A busy month with a major revamp of my websites and work proceeding on two new titles. Let’s review status.
I completed the first update for UNAUTHORIZED HARRY POTTER BOOK SEVEN NEWS, released the PDF version to customers, and requested a proof of the new paperback. I will send out a batch of review copies next month. I postponed the pub date for UNAUTHORIZED A FEAST FOR CROWS ANALYSIS to Dec. 15.
Product sales continued to show a satisfactory degree of diversification. Net unit sales included a stronger-than-usual showing from a sentimental favorite, my first publication, Basic Documents about the Treatment of Detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Higher-than-expected returns of The Solomon Key and Beyond were an unpleasant end-of-month surprise. Overall, a down month … all my available products are at down points in their demand cycles. I can only work to make sure that they are properly positioned for the likely upswing.
By far the most cost-effective marketing technique that Nimble Books has used has been to take position its products in the Ingram and Amazon.com catalogs so that they will take advantage of major publicity events driven by third parties (MPE) such as the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It costs me almost nothing in out-of-pocket cash marketing $ to position my products appropriately, and MPE such as publication date announcements have been observed to increase monthly sales by an order of magnitude or more, so the ROI is on the order of 1000%.
Assuming that MPE will occur as expected, and that they will continue to drive potential customers towards my properly positioned products in on-line bookselling catalogs, it follows that the most cost-effective places for me to invest my efforts are:
- increasing the number of products offered
- improving the conversion rate on items in the catalog
In other words, the focus for next month will be on finishing books, and optimizing catalog metadata.
Ancillary revenue streams contributed proportionally less to revenue this month than last month.
Google Print still has four of my titles “pending,” where they have been for six months plus–despite the fact that all four titles are available electronically to Google via an LSI-Google partnership! Not worth spending any time on Google Print until they dramatically improve their throughput.
I added nicer-looking Amazon “buy this book” links to all my blogs which produced a minor but noticeable increase in Amazon.com Associates revenue.
The website reorganization has cost me AdSense revenue as I moved a lot of content off-line, but switching content management systems has made it possible for me to understand AdSense behavior more analytically. I know now that the best performing channels are Tech Fun, The Solomon Key and Beyond, and What’s New for Book-Lovers. Over the course of the month, What’s New for Book-Lovers drew away from the pack as the channel that is growing fastest, earning most in AdSense revenue, and has the most potential to grow into a significant revenue contributor.
The Solomon Key and Beyond gradually outpaced the “root” Zimmerblog, finishing a strong second among all channels and establishing a distinct user community. Books I Won’t Be Reading struggled with poor usage statistics, although it had a high volume of what I thought were funny posts. I suspect the title is creating a big obstacle to casual readers! I think I will fold it into What’s New for Book-Lovers.
As I look back at the month, I realize that the bottom line is that POD publishing is a much better business model than affiliates program.
- Every time I have “success” in AdSense (a click-thru) for What’s New for Book-Lovers, I receive an average of $0.25.
- Every time I have “success” in Amazon.com Associates (a referred purchase), I receive around $1.10.
- Every time I have “success” in book-selling (fulfill a book-seller’s order), I receive between $5.00 and $15.00.
Onward!
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