<aside> 💡 Written by Sami Valentine, urban fantasy author. Find out more at samivalentine.com.

</aside>

Results of Launch + 6 Week Tail

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TL;DR Summary:

Urban Fantasy writer publishing their first series and developing their author brand. 4 Books currently out.

Its been a year and $8,000+ in revenue since I started my author platform and began prepping for my first launch. I have invested a little under $5,000 into these books with the vast majority of that cost in single-time product expenses like editing. I anticipate reaching $10,000 in revenue by September.

Author Note: I write these to give other new authors ideas of what to do to launch their series. I noticed that most guides on the subject are from authors who already have big ass backlogs and big ass newsletters and big ass audiences. I hope that my efforts spark ideas for you. Nothing is prescriptive advice and I don't claim that even my successful tactics will work for every genre. And if you're like 'wow, she is doing so much,' understand that I do not have kids or a partner. And if you think I am not doing enough, I understand but I try to prioritize writing 1,000-2,000 words a day (outside my 2-3 weeks of cool down between books). I also freelance marketing and teaching so this is not my day job yet. ;)

July is a big month for my author brand and not just because I am launching the 4th book in my series. After a year, I have enough data to see what has worked so far and made some decisions for the future. My objectives for this month are to finetune my product, clean up my audience, and boost my brand.

Product

I had built 'exit strategies' into the plot of my series so I could bring about a satisfying closure by book 4, if the series didn't sell. I have seen enough demand for this IP and I am still interested in the characters so I have decided to write it out to the full 9 books that I envisioned (not including the already drafted prequel trilogy). Doubling down on this series means that I can get better ROI on ads from promoting the first book (and eventual prequel series starter). That also means that book 1 is more important than ever. And I was only getting 40-50% readthrough from book 1 to 2 while book 2 to 3 is around 80% and growing higher.

I analyzed the reviews and identified a few ways to improve the book based on feedback. One was just to tweak the blurb to flag a romantic subplot so non-romance readers could stop complaining about it. I didn't take every critical feedback to heart especially the ones that seemed to want me to tell a different story rather than improve the one that I was writing. I also did another editorial pass. The improvements were mostly at the granular level of paragraphs and scenes structure that most readers won't notice but will appreciate. All my books are line-edited and proofread after beta readers go through it.

I also went through books 2 and 3 before my QA pass on the preorder file for book 4.

I believe that my changes, while subtle, will improve readthrough.

Audience

I come from a digital marketing & freelancing background so this isn't my first attempt at selling out and cashing in. I tried many avenues and tactics in my first year of marketing:

I don't regret even the tactics that didn't really do much for me because I learned quite a bit and even the ones that were ineffective still got eyes on my work. I was driven to growth hack the launch of the first three books in my series. However, growth hacking means that you eventually need to go over your marketing funnels and clean up your audience. I got around 7,000 subscribers in merch giveaways advertised on Facebook. While I got some fans out of it and was able to pitch my work to that big audience, these subscribers made my click and open rate drop and increased my unsubscribe rate. I believe that this has affected the deliverability of my newsletter. It also brought my newsletter costs up to $50 a month with mailerlite.

The big goal for July is to offboard the inactive subscribers on my list. I picked July because I have the excitement of a new release, the second edition of book 1, and also new paperback versions to promote. The offboarding sequence is: