Desperate Action
I’ve been watching the sales numbers on Desperate Action. I was planning to let it ride at 99 cents until the end of February, but the sales have flat-lined. Amazon Ads are not performing well (as in, no sales at all). I don’t want to run a for-sale Ad on Facebook for that long because it’ll just chew up money. So, I’m going to keep it at 99 cents until Friday, February 10th, then put it up to the full price. Anyone that has been to this site already knows it’s 99 cents and probably purchased the book by now (if you’re still sitting on the fence, then this is your fair warning). I set up a Facebook Ad to spend about $20 a day with it limited to run until Friday. I might up the daily limit if it spends out. We’ll see what happens.
I’ve been going back and forth for the past week over what to do. I thought that maybe I’ll wait until the last week of February before putting up a Facebook Ad, but why sit around with zero sales for almost two weeks, then put up an Ad? I did the math on doing a Facebook Ad for three weeks straight. That would sell a lot of books. At a loss that I can’t afford right now. So I settled on putting up a one-week Ad, then going full price. That way I can set up a Facebook Ad for the full-price book after that and see how it performs. If the click-to-sale ratio is low enough, it might be profitable on its own. That would be nice. Otherwise, If it loses money, then I’ll turn off Ads until I have the second book completed.
The reviews are great, so I think the book will perform, but who knows for sure? I suspect that once I have four or more books completed, the series will become a profitable endeavor. That would be nice. The Demons should be out, which means I’ll be analyzing the viability of that series. While that’s going on I’ll be back to focusing on this series.
Escape From the Abyss Series
The Demons, the first of this series is over 84k words completed. I should be completed with the rough draft by early March. Then there will be a lot of cleanup work on this book. I have so many notes about things I need to add to the story to make it complete and whole. The first book is a major send-off for the series. It gets all the threads rolling and leaves a lot of stuff unresolved at the end. I’m not going to leave the book with a giant cliffhanger like the protagonist is hanging onto a cliff by his fingernails, but there will be so many unanswered questions that will require one or two more books (minimum) to tie it off. The series will be at least 10 books long, maybe 20. I should get a good gauge of how long it’ll be after I write the second book.
In addition to so many books in the series, I want to keep the page count high. That means that I have to build a lot of characters (some that I can bump off later in the series). This is a very ambitious project, but I have no worries about completing it. Hopefully, it’ll be popular enough to generate a fan base. Otherwise, if it tanks, then I’ll just turn it into a trilogy and call it quits. If both The Traveler and Escape from the Abyss series tank, well… I’ll just move on to a new series. I seriously doubt it’ll be that bad (I’m just bracing myself for a catastrophe). My gut tells me that they’ll both be really popular and I’ll end up with two different groups of fans that are demanding I get that next book out. Then I’ll have to flip back and forth between two series. Such a tragic problem to have.
The ultimate result would be for both series to build enough books and fans to earn me a full-time income. I don’t expect that for some time (like a few years). But, crazier things have happened.