Last month, I posted about reformatting my debut novel, Come Back.
As part of the glow-up, I added a series link in the back matter, plus a QR code for the paperback, and a couple of sentences that told the reader which books contained stories of supporting characters (books 2 & 4). My goal was to improve series read-through.
The e-book interior was updated September 12th and the paperback September 16th, so, the backmatter changed roughly half way through the month. I compared both Kindle e-book sales and Kindle Unlimited page reads by looking at total sales and page reads for each of books 2-4 and calculating what percentage they each were of the sales/reads of book 1.
Ex: If I sold twenty copies of book 1 for the month and ten copies of book 2, read-through for book 2 would be 50%.
Of course, I have no way of knowing whether the same reader bought all four books - or in the case of KU, whether customers were reading the entire series or even the entire book - but the numbers are still interesting to compare.
It's probably too soon to make much of the data, but here's what I've seen so far.
Page reads have remained fairly consistent, but look at e-book sales. Book 2 had been the least purchased book in the series. Not anymore.
It looks as if the mid-September glow-up achieved its objective.
Mmm... data. 📈
ReplyDeleteFascinating! It made a difference.
ReplyDeleteI need to do that with some of our series although all of them do contain a list of the full series and links where applicable.
ReplyDeleteI should do that to mine, but I'm still trying to remember to change my profile pic!
ReplyDeleteGirl, you and me both!
DeleteHi, that is a difference! Great. One of the things that I am working on now is building up the awareness of my short stories. I don't have a series yet but I need to do something that draws people to my short stories.
ReplyDeleteShalom shalom
That's interesting. I'd been considering how to provide info about when characters were spotlighted in early books. I like your way.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting and useful post. I've thought about that, for sure--read-through on my series isn't great. At the very least, I need to get in there and add in teaser chapters and so on.
ReplyDeleteYay for book 2! If I was better at analytics and the like, I'd probably be following your example. Or I'd be drowning. Too much life, eh?
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the changes!
ReplyDeleteWow, love the data! Great job on the glow up!
ReplyDelete