Ever wondered why prolific authors and authors of series are so much more successful than others? It’s no secret and really very simple. I call it the bounce effect.
We all know the most important sales of a book occur in its first few weeks after publication. Actually, like a lot of things we “know” - that’s not entirely the truth. Those sales occur when a book is released in that particular channel or retailer. So, you get a “hit” of sales when the e-book is released, another “hit” when it is released in paperback, if you use a publisher who produces hardback then you’ll tend to get that “hit” before the paperback one. Similarly if a new retailer comes along (for example Apple iBooks) or your publisher manages to get a distribution agreement with another retailer then they are “new” there and you get another hit.
With the growing and changing market for e-books you will very often get several sales boosts this way. This is part of the bounce effect; you keep getting these little bounces of extra sales. Unfortunately, for many authors these extra bounces are quite small. We had a short story that wasn’t apparently doing particularly well – then we got a late sales report (you’ve heard me rant about that before) from one web retailer and overnight her sales of that particular story quadrupled!
There is another and much bigger bounce effect and another of our authors is literally surfing the crest of a wave because of it. What happens when you release another book by the same author? Very simple, you get increased interest in sales of that author’s other work. We released a new novel by Bridy on 6th August. It’s selling reasonably. Her previous novel is outselling it, and sales are up 50% on the average for June and July for it. Her short stories and novellas (and we carry a lot of those) are also on average up by between 50% and 75%.
So you get a bounce, in this case a big one, in sales of older work when you release a new book by the same author. If the book is part of a series, or a sequel or the third book in a trilogy this effect is often even more marked.
That is the bounce effect.
Think about that WIP you could dust off. That prequel/ sequel/ series development idea you could pick up and bring to fruition.
Our bestselling author virtually never submits a book to us, without outlining how the series or sequel(s) will develop. We have only ever published one short story from her that doesn’t have a natural follow up.
One final, and perhaps even more telling point. Publishers LIKE sequels and series. Often the artwork is easy, the marketing is partially done, and the main characters (not every time) established. By the time book two comes out, book one hopefully has a following.
Okay, I accept it’s harder in some genres than in others.... But is it? Is it really? Even if all else fails, there's always the next generation to repeat(ish) the mistakes of thier elders. LOL
Think about it, start planning your work longer term........
And yet there are endless rants about first time authors getting stuck in the "series rut" where they aren't confident enough as writers yet to step out of the familiar world and create another world.
ReplyDeleteBut series aren't as easy as all that to write. Yes, characters have been created and the world outlines have been drawn, but that also creates boundaries and those can become chains, the bars on the cell of the imagination. I never start out to write a series but, at the end of the book if the characters have cooperated, there is always the thought "but what happens to them next?"
And some series are unavoidable. Now, if I could just get book four edited to my satisfaction, I'd show you what I mean, LOL
Very true Deb. But, remember series don't have to be the same characters, or the same setting. You can take the "saga" approach like my Carthaginian Series - so far 32 episodes spanning 650 years. Or use, effectively, the same final sentence, as Bridy does in her Fantasies series. One or two of the characters there have two episodes but no more, out of fifteen.
ReplyDeleteSome stories cannot be told in one book, but some do come to a conclusion inside that length. it depends on the story and the characters and just sometimes on the author.LOL
My main point remains - being prolific doesn't just mean sales for the new book.