The new author scenario

Book launch day arrives. The new author is beside themselves with excitement, but they probably don’t know that their expectations aren’t realistic. Self-published authors will be able to see their online sales day by day but traditionally published will often have to wait three months to see the first figures. Once the sales start, they hope for reviews (5-star ones, of course), and nowadays we also want to build our newsletter subscribers and often imagine a good steady flow of new fans (not being too greedy, we might hope for 50/week).

The reality is more likely to be – few sales, few reviews, few subscribers.

How is it that our expectations are so high, and yet the reality is totally different? One reason is that we only read about the grand successes, with runaway debut bestsellers. Another reason is that we don’t have a realistic view of the challenges that face our book.

In, 2011, when one of my non-fiction books had been accepted by a medium-sized Christian publisher, I was sent a copy of the 2010 Ten Awful Truths about Publishing. My publisher was trying to help me adjust my expectations. They wanted me to face reality and not live in fantasy-land. Some of the facts really stood out to me. In 2009, over 1 million new titles were published in the US which was four times the figures for 2005. It would be far higher now. Most non-fiction books only sell 3000 copies in a lifetime and average about 250/year. Only 1% of books will ever be stocked in bookshops … It was a rude awakening but I was later grateful for this shock readjustment of my expectations. It also meant that when Telling the Gospel Through Story exceeded expectations, it was a lovely surprise.

The reality is that most authors have a slow build (sometimes, very slow) career. We need to adjust our goals, look at our motivations, and redefine success. Our goal must then become to keep writing excellent books and building year by year. When I look at authors whose goal is to hit six figures/year, I need to look at my reality. My first goal was to break even with costs and income (it’s taken me more than three years to reach this goal).

Another of the reasons we have such unrealistic expectations is that few authors publish their statistics. I greatly appreciate that Joanna Penn (who writes fiction and non-fiction) publishes an annual report. It’s not of her sales figures but rather the percentages of sales through different distributors and in different formats. It is worth going back to her earliest report in 2012  and comparing them year by year. She makes many good points about setting sales goals … and not comparing with others …

I thought it would be useful for me to share some of my experience as someone who had two traditionally published non-fiction books and now have self-published four novels and two more non-fiction books since  2017.

Sales – realistic expectations

This is where there will likely be a vast difference between traditionally published and self-published authors. For traditionally published you have a publishing house behind you and if they’ve printed 2000 or 4000 books, then they are strongly motivated to sell them. They are far less likely to push ebooks.

In contrast, a self-published author starts more slowly and early sales will more likely be ebooks.

Realistic sales goals

How many books is it ‘normal’ to sell each month if you only have a single book released? We might dream of selling ten or one hundred a day but it is more realistic to initially aim for 10-20/month!

I started publishing fiction in October 2017 and have published another in the series each July thereafter. I have a good read through with my series and so if I can maintain even 21 sales/month of the first, the others are about 14 each. My goal is to consistently increase that amount.

In the first year, I deliberately did not do anything to increase sales because I wanted to have a good baseline. Then I started adding some small giveaways (first on my own and later with a few other authors. Now I’m doing giveaways with 10-11 other authors).

The good news is that if you keep writing good books with genre-appropriate covers then your sales should increase over time.

Ways to increase sales:-

• Write in series so that if people like the first in series they’re more likely to keep reading.
• Many authors put the first in series as ‘free’ or much cheaper than others (sometimes cheaper + free to subscribers). Their hope is for read-through sales to book 2 -> X
• Advertising – taking the time to learn how to advertise. I waited until I had three books in a series released and was writing book 4.
• Increasing subscribers/increasing networks/cross-promoting

Reviews – realistic expectations

Yet another area we often have high (and wrong) expectations about. We’d love to think that one sale = 1 review but many people estimate it is closer to 1 in 200 or even as few as 1 in 500! I review nearly everything I read because I know how important each and every review is to an author.

Reasons why people don’t review:

• They don’t realize how important it is. The more reviews the better.
• Don’t know how to write a review.
• They think a star rating = a review
• Don’t want to sign-up for the review site, even if it is free (since it is yet another password to remember)
• They don’t review the minute they’ve finished the book and so they forget or it drifts down the to-do list
• They don’t meet the $50/year spend requirement on Amazon (this was put in place to stop fraudulant reviews but strongly disadvantages non-US authors as other countries tend to buy less from Amazon).
• They’re embarrassed of their written English. (Hint: you can leave a review in any language)
• They’re not tech-savvy.

With such a huge list of obstacles, is it any wonder that reviews are scarce?

Ways to increase reviews:-

• Set up an advanced readers group. Their job is to read the ebook and review. Mine also let me know of any last typos … I use google forms to allow people to apply and ask questions about which of my work they have read and reviewed and where. I don’t accept everyone as there are always people wanting free books who have no intention of fulfilling their responsibilities. If they don’t review, I remind them (usually twice) and if they still don’t review, I blacklist them.
• In the back matter of each book, put a request for reviews and an explanation of how important they are.
• Request reviews on your Facebook author page with a heading like “Help X book reach 100 reviews on Goodreads’.
• If you sell print copies of your books, remind people of the importance of reviews as you make the sale.
• Assure people that they don’t have to give good reviews, that any review is helpful (but if you’re giving a 1-3 star rating, please, please, please tell the author why. It is so frustrating not to be able to work on any issues because we don’t know what they are).
• Request reviews in newsletters and sometimes include a ‘how-to’ video link for a specific place like Goodreads. Also, list the places where reviews are needed and give subscribers the direct link. Let people know they can copy and paste the one review for that book across to multiple sites.

Newsletter subscribers – realistic expectations

Most authors know that having an author newsletter is recommended ‘best’ practice. The main reason is that it is the one area that we have direct access to our readers and a newsletter gives us the opportunity to move readers from slightly interested to become faithful fans.

Some new authors sheepishly admit they only have 10-40 subscriber lists but the reality is that most of us started out small like that. It has taken me over four years to grow my list from 0 to 1300.

The best ways to grow the number of subscribers:-

• Cross-promotions with other authors similar in some way to yourself – same genre, same country of origin (i.e. Australian Christian authors) … the closer you can get to other comparable authors in your genre, usually the more likely the subscribers are to remain on your list. People unsubscribing is discouraging but it is best to think of them as ‘not being my ideal readers anyway.’ You want real fans on your list who will open all your letters, write to you, and buy and review your books.
• Joining cross-promotions with Book Funnel (the closer to your genre the better) or BookSweeps (I’ve done this three times for gaining Bookbub followers and subscribers).

Networks with comparable authors

I’ve been working at this for five years and have finally reached the point where I know about ten comparable authors. Mine is a harder genre to find comparable (Christian women’s fiction – without strong romance). I’ve grown my networks by:-

• Reading books in my genre – and asking in big readers groups on Facebook for ‘books similar to X, Y, Z’.
• Reviewing books in my genre
• Eventually writing notes of thanks to various authors
• Inviting them to participate in cross-promotions (they can only say ‘No’ but they might say ‘Yes’).
• Endorsing good books in my genre online and putting some of my favourites in my newsletter and letting the author know I’m doing so.

Now my networks are strong enough that when I ask authors to join cross-promotions, many are willing to say “Yes.”

Authors – what were some of your false expectations? What have you found helpful to increase sales, reviews, and subscribers?

Readers – what did you learn from this article? What could you do to help your favorite author?

** This article first appeared on the International Christian Fiction Writers blog on 19 November 2020.