Thursday, December 20, 2018

Indie Publishing - Part 3: Measuring Success

When I began to scour the fantasy publishing market for examples that I might learn from as an independent author, I subdivided the ones that I came across into three primary categories:

  • The established authors, who published through a traditional, print publishing house but who also made a significant number of sales through eBooks;
  • The dedicated indie authors who have been successful in their genres, selling hundreds or even thousands of books; and
  • The indie authors who have been unsuccessful - and who therefore carry with them a certain warning regarding things not to do.


The other tool that I had at my disposal, has been the emergence of Amazon as the world's leading online retailer for books - electronic or otherwise. Not only is Amazon the leading online retailer, providing a platform for indie and establishment authors alike, but they also provide a variety of tools that helps authors (and the public) to gauge which books and which medium is in fact selling.

The process that I adopted, was to select one or two books from each of the above three categories, which had recently been released, so that I could track what strategies were exercised (and which strategies worked best) for introducing a new book into the marketplace. For each title in question, I tracked the month-by-month pricing, ranking, number of reviews, and how many stars each book had earned (on average) from those reviews. I also reviewed my overall impression of each book, in terms of writing style, likely audience, and any online marketing tips that I could identify.

I will share some of my observations here, beginning with my next post.

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