Tao Wong
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Business Post: Magic Kingdom at War Launch Post
🕑 Added 2024-07-03 10:00:07 +0000 UTC
I know I said I wasn't doing these anymore, at least not consistently. But since the first month is over, figured some people might find this interesting.
I should note, sales below are ONLY ebooks. There are no print versions of this, and I'm not going to bother estimating audiobooks beyond saying they're likely to breakeven.
Audiobooks are doing okay, breaking even at least so far I think.
I had a thread on Threads, but it got deleted or something (https://www.threads.net/@taowongauthor/post/C85VuSlSQ0J?xmt=AQGzycU8WZ8hB6KRSG4suSRzS_3Ne37ms2fvWGA6vna_6Q) the other parts of it that is.
Really, most of this stuff, most of you know - novella, 25k long, kingdom builder. None of which is eactly 'on trend' or 'to market' with LitRPG which likes their 100k post.
We've got volume 3 coming out on July 7 (https://amzn.to/4cIJSfc) which should see another little bump in sales from both pre-orders but also books 1 & 2 getting further notice. We'll see how big a jump that is, but we switch to 1 work a month till volume 12 comes out after which we'll do a big review.
Interestingly enough, so far, sales for the same number of words/etc. tracks pretty close with Climbing the Ranks. Climbing still made more, overall; but it's relatively close. Neither books were 'on trend' (too much Manglish with Climbing and NOT in KU); so it's fascinating to see.
For those curious, it works out to roughly $0.05 per word written, give or take. Which means, if all things trended exactly, writing half a million words a year, I'd make $25,000 a year. If you didn't count the on-going effects of having a backlist that is.
Success? Failure?
Right now, it's mostly meh. The strategic goal of all this is to tickle the algorithim. The fact that we aren't in the 'short reads' section of Amazon has definitely hurt us, and not something we had expected.
Sales are fine, for what we see. I am curious to see what happens when volume 3 and onwards come out and the knockon effects to all the other series, which is the major reason why we did this the way we did.
If we can keep this consistently earning, even if it hits roughly $1.5-2k a month, it's well worth doing since (for me), 25k is only 10-12 days of writing. Not too bad at all, and something I can (like with these initial 6 volumes) back up.
Add in another year or two, where we have like 20-24 such volumes and the readthrough / payout from advertising might be pretty damn nice.
And we could yank it all out, go wide and repeat the same thing, see if that makes any diference that way. Which, frankly, is another side consideration since while I like Amazon, I certainly don't intend to be stuck with them forever.
So, right now, we sit back and wait. And watch.
Comments
clinton cuzzort
Very fascinating indeed. If it achieves the short list with third volume, I’m sure it will be a very nice return on the effort. There are so many cool avenues to explore. Thanks for the breakdown on this one.
