Indie Publishing - Part 4: Book Launches Compared

For illustrative purposes, I have selected one or two sample books from different categories, from among the multiple titles that I had been tracking over the past several months, to provide a comparison for the effectiveness of different release strategies. Again, the categories that I chose to divide the books into were:

• Established, traditional authors, who publish through a print publishing house;
• Established, successful indie authors with four or more titles to their credit; and
• New indie authors who have been less successful at breaking into the market.

I have left off the names of the authors or novels, sampling Amazon sales rankings and reviewer statistics at the beginning of each month. The trends that are depicted should therefore provide an indicator as to which book marketing strategies can lead to a successful book launch, and which do not. All of the books in question fall into the "fantasy fiction" genre.

The first chart compares the Amazon ranking for each novel - as sampled at one-month intervals. Since the sample was taken on an arbitrary date, there will be some volatility in the values, from books that might have had just sold another copy on that particular day. The overall trends, however, are informative.

The scale on the vertical axis is logarithmic. The difference in success between the mainstream, traditional author - with the name recognition and resources of a traditional publishing house behind them - and the indie authors is therefore significant. Nonetheless, the two established indie authors depicted here have been consistently making sales, month after month, something that the two new and aspiring indie authors were struggling to replicate. "New Indie Author 2" actually had zero sales to report during this period. So why did some of these authors succeed, while others failed to reach their intended audience?

The differences between the successful book launches - whether from the established indie authors or the mainstream, traditional author - and the less successful book launches from the new and aspiring indie authors can be broken down to a few key elements:

• The successful authors all had a strong social media presence, with their own blog, newsletter or webpage, their own Facebook page, and sometimes an account on Twitter as well. This was true for both the successful indie authors, and the mainstream, traditional author with a publishing house to help back them up. In each instance, this presence was part of their strategy for successfully reaching their intended audience.
• The successful books all featured beautiful cover art work, that included images of the main character or protagonist. In contrast, "New Indie Author 1" had a beautiful cover - but featuring a landscape rather than a persona that readers might identify with. "New Indie Author 2" didn't even have that going for them, with a drab cover design that failed to connect with readers.
• The successful book launches all featured aggressive promotional efforts early in their book launch. This was in the form of lower (sometimes free) pricing to generate early reader interest or reviews, give-aways, and sponsored ads. Only after each title had established itself did the respective author or publisher increase their price or dial-back their advertising presence.
• The successful books were all also well written and edited. I could say the same for the samples I read from "New Indie Author 1" as well. A well-written book is a pre-requisite for sustained success as an author, but it does not guarantee it.

The other statistics that I tracked tell a similar story. Comparing the number of book reviews accumulated by each title, it is obvious that the mainstream author, with a traditional publishing house behind them, was able to collect reviews at an accelerated rate.

For me, the more surprising thing was that the "Established Indie Author 1" did not generate a consistently higher Amazon ranking than "Established Indie Author 2", despite collecting reviews at an accelerated rate. Apparently, there were other elements that played a role in achieving a successful book launch - although having more reviews obviously helps.

Finally, as many of us would have expected, there is no correlation between the average rating or "stars" awarded by reviewers, and the ranking of an individual book. Any book is going to appeal to some readers, and not others, even if it is exceptionally well-written. Taken in total, the quantity of reviews is more valuable than how many five-star reviews a book collects - and even that can be an incomplete indicator of market performance.

Many of these trends should not be surprising to anyone that has followed the indie market for fiction. The strategies for a successful book release have been cited by a number of authors over the years - and my own comparisons only reaffirm those trends. The one thing that was surprising to me, however, was the comparison between printed and eBook sales. As an author who has already published a book through a traditional publishing house in a very different genre, my past experience suggested that printed book sales should out-pace eBook sales by a considerable margin. I actually had customers who purchased the eBook version of my previous book, because they could access it instantly, who told me that they later went back to buy the hardcover version because they wanted the physical book for their personal library. Again, this was for a very specific, non-fiction audience.

It was therefore eye-opening for me to discover that in the fantasy-fiction genre, eBook rankings for the same book will typically be 10 to 100 times higher than the Amazon rankings for the printed edition. True, there are more paperback or hardcover books listed by Amazon than there are eBooks - but in my experience this translates into only a 2X or 3X difference between the two rankings, not one or two orders of magnitude difference. In other words, for this audience, even for an established author with a consistent following, the vast majority of online sales will be electronic, not printed.

It was this final revelation, in part, that convinced me to tackle my next publishing challenge as an indie author. For this genre, unless you're a "mega-star" of the publishing industry, eBook sales will predominate over printed book sales, throughout all online commerce.