Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

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I think that is largely because most writers don't know how to or don't care about marketing.

I published a novel in late november, and it's sales are low but steady to slowly increasing. A key aspect is that to "survive" past the initial bump you need to invest effort into building word of mouth and getting reviews, and that is a slow process. The people I got to help with marketing even actively advised against doing much marketing before we had a base of reviews, because they apparently find it almost impossible to get positive ROI on Amazon ads until there's a reasonable number of reviews.

I intentionally started writing a series, and everything I've seen and heard suggests series rarely even start selling decently until at least the 3rd volume, because people hold off to see if it's worth investing time in.

I'd advise against considering what happens to "most" books, because most books gets no marketing, no proper cover design, no effort in writing blurbs, no effort to push the books over time.

Oh I've heard that. The classic "third book" being the one that goes viral. (Gillian Flynn, Dan Brown, etc.)

I agree with you on considering most books (most books don't market), but even trying to learn from the successful books isn't entirely encouraging. Even the best ones don't see a lot of reads.

But the industry is rapidly changing. We don't all watch the same three television channels anymore. Niche content is more the norm than mass marketed content.

I think the whole "creator economy" is still in its infancy, and we have yet to see whether it will actually allow creators to monetize in a meaningful way. But it's worth engaging with it as an experiment to see what happens!

It's not just that the third book is what takes off, but that sales of book 1 and 2 rarely takes off before book 3 is out because people hold off and might sign up to your mailing list etc. but won't read until they know there's more coming.

I do certainly think the market is massively geared towards a tiny number of best-sellers, but there are a number of people who still have success with modest sales of individual books simply by focusing more on building a back catalogue and marketing to a fan base more likely to want to buy "everything". You can afford to spend quite a lot more on ads if a single sale might lead to 20 more than if one book is all you have.

But that require you to think about it as a business, and a lot of writers don't want to deal with that bit.

I know at least a few that will not buy any book in a series until it is completed, due to the number of book series that simply have petered out part-way though.

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