{"id":4208,"date":"2015-01-29T09:21:35","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T14:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/?p=4208"},"modified":"2020-01-02T17:00:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T22:00:13","slug":"why-marketing-indie-books-is-so-hard-competition-value-pricing-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/why-marketing-indie-books-is-so-hard-competition-value-pricing-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why marketing indie books is so hard: competition, value, pricing (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>You can&#8217;t market without data.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well, okay, you can. But you&#8217;re shooting blind. And if you&#8217;re spending money, you&#8217;re throwing it away.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s not a professional marketer in the world &#8212; and by professional marketer, I mean someone with education and experience in marketing, who has been hired by a bona fide company to run its marketing programs &#8212; who would <em>dream<\/em> of spending marketing budget without first validating a whole slew of assumptions.<\/p>\n<p>Another word for it is metrics.<\/p>\n<p>Hang out on any marketing forum for any period of time, and the conversation will turn to metrics.<\/p>\n<p>When social media first became a &#8220;thing,&#8221; the marketers became obsessed with metrics. They&#8217;d ask each other all kinds of really hard questions.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Have you tested Facebook? Twitter? YouTube? That other social-media-platform-of-the-day?<\/li>\n<li>What were your results? How many visitors did you get? How many clicks per visit. How many conversions per click?<\/li>\n<li>What was your cost per click?<\/li>\n<li>What was your cost per conversion?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Dear fellow authors: have you ever once heard any indie book marketing company talk about ANY of those things?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bet you a steak dinner you haven&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Because those kinds of questions poke holes in most of the author marketing &#8220;strategies&#8221; out there. Holes big enough to heave a trad pubbed book through.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>What Indie Books Are Up Against<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>You can&#8217;t find a solution unless you understand the problem.<\/p>\n<p>So pull up a chair, because I&#8217;m about to lend you my brain so that, together, we can understand a bit more about the challenges we face when we decide we&#8217;re going to &#8220;market&#8221; our indie titles.<\/p>\n<p>The way I&#8217;m going to do it is through a little thought experiment.<\/p>\n<p>Put on your pretend business person hat. Pretend you were going to found a new business which would be based on an ideal product, and you were going to launch it in an ideal marketplace.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll go into this in more detail in my book, <em>Getting to the Truth About Indie Author Marketing <\/em><a title=\"Outline and notes on content of Getting to the Truth About Indie Author Marketing\" href=\"http:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/whats-all-this-about-a-book-on-author-marketing.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">(click for details)<\/a> but here&#8217;s the gist. Here are a few characteristics that define an ideal product in an ideal market:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The product would have an enormous potential market.<\/li>\n<li>It would have little-to-no competition.<\/li>\n<li>Prospective customers would need the product. Or if they didn&#8217;t need it (as in, they die without it, like food) they want it so badly it hurts.<\/li>\n<li>The perceived value of the product is very high.<\/li>\n<li>The cost of producing the product is very low, relative to the price you can set for it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now comes the painful part.<\/p>\n<p>(I&#8217;ll wait while you find the Kleenex &#8230;)<\/p>\n<h3><strong>How do indie books compare to that marvelous ideal?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Answer: they don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>The only <em>possible<\/em> exception is the first\u00a0 bullet &#8212; market size &#8212; and that comes with a few caveats.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re writing genre, for example, you may be creating a product with a large potential market. <a title=\"About the Romance Fiction Genre\" href=\"http:\/\/publishing.about.com\/od\/BookAuthorBasics\/a\/Romance-Novels-About-The-Romance-Fiction-Genre.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sources day that the market for romance novels is around 29 million readers, for instance<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But if you&#8217;re not, your potential market is smaller &#8212; potentially much, much smaller.<\/p>\n<p>And market size hardly matters anyway, because of the other factors we&#8217;ve listed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Competition?<\/strong> Hey, you know how flooded the market is. Amazon carries over 30 million book titles, guys. That&#8217;s not even a flooded market. That&#8217;s darn near <a title=\"Market Saturation wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Market_saturation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a <em>saturated<\/em> market<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So what about bullet #2. <strong>Do prospective customers need books?<\/strong> Guess what. They don&#8217;t. They might <em>want<\/em> them &#8212; and there&#8217;s a segment of the market that wants them badly &#8212; but nobody&#8217;s gonna t die tomorrow if he\/she doesn&#8217;t get his\/her hands on a new book.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Perceived value?<\/strong> Tell you what: if the perceived value of books was high, people wouldn&#8217;t be giving them away. They wouldn&#8217;t be pricing full-length novels at 99 cents.<\/p>\n<p>Which leaves us <strong>cost.<\/strong> I&#8217;m having a lot of fun with cost in my book! But the bottom line (har har) is that you have to look at cost in terms of cost per unit sale.<\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s the cold truth, my fellow writer: <strong>most indie authors aren&#8217;t going to sell more than a few dozen copies of their books.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I know, I know, e-books are forever, your title might take off someday, and so-and-so sold zillions of copies, didn&#8217;t he\/she? (Don&#8217;t worry, we&#8217;ll come back to that last claim early and often in future blog posts!)<\/p>\n<p>But you&#8217;re investing your time and money <em>today<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re paying your bills <em>today<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>No professional marketer in his right mind would ever dare turn to his boss and say, &#8220;I know, my marketing program didn&#8217;t result in any sales this year. But not to worry! I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll recoup you costs sometime in the next coupla decades.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So suppose you churn books out at lightning speed, and keep your costs to almost negligible levels.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You&#8217;ve got to clear at least $5000 per title to break even.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At <em>least<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>(I will show the math on that in a future post.)<\/p>\n<p>So plug that number into your calculator, along with how you&#8217;ll price your book and your expected royalty cut. And figure out how many copies you&#8217;ll need to sell.<\/p>\n<p>1500?<\/p>\n<p>2500?<\/p>\n<p>5000?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m hunting down numbers as I research my book. Numbers. And one of the numbers I&#8217;m researching is how many copies\/title the <em>average<\/em> indie author sells.<\/p>\n<p>Not the big guys. Not the Hugh Howies and the Amanda Hockings and the JA Konraths.<\/p>\n<p>The no-names.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I have yet to find any source that puts that number at higher than a couple hundred copies.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Got that?<\/p>\n<p>On average, indie authors can only expect to sell a couple hundred copies of any given book.<\/p>\n<p>Have you soaked your Kleenex yet?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Look, I have a huge problem, here, and I know it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nobody wants to buy a book that&#8217;s a total downer.<\/p>\n<p>Hunt around on Amazon for titles on how to market your indie book. You&#8217;ll find a happy place, I promise. This works! That works! Five simple steps! Seven simple steps! All you have to do is xyz!<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a fantasy.<\/p>\n<p>And I have nothing against fantasy. In fact, I adore dreams, fantasies, imagination. I write novels because there&#8217;s almost nothing in the world that makes me feel better than conjuring a fantasy and committing it to a Word file and then sharing it with other people.<\/p>\n<p>So if you want to buy into some fantasy about how easy it is to market indie books, I say: <em>more power to you.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But speaking for myself, I&#8217;m a professional writer. I&#8217;m in this as a career, not a hobby. I&#8217;m into this indie publishing thing as a business.<\/p>\n<p>Not a get-rich-quick scheme.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A business.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So I want a clear-eyed view of what I&#8217;m up against.<\/p>\n<p>Won&#8217;t you join me?<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Everyone who subscribes to my <em>Getting to the Truth <\/em>email list before midnight, E.S.T., on Sunday February 15 will be entered in a drawing to win a free e-copy of the book.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Subscribers will receive brief, periodic updates on the book, including links to <a title=\"Why Marketing Indie Books is SO Hard (Part 1)\" href=\"http:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/why-marketing-indie-books-is-so-hard-part-1.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">blog posts like this one <\/a>that share information I&#8217;ve dug up about indie marketing. These will be hard-hitting, extremely useful posts that you do not want to miss.<\/p>\n<p>I will not share your contact information with anyone else, and you can unsubscribe at any time.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe by using the form below, and please pass along this link to your indie author friends so they can participate as well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thanks for your interest. Thank you for your support.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"mc_embed_signup\">\n<form id=\"mc-embedded-subscribe-form\" class=\"validate\" action=\"\/\/kirstenmortensen.us5.list-manage.com\/subscribe\/post?u=3c3803fc9774b7cdc65952835&amp;id=c45482b61e\" method=\"post\" name=\"mc-embedded-subscribe-form\" novalidate=\"\" target=\"_blank\">\n<div id=\"mc_embed_signup_scroll\">\n<div class=\"mc-field-group\"><label for=\"mce-EMAIL\">Email Address <\/label><br \/>\n<input id=\"mce-EMAIL\" class=\"required email\" name=\"EMAIL\" type=\"email\" value=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"mc-field-group\"><label for=\"mce-FNAME\">First Name <\/label><br \/>\n<input id=\"mce-FNAME\" class=\"\" name=\"FNAME\" type=\"text\" value=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"mc-field-group\"><label for=\"mce-LNAME\">Last Name <\/label><br \/>\n<input id=\"mce-LNAME\" class=\"\" name=\"LNAME\" type=\"text\" value=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"mc-field-group\"><label for=\"mce-MMERGE3\">Website <\/label><br \/>\n<input id=\"mce-MMERGE3\" class=\" url\" name=\"MMERGE3\" type=\"url\" value=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<div id=\"mce-responses\" class=\"clear\"><\/div>\n<p><!-- real people should not fill this in and expect good things - do not remove this or risk form bot signups--><\/p>\n<div style=\"position: absolute; left: -5000px;\"><input tabindex=\"-1\" name=\"b_3c3803fc9774b7cdc65952835_c45482b61e\" type=\"text\" value=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"clear\"><input id=\"mc-embedded-subscribe\" class=\"button\" name=\"subscribe\" type=\"submit\" value=\"Subscribe\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--End mc_embed_signup--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can&#8217;t market without data. Well, okay, you can. But you&#8217;re shooting blind. And if you&#8217;re spending money, you&#8217;re throwing it away. There&#8217;s not a professional marketer in the world &#8212; and by professional marketer, I mean someone with education &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/why-marketing-indie-books-is-so-hard-competition-value-pricing-part-2\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[381],"tags":[498,1377,1376,1378,241],"class_list":["post-4208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-getting-to-the-truth-about-indie-author-marketing-clear-eyed-guide-to-author-marketing-services","tag-amwriting","tag-getting-to-the-truth-about-indie-author-marketing","tag-indie-author-marketing","tag-indie-publishing","tag-writing-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4208"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5950,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208\/revisions\/5950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}