Sevenfold Ad

I talk a fair bit about advertising, and so I thought I would use some actual numbers to prove some things I’ve been talking about. Practice what I preach, so to speak.

Namely, 1.) That having a free first book in series helps with sales, 2.) it is possible to profitably advertise a long series, and 3.) you really shouldn’t advertise until you have a long series or a lot of books.

For the experiment, I decided to use SEVENFOLD SWORD. It fit several useful criteria for the experiment. First, it’s one of my older series. I started writing it in 2017, and finished it in 2019. Second, it’s twelve books long, so there was room for a lot of read-through that would hopefully pay for the ads. Third, advertising it would have some incidental benefits – the entire series is in audio, so ads might increase audiobook sales, and it might also lead to increased sales for DRAGONTIARNA, the sequel series to SEVENFOLD SWORD. It was also helpful that I didn’t advertise it in February and hadn’t advertised it for several months before that. So if I started advertising it on March 1st, I could compare the results with February without any major outside factors skewing the results.

I should also note that I only advertised on Amazon, and for the sake of this experiment, I only tracked the numbers on Amazon, even though the SEVENFOLD SWORD books are available on all platforms. I’ve found that I get the best results advertising for Amazon, Apple, and Google, though it’s less useful to advertise to Apple because the recent privacy changes in iOS 14 make all manner of targeted ads to iPads and iPhones less effective, and (obviously) Apple readers do most of their reading on Apple devices.

Let’s move on to results.

In February, before I started advertising, the SEVENFOLD SWORD series sold 296 copies on Amazon. I think this demonstrates my first point above, that just having a free book can help sell a long series. SEVENFOLD SWORD: CHAMPION has been free since March 2020, and that helps drive sales.

Now on to March and advertising. I did some advertising on Facebook, and some on Bookbub as well. It had good results. For every $1 of ad money I spent, I got back $2.95, which is pretty good. Additionally, the total units increased, with 482 copies sold on Amazon during the month of March. So that is an increase of 61% in terms of copies sold.

But, you might ask, what about the net profit? I sold more copies, but I spent more on advertising. Was the increased gross profit for March minus the cost of the ads actually less money than I made in February without advertising at all?

It was not. I am pleased to report that net profit for SEVENFOLD SWORD on Amazon was $70 higher in March than in February, even with the costs of the ads included. Now, an additional $70 might not seem like all that much, but it’s still an increase, and there’s an additional benefit to it. Because of my business structure, advertising is a deductible business expenses, so that helps significantly with the tax bill at the end of the year. If you’ve even been involved in the accounting with a small or mid-sized business, you know that deductible business expenses are absolutely vital. (I should point out that I am neither a CPA nor a financial planner, and if you want tax advice, you should hire an accountant familiar with the tax laws of your nation, state/province, and municipal region.)

Additionally, there were likely other benefits that are difficult to quantify. Readers who enjoyed SEVENFOLD SWORD might go on to read some of my other series. I saw a slight increase in newsletter subscribers, which means more readers to read my future books.

However, it would have been nearly impossible to turn a profit without a long series. The so-called “long tail” is where the profit is, and so I think this shows that it’s a much better idea to advertise a long series instead of a single book.

Finally, there’s something else to consider. It’s an axiom in business that it’s easier to sell to existing customers than it is to acquire new customers. The related adage for self-publishing is that it’s easier to sell new books to your existing readers than it is to sell old books to new readers.

This was proven true in March, because DRAGONSKULL: BLADE OF THE ELVES, my new book, brought in 3.69 times as much money as the entire SEVENFOLD SWORD series. Additionally, DRAGONSKULL is now three books long, and BLADE OF THE ELVES had a halo effect for the first two books. The three DRAGONSKULL books combined brought in 6.75 times as much as the entire SEVENFOLD SWORD series in March.

Among writers, a common saying is Would I Be Better Off Writing? The idea is that your time is best spent writing new material, and that should be the priority. I think that my results for March show this to be largely the case.

However, there is still clearly value in advertising old books. So, on balance, I think it’s best for the focus to be on writing new material…but it’s still a good idea to spare a thought towards advertising your old books.

-JM