The Bookbub Effect

February is over! As most of you know, I got placement with Bookbub on February 8th: my deal was Earthrise, free.

So, January of this year, I gave away 128 (free) copies of Earthrise, and sold 36 copies of Rose Point, 31 of Laisrathera, and 75 of Rose Point Holiday (which had just come out in December). I also sold 23 copies of Mindtouch, 14 of Mindline, and 9 of Family; and 13 of Wingless, 7 of Transcend, 5 of Amulet and 8 of Only the Open. Plus some assorted other sales. This is on Amazon alone.

February, post-Bookbub, I gave away 43,585 copies of Earthrise, sold 842 of Rose Point, 646 of Laisrathera, and 357 of Holiday. Additionally, 55 Mindtouch, 43 Mindline, and 37 Family; 30 of Wingless, 18 Transcend, 9 of Amulet and 4 of Only the Open. Plus some assorted other sales. (Once again, Amazon alone.)

The situation on other retailers was even more extreme. Up until February, I'd moved 11,084 books to every other retailer through Draft2Digital in the three years I'd been selling through them. In February, I moved 11,588, doubling in one month the amount I'd needed three years to accomplish (mostly to Apple and, surprisingly, B&N).

The audiobook sales also took off. In January I'd sold 37 units; in February, 724. And those were straight sales: there's no free downloads there.

Earthrise also went from 128 reviews to 160. All but 2 of those have been excellent, and even the bad ones were pretty lukewarm about their badness.

Some 37...38? New people have signed up for my mailing list since the Bookbub, which Mailchimp tells me is an 8% increase. Given how long I've been building my mailing list, getting an 8% increase in part of a month is... astonishing.

It's now March and while daily sales have dropped, they're still way, way higher than before. Like "I've already made more in March than I did in all January" higher. I'm sure publishing the novella helped, since 43 copies of that have moved so far, but for now the plateau's just higher.

***

So one of you... Persi, maybe? Asked on the community tab if I feel like leaving social media has hurt my sales. This is similar to a question that came up on the Patreon creator community boards about the value of social media for artists. I'll say here what I'll say there: if you like social media because you enjoy it, you should do it. But I don't think it has any useful correlation between the time you put into it and the money you get out of it. One promotion with a known bookseller did more for me in a day than fifteen years of social media. There are forms of advertisement that work for a given piece of art, and unless you're one of the odd one-percenters who stumble into the "social media persona => riches" conversion, social media's not going to make or break you. Far from it.

It is, then, a personal decision. It's been several months now since I quit and I find that I'm happier and I waste less time. This is me personally, mind you. But I find social media lines up very neatly with some of my less savory mental problems, particularly the one where I believe that my opinion matters and therefore I should tell everyone about it (followed quickly by anger that not enough people think my opinion matters). Every now and then, washing a dish or looking at a flower, I think, "I should tell everyone how I feel about this thing!" and I remind myself: "Almost no one cares, fewer people than you think are even going to notice, and all it's going to do is make you upset when you realize that you mistook your ability to tell the world something for the world actually listening."

This is a rabbit hole I don't want to fall back into. So I'm not.

I do miss the conversations I used to have on Twitter, and the fun of sharing things on Instagram, and the blog posts that made me feel, briefly, like I was "making some sort of difference." I still love people. But I am happier being a person of less consequence, particularly in my own head. God knows what's going on in there, and that's enough for me.

But anyway. Bookbub. Talk about power. I wonder how long it will last? I guess we'll see! In the meantime, I will write what I care about, and try not to let it go to my head. It's way too easy to think that I am selling well and should do something to maintain that. But I am done chasing sales, particularly when I've seen how little control I have over them. Fifteen years of laboring in the social media mines, networking at cons, and writing all the time... versus one promotion? *shakes head* 

It's all a game. You're not meant to take it seriously. :)