Back in 2023, in an attempt to prime the pump, so to speak, I invested some money in advertising. You have to spend money to make money, the experts say.

There's a British term for what the experts say: bollocks.

Okay, maybe not fair. In 2022, including the anthologies I have short stories in, we sold 539 copies. This is give or take: Sales numbers are guarded by the publishing industry the way I guard my hoard of chocolate.

In 2023, the year of the great advertising experiment, we racked up 624 sales, again including the anthologies. Great, right? Except I also racked up great expenditures, which Emily would have stopped if I hadn't been so obsessed with the numbers that I didn't think to talk it over with her. (She found out. Boy, did she find out, and by the way our couch is very comfortable.)

The chair's nice, too.

Ahem. Long story short, I spent $11 for every dollar the book sales earned.

This is not a sustainable business model, except in Washington, D.C., and they have 341 million investors.

 So in 2024 I worked on reducing our advertising costs, while not reducing book sales. This didn't work. According to my calculations, I did indeed manage to reduce advertising costs by 2,180 percent, but ....

Wait a minute. That can't be right. Let me hit the calculator again.

Okay, for every five dollars I spent in 2023, I spent 3 dollars in 2024. I really need to apologize to my math teacher for telling him I'd never use this stuff. Once, around 1990, I even needed algebra. Of course, I'd forgotten it.

 On the one hand, total sales from last year were 492, down from 539 copies in 2023. On the other hand, I no long have access to sales numbers for the two anthologies. (Long story.) If the same number of those were sold in both years, our total numbers for 2024 would be 651, a slight increase. Yay?

Except I still spent more than we took in last year.

Business takes a lot of the fun out of writing.

Our biggest seller for 2024 was Coming Attractions, including one copy that went to Australia, and one to the UK. This is partially due to a really weird spike in sales through Amazon, which reported it was from searches using the keyword "ebooks". That makes as much sense as my math skills.

The second biggest seller was Hoosier Hysterical, including one copy that went to Germany, followed by Storm Chaser and The No-Campfire Girls. That pretty much matches the year before.

Still following the numbers? Me, neither. Here's the upshot: For every book sold, I still spent four and a half dollars. That doesn't include internet costs, or the fact that we had to buy a new laptop.

But now I've cut way down on my advertising, which so far this year led to a corresponding decrease in sales. We'll see if the release of The Notorious Ian Grant makes a difference, since we didn't put out any new product in 2024 or, as I like to call it, Year 4: Decade Of Hell.

My original plan for 2025 was to sell at least 1,000 copies. I've changed that: now the plan is to make more money then I spend. Otherwise, I might as well just be a Congressman.

You can help pad my numbers by buying our books here:

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

·        Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

·        Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

·        Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

·        Audible:  https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

Remember: Sometimes the term “starving artist” is a little too close to literal.

Meanwhile, at certain points in the process, that's the only thing authors want to know.

Actually, the traditional publishers I've worked with have been good about giving me sales reports--every three or six months. But it can be hard to read their reports, in the same way it can be hard for the janitor at a college to understand a blackboard full of physics equations. Well, maybe they can sometimes. A better example would be someone giving me the full schematics on how to wire an electrical system into a house, then expecting me to actually do it.

"Gee, he seemed smart enough to manage. I'm gonna miss him."

When it comes to places that sell your work, such as Barnes and Noble or the elephant in the room, Amazon ... good luck. Most of my books are independently published, so there is no publisher trying to keep track of my sales. You'd think the bookselling websites would do that, but ... well, you'd think more people would read, too.

Maybe I could sell them like donuts. "I'll take a white one, and a blue one, and ...."

I'm telling you all this to explain why, while I've come up with an estimate of my 2023 sales, I have no idea how accurate it is.

Fairly accurate. I think. Within reason.

So, in 2023 we sold 624 books. I think. 482 were e-books, and 142 were print copies. (In 2022 I actually sold a hardcover copy of Images of America: Albion and Noble County. I mention that because, before then, I didn't think you even could buy hardcover copies of our books.)

Our 2022 total was 539 sales, so we're up by 85 books. It's a good number, considering we haven't done an author appearance since the beginning of Covid. Now that I've actually had Covid, I'm not thrilled about going out into crowds in the immediate future, either.

Our best sellers:

151 copies of Coming Attractions.

145 copies of Hoosier Hysterical: How the West Became the Midwest Without Moving At All.

104 copies of Storm Chaser (which was re-released with some fanfare early in the year).

51 copies of The No-Campfire Girls.

The other books were, shall we say, not great sellers. All sold at least a few copies except for Slightly Off the Mark: The Unpublished Columns, which has the disadvantages of having been out for several years, and of being a humor book by someone who isn't already famous.

"Dude, these are stale."

Still, good money, right?

Well ...

I also experimented with advertising all last year. Online ads did indeed increase our sales, but they didn't lead to a profit. For every dollar in gross sales we made, I spent about two dollars. ("I" because Emily wasn't involved in that pile of commercial misfortune.)

But wait--there's more. Depending on how they were published and where they were bought, our profit was between 60% and 6% of each book sold. The 60% ones were the books Emily slaved and sweated over.

Do that math, and for every dollar we made, I spent five dollars in advertising and promotion.

This is fine for a hobby. I could collect toy trains, or fix up antiques, or bend my elbow at the bar every night, for a similar amount of money. It is not, however, what anyone would call a sustainable business model. It's more like trying to sell your product by screaming out the brand name as you leap off a cliff.

"Losing the house is no big deal, I can write in the car."

So, I have two goals when it comes to selling books in 2024. One is to sell a thousand copies of our various books in the space of one year. There are a couple of years when I may have done that, but I'm too lazy to go back and do more math--I'd rather think of it as a new obtainable goal.

My second goal is to do that while making more money than we spend. I don't know ... maybe my goal should be to sell the same number as last year, but without taking a loss. Many authors manage to do this.

Not many manage to make a living at it, but if I wanted an easy job I'd be a physics professor.

• Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
• Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"
• Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter
• Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/
• Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
• Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter
• Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914
•  

Remember: Every time you buy a book, an author can buy a cup of coffee to keep him awake while he's writing his next book.

 I embarked on a fun experiment at the end of November, and by fun I mean it wasn't much fun, and by experiment I mean I had no idea what I was doing.

One of my goals has been to increase book sales, a goal for most authors. The problem is, when it comes to sales an author is competing with--well, almost all those other authors. Writers don't like to think of themselves as being in competition. Writing can be tough, and selling--well, that's way worse. So we support other writers, because we know just how hard it can be.

That doesn't change the fact that there are only so many readers, seemingly fewer all the time ... and a lot of those readers are writers. They can read only so many books--I only managed about a dozen or so last year. So, while we'd like all authors to succeed, we all have to fight to be heard ... I mean, read.

Social media, once a great way to get the word out, has in the last few years bombed. Why? Because the people who run social media sites have realized they can get money from people who are trying to get the word out. As a result, they've changed things around so that an author finds it almost impossible to reach people on the internet, unless they pony up some cash, first.

And most of us can't afford a pony.

"Wait ... no ponies?"

So I tried promotion websites, and I tried Facebook Ads. Both gave me a few more sales, but not enough to justify the money I spent. Here's a fun fact, kids: If you spend more on advertising than you make in sales, it's bad. (It does sometimes work in the short term, like those "loss leaders" offered in stores.)

And so I turned to Amazon Ads.

Honestly, I'd rather sell direct, through our website or an independent bookstore. I'd also rather eat chocolate for all meals and be 25 years old again, forever. But never mind that--in this case we're talking about Amazon, the Godzilla of online selling. (I've heard Apple is the second biggest online bookseller.)

Figuring out how to run an Amazon ad is hard.

I mean, driving in a NASCAR race when you've never actually driven at all hard.

I had to learn about impressions, clicks, targeting, keywords, and, most important of all, ACOS.

That means Advertising Cost of Sales. In other words, how much does it cost you to sell a book? If ACOS is over 100, you're spending more money on ads than the book itself sells for. This is bad. If your ACOS is right at 100 you're still in trouble, because Amazon takes a cut--you're still spending more than your' making. The best number is right around 30, give or take, so you're making at least a little money.

I decided to experiment with my latest published novel, Coming Attractions. I set up an Amazon ad for the book, which hasn't sold a single copy through Amazon since November--of 2020.

On November 27 of 2021, my Coming Attractions e-book Amazon rating was 2,931,646. That's almost three million books selling better than mine. On November 28, the rating was 264,568.   It peaked on New Year's Eve at 63,798. That was the book's highest Amazon ranking ever, including when it was first published--when I labored long hours to publicize it.

 My goal for last year was to sell an average of one copy of our books every day. It didn't happen. In December it did: 37 e-book copies and two print copies of Coming Attractions, and one copy of The No-Campfire Girls sold in a little over thirty days. Here's what it looked like:

After a few weeks of joy and celebration I checked my numbers, and what I found made me very unhappy.

I was indeed selling a lot of books, but when I checked the ACOS, I learned that for every 99 cent e-book I sold, I was spending almost nine dollars to advertise it. This, for those of you who don't care to do the math, is unsustainable, unless you're a millionaire who's not concerned about spending money. I'm not a millionaire. I don't think I'm even a thousandaire.

So, like any sharp businessman, I panicked.

I spent the next several days tweaking all the details, including the list of terms I mentioned earlier. My sales dropped, but as of the first full weekend of January I've gotten my ACOS down to 56%. For me that's about breaking even, so still not great, but at least I'm not bleeding money. They don't make bandages for that.

I'm going to try again, of course, this time going in a little wiser. I haven't decided whether to try one of my other published books, or wait until the next new one comes along, but for once in my life I haven't been cowed by math. Much. I should add that most people who use Amazon ads say it's pretty common to have high ACOS ... ACOS's? ... at first, although I suspect my early numbers would have made them faint.

If you decide to try it, my best advise is to learn everything you possibly can about the process, first. The homework might save you some cash. How have you other authors been doing in your sales attempts? Any tips?

 It's said there's no such thing as bad publicity.

We all know that's not true.

Oh, it sounds like a good idea in theory. As a writer, I'm well aware that if you want to hit the best seller's list, your best bet is to get caught doing something wrong, preferably prison-sized wrong. Or to get elected, which is pretty much the same thing these days. 

But even then it depends on what you did. There's a new reality show out about the "Queen of Meth", actor Tom Arnold's sister, who apparently made truck loads of money, got busted, and now is being paid to be on TV because she ... well, dealt drugs. But do you think she'd get a TV deal if she got busted kicking puppies and kittens? Nope.

So, it depends.

Now, my newest novel is a couple of years old now, but chances are you haven't heard of it. Yes, I sent out press releases, but I've published too many books now for the media to be all that interested anymore. I shouted out Coming Attractions on the internet, but social media is now designed so people aren't likely to hear about it unless the writer forks over some money, first.

So I forked over some money.

There are web services that promise to shout out your book, get people interested, land you sales, make them money ... you too, hopefully. I've used them sparingly before and found they gave me a bump in sales, if not a big one.

Now, I believe in Coming Attractions. It's a fun story, if I do say so myself.

But frankly, it landed with a snooze.

It's received only four Amazon reviews, the most recent one a year ago. It was self-published, but these days almost all authors have to help promote their work, even with a traditional publisher ... unless their name ends in King, Koontz, or Rowling. It was as if one of my children went on stage for their first role, and found the theater occupied by three winos and the janitor.

I have ideas in other areas, but for starters I decided to try one of the publicity sites again. Among other things they put the book up on their website, and send it out to their newsletter subscribers. They also Tweet links to it. You've heard of Twitter: That place where you have very little space to say a whole lot of things. I'm a novelist--Twitter and I are not friends. But I've met a lot of great people there, and some of them read.

Some attention, right? At the very worst it would just be a little wasted money.

Then I saw the first Tweet.

A literary masterpiece. #books #RomanticComedy #MarkRHunter

@MarkRHunter

 

Wait. What?

 

It came with a nice visual, but that visual was on every single other Tweet.

 

Then came the next one:

 

A dynamic, explosive, page-turning epic. #books #RomanticComedy #MarkRHunter

@MarkRHunter

 

Um ... are we talking about the same book?

 

Don't get me wrong: I really do think it's a good story. But it's a romantic comedy. Early Tom Hanks, Sandra Bollock stuff. It is not, nor was it meant to be, a literary masterpiece. Nor is it the kind of story that would be called explosive, or epic. My characters are not returning a magical ring, or saving the planet.

With what I paid them, I didn't expect anyone at the company to actually read the book--but they did have the back cover blurb, for crying out loud.

Over the next several Tweets, I learned Coming Attractions was inspiring, intriguing, riveting, and the Best Book They've Ever Read! Also, after making all those promises, they said it lived up to every promise. Promises they made.

Oh, and it's also "One of the most original, powerful, and mind-blowing books you will ever read about human consciousness."

 

No. No, just ... no.

 

Finally, it's "The perfect book for all book readers".

 

Oh? What if you only read horror? Or thrillers? Or stuff recommended by Oprah?

 

I was horrified.

 

I would have been horrified but kept my mouth shut, if it actually did bring in more sales. But I kept imagining potential book buyers would read this bombastic bragging and be reduced to helpless, knee-slapping, non-buying hysterics.

 

That must be what happened, because during the promotion period Coming Attractions made exactly zero sales.

 

Ah, well. It wasn't much money--if it had been, I wouldn't have tried it to begin with--so I can only complain a little. And after all, I'm competing with the 1.7 million other self-published books released that same year, so maybe shouting big words from the rooftop was worth a try. It beats walking up and down the street wearing a sandwich board sign.

 

Which did get me two sales, so who am I to say?

 

 

At least it got around a little.

 

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

 

As part of submitting to agents and publishers, an author often has to write a brief synopsis of their novel. It's no big deal: Just boil your 80,000 word work of art into a 500 word ...

Okay, it is a big deal.

The actual length of a synopsis depends on who's asking, which is why I usually do three: a long one that's basically an outline, a medium length one of 2-3 pages, and a short one of 500-1,000 words. None are easy, if you're a long form writer.

These days, most agents and publishers ask for a page or less. You leave out subplots and a lot of the drama--it's can be a little dry, unlike most of your writing output, with just the facts and a brief look at your characters.

My finished rough draft was 4,085 words, in 12 pages.

The second draft is 2,985 words.

So. I have a bit of work to do.

After that I have to write a blurb, something you'd find on the back cover of a book, and it has to be good, interesting, and descriptive, and even shorter. Add to that a cover letter for your submission, which will be sent along with the first, oh, three pages of the manuscript, or five pages, or five chapters, or twenty pages, or whatever they ask for, and there's your submission package. Much of that you have to do even as a self-published author, for promotion purposes.

Writers stress hard over submission packages. But with the odds against them, and most never making enough sales to do it full time, you can hardly blame them.

Off to edit, then. Or submit, or research agents, or ... now that I think on it, it's February. Maybe I'll just have some fun and start on another story. I'll worry about outlining the new one when the days are longer.

This is why writers get a reputation for drinking.

(Let's see who reads to the end of this: After a rough couple of hours, I got it down to 839 words! Still over two pages, but what the heck. I know what you're thinking: "Now, Mark, wasn't that easy?"

No. No, it was not.)