I’ve been busy since the last progress report.
Website changes
I’ve revamped the anthonycamber.com website significantly.
- There’s a new home page that showcases my books, and my newest book in particular, rather than my blog posts.
- There’s a new Blog post index page for posts/rambles like this.
- There’s a new Find your next book page, with about thirty different criteria that potential readers might be interested in, and which books match. For example, someone can easily discover which books are sci-fi, or written in past tense in the first person.
- There’s a new Press kit page with sections for me and for each book, aimed at anyone just looking for facts.
- The Books page focuses on providing purchase links to all my books. I’ve checked all links and added most missing Amazon stores. Stores that don’t stock an edition of a book are shown greyed out and unclickable. (I haven’t added Amazon stores that don’t stock any of my books. I guess I’m too gay for Saudi Arabia.)
- Every book’s own page has been updated to include updated purchase links, review quotes, metadata like ISBNs and publication dates, and media files.
Between Two Worlds
Between Two Worlds — Pod of Capricorn book 1 — is now out! You can likely buy it from your local Amazon store for Kindle or in paperback, and it’s available at no cost to subscribers of Kindle Unlimited. There are purchase links scattered throughout the site: the sidebar, the Books page, the Between Two Worlds page, and the home page.
I love how the paperback has turned out.
The chapter heading graphics were an inspired last-minute idea, added after I’d already laid out the book interior. Every chapter heading graphic is different, and all 72 graphics together form a sequence. It was never going to work as a flipbook, because for this book I’m starting chapters on both left and right pages. However, if you subscribe (free!) to this site, the bonus (free!) content available to you includes a couple of YouTube videos of the full sequence — with background stars and more frames.
Talking of bonus content: subscribers also have access to a short story, Kerb’s bad dice, set within the timeline of Between Two Worlds. This story isn’t available anywhere else. It doesn’t spoil the book.
Rankings
I’ve seen some pleasingly low numbers in the rankings on Amazon UK:
Reviews and ratings
ARC readers are key to creating an initial buzz around a book. Books are more likely to succeed if they launch with a bunch of reviews and ratings already in place, providing potential readers with social proof that the book’s worth buying.
As I mentioned last time, I didn’t manage to attract many ARC applications for Between Two Worlds. I sent out only seven ARCs, and so far I’ve seen one review. This rate of return isn’t surprising: about 90% of people who receive an ARC don’t write a review. It’s possible the six other recipients haven’t yet read the book, or decided not to, or started and gave up, or hated it, or beamed away to the planet Zog, or something. Although it’s tempting to get annoyed that I gave away six books for nothing, it’s better to treat ARCs as marketing spend. It’s the cost of doing business. They’re digital media, and the monetary cost to me per-ARC was almost zero.
Meanwhile I’ve started a month-long review campaign with Booksprout. Up to 25 members of that site can claim a free review copy. See the Booksprout book page for Between Two Worlds.
Happily some reviews have started to appear on Amazon now. Some choice quotes:
“Everything I want and need from a sci-fi story” — from the one ARC reviewer who did review the book.
“I loved this book. A weirdly warm dystopian sci-fi built around layered little mysteries in a voice that really builds its world, all wrapped into a queer love story” — from a beta reader.
At time of writing, Amazon shows four global ratings, all five stars. No reviews or ratings have appeared on Goodreads or The StoryGraph yet.
The more reviews and ratings the better, even if they’re not five stars. Social proof helps me sell books. Please rate and review if you can.
Advertising
For the first week after launch I ran three different ads on Meta — firstly on Facebook feeds, and then on Instagram reels. One of the ads worked well: about 10% of ad impressions resulted in clicks to Amazon.
Sadly the sales didn’t recoup the ad costs. This might be for a number of reasons, some easily fixable, some not-so-easily fixable, and some realistically not fixable. Perhaps it’s the blurb? Easily adjusted. Or the cover? Not so easy. Or the fact that the book’s in dialect? That isn’t going to change.
I don’t know for sure what stopped so many clicks converting to sales. My hunch is that the lack of Amazon reviews/ratings is the most likely cause, and that’s why I’ve started the Booksprout campaign. It was a known risk to advertise with no ratings in place.
At least now I know I have an ad that people click on. But perhaps the ad mis-sells the book, and that’s why people don’t buy.
So many possibilities, so little actual data.
Pod of Capricorn, book 2
I’m almost halfway through the third revision of POC2. I’m happy with it so far, and don’t see any major issues. I’m mainly tidying up the language so it’s consistent with Between Two Worlds. It might end up at 90-91k words, a bit longer than POC1.
I don’t have a confirmed title yet. I do have a cover idea.
There’s a recap of Between Two Worlds at the start, because everyone including me hates sequels that pick up the story assuming you remember absolutely everything that happened in the previous book.
Unstable Orbits
From September 21, everyone who buys Unstable Orbits for Kindle (or Kindle Unlimited) or in paperback will find the first chapter of Between Two Worlds at the back of the book.
I’ve also lowered the price for Unstable Orbits in all stores, for Kindle and paperback editions (I don’t control the audiobook price).
Some price changes to highlight:
- UK: Kindle £4.99 -> £3.99; paperback £10.99 -> £9.99
- USA: Kindle $6.99 -> $5.99; paperback £13.99 -> $12.99
- Canada: Kindle $8.99 -> $6.99; paperback $19.99 -> $17.99
- EU: Countries in the Euro previously had inconsistent paperback prices due to VAT. All sticker prices should now be consistent. Kindle €5.99 -> €4.99; paperback €13.99 plus VAT -> €11.99 including VAT.
Prices in other countries, like Sweden, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan, have dropped too. See the Unstable Orbits book page for all the links.
Other books
In a few days there’ll be a new revision of A Room Full of Elephants (for Kindle and paperback) that includes the first chapter of Between Two Worlds.
I might update the other books too, if I can reliably do so. I can open the Scrivener files for them, so I should be able to rebuild the ebooks easily enough. It’ll be trickier to update the paperbacks, as I originally created those with Adobe Indesign and I’ve since moved to Affinity. Affinity might be able to load those files so I can tweak them.
It would be nice to move all books to the current Affinity template. However, that would likely change the page count too much for the Amazon gods, and they’d require me to create a new edition with a new ISBN. It’s a big old faff, essentially. I want to avoid burning ISBNs (they’re not cheap) if I’m not also changing the covers.
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