It has been almost a week since I published Stolen Property and I’ve been watching the number on a daily basis. It’s still too early to tell, but I have some data to work with. The number of KU pages read for Stolen Property sits stubbornly at zero. EBook and paperback are also at zero. I’m sure, eventually, someone will pick it up and read it. There are active KU page reads on The Nav Computer yesterday and today. I suspect if someone made it to the third book, they’d probably read the fourth one.
Decisions
Now I’m at a crossroads. I’ve analyzed the problem and I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. I’m sure all the people who have read the books can agree with my assessment. Michelle and I discussed this series at length and we agree that the first book lacks enough of a punch. The data tells more than that though because the number of impressions is low. That means that the people that Amazon is showing the book to are a smaller crowd. The main sub-category is Action/Adventure. This might not be a large group under SciFi. I should have spent more time with KDP Rocket to determine if it was a good category to write a book under.
Anyway, the second issue is that the first book isn’t powerful enough to hook people into the series. Since it’s a chronicle, there’s no “large story” arc. I was hoping that an anthology could be read in any order and one book wouldn’t sink the whole series, but that’s now how it worked out. The click-through is at 0.0025. In other words, I have to get almost 400 impressions before someone clicks on the book. Almost all the purchases are through KU. I’m OK with that. KU pays pretty good when there are a lot of pages to read. This would happen if the read-through was good and I had a lot of books. When I look at the read-through rate from book 1 to book 2 is 50%. Even that would be OK if I could scale up. Then the read-through from books 2 to 3 is 41%. That tells me that very few get through Dangerous Cargo. I think the story is good, but it really didn’t pop like I wanted it to. Especially after I completed The Nav Computer, which I think was a more gripping story. Stolen Property is intense as well, but it’s at the back end of the chain of books.
So, this is a learning experience. Make sure the first book ends with a bang. Something very powerful and leaves a large story arc that hooks people in. Another thing to watch out for is a weak story in the middle of a series. That could cause the read-through to drop off and kill future books added to a series. The ultimate is to have an overall story arc that can be sustained over a long series of books that really pop.
If you’re reading this and interested in reading the Daphne series but are suddenly turned off, start with The Nav Computer and see what you think of the last two books.
Can I recover?
The next thing I think about is: what should I do about it? I thought about several scenarios. I could de-list the whole series, then repost them without the first two books. I could just post the two first books as free give-aways and advertise them as “before the series” type of books.
I could de-list the series and hold onto them for a year. Then fix the first two stories and re-release them as revision 2. I’m not too keen on that. The series might still end up as a flop which would mean that I would sink twice as much time into a book series that may never work out.
What’s the Plan?
OK, so one of the things I did already is I switched my focus from the Daphne series to the Escape from the Abyss series. The rough draft for the first book of that series is already over 48k in length. The rough draft is almost half done. This book is going to be a beast to edit, so I’m not even sure when it’ll be ready. Maybe December. I also have to get a cover for it.
I still have the cover coming for the fifth book of the Daphne series called Supercomputer. My cover artist said it should be ready next week. There’s no rush, but I’m going to buy it anyway. I have 3,100 words into the rough draft of that book and I anticipate it coming out to 50k or so. Completing this book will take a back seat unless the Daphne series suddenly perks up. After all, the lackluster sales could be due to other factors, like people are not reading books right now due to vacations and summer activities. Maybe Amazon hasn’t stumbled onto an audience that is interested in the series. Or any other factors that I can’t think of.
Anyway. My plan now is to lower the priority of Supercomputer until I publish the first book of Escape from the Abyss (whatever that book will be named). When I publish that book, I’ll analyze the data on it to determine if that will become the series that it is meant to be. In my mind, it has so much potential, yet there is always the possibility of it being a flop.
Here’s my production from the past week:
- Mon Aug 8: 1,756 Supercomputer
- Tue Aug 9: 0
- Wed Aug 10: 1,511 Abyss
- Thu Aug 11: 855 Abyss
- Fri Aug 12 3,545 Abyss
- Sat Aug 13 4,040 Abyss