By the way…

On October 23, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

…Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 is free today, if you haven’t taken advantage of one of those yet.

September blogwanking: #SilerSaturday edition

On October 5, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking1 Comment

SPREADSHEET OF DOOOOOM!

Assuming you bothered to click, you’ll notice quickly that my nobody-wants-my-books trend of August has come to a sudden and abrupt halt. In case you don’t remember, I made all three of my books exclusive to Amazon this month, and have been fiddling around with free days. The result: a whopping 553 downloads in September, along with four pre-orders for Searching for Malumba.

The interesting thing: You can see, easily, where the Saturday downloads were. You can also see that this month had a lot of zero-sale days. What also happened, though, was a lot of sales triggered by the free downloads, which was exactly what I was hoping would happen. In particular, it appears (based on a single data point, mind you) that making The Sanctum of the Sphere free pushes people to buy The Benevolence Archives. September is going to actually be a pretty good money month for Amazon, especially for a month with no book launch in it. It’s just that all of the days I had sales have been concentrated into weekends.

I’m also starting to think that promotional efforts on my end don’t matter a whole lot. It seems like how busy is Amazon today? is the single most important variable on whether a book does well, and that’s not something I can control very well. It is, however, something I can learn to predict. I’ll be doing a free promo for one of my books this week, and I’m not going to mention it at all other than to state that it won’t be on Saturday, just to see what my numbers do.

I’m also modifying my spreadsheet a bit next month so I can account for paid sales vs. free downloads from Amazon. I’m hoping the sales are up in general, and having Malumba launch this month will help a bit; I’d like to see a lot less red in the ledger next time around. But as for right now I’m feeling pretty good about how the month went.

(Also: respectable KENP reads. Somebody’s reading my books out there– I had a 600-page day last week. Cool!)

#SilerSaturday: SKYLIGHTS again!

On October 3, 2015October 2, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

Hoping to capitalize a bit on the (hopefully) runaway success of a certain Mars-themed movie, we’re making SKYLIGHTS free again, today and tomorrow! I promise to be a bit less noisy around here about it, because I figure a lot of the people who see the blog have had plenty of chances to download it, but feel free to spread the word however you like.

August 15, 2022: the Tycho, the most advanced interplanetary craft ever designed by the human race, launches from Earth on an expedition to Mars. The Tycho carries four passengers, soon to be the most famous people in human history.

February 19, 2023: The Tycho loses all communication with Earth while orbiting Mars. After weeks of determined attempts to reestablish contact, the Tycho is declared lost.

2027: Journalist Gabriel Southern receives a message from a mysterious caller: “Mars.” Ezekiel ben Zahav isn’t talking, but he wants Southern to accompany him for something– and he’s dangling enough money under his nose to make any amount of hardship worth it.

SKYLIGHTS is the story of the second human expedition to Mars. Their mission: to find out what happened to the first.

Not quite dancing in the streets yet…

On September 26, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

…but we’re getting there. The Sanctum of the Sphere is still free at Amazon until late tonight! Download it while you still can!

Here we go here we go here we go it’s #SILERSATURDAY!

On September 26, 2015September 25, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing5 Comments

What’s the free book this week? THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE, the novel-length sequel to THE BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES! This book has never been free before! Check it out!

“Go rob that train.” Nice, normal. An everyday heist.

But nothing is ever normal for Brazel, Grond and Rhundi.

A simple act of motorized larceny quickly explodes into a galaxy-spanning adventure for the two thieves. Blade-wielding elves, a fast-moving global war, a secret outlaw space city, incomprehensible insectoids and one impossibly lucky human are just the start of their problems. And that’s before they learn that someone from Grond’s past has gotten the Benevolence involved…

What is happening on the ogrespace moon Khkk?

Who are the Noble Opposition?

And what is the secret of THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE?

#10!

On September 19, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing2 Comments

I never really know how seriously to take sales ranks in subgenres, but top 10 is cool. MOAR!

It’s #SilerSaturday again! SKYLIGHTS free today!

On September 19, 2015September 18, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

My Mars novel Skylights is free all day today! Go download it!

I suspect that this one’s subgenres will be a trifle harder to crack than Benevolence Archives’ were, but this book has also never been free, so presumably I’ll get more people from my social networks downloading it. We’ll see.

Saleswanking the first #SilerSaturday

On September 14, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing4 Comments

tl 51X7vJ8S0SL._SX373_BO1,204,203,200_ ;dr version: That didn’t go poorly at all.

Slightly longer tl;dr version: Best free day in a while, followed by the best sales day in, also, a while.

Longer version, with numbers: 49 free downloads on the first day, two of which were not through Amazon for various reasons. 5 free downloads on the second day, because Amazon never actually keeps these things to a single calendar day and I’m not sure what time zone they’re actually on anyway. Seven sales the second day, all of Benevolence Archives, and one new five-star review. Also, I had my thousandth book download of the year.

All of that’s good.

We topped out at #4 in subgenre:

There was one more update where we were at #28 in Space Opera and maybe the 4100s somewhere overall, but the best ranking didn’t move from this. The interesting thing: I’ve been at fourth place in Anthologies and Short Stories before, during my birthday free day in 2014. And that day it took a hundred downloads to reach #4 instead of the probably low 40s that it took this time. Conveniently, July 5th 2014 was also a Saturday, so I’m not comparing across days of the week. I ended up with exactly 200 downloads that day with more or less exactly the same amount and style of promotion for the free day– a couple of blog posts and tweeting about it once an hour or so, and it got me four times the downloads for the same amount of trouble.

My reach on social media, incidentally, is way longer now than it was back then. What does this tell me? It tells me that Amazon is a lot busier in July than it is in September. This fits with previous anecdotal evidence, but it’s nice to have some confirmation.

What I’ll be looking for this week: I’m crossing my fingers to see if I get some movement from The Sanctum of the Sphere, now that 40 more people have Benevolence Archives. A sale or two on Skylights would be nice too but it’s not a sequel so I wouldn’t necessarily expect it. I was kind of hoping to get a Searching for Malumba preorder or two, too, but it didn’t happen.

Next weekend, Skylights, which has never been free before. It’ll be real interesting to see how it does.