Welcome to the fantastical side of romance with magic and myth, ,
Ever been curious about how much an indie makes?
Well, have I the hack for you! Kind of. It's a loose hack for curious minds. I can't help myself as an indie I look at books closely related to mine and compare to see what others are doing in my field that are a step ahead of me on their journey to see what I can do to improve and reach that next level.
But also, I believe transparency in the indie industry for both the reader and fellow authors is important. Many readers may look at a 5.99 price tag on books and balk that an indie would charge "so much" for 6 hours or more of entertainment when a movie costs 14 for 2 to 3 hours, and not realize that us indies fronted our own money to bring the book to life and often times NEVER see a return on that investment.
But that's for another email. Back to the hack of the book rankings and checking up on fellow indies that are the next step ahead in their author journey for inspiration.
And I do mean a step, not like leaps and bounds ahead of me. Even my other pen name for alien romances is "Leaps and Bounds" from where my romantasy platform is currently at. Or perhaps, if I put it in terms of released books that are steadily growing an audience, my romantasy has one single surviving book, and my alien romances have 6. So, 5 leaps "Books" between the two.
Most rankings float off of previous sales in the week, but it's pretty easy to suss out engagement with a book based on overall Kindle Store ranking ranges.
This hack could be useful to fellow audiobook narrators that work off of royalties alone as well. Unfortunately, if an audiobook narrator picks up a job for a book that's regularly ranked above 200,000+ in the rankings, they will probably never see a return on their time and get paid less than pennies on the dollar of their time. It's why I recommend only doing royalties for passion projects and asking for a royalty plus agreement outside of that.
If you see a book within the 300,000+ in the Kindle Store Rankings
This image is of Taking Medusa the other day when it made nothing today, but made a $1.00 in KU reads the day before at rank 331,025
It's likely that a book in the 300,000 range made pennies or nothing day, possibly made around a dollar the day before. I'm using my own book data to determine this, as it isn't the first time I've had a zero-dollar day for Taking Medusa and made a dollar the day before, and regularly, across 6 different books I've written it averages less than a 1.00 when I'm in the 300,000 rankings for the day.
Taking Medusa averages around 10 to 20 a month and is regularly in the 300,000 rankings without a boost from paid newsletters (of which, do not usually make their investment back and is considered a marketing expense to find readers and hopefully retain them for the next book)
On days I only make a few pennies from a few pages read in KU for many days? I've seen my book in the 800,000+ range
On days I made nothing for months? My lowest ranking day was 1,639,121 on 8/3/23 before discontinuing a book. I'm pretty sure past this ranking point is where all the books that have been discontinued/retired go to languish.
If you see a book in the 200,000 range
That's closer to the $2+ range on that day or the day before
If you see a book in the mid 100,000s rankings in the Kindle Store
It's likely that book has made around $5+ in a day or two
Just under 100,000 in ranking?
This book has made around $7 to 10 in the last couple days
This doesn't account for "Free" promo books, if you the ranking in "free kindle store" then these rankings won't represent approximate book income, but book interest (downloads).
I give these estimates for readers and fellow authors alike to see that a majority of indie authors are in the range of 100,000 and 500,000+ ranks on average. Which means a majority of indie books are making less than $10 a week.
That isn't even a regular daily job, minimum wage job. That's not even enough to get more than a sandwich at a fast-food joint, meals these days are 12 to 15 for 1 person.
This is where the starving/struggling artist saying comes from.
To go from 100,000 to 43,000 in the rankings is a difference of making $6 the previous day and making double that the next day. The numbers of what you have to make to get under 40,000 in the rankings increases drastically to the point where it would be difficult to know exactly on any given day how many books/reads were needed to break past that ranking.
I haven't gotten under 40,000 excepting on launch days when pre-order copies are added to the algorithm. My best launch day number is #14,559 on Her Alien Prince's launch day with 177 preorders. The preorder copies were discounted because I was still building a readership, and even though I sold more, I actually made less than my current release launch days, but it's still my best "performing" book launch in terms of ranking higher in the store.
Which means if you see a book around 14,000 or under 20,000 in the rankings this author (at least for that day) is making an actual living wage during this time on that book. Probably around 100 or more for the day
You can often see indie authors with 1,000+ reviews/ratings on their books regularly appearing in this ranking range.
They are the regular indie author dream range, of making a living as an author, and not having to have another job to support themselves.
**reminder, rankings change all the time, so this is only a peek into estimated correlations between rank and income for the day/week
I'd be curious, if you too are an indie author, whether your data points are similar? Am I pretty close with my ranking "hack"?
Curious about what my own books have ranked in the Kindle Store? Keep reading on with Author Updates!
Author Updates
Her Alien Warrior reached rank 24,602 in the kindle store on launch day, which includes pre-orders in boosting the rankings. Which was 103 preorders 396 pages read on KU, and 7 e-books. (As of writing this email (AOWTE) my day ranking was 159,656 and I had 447 pages read in KU with no ebook sales)
Her Alien Savior reached rank 38,266 on launch day with 92 preorders and 1534 pages read and 4 e-books on launch day. (ranking 109,921 AOWTE- 328 pages read in KU, no sales)
(You'll notice that I use "estimated ranges" for the hack, because as you can see, Her Alien Warrior had more than 100 MORE pages read in KU, but still didn't have as good of a ranking as Her Alien Savior, reason is the day before Her Alien Savior had MORE pages read than Her Alien Warrior, and the rankings do boost a book across the week so that's why I use "ranges" of the rankings, not absolutes.)
Per the "HACK" above they both fall in the 100,000 range and DID indeed make "around" $5.00 across two days - which means that it was an accurate hack for the day according to my own stats and it's pretty consistent that the ranges have been an accurate indicator.
The highest paid ranking from any of my books received was 14,559 with Her Alien Prince on launch day. There were 177 preorders, 6 ebooks, and 909 pages read in KU. (don't be fooled by the 177 preorders, this is an AWESOME amount, but the book was discounted below 2.99 so it actually made less than my other launches with 100 or less preorders at 2,99.)
I put the numbers into a spreadsheet, like I'm prone to do, and have found that even though Her Alien Prince had my highest paid ranking, (Because I was just starting out, I had my preorder pricing set lower to help people take a leap towards a new author) so in terms of working my author career towards monetary stability, each book release has increased in profitability by 56% better from book 1 to book 2, 92% better from book 2 to book 3, 72% better from book 3 to book 4. I'm excited to see what the percentage is from book 4 to 5, but I won't have my launch month data until the end of MAY for Her Alien Insurgent!
It was actually because of Her Alien Prince's launch that I realized I can't have my preorders be under 2.99 because 2.99 is the threshold on Amazon to make the 70% royalty versus the 35% royalty rates and it took an entire YEAR from launching this book to finally break even on launch costs.
This is a great sign to see an increased interest from book to book in my Alien Romances! I hope to see the same trajectory with my romantasy books too as I launch more books!
Taking Medusa ranked 145,355 on launch day with 38 preorders and 231 pages read in KU. And this is why you can only "estimate" on how well a book is doing on any given day even with looking at their Kindle Store rankings. Not all of my preorders were counted on launch day, a few days later the ranking went up to 84,469 from pre-orders coming into the data.
So, you can see how the "rankings" are not a super reliable thing to estimate how a book is doing because it doesn't have much to do about "income" but about "interest".
Interest is increased by "reviews", quantity of ebooks downloaded, pages read, and probably how many people have added the book to their borrows even if they haven't read a bunch of pages yet. Who knows the exact mechanics of their ranking decisions? The engineers sworn to secrecy, perhaps? haha.
So, even though I had 38 preorders which is MORE books and more money in that day than say my alien romance that was in a similar ranking of under 100,000. The competition in the store is a factor (Other books doing well/launching that day), and more "interest" according to the algorithm.
All I can do is keep plugging away and maybe one day the algorithm will give me some more love.
I look forward to adding Breaking Fate's stats to my spreadsheet in October!
I'm working on it NOW!
Breaking Fate Progress! 61,597 / 90,000 word goal (68% completed)
If you haven't checked out book one, this is a series, these are not standalones, and I highly recommend reading Taking Medusa first, even though I do write my books to be easily read regardless of having read a previous book, there are plot reveals and spoilers if you start with book 2 instead of reading book 1 first.
Taking Medusa mood board vibes:
Help support more books by yours truly by reading Taking Medusa in KU, or grabbing a copy for yourself.
Convincing you to read Taking Medusa in KU and reach 50 reviews on Amazon!
Mermaids! Medusa is kidnapped to Atlantis for killing the last daughter of King Triton with her poisonous blood. To be fair.. she was trying to kill her first, and she has no idea how she survived it. She has no memory of being Medusa at all!
This is modern day and she believes that she's a normal mortal after her sister (a gorgon) stole her stone body from the watery depths and reunited her head after stealing it from Athena's shield, conveniently left in a museum instead of guarded by gods.
Enter DION! An Atlantis sentinel, who has some strange connection to her, and TRITON, who is apparently a glutton for falling for nymphs and collecting brides that don't survive long past their marriage vows.
There are mysteries, and romance, and adventure as Medusa (Aless) is lured back into the chaos and schemes of the gods. She's destined to protect them all, but fate has a funny way of trying to repeat itself. Can she keep her head this time around or will she sacrifice herself all over again?
This is a slow-burn romance fantasy adventure, so there is no clapping the cloisters, tickling the tentacles, or fishing for fins in book one, but this is a fated mates romance that will keep you turning the pages, and twisting your expectations of myth and legend. <3 Read Taking Medusa in KU!
https://books.steviemarie.com/takingmedusa
Already read Taking Medusa? Did you know Breaking Fate is available for preorder.... I'll just leave this here... (sparkles) https://books.steviemarie.com/breakingfate
Check out indie Romantasy reads with BookFunnel:
https://books.bookfunnel.com/fantasyandmythology/2kgsyqowle
https://books.steviemarie.com/takingmedusa
Support Breaking Fate and the Taking Medusa Universe by pre-ordering on Amazon here: https://books.steviemarie.com/breakingfate
Chat soon!
xoxo
Stevie
Getting too much email? Reply back to this email with "Monthly" in the message and I'll move you over to my once a month letter usually sent out around the 15th of the month.
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