Become a Successful Indie Author by Craig Martelle

Author:Craig Martelle [Martelle, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1942810156
Published: 2018-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

Serials and an 18-Day Release Schedule

Scott Moon and I undertook writing a space western in TV serial style. Our target was 30k words per book. I wrote the first book and it was only 17k words, but we are keeping it priced at $0.99, with all the rest priced at $2.99. Scott wrote most of the rest. (I wrote Books 6 and 9.) Book 2 was 23k words, and Books 3-5 and beyond were in the vicinity of 30k words. We started last September to build our kitty of readily available titles so there would be no hiccup in meeting our 18-day launch windows.

Our costs per title are $200, which includes cover and editing. My FB and AMS ad spend is about $2/day total.

We launched Book 1 on December 18th, with some NL swaps and a little AMS ad love, but low spend. We launched Book 2 on Jan 5, and Book 3 on Jan 23. (Part of our tagline is a new release every 18 days.) On Jan 23, we ran Book 1 for free.

Look at how the tail is increasing in size for both sales and page reads. This is a Space Western (Firefly meets Tombstone, although we put it in the space opera and alien contact categories). It's not a huge niche with a ready market, so we are developing that market. Many reviews call Book 1 a Short Story, and that's part of the message that we didn't manage. We call them all "books," which has no defined word count, and the average reader doesn't know what a novella is. The reviews are overwhelmingly positive, but length is part of the readers' concern, so we'll start managing that part in FB ads—so much story in a compact, quick-read package kind of thing.

There was a little hiccup going from 1 to 2 as the price also went from 99 cents to $2.99, even though subsequent volumes were longer. We did not attempt to work this message because it will play out over time, when we can tout ‘Book 1 in the bestselling Darklanding series is ONLY 99 cents’ for marketing).

Overall, this is a win as it is starting to sustain itself. Six weeks after launch, Book 1 continues to get 10-15 sales a day and over 1000 page reads. Are these numbers eye-popping? No, but we are having a lot of fun and the income is increasing with each new title. We also wanted a series that was pitchable to network TV, because, hey! Those bastards canceled Firefly and still haven't replaced it with something comparable...

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