The Power of Used Books

by Paula Gail Benson

I have a friend named Fran Bush who, with carefully selected cohorts, accomplishes the impossible almost every day. No exaggeration.

Don Bush, second from the right, photo by Cindy Kubovic for the Aiken Standard

She and her husband Don, both lovely, genial, retired booksellers, spend their time making the world better for people and animals. They are well known in their home town of Aiken, South Carolina, for their community contributions. Any abandoned or rescued cat or dog can find a refuge at the Bush abode, and likely may become a permanent resident. (Currently, they support six dogs and thirty cats.) In 2017, the Bushs were honored by the local branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) for their leadership.

Fran’s connection with the local AAUW began when, while still working at her bookstore, she donated and collected used books for the annual AAUW Books ‘n Things Fair. She also helped to set up lunch programs with authors (including her dear friends Charles and Caroline Todd--take a look, she’s mentioned in their Bess Crawford acknowledgments) to raise funds for education efforts.

Fran Bush and Amy Conkelton, photo by Dede Biles for the Aiken Standard

This year, Fran and her good friend Amy Conkelton were named co-chairs for the AAUW Books ‘n Things Fair.

Amy is another force for good in the Aiken community. She has been an English teacher and school librarian at Aiken High School as well as caretaker for her mother.

Recently, Amy was sidelined by a severe automobile accident that required five surgeries for shattered bones in both her feet and ankles. Nevertheless, she persevered with planning for the Fair, even while in rehab.

Fran speaks humbly about their involvement in the event. “This is not something Amy or I can take credit for. The Fair is organized by a group of people who know what they are doing and have done it for thirty-five years. The biggest thing I did was to stay out of their way or do something when they needed it done.”

Front Room of AAUW Books 'n Things Fair, photo by Cindy Kubovic for the Aiken Standard

What the group did was collect 80,000 books to sell. In addition, they had a section of “Attic Treasures” that featured clothing, jewelry, household items, Christmas decorations, and other merchandise, including special books (those extremely new or very old that were specially priced). They also operated a food court, where shoppers could take a break and order from a delicious menu.

For the first two days of the event, each hard cover book was priced at two dollars, trade paperbacks were one dollar, and mass-market paperbacks were fifty cents. On the last day, everything was reduced to half price.

On the first day, Don Bush opened the doors early to let shoppers come in out of the rain. They had a record crowd.

Back Room of the AAUW Books 'n Things Fair, photo by Cindy Kubovic for the Aiken Standard

During the three days, approximately 70,000 books were sold. The 10,000 left went to different charities, including the local free libraries, another city’s library, another library’s book sale, a church library, and a church’s book sale (to raise money for a summer school Bible program).

This year’s Books ‘n Things raised $61,249, all of which the AAUW will provide to education projects and for scholarships.

So, you see, it’s not just the power of words, but the power of used books that, even in this age of technology, may make a significant difference.

Thanks, Fran, Don, and Amy. I look forward to seeing you at next year’s event.

Have you experienced the power of used books?

Early Results from a Free Book Promotion

Not quite a month ago my WWK blog Free or Not to Free—THAT is the question addressed my assumptions about what would happen when I offered the Kindle version of the first in my Seamus McCree series for five days for free. Here is a summary from that blog:

My hypothesis goes something like this: For every 1,000 downloads, say 10% read the book. Of those, say 10% become fans and read the entire series. At current pricing, it costs them $15 to buy the other four books. Under those assumptions, each 1,000 downloads will result in $150 of sales ($100 of royalties). Plus, I expect I’ll end up with more read Kindle Unlimited pages, and I hope the publicity will spur sales of other books in the series to people who have read and liked my novels but not been motivated to buy the next in the series.

To estimate the effect of the giveaway, it’s necessary to develop a baseline: what might have happened had I not offered the five days of free downloads. During the thirty days before the five free-promotion days, I had no promotions in effect and sold a walloping nine Kindle books. Kindle Unlimited reads during that period totaled a paltry 3,637 pages. Total earnings for those thirty days: $42.

Results of the promotion

The ad cost $150 and resulted in 5,961 downloads of Ant Farm. During the promotion, Ant Farm reached #1 bestseller for free Kindle ebooks in the Suspense and Private Investigator categories, and #22 overall.

Given the nearly 6,000 downloads, my hypothesis proposes I should gain long-term earnings of $600 from Kindle books sales. In addition, I expected to significantly increase the number of Kindle Unlimited Pages read. The chart below shows the results for the twenty-four days starting with the first day of the promotion (through June 10, 2018 – the day I wrote the first draft of this blog).

Book	Kindle Sold	Royalty	KU Pages Read	Estimated Total Revenue
Ant Farm	5	$14	24,782	$125
Bad Policy	31	65	18,446	148
Cabin Fever	21	59	12,937	117
Doubtful Relations	17	47	9,993	92
Empty Promises	13	36	9,549	79
Total	87	$221	75,707	$561

My expectation was and still is that the hoped-for $600 earnings from Kindle ebooks will occur over a long period (and therefore be difficult to measure precisely). However, I have already earned about a third of that amount.

I also theorize that “binge” readers of Kindle ebooks belong to Kindle Unlimited because it makes economic sense for them to pay $9.99/month rather than buy individual books. If that assumption is correct, KU pages read resulting from the ad will be front-loaded relative to purchased ebooks. The first twenty-four days of KU reads produced an estimated $340 (at $.0045/page). The rate of pages read quickly reached 2,500 a day, eventually increased to as many as 5,000 a day and has dropped off to 3,000 a day. I’ll be interested to see how long the tail of the distribution is. Also fascinating to me is that many KU readers don’t bother downloading free books; they prefer to read them through KU. That’s great for me because the nearly 25,000 pages of Ant Farm they have read generated over $100 of income for me.

The ROI on my $150 investment has already reached 350% —clearly a terrific investment. As a bonus, the number of Goodreads reviews and ratings has increased, pushing the series total to more than 200 ratings, averaging 4.33 stars. Amazon ratings have also ticked up a little (the series now has 148 reviews averaging 4.67 stars).

Considerations and Unknowables

A single ad. I decided to run only a single ad for this promotion besides announcing the free days in my newsletter. Had I purchased other ads, I would have generated more downloads at an increased cost. As the results for the month before the promotion illustrate, without promotion, sales of the series die. I chose to save those other advertising possibilities for future promotions. Their mailing lists will have considerable overlap with the one I chose, but each has unique subscribers, and periodic promotions will (a) reach new readers, and (b) remind others of the series. Time will tell.

Amazon-only ebook distribution. My overall sales strategy is predicated on granting Amazon exclusive rights to sell my electronic books. There is no way to measure what might have happened with a similar promotion had the electronic books been available on all platforms, but unavailable on KU. I have noted in earlier blogs that when my publisher used a wide distribution, non-Kindle ebooks ran about 25% of Kindle sales. My KU revenue runs 53% of ebook sales. That percentage will increase after this latest promotion. Single-sourcing electronic book sales with Amazon has been a good decision for me—so far.

Diminishing returns. This promotion was the first time Ant Farm was offered free, other than the free books provided at the book’s birth as a Kindle Scout selection three years ago. I plan to make Ant Farm free again in the future, and I’m anxious to learn how effective periodic promotions will be. As more people have the opportunity to download the book, returns should diminish. The 6,000 readers represent a small percentage of the potential market for the series making it uncertain how steeply the returns will diminish.

Uncontrollable. There are many things that can affect my results I cannot control for in this experiment. I didn’t check the moon phase, whether Mercury was in retrograde, or another astronomical phenomenon. I don’t know whether mid-May works better or worse for a free promotion than other times of the year. I have no ability to test whether changing the sales copy for the free promotion could have resulted in more downloads or sales. So many unknowns, so little certainty.

My experiments will continue.

* * *

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree mystery series. Empty Promises, the fifth novel in the series—this one set in the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—is now available. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

I’ve attended a few bookstore events since Cabin Fever’s publication last month. I’d love to say I was overwhelmed with the positive response, but that’s not the case. I can attribute the lack of success to a variety of causes, although my being unknown is likely the major factor.

Timing can be everything. For example, at one bookstore my event was a Saturday afternoon (normally a decent time). However it conflicted with a wonderful farmers market/artists booth sale/classic car show held at the central town square on a beautiful spring day. Worse, the bookstore had a launch party for a local author’s “food book” that evening, which involved not only the bookstore but many other merchants in the town. How many people are going to go to two book events in a day?

Having exactly no one show up at that signing was disappointing. I recently spoke with CJ Lyons, who said she rarely does bookstore signings anymore because they are not worth her time. She then added an important caveat, “unless you are just trying to build relationships with booksellers.”

Exactly. Most people who read my books really enjoy them. Goodreads and Amazon reviews of my books have been favorable (On Goodreads Bad Policy ratings average 4.55 and Cabin Fever currently averages 4.88. For Amazon the ratings are 4.75 and 4.78.)

The key to my success is to have people read the books – at least people who like page-turning mystery/thrillers. For that I need proponents and, until I have legions of fans, for that I need independent booksellers.

At each signing I introduce myself and my books to someone who can sell them. Unfortunately, I am not alone in this endeavor and independent booksellers are inundated with people vying for their time. All I can do is continue to try and appreciate every bookstore that allows me to appear in their venue.

So, thank you all independent bookstores—those who already know me and those who will learn of me later. I’m rooting for your success and hoping we share a prosperous future.

~ Jim

The Book Popularity Contest That Wasn't

Apparently, I’ve been a bad Kansan. I’ve lived here nearly all my life, but according to this list of the most popular books in each state, I’ve totally failed.

I haven’t read the most popular book in my state.

Heck, I haven’t even heard of it.

The High Lord: The Black Magician Trilogy. Anybody heard of it? Anybody read it? Bueller? Bueller?

It’s the third book in said trilogy by an Australian writer named Trudi Canavan. It has good reviews on GoodReads and Amazon. But the most popular book in our state? Really?

Now, I’m not putting that much belief into this tally, mainly because I’ve never heard of the service (maybe I’m just out of the loop?), and just using a single service as a guide seems like extremely thin accounting.

Actually, I’m being nice. My journalism background knows exactly what this is: lazy. A press release and easy inches to fill the page. Trust me.

But I wasn’t in the Parade newsroom when this story sprang to life. Thus, I’ll just give you the best outsider’s evidence: No state has the same book.

With the prevalence of bestsellers out there, don’t you find that a bit odd? I mean, I understand it would be boring if every single state had The Goldfinch as its top pick. Or Life After Life. Or some other mega hit. But no two states have the same runaway bestseller? Yeah, that’s the single source/small sample/press release laziness talking.

Thus, I’ve been trying to think about what might be the actual most popular book in my state.

Mostly, the list I’ve come up with includes books that are either longtime, huge bestsellers (The Harry Potter series, Dan Brown’s books, James Patterson’s books, etc.) or books assigned for school reading (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter).

Of course, those are all serious, practical answers. As far as what I personally believe should be the current bestseller here? Why not Gone Girl? It’s written by a University of Kansas graduate and it’s undeniably popular.

What should be your current state’s bestseller?