The stellar performance of my Last Mayor box set books 1-9 continues unabated. This remains something I am surprised by, don’t fully understand, and have no idea how long it will go on for – therefore I am enjoying it very much while it lasts!
It is selling some 70 copies a day, with around 20,000 page reads. That’s around $100 gross a day. Of course I am paying around 40% for the privilege. On days when AMS spends my ad budget it does better. Likewise with FB ads – though somehow the FB ads have been cutting themselves out very early. Technically it is set to spend about $50 a day on FB ads, and it’s only spending $10.
Wha-? This happens more normally on AMS. So I keep making fresh FB ads targeted to new audiences to try and persuade it to spend more.
The book has been a #1 category bestseller in a couple of categories on and off all week. It is in the first or second page of also-boughts for the top box sets in the genre.
Since this box set is converting so well, I’ve fired up a few Bookbub ads as well. I have never had any success with these before. It’s too early to say if I will now – so far I’ve spent $20, $10 a day – and CTR (clickthrough rate) is maybe 0.8%, CPC (cost-per-click) is around 80cents. That’s a lot.
Will it come down? Bookbub ads say they now split your results by the authors you use for targeting. This would be excellent, if it worked. It’s only been two days, so maybe this data will populate soon. Then I can turn off any authors with awful CTR and optimize.
Here’s the Bookbub ad:
It may be my best-looking ad yet. I like having the price as a sticker on the book – I can never pick a spot in the ad that looks as good.
My hopes that the Soul Jacker box set might follow in its footsteps appear to be unfounded. Well, let’s be honest, they weren’t founded on much to begin with. It is selling a few copies, but it needs to earn pagereads to make money, and that isn’t happening yet. Fingers cross that it will.
Until that point, the zombie box set is subsidizing both Soul Jacker and Christopher Wren ads. Wren is starting to get some take-up down the series (3 books so far). Clicks cost a lot more, though. It’s all a big investment. Lots of nice reviews are coming in too, which is great.
On Wren briefly – I’ve had a fair number of reviews say he’s unlikable, but fascinating, flawed but gripping, even one person said they like to read about him but wouldn’t want to get a beer with him, whereas they would get a beer with Jack Reacher. It’s tough to hear – I obviously like him. However a review came in yesterday that said, while he was flawed and tough and vulnerable, he was also kind.
It’s what I think about him. I’m glad someone else got that.