Edit: Oops! Got a little trigger-happy with the “publish” button. I intended to add some comments first. I’ll keep it short. A friend on Twitter shared this article with me this morning, and I had to pass it along to all of you. Mark Coker released some statistics that may greatly impact the way you choose to market your stories. I strongly urge you to read this article.
As good as the article is, however, I do take exception with one point: scheduling pre-orders 12 months in advance. Please keep in mind that if you are in KDP Select, this is not a good strategy. You want to have as strong a release ranking as possible in the days shortly following your launch. But Amazon bases your ranking on a rolling 30-day average. Most of us who have been at it a while know that your sales tend to peak in the initial months, then fall off to a long tail on the sales graph. If you schedule your pre-order out too far in advance of your launch, you run the risk of watering down your own launch month ranking. If I were to start using the pre-order function, I would probably schedule my pre-orders no more than 30 days in advance of the actual launch day. Just something to consider.
Here’s the link!
Source: Smashwords: 2015 Smashwords Survey Reveals Insights to Help Authors Reach More Readers
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About Nat Russo
Nat Russo is the Amazon #1 Bestselling Fantasy author of Necromancer Awakening and Necromancer Falling. Nat was born in New York, raised in Arizona, and has lived just about everywhere in-between. He’s gone from pizza maker, to radio DJ, to Catholic seminarian (in a Benedictine monastery, of all places), to police officer, to software engineer. His career has taken him from central Texas to central Germany, where he worked as a defense contractor for Northrop Grumman. He's spent most of his adult life developing software, playing video games, running a Cub Scout den, gaining/losing weight, and listening to every kind of music under the sun. Along the way he managed to earn a degree in Philosophy and a black belt in Tang Soo Do. He currently makes his home in central Texas with his wife, teenager, mischievous beagle, and goofy boxador.
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