you want a baseline with lots of data. Since you are going for percentages, not total amount, it doesn’t matter if you’re comparing summer slump to winter reading. It does matter if your data is too sparse, or timeline too brief, to get a statistically significant result.

30 days is good, because most people read a book within two weeks. So you’ll capture an aggregate of people moving through one book and on to the next. 90 days, six months… these are perfectly workable if you’re not doing anything to disturb the baseline. If you have new releases or promo campaigns, then trying to get a baseline with those included is like trying to get a level measure on a trampoline with a six year old’s “assistance.”

“What about all the people who start reading and never finish the book?”

This is why you want large amounts of data. Because these things average out. If you have 200 people who read through a 250-page book, and 200 people who started and then gave up after the first couple pages when it didn’t grab them… then statistically, it adds up to 201 people who finished the book, and is a rounding error.

Yes, if you have a large number of people who read half to three-quarters through and then wall the book, it’ll mess up the data… but you’ll already know that, because you’ll get a significant number of reviews complaining about where they walled / DNF the book.

1A.) Reader behaviour with new releases in a series.

Long time reader 1: will pick up new book, read it, and then go find other things to read that aren’t you, because they’ve already read everything of yours they care to.

Long time reader 2: Reads your new release, then picks up an anthology he missed. (These people may or may not re-read the series leading up to new release, but since they already own them, you won’t see that from sales numbers.)

New Reader 1: picks up new release, reads it, then goes back to 1st in series, and starts working their way through from there.

New reader 2: downloads sample of new release, reads it, then goes and starts with the first in series, and starts working their way through.

New reader 3: reads new release, wanders off.

New reader 4: downloads sample of new release, reads it, goes to your author page, picks a different series, and starts working their way through.

New reader 5: Reads new release. Reads the rest of your series, in order. Reads your stand-alones.

New reader 6: like 5, but even reads the anthologies you’re in, and your short stories. (these are statistically different from 5, who only reads your novels.)

2.) Interesting example of Dust of the Ocean.

Dust is a stand-alone. Yes, it’s set in the same Universe as the others, and yes, it’s a thematic follow-on from Shattered Under Midnight (which is why my awesome cover artist put “author of Shattered Under Midnight” on the cover, as an extremely unsubtle signal to readers of what to expect, and what to go buy next if you like this.)
So, Dust comes out, and gets its initial sales. When it came out, I got a small spike of other sales on the first 2-3 days after release…

1.) People who missed the last release on my Combined Ops series, and got that instead,
2.) People who saw that I have this out, and then picked up the start of my series instead of a stand-alone.
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Then nothing. 0 sales of anything not-Dust for a few days.
(This is upsetting the first time you hit it, but it’s actually a good sign. Remember what I mentioned about about “most people read a book within 2 weeks”?

Yes, we all know power readers who tear through 6 books in a day. However, outside of Romance, they’re often not the majority of your readers. Most working adults don’t have the time to do that, and many don’t have the reading speed. (see: 70 years of dumbing down education standards, and the travesty of whole-word reading)

I get people who read in less than a day, people who finish a book in about 3 days, and people who finish in about 2 weeks. They’re 3 very distinct sets of readers, and I’ve noticed the same pattern across all of Peter’s books, too. Which is why I need to wait at least 3 weeks to run reports for success and lessons learned on any marketing… and at that point, a month is just easier to pull and track, so it’s my minimum.

So if your non-new-release of sales go flat for a few days right after the release? That means people are reading your book.)

So, what happened after about 6 days? A spike in backlist sales. But not what I was expecting.

I expected, logically, hey, they’d go read Shattered Under Midnight next, right?
Nope.

Readers like series, where they know they’re going to get to spend a long time in a world enjoying the same author voice, same feel. And they proved this: my backlist sales were almost all to my Combined Ops Series.

(At this point, I could see where power-readers hit, because I could literally watch them tear through 1-2 books/day, by the sales/KENP read spike moving down the lines of the series like a wave…)

But over the next two weeks (that is, three weeks from release), with enough backlist sales, I could see them pick up to Shattered, and… not all the anthologies, just the one that has a story explicitly set in the same universe. (And a few to the others, but at a far lesser rate.)
This means, without a new release in the Combined Ops series, I got a chance to see organic (that is, non-forced via targeted promotion) sell-through and read-through.

(Am I boring you yet? It’s going to get worse; I’m going to break out numbers.)

Combined Ops
Sell-through by per book
Book 1: 100%
Book 2: 67%
Book 3: 75%
Book 4: 89%

Read-through per book / Cumulative read-through

Book 1: 100% / 100%
Book 2: 75% / 75%
Book 3: 93% / 70%
Book 4: 92% / 65%

What’s this tell you? That it’s harder to divine learning experiences out of success than failures, that’s what.

But if you look at the sales of book 2 to book 3, you’re going to see I lost a chunk of people, who extrapolated that the realpolitik that does not bend to the political correctness of the day, that in a world with active terrorism bad things happen to good people (even if off-screen), the low steam level / the icky girl romance cooties (depending on if they’re Romance-Scifi readers or MilSF readers) and the high level of hard science is going to be a running theme, not a one-off, and bail.

(why do I list those? I read my reviews. I may take a stiff drink and do a little ranting, but once you learn to separate ego from product, and realize reviewers don’t know you, only your book, it gets a little easier. You know, like repeated papercuts instead of being stabbed.)

Some readers cannot bring themselves to start a new book mid-series. Many of them are also the people who wait until there are at least 3 books in the series (5 in westerns) before starting to read it, because they’ve been burned by the midlist death spiral as a result of the Barnes & Nobles ordering system. Killed most of the tradpub midlist in the ’90’s through to…. today.

For anyone who doesn’t know that, read Holly’s post from 2006 on it… and take the time to appreciate the trailblazing. She got TONS of hate, absolutely vitriolic, for exposing it.

https://hollylisle.com/selling-to-the-net-or/

On the other hand, if you put out book 6, or like our own and awesome Pam Uphoff, book 26, some people will pick it up, read it, and only after reading it decide they want more, and start from the beginning.

Yep, people are not at all the same, and their patterns and buying choices are highly individual… but economics is the science of trying to make them make sense in aggregate.

This is part of why we as authors encourage each other to make sure every single book can work on its own, as well as in conjunction with a series – because there’s no telling which one is going to be reader’s entry point into your series.

To continue on sell-through: book 3 to 4 is up to 89%. That tells you that if readers made it to book 3, they like what I have to offer, and are going to pay their hard-earned beer money to get book 4.

On to read-through.

Read-through will have higher percentages, because there’s no money at stake, and there’s fewer clicks. The reason Amazon spent so much money and time to get “one click buy”, was because they figure for every additional click a customer has to make, they lose 25% of sales.

This is why they have that “click here for the next in series” pop up at the end of a book – to cut down on the customers lost by the necessity to get off the kindle app, go to the web page, find the book, read the blurb, and then click to buy.

With the current impasse in negotiations between Alphabet (the owners of google ) and Amazon, wherein Alphabet is demanding 15% of gross income for all transactions on any app gotten via the google play store – thus, why you can’t buy books on an android kindle app – there’s an inevitable hit to sales because your book may not motivate people strongly enough to go through the work of buying the next. (Should Alphabet & Amazon come to an agreement, expect these guidelines to change for higher sell-through.)

KU readers, on the other hand, just tap to go to the next book’s page, and tap on “read for free”, and dive right back into the world.

Lessons from readthrough / cumulative readthrough:

1.) Even if you do everything right and the readers like your books, you will get a small loss of readers from book to book.

(There are some exceptions out there, where book #3 or #4 becomes the entry point to your series. or #8, if you’re Terry Prachett. But learn the rule, and then smile in awe at Sir PTerry, who never did conform to anything)
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So of every 100 readers for Book 1, only 65 will make it to Book 4. There’s always going to be drawdown over time, and unless you get a series and fanbase that is lightning in a bottle with very high readthrough and large draw on the front or at multiple entry points, there’s always going to be a point in a series where it’s going to no longer break even on the ROI.

This is why really good plotters will build in multiple, staggered natural stopping points in a series. If demand is strong, more arcs are braided in, so it keeps going strong. If not, it wraps up and readers are satisfied. (Or if the author is done for other reasons, she can gracefully exit and leave readers happy. )
Those of us who are pantsers? We’ll find a way, but it might take two books to do it right.

(…Or if you’re Robert Jordan, 3 books by Brandon Sanderson to wrap up all your dangling plot threads. Try not to follow that example of a best-selling author, though, because there is a distinct shortage of extra Brandon Sandersons in this world. )

This is also why, with longer series, they’re often broken down into smaller sub-series. If the author and publisher doesn’t do it, the fans will often do it for them, in suggested reading order lists.

For example, you will find far more people who recommend you start Terry Prachett’s Discworld by starting with the City Watch books (Guards! Guards! et al) or the witches (Equal Rites et al.) than going back to his very rough and raw beginning before the world and tone of the series gelled, and starting with The Colour of Magic.

These multiple entry points draw new fans in where there is a natural starting point other than Book 1, giving them a plot arc and characters they like and follow through adventures.

2.) Advertising on series can be far more profitable than stand-alones, because you can treat book 1 as a loss-leader and recoup on books 2-4.

The first time we got a BookBub Featured Book of the Day for one of Peter’s books, he was quite disappointed at the initial numbers (Bookbub had only been around for maybe a year and a half at the time, and the knowledge base you see today was being built the hard way, back then. We’d discounted to 99 cents, so only 35 cent royalty (less the transmission fee), and the bookbub cost $300. (This was roughly a decade ago. It’s grown, and prices gone up since then.)

At first glance, we barely covered the cost of the ad with sales of Take the Star Road. Made, like, $15 on it. But we had 3 books in the series at the time… and the follow-on sales were awesome, as people read through.

When Peter gets the 6th one out, G-d willing and his health continues, then I’ll start lining up for another Bookbub, because the sell-through across 6 books will do very nice things toward paying medical bills.

(By the way, each promo site has a fixed pool of readers with a slow turnover, and it is very possible to saturate the market. This is why most places won’t let you promo the same book / same series more than once a year.

The same holds true of conventions – unless you have high turnover in attendees, soon or later you will saturate the market. The timeline depends on your visibility, the reach of your marketing, the size of the convention, and the number of people there who may like your specific stuff as opposed to what they came there for.)

Oooft. That was a lot; no wonder I didn’t get it out of my head and into the last post before bed. Any questions?