The question is: where are the fans?
The truth of the matter is that in every collection of individuals,
there is one or two people who are your devoted fans. In every 400
people you might find one fan, one person that likes your work and
would like to read more. 200 people just are not interested in what
you write. Your genre is just not what they are looking for. 299
people like your genre but aren't involved with your characters or
the cover of your book, or the way it reads off the synopsis on the
back. Your genre could be splintered and your book too abstract, not
fitting in any of the groups.
What is lost to me is where do you find
the pools of people who read to drill down into and find your one or
two fans? Do you find them on Facebook? On Twitter? On Goodreads? On
Amazon's pages or forums? Where could they be? That's what I am
wondering. I am now searching for another means to find these vast
wells of readers and to connect with them. I'm looking over analytics
and sales reports and things are beginning to change my impression of
what is important and what is not.
In a 2013 survey via Survey Monkey
(http://e-bookformattingfairies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-readers-sound-off-how-they-read.html)
nearly 80 percent of book buyers purchased their books from Amazon.
Far distant from them were 23 percent purchasing their books from
Barnes and Noble and at 13 percent came iBookstore/Apple.With my
e-book sales stats, I find that Amazon Kindle downloads are also far
in the lead. Ibookstore and Barnes and Noble are in second place
followed by Kobo close behind. A lot of people are keying into my
books through Amazon, but there is still a number who are distributed
all over the online retailer sphere. I have much of my attention on
Amazon and I do what I can to push those tools available there, but I
don't do it much on the other retailer sites. I need to rethink this
and work on those. I need to beef up their pull by putting more
information on them about the book and me. I need to build up the
contact information there and personalize it more so that my fans can
feel that I care and make that move to purchase the book. This could
problematic and why the other retailers are dragging behind Amazon.
I am very susceptible to surveys, they
help me make certain decisions as to what to do. I was looking into
purchasing a large number of my books to take to my local bookstores
and sell them on consignment. I thought that I may be missing out on
a number of fans this way. Every author wants to see their book on a
bookshelf in a bookstore, but in the same survey nearly 58 percent of
readers have not visited a brick and mortar bookstore in the last
year or have done so twice in the last year. So it seems clear to me
that I'm not missing out on reaching fans in this direction. I think
I've saved myself the heartache of having boxes of my books in my
small apartment, gathering dust because the local bookstores could
not move them.
The good news for indie-publishers is
that those surveyed stated that sixty-four percent pay “no
attention”, or 'it doesn't matter” to them as to who the book
publisher is. I have to admit, this is somewhat uplifting to me
because I have many author friends who have gone out of their way to
court small publishers to publish their work, and they walk around
like peacocks when they do. The amazing thing is that they give so
much of their royalties over to these publishers. They seem to have
no clue about percentages of profits and how much they could make on
their own, and they have to do the same marketing as I do. The small
publishers don't do any for them. There is no real benefit if some
sixty-four percent of the readers don't care that they went through
the hassle and the price gouging of a small publisher.
I thought that publishing an author
newsletter would be a good idea, but I have only a handful of people
in my address database, and when I say a handful, I mean four or
five, to send newsletters to. The survey brought out that only
thirty-six percent of readers use author newsletters to get
information on their favorite author, and this does not include
discoverability. But it was something that I tried. I also looked
into buying mailing lists, and lord did I get an eye-full of
information on why one should NOT buy mailing lists. I am somewhat
confused as to the reluctance that most have against this, but I
understand their arguments and have cooled to the idea. There is much
that is negative about buying mailing lists, the main reason is that
it is not tailored to your book. These are largely just addresses
that are culled from anywhere and given to you. They may not be
readers, and may not be readers of your genre. The last thing that
they want to receive is a stupid email from a writer pushing his lame
book in their direction. They'd rather watch a television show. Also
many of these email addresses are not kept current and many of them
have expired, such as changed, closed, moved, whatever. And you pay
by the number of email addresses that they give you. So you can pay
for a hundred addresses and not get anything relevant that will turn
into finding fans.
But by my current calculations, if I
only get 1 out of 400 attempts, if I buy 400 email addresses, I can
at least expect one person to turn into a fan. But the question is:
do I want to pay hundreds of dollars for 1 fan with at best a $2.99
turn around in sales. There has to be a more economical way of
reaching the masses, a low cost way of sending a simple message to
hundreds of people at a reasonable cost. I thought that Facebook
would be that path, but that can become very expensive through an
incremental bloodletting.
I did a Facebook campaign, I started an
author website and the good news is that sixty-two percent of those
surveyed stated that they use Facebook to find information about
their favorite authors, and sixty-three percent used the author's
website. But this doesn't say anything about discoverability, which
is just how a reader 'finds' an author. Once a reader is interested
in you, they'll go to Facebook or your website to learn more about
you, but the truth is, this doesn't seem to be the way to find your
fans.
To drill the numbers down further, you
have only twenty-seven percent of people finding information about
their authors through Goodreads, and nineteen percent through
Twitter. The numbers are even more discouraging when the number drops
to eighteen percent for Retail Sites.
For discoverability numbers, they're
scattershot. Readers looking for their primary sources of
information, Facebook is at eighteen percent, Retail Sites at
seventeen percent, Goodreads at thirteen percent, author websites at
ten. So Facebook still seems to be the best way to introduce people
to your book, followed by Goodreads and then your website. Since a
Facebook campaign can be expensive if not done properly, a Goodreads
campaign followed by constantly beefing up your website might be the
way to go. This is the course that I'm taking in the 2014 year.
I'm searching for this new way to reach
the masses. Another way. Maybe another blog tour, or a campaign
somewhere, something. I'm like a shark in the water, moving about,
never stopping, never sleeping, eyes open, senses aware, searching
for the splashing in the water, the expanding blood slick on its
surface meaning wounded prey. I'm searching for the next avenue to
fans.
I'll find it.
Gregory
