Another blast from the past blog.
It's the end of October 2013...
'Severe Discomfort' and 'Continual Supervision' are still largely undiscovered by the reading public, but undaunted by apparent failure I've started publishing the further adventures of the same characters - in a story with the working title 'Limited Capability' - as a serial.
With a new episode out every week it was a quite a challenge to stick to the schedule. Although the full story had been written as a first draft, edited down and partially re-written, each episode still required at least final tweaks to the narrative and dialogue, continuity checks and DIY proof reading, while some needed extra or replacement scenes. There were little profiles of some of the characters too, for the benefit of readers who hadn't read the earlier books.
Episode one is here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Limited-Capability-Episode-Social-Insecurity-ebook/dp/B00EZWT4VA/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1390516631&sr=1-2&keywords=sarah+honeysett
There are free episodes available every Friday - four, eight and twelve tomorrow, and all episodes free on every fifth Friday - but some people seem to be hooked enough on the story to buy the parts they don't want to wait for!
But as the download data began to filter through, an unexpected pattern began to emerge...
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| The romantic scent of Philadelphus plays a part in helping two characters find love in Severe Discomfort |
'Sex sells', they say. Well, it seems that whoever figured that out was definitely on to something...
As regular readers will know, in between the odd gardening project and my 'proper' job back at the CAB, I write fiction. If you haven't already read 'Severe Discomfort' and its sequel, 'Continual Supervision', and haven't met the Walker family and the Solent Welfare Rights Project advisers who help them cope with a nightmare Social Security appeal, I hope you will; both are available as real paperbacks from real bookshops as well as virtual ones with any profits from sales earmarked for the Stoke-on-Trent Citizens Advice Bureau.
Kindle owners can pick up both as ebooks on Amazon, along with weekly instalments of 'Limited Capability', a new story concerning the same characters, with at least a couple of episodes free to download every Friday. It's the download stats for these that prove the old marketing maxim correct.
Logically, if you start a story at Episode One, state clearly in the blurb when it can be downloaded free, publish Episode Two the following week with similar guidance and so on, you might expect similar numbers to be downloaded week by week, unless you do a major marketing blitz to disrupt the pattern. I don't have the resources for a major marketing blitz, but have popped the odd link on Facebook sites sympathetic to the cause of Social Security claimants around the first Friday of the month, when Episode One is always free.
On that basis, you might expect the highest sales for the first instalment, with fewer for no.2 as the story won't appeal to all, a few less for no 3 (especially if folk enjoying the story haven't finished the previous episode yet, but know they can come back for a freebie in a month's time or spend 77p for it when they want it) and so on. But this is not the pattern.
While Episode One has reasonably good 'sales' (including freebies), it is currently being outpaced by Episodes Four, Six and Eight which, I'm sure you'll agree, is illogical. Or it would be, if all the instalments were classified in the same way, but because there is no genre 'Social Security Benefit themed, left-leaning chick lit' to select from Amazon's menu (an unforgivable oversight, I'm sure you'll agree), I've varied the two options for genre available per episode. No 1 therefore went out as 'Legal' and 'Family Saga' which is probably the closest match for the story as a whole. Depending on the primary themes in each of them, other episodes have also been tagged as 'Contemporary Women', 'Political' and 'Romance'.
It's no coincidence that Episodes Four, Six and Eight have the 'Romance' tag!
But now I have a dilemma. I want my story to be read. I want people who wouldn't otherwise think sympathetically about benefit claimants to meet the Walkers and get to like them, and to empathise with their troubles. I want them to share the frustrations of the advice workers battling with funding cuts and legal challenges. I want them to stop believing the 'Daily Mail' and see Iain Duncan Smith for the vile little turd that he unquestionably is.
And I now know that the best way to get readers is to classify my stories as 'romance'. There is clearly a large audience for romantic fiction looking for a free read - I'm sure it's the mildly racy scene available early on in the preview pages of 'Continual Supervision' that keeps it outpacing its prequel when they're both on a free promotion! I have a sneaking suspicion that classifying an episode or two as 'erotica' would be even more effective in drumming up downloads, but even the naughtiest of the 'naughty bits' aren't really naughty enough to get away with that without risking disappointment to frustrated readers, and we don't want bad reviews!
At which point, may I make a gentle plea for kind but honest reviews on the 'Amazon' site if you've read either of the original books or any of the new serial so far.
So I suppose I had better not cheat and stick the 'romance' label where it doesn't belong. On the other hand, if 'sex sells' perhaps the trick is actually to write a few extra 'naughty bits'?
Actually, my conscience prevailed and I didn't do either - there was no deliberate misclassification and no gratuitous bonking either!
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