Monday 25 November 2013

Amazon anomalies!

Available on Kindle next week.
Amazon sales are a mystery to me and to many other writers. I think we all agree that free promotion is no longer working, certainly the algorithm Amazon uses no longer influences sales ranking.
They have replaced it with a promotion which certainly increased sales on my Regency Boxset Two and I'm going to try it again with another book in the middle of December. The good thing about this new promotion idea is you still get 70% royalties and the book is never free, just reduced.
Another writer friend told me that when her sales fall away she puts the price of the books up rather than reducing it. This might sound an extraordinary thing to do, but her take on this is that people are quite prepared to pay £1.99 for a book they really want to read. She is assuming, correctly I think, that after a few months only people who really want to buy the book are still looking at it.
I have had all my Regency titles priced under a pound whether they were short  (30,000 words) longer novellas (50,000 words) or full-length books of 70,000+. I have now increased the price of all full-length books to £1.99 and unbelievably I am selling more at that price then I was at the lower price.
Is this because some people think books priced below a pound can't be very good? Whatever the reason, I'm absolutely delighted to have made the correct decision for once and in future none of my full length books will be less than £1.99.
I also put up the price of three of my box sets – the fourth contains three short novellas and I left this at £1.99. This has not proved as successful an experiment and  I'm pretty sure I'm not selling as many as I was before. If this particular change doesn't work it's incredibly simple to reduce the price to what it was previously.

I have included the cover for my next novella, the second in my lords and ladies series, "Lady Charlotte Deception".This should be available on Kindle at the weekend.

Fenella J Miller

4 comments:

  1. I recently raised my prices and noticed a spike in sales, too. Like you said, if it doesn't work we can always lower them again:)

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  2. Tory, I wonder how many others have found the same thing. Mayb e this is the new promotional tool? :)

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  3. Amazon, and other, sales are a mystery to me too, Fenella. I think your back catalogue must help here, surely? With only 2 historical novels out and being a recent author, I can't offer insights. Sadly, a pirate site brought to my publisher's attention is selling comparative shed loads. It's a bit of a jungle...Anne Stenhouse

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  4. Anne, how annoying! I expect this is hapenening to me but I never check the pirate sites so remian in blissful ignorance.

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