<aside> đź’ˇ Written by Sami Valentine, urban fantasy author. Find out more at samivalentine.com.
</aside>
TLDR Summary: writer chronicles the journey launching the first three books of an urban fantasy series.
Spoiler: This is NOT a wild success story about how I wrote a hot trope and made millions. I know, I'm bummed about it too.
1/13 Update: I won't hit my January 20th launch, but the third book is with the betas. It will hit the store in the first week of February. I am pleased by the results so far since the first two novels just earned back their editing costs. I doubled by all-time sales in December. It's the first two weeks of January and I already outsold the 150 sales that I made in the entirety of November. For some reason, I am ranking great in the Australian UF charts. The all-time revenue (not profit) as of now is $1,147 up from $559 on 12/21.
Context: I'm a newbie author without a backlist who has been building their author platform since September. I'm doing a rapid release of the first 3 books in an Urban Fantasy series over three months into KU. The prequel short and the first book in the series were published on October 20th and November 20th respectively. The second book came out on December 20th with the third planned for January.
What are my strengths?
This is my first self-publishing launch, but I have been published once before under a defunct penname and have been keeping abreast of publishing trends even during a few years of writer's block. I also took Derek Murphy's Guerrilla Publishing Course and got a scholarship to his castle writing retreat with in-person mentorship which was invaluable. I do have marketing experience which came in handy and improved my learning curve since I already know the tools and have no issues with self-promotion. I already know that if you build it then they will probably ignore it. I have been a mercenary in the creative gig economy for years now so I have processed my existential conflicts about art and business.
What are my challenges?
I wrote what I wanted and luckily what I wanted does fit in an evergreen market, but I didn't write with hot tropes in mind. This made the cover and blurb difficult because it's not in a clearcut subgenre like 'academy.' I also made my cover and used prolific works to test it so its on point, but not as fancy. I do not have the budget at the moment to replace them even though I have gotten very valuable advice to do so.
Also, no one knows who the hell I am and the urban fantasy market is crowded as shit. I am also used to marketing tools and platforms that can give you rich data to analyze and the KDP dashboard is hot garbage.
Book tropes/genre for context: urban fantasy (not PNR), witch, vampire, mystical Hollywood, supernatural bounty hunters, love triangle, badass female MC, amnesia, and doppelgängers.
Penname: Sami Valentine
Show Me The Money (12/21/19)
Expenses 1,800+
Sales 196
Pages 53,453
Units 314 ( + 763 free prequel copies given away)
KU Royalties $234.45