Indie Author SnapShot: Book Length and Readability

There were a few extraneous pieces of data which I also explored in my one-day snapshot for indie author sales in the fantasy genre, which might bear repeating.

For full length novels (books with 200 pages or more), the length of the book had no apparent bearing on its sales success. Shorter novels or novellas (books with less than 200 pages), on the other hand, did tend to generate fewer sales.

This trend should not be surprising. Novellas are often used as promotional tools by authors and are usually priced accordingly. The market has only so much appetite for shorter works of this kind. With regard to full length novels, traditional publishers have often shied away from publishing longer works because of the added printing costs. For indie authors, most of whom will rely heavily on eBook sales, the printing costs for the paperback are a secondary concern. If the story needs to run a little longer, as fantasy books with their world building often do, there is no reason to shortchange the reader.

An assessment for the effect of readability, or "reading grade level", on sales was performed for a limited number of titles. The readability metric was calculated from a short sample of text, extracted from the first chapter of each title, for the first book in each series. A total of 55 books were evaluated in this fashion. The readability metric was averaged by an online algorithm, using a number of standard readability metrics. Most of these metrics measure sentence length (number of words per sentence), and word length (number of syllables or letters per word) to arrive at a "grade level" score.[1]

On average, book sales tended to peak around a readability grade level rating of 5.5, with a trend towards slightly fewer book sales either above or below this value. To place this trend into context, a similar reading sample from JRR Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring had a readability grade of 9.9, and a sample from Sarah J Maas' Throne of Glass came up with a readability grade of 7.0.

Books with higher reading levels (longer, more complex sentence structures) can obviously do well enough. But authors should consider their audience and invest the necessary time into editing their novels if they want their audience to embrace their work.


References

[1] "Check Readability." StoryToolz, Kydala Publishing, 2016, https://storytoolz.com/readability

Indie Author Snapshot: Why Ratings and Reviews Do or Don't Matter

Every indie author has probably been told that reviews drive book sales. That adding reviews to an Amazon title will prompt prospective buyers to purchase that title, and how Amazon's secret algorithm for where books place among their recommended products takes reviews into account.

I was therefore eager to see if I could find evidence for this trend in the individual book and author sales data which I collected from my one-day snapshot. Information was collected on the number of ratings, number of reviews, and ratings score for each title from both Amazon and Goodreads.

In general, there does appear to be an overall trend between the number of book ratings and book sales - but it's impossible to determine how much the ratings are driving sales and how much they are a product of those sales. The trend between book reviews and book sales was very similar, and there was little meaningful difference in this trend between Amazon and Goodreads - although there were usually more ratings and reviews for each book on Goodreads than on Amazon.

The relationship between the number of ratings and book sales becomes more revealing, however, when plotted as a frequency - taking into account the average number of days between the release of each review. There is a sharp shift in the slope of this trend for books which receive ratings more frequently than once every 15 days.

These trends, however, appear to be driven more by the popularity of the book than they are by the ability of additional reviews and ratings to generate more sales. There is no sharp shift in the sales potential when the book reaches ten reviews, or twenty, or any other arbitrary break-point.

This does not mean that reviews are unimportant. There are many promotional services, for example, which will not accept a book for consideration until it has exceeded some minimum number of reviews - often around ten. And there may very well be an element in Amazon's search algorithm which takes the quantity of reviews into account. But these effects are less pronounced than other influences might be on a book's success - such as the number of books which the author has in their portfolio, or the advertising strategy of the individual author. There is general agreement that reviews are an important component to an author's success. But they are not the only element, and they do not guarantee a novel's performance.

Similarly, there is no clear correlation between the rating of a book, on either Amazon or Goodreads, and the ability of that title to generate sales. Among the books examined, all of which had a rating of greater than 3.6, each book's rating appeared to have minimal effect on whether readers would be willing to purchase that title. In fact, the highest-grossing titles tended to have a slightly lower rating, a reflection of the broader audience which had reviewed and rated each book. As expected, the Goodreads rating was usually (although not always) lower than the Amazon rating. But the rating score still does not directly correlate with sales.

To understand why some books are more successful than others, we will have to look at other contributors.

Indie Author Snapshot: Number of Books in a Series

One of the questions I wanted to answer, when I pulled together my snapshot of indie fantasy authors, was whether there was a "sweet spot" in the number of books which should be included in the same series.

As most indie authors are aware, writing a series of books can be far more effective than writing standalone novels. A series makes it easy for fans of the first book to find the next book by the same author. Series drive read-through, which also makes advertising costs more effective: a single ad can promote an entire series of books, not just one.

Conversely, there's always the question of whether writing a lengthy series of books set in the same world or with the same characters will result in reader fatigue. Even if the next book is set in the same world - would it be better to include it as part of the original series, or might it not be better to begin a new, spin-off series? What is the optimum number of books to include in a single series? Three? Four? Eight?

To draw this comparison, it was necessary to normalize the earnings per book in each series, with the earnings for single, stand-alone novels by the same author. This needed to be done on a per-author basis, to filter out any differences in marketing strategy or sub-genre between the individual authors. Not all of the authors originally surveyed had stand-alone novels to normalize against. This therefore reduced the data set to a pool of 28 series from which to draw comparisons.

The results of this particular survey surprised me. It appears as if there is no practical limit as to how many books can be added to the same series - and yet continue to increase the net worth of each book in that series by a nearly constant factor. In other words, a series of 6 books will earn more on average than two series of 3 books each. This is true, even taking into account the previously mentioned trend between the number of books published and the earnings per book. Aligning the titles into a single series further drives up their marketability.

This was not an outcome I could have predicted, but one which definitely has implications for my own writing. I had planned out my own original series and story-arc to span four books in length, with opportunities for a couple of different spin-off series set in the same fantasy world. These results, however, suggest I would be better off including all of the spin-off novels under the same series label.

Indie Author Snapshot: The Impact of Adding More Books to an Author's Portfolio

For any indie author who hasn't done so already, there is an invaluable online resource on Facebook known as 20BooksTo50K (R). This indexed Facebook community includes advice and observations from a variety of indie authors, some of whom have become highly successful as self-published writers.

In one survey, members of this community were asked to comment on "that thing" which had made the biggest difference in their success as an indie author. Compiling these responses into categories, there were 101 individual responses to this question. Some respondents provided a list of several key elements which had contributed to their "turning point" as an author, while others cited only that "one thing" which most helped in their career as an author. Of these responses, the majority - over 54% - cited adding more book titles to their portfolio as the single most important element towards their success. The next most popular responses were learning how to do advertising and promotion (30%), and writing to genre (20%).[1]

This was therefore one of the first questions which I sought to explore when reviewing the results from my own, recent data snapshot across a sample of indie authors in the fantasy genre.

As mentioned in a previous post, I surveyed Amazon rankings for 259 titles, and 24 authors - as captured on a single day in June. To convert this snapshot into projected author earnings, I therefore had to convert the Amazon rankings into estimated daily sales, and from sales into revenue.

Fortunately, there is a handy online tool available from KindlePreneur which projects the estimated daily sales, based on the Amazon ranking for each eBook title.[2] Using an equation calibrated against this tool, it was possible to make an estimate for the annual gross income for each author, based on the snapshot in rankings from their respective portfolio of published titles.

A few notes are due for both the merits, and limitations of these projections. First, these are projections only. The estimates are based exclusively on projected eBook sales, and do not include contributions from paperback or audiobook sales - which are usually much smaller than eBook sales for most, but not all indie authors. The totals only reflect sales on Amazon - which is appropriate for the vast majority of the books surveyed. Most of the titles reviewed were Amazon exclusive (KDP Select) novels.

Earnings per sale were projected from Amazon's published rates (35% of the sale price for books less than $2.99, and 70% for books priced at $2.99 or over). These projections ignore the difference between the value of eBook sales, which are based on the price of the book, and KDP Unlimited sales, which are based on the number of pages read. It also ignores any Amazon sales in foreign markets.

Taken as a whole, however, the projections should provide a good sense for trends in author income.

The results from these projections are illustrated in the graph shown, on a logarithmic scale. As should be evident, having more books in an author's portfolio leads to higher author earnings. This relationship is very nonlinear, and nearly quadratic in nature.

A number of alternative regression fits were explored for modeling this trend. The relationship ultimately selected reflects a regression carried out in logarithmic space, with the lowest overall error.

The values projected from this data-match are slightly higher than similar results reported from a poll conducted by Written Word Media, which surveyed over one thousand authors, publishing in a variety of fiction and non-fiction genres.[3]

The results of that survey suggested that the median number of books per author, among those who grossed between $60,000 and $100,000 per year, came out to some 22 titles per author. The projections from the smaller snapshot presented here, would suggest that at 22 titles, the median fantasy author should gross $104,000 per year - slightly higher than the survey from Written Word Media. This would suggest that, on average, the smaller snapshot examined here either tends to overestimate the gross revenue from each novel, or that the authors who were selected might be somewhat biased in favor of better known or more successful writers.  Alternatively, it might also suggest that the fantasy genre tends to provide more sales per title, than other fiction or non-fiction categories.

The precise earning numbers from the projection illustrated above should therefore be taken with a grain of salt.  It's the trends which are most important.

Relationship between the size of an author's portfolio, and the average value of each title. Note that for ease of legibility, the upper portion of this graph has been truncated - omitting some of the higher-performing data points.

Per the regression generated, the average income across all of the books in an author's portfolio will tend to increase as more books are added. In other words, adding books to an author's resume drives more read-through - enhancing the value of the author's entire portfolio.

These projections suggest that the average increase in value for the books in an author's portfolio will follow a nearly linear relationship. Going from five books to ten books, for example, is projected to more than double the average expected earnings per book. But because such an author would now have ten books rather than five, that author's total earnings would increase by a factor of more than four.

The testimony provided in the earlier bar-chart from the authors of Facebook's 20BooksTo50K community, was therefore spot-on. Adding books to an author's backlog of published titles really is one of the most reliable, and powerful tools available towards becoming successful as an indie author.


References:

[1] "Jose's Post." 20BooksTo50K(R) Public Group, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/781495321956934?view=permalink&id=1034783269961470.

[2] Chesson, Dave. "Amazon Sales Rank Calculator." KindlePreneur, 9 Mar 2020. https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-kdp-sales-rank-calculator/.

[3] Wolman, Ricci. "Author Income: How to Make a Living From Your Writing." Written Word Media, 22 Oct 2019, https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/author-income-how-to-make-a-living-from-your-writing/.

Indie Author Snapshot: An Introduction

Indie authors have to shoulder the responsibilities not only of writing, but also as a publisher. This includes all promotional activities, as well as developing a longer term business strategy. It is a challenge which can be both exciting, and intimidating.

There are a number of resources which I have used to assess the market, and how best to promote my work as an indie author. These include:

• Advice from other indie authors (including from forums, websites, and books)
• Advice from promotional resources supporting indie authors
• Observations and profiles I've assembled from individual authors who have "made it" in the self-publishing world

As part of this effort, I recently completed a cross-market review of several indie authors in the fantasy genre, looking for trends and common attributes for success. I will be sharing my observations from this review in a series of upcoming blog posts.

The market survey included statistics collected from:

• 24 indie authors who have published in the fantasy genre
• Each author had anywhere from one to sixty books under their belt at the time the data was collected
• A total of 259 books were included in the study
• These books spanned a total of 59 different series

Data was compiled for each book in the study, to reflect a snapshot for each indie author's publications - as compiled on a single day in June. The data collected included:

• Amazon ranking for each eBook
• Amazon rating
• Number of Amazon ratings and reviews
• Goodreads rating
• Number of Goodreads ratings and reviews
• Original release date for each book
• "Print Length" for each eBook
• Price and formats available (eBook, paperback, hardcover or audiobook)

Plus other details about each novel (which I'll be discussing in coming days)

All of the authors reviewed had published at least one novel in the fantasy genre - falling into sub-genres ranging from urban fantasy, to sword and sorcery and high fantasy. For the purposes of this assessment, a few sub-genres were omitted - including grim dark or dark fantasy, as well as erotic fantasy.

Other fictional works attributed to each author were also included as part of the overall assessment for the breadth of each author's portfolio - although any non-fiction books were omitted. I also omitted books published under a different pseudonym.

In the coming blog posts, I will be reviewing the statistical findings from this miniature survey, and comparing them to those reported by others in the indie author community.

Review for Book 2 in "Diary of a Wannabe Writer"

It was great to see a review for Storm's Clouds, the second book in the Stormfall Chronicles, appearing on Anie's "Diary of a Wannabe Writer". To quote from her review:

"The world created is so imaginative, well set up and fleshed out. When I read I felt like I was right there with them."

Anie's review also marks the first review for Book 2 to appear directly on Amazon's UK website. So glad Anie enjoyed the novel:
https://diaryofawannabewriter.blogspot.com/2020/06/storms-clouds-by-j-w-golan.html

A Moment of National Reflection

I've been debating how best to respond during this period of national reflection, following the murder of George Floyd. Whether it was best to put my own thoughts down, or if I should highlight some of the voices of those most directly affected by the inequality which persists in our nation. I ultimately decided to do the latter.

Of the many commentaries and reflections I have read on this subject, the post appended below struck closest to home for me. As a father who also has to explain all that's right or wrong in this world to my own daughters, Pam's advice from her father reminded me of just how far we still have to go.

https://adultingwithpam.com/remember-who-the-true-enemy-is/