Adventures in Amazon Advertising: BATTLE FOR THE WASTELANDS

One of the reasons that I independently published Battle for the Wastelands rather than continuing to submit to traditional publishers is that I wanted to use it as a test-bed for various book-marketing plans I've learned via writing podcasts like The Sell More Books Show and The Six-Figure Author (successor to The Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast). Although the coronavirus outbreak has scuppered my usual strategy of "sell books at lots of events and get lots of e-mails for the newsletter" (seriously, that's how I've made most of my money from 2017 when The Thing in the Woods came out until today), on the bright side that's given me some very strong incentive to try other methods.

However, even before the outbreak I ran a series of Amazon advertising campaigns using relevant keyword sets for searching like "post-apocalyptic," "western," and "steampunk." I also attached Battle as a sponsored product to similar books like William R. Forstchen's the Lost Regiment series, books like the Atomic Sea series by Jack Conner (who blurbed it), etc.

Results were mostly negative, although they did help me learn a bit about keywords that might be more successful. Here's a breakdown:

*One Amazon campaign using various derivatives of "western" like "western books for Kindle" and "western weird" got me three Battle sales for a total of $11.97 at a cost of $17.88. Battle is in the Kindle Unlimited program and I do remember upticks on Kindle Unlimited page-reads during this period, but I don't think it's enough to cover the difference. Plus $11.97 divided by the three copies is $3.99, the e-book list price and not my net profit, so the profitability gap is even larger. The "western weird" keyword set got me two sales totaling $7.98 for a spend of $0.51, which to quote the great Borat is "very nice," but "western books for Kindle" got me one sale for $8.60 spend, a substantial loss. And two variants of "Western Kindle" spent $8.77 between them for no sales at all.

*Another advertising campaign ate $28.73 for no sales whatsoever. That one was focused on post-apocalyptic fiction with military fiction as the follow-up. A keyword related to steampunk that was almost an afterthought spent $2.55 for no sales and that was the best performer in that campaign. 😭 This was the first ad campaign I straight up shut down to stop the bleeding money-wise.

I think the reason that happened is that post-apocalyptic readers prefer stories that take place immediately after the apocalypse or within a relatively short time (think The Walking Dead, Zombie Road, or various EMP-type books), while the apocalyptic event in the Wastelands world was centuries in the past. This is more secondary-world fantasy with an apocalyptic background--Lord of the Rings had the Fall of Numenor and the decline of its colonies/successor states like Arnor and Gondor in Middle-Earth as the background and my short story "Lord of the Dolorous Tower" has a comet impact the medieval-ish society remember as "the Hammer of the Heavens." Meanwhile, Wastelands has...well, I can't get into that for spoiler reasons. :)

*Another ad, with a focus on steampunk, netted one sale at a cost of $18.94. The keywords that got that sale are "steampunk fiction" (broad), while "steampunk fiction" (phrase) lost money and "steampunk books" lost lots of money.

*An ad campaign focused on steampunk books, in particular higher-selling ones, only got clicks on three of the six books and made no sales on those and straight up lost nearly $7 on "steampunk fiction" as a category.

I think there's at least one more ad campaign there, but I'm pretty sure you get the point. As a result of all this, I shut down all my Amazon ad campaigns, period. Although Kindle Unlimited pay-reads--and those did go up--does provide a bit of "fudge factor," the profitability gap was so large that there is no way hundreds of pages at half a cent each was covering them.

In some discussions online about Amazon and Facebook advertising, someone I've talked with said that AMS ads make a lot more sense if you've got a series rather than just one book. That way, even if only 10% of people who click buy your book, if a bunch of those go on to buy later books, that ad is a lot more likely to pay for itself. This bodes well for my planned related novella "Son of Grendel," which will probably be out sometime in the spring once I make some revisions and get it formatted.

And if I do give Amazon ads another spin before I have another Wastelands story out, "Western weird" might be the way to go. 😎

Selling My Own Books, In-Person or Online

I once heard the reason Taylor Swift is so rich is that she knows that musicians don't get most of their money from record sales, but from touring. And she likes to tour. Consequently, she is probably one of richest 30-somethings on the planet rather than some forlorn artist who made a lot of money for the record label but not much for themselves.

The same logic applies to books. Once the retailer, distributor, and publisher get their share (and I'm not faulting them for wanting to be paid for their portion of the work, especially low-margin small presses), there's less for the author. One solution for authors looking to make more money, therefore, is to sell direct. I've heard of more complex methods of doing this, such as selling bookmarks with a QR code linked to a one-time e-book download, but the method I settled on was buying lots of my stock wholesale from the publisher and hitting up event like science fiction conventions, gun shows, local festivals, etc.

Then I moved onto selling directly online, selling my wholesale copies of Little People, Big Guns and Battle for the Wastelands to people I knew online or in real life. Some bought through Amazon, while I made individual arrangements via PayPal or Facebook (which now has a "send money" option).

That's come in particularly handy this weekend, which was supposed to be the Atlanta Sci-Fi and Fantasy Expo. I first attended that event in 2018 and that was the first event where I sold through a complete print run of The Thing in the Woods. The second event in 2019 was less successful because the only new thing I had was The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2, in which I had only one story and people from the previous year were expecting new stuff. I was looking forward to this year's event because I had new books like Battle, LPBG, and my reissued short-story collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire, but then the coronavirus outbreak happened.

(Not really blaming them for canceling--not only do medical professionals recommend avoiding large crowds at the moment, but on a more self-interested level if they went through with it, attendance numbers would likely crater and nobody would make any money. Better to wait.)

So although it's unfortunate the event got canceled, I've got the infrastructure in place to sell signed copies to anybody in the United States. If you'd like anything of mine signed, e-mail me (mquinn1984@gmail.com) or contact me via Twitter (@MatthewWQuinn) and we can work something out via PayPal, VenMo, or Facebook.

One person has already contacted me about a two-book deal, so let's get this going. :)

Putting Novellas In Packages...

At some point in the next few months, I'm going to put out a new novella "Son of Grendel," which is set in the world of my novel Battle for the Wastelands roughly a year or so before the book begins. The cover has already been completed by artist Matt Cowdery, who did the cover for Battle and the upcoming sequel.

However, in order to get 70% royalties on Amazon, one has to charge $2.99 or more per book. That's easy to justify with a full novel, but harder with a shorter work. A 70% royalty on a $2.99 e-book is $2.10 or so, but 35% royalty on a $1.99 e-book is $0.70. That's no way to make money. And if I've got a quality cover and had the formatting done professionally, that's a lot of costs to cover even at a higher royalty before I make a profit.

Consequently, although I'm going to release "Son of Grendel" as a standalone since most of the work has already been done (I just need to do writing group revisions, perhaps add a couple new scenes, and then have it formatted for e-book), future novellas set in the worlds of Battle or The Thing in the Woods will be released in packages of three.

(I've got to give credit to Delilah S. Dawson, Kevin Hearne, and Chuck Wendig for the concept--they released three novellas in a package called Three Slices.)

Not only can putting three novellas together into something approximately novel-length justify charging a novel-equivalent price, but I can print the book to sell at conventions. That's how I make most of my writing money anyway, so having more to sell is always a plus.

I even have ideas for what the first three-novella package will look like. It'll be entitled Warriors: Three Novellas of the Wastelands or something to that effect and will feature the following stories:

*I'd lead with "Son of Grendel," since it would be the first one published. Falki Grendelsson, heir to the first lord of the Northlands, is sent on a counterinsurgency mission and things don't go according to plan.

*Next comes "Ruled in Rage," which is approximately a fifth written right now. It's Grendel's origin story--how he adopts the name, how he meets his right hand Alexander Matthews, and how he begins to walk the trail of blood that will someday make him the ruler of the known world. Although he's in his teens, we'll see a lot of the traits that mark him in middle age--his cunning, his lechery, etc. The title is an allusion to Beowulf, which is heavily tied into the Wastelands' series overarching plot.

*The third novella is tentatively titled "A Valkyrie Is Born," but that's probably going to change. The Valkyries are part of Norse mythology and thus more associated with Grendel and his Sejeran (Norse) allies, plus the title is a bit on the long side. This is a story of Alyssa Carson, Andrew's love interest from the first book, and her family's...grotesque...encounter with the cannibalistic Flesh-Eating Legion after the fall of the Merrills.

*Alternatively, the third novella could be "A Creature of the Fall." This one takes place over a decade before Battle and will feature Alonzo Merrill in his very early teens and his serious-minded elder brother John. There will be battle with the Flesh-Eaters, a great big hint as to what happened to end the Old World, and perhaps the dirigible bombing of the Flesh-Eater capital that gives their overlord Jasper Clark such a massive grudge against the Merrills.

Given the potential for some of these stories to grow into full novels (most likely to happen with "Ruled"), having different options for the third novella is always a good idea. I could make a package of four--two stories from the villains and two from the heroes--but that'd risk it getting too long. Realistically I'd probably save "Creature" for a future installment, especially since including an Alyssa story would prevent the collection from being a boys' club and I want to foreshadow the reason for the Fall closer to the final book.

Next Events: Augusta Toy and Comic Show, Ringgold Next Chapter Con, and Atlanta SFF Expo

Although I had several events lined up for the spring and summer, COVID-19 has knocked my convention game on its heels. The Atlanta Comic-Con, historically my biggest earner, was delayed until 2021, while the Atlanta Sci-Fi and Fantasy Expo, the occasion for the original version of this post, was delayed until the summer and then as of now November (more on that later). Fortunate, I'm not out of the game yet. I attended a Dalton-based event called ConFinement (hee-hee) in June and I've got events slated for September and November.

My first event will be the Augusta Toy and Comic Show, September 5th and 6th in Augusta, Georgia. I have some relatives in town I can stay with, so I won't have to worry about hotel expenses. I've historically done very well at comic events, but people who go to toy shows typically aren't interested in books. This will be the official premiere of The Atlanta Incursion (the sequel to The Thing in the Woods) and the print version of "Son of Grendel" (short prequel to Battle for the Wastelands) so hopefully I'll be able to make a lot of "two for $20" cash deals.

My next event will be the Next Chapter Con in Ringgold, GA, near the Tennessee border on September 19. Last year I served as a panelist and made both a great deal of money (I don't remember how much) and got a lot of e-mails for (my semi-monthly newsletter). And that was with only two books, Thing and The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2. This time around I've got a bunch more inventory to sell and I'll be able to notify people who'd attend last year in advance that I'll be coming. I'm definitely looking forward to this one.

Finally, I'll be coming to The Atlanta Sci-Fi and Fantasy Expo for the third time. The first time I attended I sold an entire print run of The Thing in the Woods, but the second time was less lucrative--a lot of people had bought books at the last one or at other events asked if I had anything new to sell. Well now I've got a lot more to sell--Little People, Big Guns,Battle for the Wastelands, "Son of Grendel," and Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire in addition to my remaining stock of The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2. Based on some e-mails I've exchanged with the convention organizers, the event will be broken up across several weekends in November and I'll be attending one of those. Hopefully I'll be able to coordinate my stuff with relevant or popular panels, plus I've got visitors from the last couple years on my newsletter list.

So even though COVID wrecked my summer convention schedule, I might still be able to make bank this fall, especially with my larger inventory. Fingers crossed!

Myopia, Patreon, and "How I Would Have Done It"

As most of you know, I am a regular participant in the film podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood, now in its fifth-ish year. In order to get the podcast to its next level, we've created a Patreon with lots of different rewards. Reward tiers include access to exclusive series on the James Bond and Alien franchises, exclusive one-off episodes like one on the James Bond film soundtracks, live riffs on movies like we did late last year with The Black Cauldron, and for the top-paying patrons, picking movies for us to do episodes on.

All patrons, however, will receive the monthly newsletter "Myopia Prescription." A major feature of that newsletter will be a monthly long-form article from me. February 2020's article was how I would have done The Guyver, which draws heavily on ideas from my review of the first one and my review of the second one. The next one, slated for March, will be how I would have done The Last Starfighter. Other "how I would have done its" for further out include the 2007 live-action Transformers, the 1990s live-action Mortal Kombat, and the original Friday the 13th from the 1980s.

(New patrons can access the newsletters and bonus episodes from earlier months, so if you're finding this now, don't worry about it.)

These "how I would have done it" film treatments will be longer (both the Transformers and TLS ones are 2,500 to 3,000 words long) and more detailed than the "how I would have done it" blog posts like this one on Friday the 13th VII, although I will still structure them in the three-act format.

Thing is, I don't have so much time anymore, especially now that I've independently published Battle for the Wastelands and need to put out new series content every couple months to keep reader interest and build up those precious Kindle Unlimited page-views. As a result, you're going to see a lot less film-related content from me here.

So if you want to keep getting those "how I would have done it" posts (and depending on how crunchy time gets, movie reviews), make sure you subscribe to the Myopia Patreon. You can still get them for as little as a dollar per month, less than a cup of coffee.

After-Action Report: Two Cons, Two Weeks

I know it's been awhile since I posted anything, but these last few weeks have been busy. In particular, I've spent two weekends in a row working conventions here in Atlanta--the horror-themed Days of the Dead and the steampunk/alternate-history AnachroCon final show.

At Days of the Dead, I split the table with Nathan McCullough, whom I know from the Atlanta chapter of the Horror Writers Association and who was selling his new novella/short-story collection Drag You Down. That was a good weekend--I got 35 e-mail addresses for my semi-monthly newsletter and sold 33 books. The Thing in the Woods dominated with over half, but I sold a fair number of Little People, Big Guns and even seven copies of Battle for the Wastelands despite it not being a horror novel. I made at least one sale by comparing it to The Dark Tower, which helped me make a horror connection even though both Battle and TDT series are primarily fantasy.

I also handed out all my remaining Thing note-cards with QR codes for the e-book, which based on my Amazon rankings seems to have led to some upticks in sales. Unfortunately the relatively high table cost, even though I split it with Nate, and the high costs of parking led to a net profit of only around $25. Still, given the large number of books sold, the addition of new people to my newsletter, and advice Nate gave me on how to fix a minor glitch in the first print copies of Battle, this overall was a good experience.

(Going forward I'm thinking of carrying books to and from conventions in a rolling suitcase and taking Lyft rather than driving myself and carrying the original shipping boxes on a hand-cart. With a more stable suitcase, I could even take MARTA even though it's slower and shave off even more dollars. That'll be really helpful with the upcoming Atlanta Comic Con at the Georgia World Convention Center.)

AnachroCon proved more profitable, since I was a convention guest. I appeared in five panels, listed here. The most lively one was the one on tropes--we got into the ones people found annoying like Tragic Mulatto (I brought up Mr. Spock as the rare male example, since McCoy gives him crap about being a Vulcan and other Vulcans think he's too human) and characters getting "fridged." I sold 19 books there (Thing was the biggest seller surprisingly enough, followed by Battle) and since I didn't have to pay any costs, I made $121.50 in profit on 19 books and got 17 e-mails for my newsletter. Although it's unfortunate that this will be the last AnachroCon, the Atlanta Steampunk Expo  is moving to February to take its place next year and I've been in talks with the organizers about attending as a writer.

Time to get "Son of Grendel" revised and posted on Amazon and get working on the sequel to Battle of the Wastelands. :)

My Five AnachroCon 2020 Panels

The weekend of Valentine's Day 2020 I'm going to be participating in--and even moderating--several panels at AnachroCon, Atlanta's annual steampunk and alternate history convention. Here they are, along with what I anticipate discussing:

How To Write Effective Villains-Friday (2/14) at 5 PM. I've gotten some kudos for developing my villains, be they cult leader Phil in The Thing in the Woods, the military dictator Grendel in Battle for the Wastelands, and (NAME REDACTED FOR SPOILERS) in Little People, Big Guns. I always take care to remember that everybody is the hero in their own story and few if anybody truly see themselves as evil. Hitler and the Nazis viewed themselves as heroically fighting an international Jewish-Communist conspiracy, the Soviets viewed themselves as fighting exploitative and aggressive international capitalism, Mao Zedong viewed himself as fighting to rebuild China after a "Century of Humiliation" at the hands of the European colonial powers and Japan, and Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi viewed themselves as agents of the will of God. Also appearing on the panel are Taylor S. Hoch, Lee Martindale, and Bill Ritch.

To Trope or Not To Trope, That Is The Question-Friday (2/14) at 8 PM. Given all the times I've referenced the almighty TVTropes in Myopia: Defend Your Childhood and my friend Jamie and I can actually carry on conversations in TVTropes, this seemed right up my alley. Although many of my stories use common tropes (no spoilers to say that in Battle for the Wastelands, the hero's home is the Doomed Hometown), some of my storytelling ideas do invert common tropes. I wrote a whole blog post about how Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker would have been more interesting if they'd avoided Redemption Equals Death for a certain character (and had to deal with all the awkward consequences), while I've got an as-yet-unpublished short story in which the villain, rather than destroying the hero's hometown, instead makes it a major military base. The hero's neighborhood gets eminent-domained and much of the town ends up gentrifying, creating sets of winners and losers and a much more complicated situation than just the usual hero-villain. Also appearing on the panel are William Joseph Roberts, Bill Ritch, R.A. "Rob" McCandless, and Dennis Medbury.

So You Want To Go Indie: Publishing in the 21st Century-Saturday (2/15) at 11 AM. We're living in a new world with e-readers and platforms like Amazon KDP and Createspace. To use economics teacher metaphors, publishing used to be an oligopoly (harder to get into and more money for those who do), but now it's monopolistic competition (low barriers to entry and less profit). This has led to an explosion in the number of books available to readers, but also drastically increased competition for writers even as it provides a lot more opportunities for them. Also appearing on the panel are William Joseph Roberts, Mandy Burkhead, and Cecilia Dominic.

Alternate Universe Creation-Saturday (2/15) at 1 PM. One area of my writing I've been given kudos for is my worldbuilding. My "idea files" for different projects typically involve well-developed worlds just needing people to put in them. From high school (around 2000 or so) until 2015 when my new day job required more time I was a regular member of the Internet's biggest alternate history forum, producing several alternate timelines on the site and commenting on many, many more. Even though I had site administration ban me to avoid distractions, I still blog about timelines I can read in the public section, so I'm not getting rusty. Also appearing on the panel are Taylor S. Hoch, Bill Ritch, and Cecilia Dominic. This is the first time I'm actually moderating a panel, so wish me luck. :)

How To Research Effectively-Saturday (2/15) at 3 PM. Given how I've got a history masters degree this is an area where I can put my talents to work. For those writing military fiction YouTube has demonstrations of the firing of various weapons and even footage from actual combat (like the time someone put GoPros on tanks in battle in Syria). Also it's possible to get an alumni library card for colleges you've graduated from to retain access to the library, like I have for Georgia State. Also appearing are Lee Martindale and Cecilia Dominic.