It’s been about a month since I released my first romance novel. Although it didn’t sell as well as I anticipated, I still learned a lot that will improve my next few releases. My primary takeaway can be summed up by the following heading…
Write to Market
Write to market. Write to market. Write to market.
The popularity of the this book’s niche is waning (i.e. it’s not charting high right now), and the story itself isn’t exactly what readers would expect in from niche anyway.
It’s more of a romantic suspense than it is the niche romance. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but it made this book more difficult to market.
The blurb was a complete headache to write. I wrote at least ten different versions because I wasn’t sure which direction to take. Romantic suspense or niche romance. Blend of both?
I chose one that was a blend of both, leaning more towards the niche romance. I’m not sure whether it’s the best one, but there seems to be a slightly better sell-through from the few AMS ads I ran.
The cover is comparable to others within the genre, but the title isn’t. It isn’t Fake Fianceé, Mr. Fiancé, or Bad Boy XYZ–titles that clearly state what trope you should expect from book. The title is more in line with a romantic suspense, a darkish one too, while the blurb leans more toward niche romance with elements of suspense.
The prospective reader is being pulled in a multiple directions and I think they’re just skipping it.
I’ve accepted it because I know once I get a few more novels out, readers will go through my backlist and be more willing to give the book a chance.
The Results
Here are the graphs.
When I first published the book, I tried some AMS ads. They worked, but the money spent to get the rank ~8,000 on May 8th wasn’t worth it.
The Hidden Gems newsletter was worth the price while the Bargain Booksy wasn’t. There’s a number a reasons why it didn’t do as well, but I outlined them above.
Write to market…
I’d be interested to see how a book written to market with a compelling, trope-filled blurb would do. I should’ve scheduled the promotions at the time of my release, but republishing this book was a last minute idea. I’m glad I did it because the book is much better now, but I probably shouldn’t have spent the money for marketing this book.
Oh, well.
The fascinating (and frightening) part of this is how little visibility this book has. Without ads or promotions, the book is essentially hidden. I’m pretty sure most of my sales apart from the newsletter promotions come from AMS ads.
There just isn’t any organic visibility for some reason. I used to be able to publish a short story and have a few sales each day, or multiple depending how high it ranked. Then it would slowly taper off. This one, however, just sank like a rock without advertising.
Maybe the newsletters messed with the also boughts–I’m not really sure. It’s an issue that seems to be common now. Amazon seems to have changed their algorithm that heavily favors new books. If you book doesn’t sell much in the first few days, it will all but guarantee that no one sees your book without ads.
Man, that number is not pretty. It hurts to see how badly this book has done, but I know with a few more novels under this pen name, that number will jump.
Rankings
The first AMS brought the ranking to about 8,000 in the store. Once I dropped the ads, the book sank. Go figure. The ranking boost just wasn’t worth the spend.
The first newsletter sent me to about 6k I believe, while the last one boosted me to 3,000. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much else.
I thought it might be because I priced at $2.99 after the initial promotion, so I changed it back to $0.99, but it didn’t change much of anything. I was selling just as much at $2.99 as I was and $0.99.
So I’m keeping it priced at $2.99.
Reviews
I used Hidden Gems ARC service to get some reviews. I received about as many reviews as ARCs sent out. The response was positive, too.
Out of the 60+ reviews, there was only one two-star, a couple three-stars, and the rest were evenly split between 4 and 5-stars.
People enjoyed the suspenseful elements to the story; they liked the characters, both main and secondary. A common thread, one that I touched on in the beginning, was that the story wasn’t what you’d expect from this romance niche. They liked it, but it was different.
Having read a few romances in the niche, I completely understand what they mean. It’s a decent book; it’s just not exactly on market.
I more than likely won’t use the service for my next book. Some of the reviews were helpful, but others were just summaries of plot points and not very helpful.
Moving On…
So I’m currently editing my next novel. It should be done and published by the end of the month. After going through the process with this first novel, I don’t have any lofty expectations. It might sell, but odds are that it won’t.
It’s in the same niche, but just like this one, it’s not completely on market. And it’s a slow burn… which are always tougher to sell.
So the plan now is to finish editing, publish, and then move onto the research phase. I’m pretty sure that my next book will pair the fake relationship and enemies to lovers tropes because those are popular right now.
We’ll see.
I’ll be documenting my research process toward the end of the month. And of course, I’ll have another post about how book 2 does.
Back to editing.