Marketing - the difference between proactive and organic growth

There are two kinds of marketing growth.

1. Organic growth: This is word of mouth advertising.

2. Proactive growth: These are readers we reach via our own promotional efforts.

 

It's unbelievably important to differentiate between the two. Why? The long term effect of organic growth is much more effective (and sustainable) than proactive growth.

Organic growth is when a reader likes your work enough to share it with a friend, colleague or rabid following on their blog/ twitter/ facebook etc. We measure this the same way as viral vectors. If Every reader tells one other reader then you'll keep spreading if there is no repetition, and a 100% follow through.

 Organic Growth = (Average # People a reader shares you with - Readers who already know about you) x Conversion Rate. [x average number of books sold to each reader]

So let's look at that in real terms. Many readers never share. You'll find some readers who share extensively, and some who tell their friends once in a while. Reading is a social activity, even if we engage in it alone.

This is where things get complicated. Readers who tell lots of people invariably have a lower conversion rate, whereas the reluctant sharer often has more impact when they do share.

• Reader A might have 10,000 followers and share with all of them on twitter. 500 or so of those 10,000 might see the tweet. Out of those 500, 1% might click through, and a smaller % might buy it. Net result 2 or 3 sales at most.

• In contrast reader B might tell five people in person, be really passionate and sell four of them on your book. Net result, 4 sales.

As you can see the conversion rate is a massive swing between the types of word of mouth. After the initial rounds where no one know you, you'll hit the wall of 'Person A tells person B but B already knows'. You can't sell the same book to someone twice (short of convincing them to buy print after eBook or vice versa, which is relatively rare).

We have to take all this on an average - some readers will share more prolifically, but overall you've got a calculable rate (in theory - in practice, you won't know what kind of readers you have straight away).

So if OG = (3-1) * 50% then we get 1 new reader every time someone reads. This is continual growth.

If we get higher with OG being (10-7) * 100% = 3 Then 3 readers find you for each round of worth of mouth. That's exponential growth (for more worked numbers, see our previous post on exponential virality).

However if OG is less than 1, you're in decay. You'll sell more on the way down, but you will hit 0 eventually. This can be because your readers don't share, or they share with people who already know or your conversion sucks.

Getting readers to share is about cultivating rabid fans. This is hard - there is an element of luck here. But if you've got a quality product, some will emerge eventually.

Who they share with is, to some extent, beyond your control. Word of mouth moves inside social groups. That makes the spread fairly predictable. Some individuals are conduits i.e. they belong to multiple social groups. These convincers are key to keeping your OG rate above 0. Even a high OG rate can burn out if the target audience to be shared with already knows about you. This is known as market segment saturation.

The conversion percentage is where you have much more influence. High quality covers, an intriguing blurb, a great first chapter, a popular genre and convincing reviews all go into having a high conversion %.

My advice is work on conversion. It's the only bit directly in your control. Organic Growth is all about the slow burn, and you may not see if kick in with just one book. Having multiple books increases your OG factor as readers may be told about one book, but then go on to buy your backlist. This means a factor of 1 could be ten sales if you've got ten books in your backlist.

 

But how does this differ from Proactive Growth? Well, readers don't find you on their own. No one is going to Google randomly for "Daniel Campbell Dead on Demand". They need to hear of you somehow. Initially this is advertising. Once you've got the ball rolling, also boughts, bestseller lists etc help you along.

But those first few? They're all you.

So if you use Select, permafree, banner adverts, twitter, blog posts, goodreads giveaways, whatever. That reaches PG readership. Keep in mind that it takes a typical 7 impressions to convert to a sale. Repeat exposure is the name of the game when advertising online.

Proactive Growth = (# Impressions Generated - Existing customers) x Conversion Rate

This is the 'seed readership' for your organic growth. If you've got an OG of 1 or more, then a small seed readership is enough.

If your OG is <1 then you'll need to either accept your book is in decline, or plant more seeds. PG needs continual replenishment. PG is high maintenance, and once you stop advertising you'll go into decline until and unless you get above 1.

 Getting your OG above 0 is hard, but it is doable. For some suggestions on how, read this blog (or download Can't Sell, Won't Sell).

Remember if your readership isn't growing then it's shrinking.

 

 

Bank Holiday Monday - a WIP timeline update.

Morning all,

I hope you're all enjoying the early bank holiday (and the glorious weather).

Dan and I are working hard on our current work in progress. In our latest story, a body is found in Hackney Marshes. The body is badly decomposed, and the police are faced with great difficulty in identifying the body.

We'll be showcasing some great police procedure here, with the return of Detective Chief Inspector David Morton from Dead on Demand. This book will be gritty, but not so focussed on suspense.

It'll be coming out in early September in both paperback and eBook (Amazon initially, all formats to follow). But you guys can get your hands on a copy early: Both Beta and ARC copies will be made available.

The timeline!

Today - May 4th. WIP is unfinished. We're working on a write/ review cycle with Sean doing initial write up and Dan reading/ evaluating. A full outline is complete, so this is a 'write by numbers' task to finish the storyline, with only subplots and other character development elements being added.

May 31st - Alpha manuscript goes off to the editor. We then have 3 weeks to make any significant changes.

Early June - Artwork will be commissioned for both eBook and print wrap around.

From June 21st, we'll be making Beta Copies available. This is our uncut manuscript. We're giving this away to readers who would like some hand in shaping final story elements, but the critical story elements will all be finalised. These will be supplied electronically - and only to those who can return feedback within a two week turnaround. Formats available include .pdf, .ePub and .PRC for use on virtually any device.

The story will simultaneously go to a line edit, and several rounds of professional proofing.

From August 15th, we'll be giving away ARC copies. These are finalised edition, with any revisions limited to latent typographical errors. Anyone with a book blog, or willing to post an honest review on Amazon in exchange for a review, is welcome to request a copy. These are available in eBook and print formats.

On September 1st, we'll be going live on Amazon.  Print and eBook will launch simultaneously (or as close to as it as practicable given propogration timeframes.

From September 1st to 30th, we'll be running significant promotion for the book, with all details of that to follow.


To summarise, Beta and ARC copies are available on the dates listed above. If you want a copy then tweet us @90daysnovel, leave a comment or email us on EarlyLook at 90daysnovel.com

Almost one year - price cut experiment

Morning all,

We're big fans of getting a resonable per copy royalty. Over the near future, we're going to experiment a bit to see if the numbers we found optimal last year are still the best revenue generators this year.

Assertions from 2012:

1. The 35% royalty rate is a bad deal.
2. Being just under a .00 is psychologically attractive (including tax)
3. Higher prices mean readers are more likely to finish the book.
4. Lower prices means tempting readers who wouldn't pick up the book otherwise (duh) which is turn could mean readers buying outside their comfort zone and thus increasing 1* count.
5. Lower prices should mean reviewers are more generous as this is taken into consideration.

So, lets test it.

We've been at $4.99/ £2.99 for the last 12 months. Let's try $2.99/ £1.49 for a month and see what effect that has. Then we can think about trying a 99c rate temporarily when book 2 is released, and see what effect that has (likely to be September).

Buy links are unchanged - click Buy at the top of this page, or click on the book cover to the right hand side of this page.

Premades and Shorts - an experiment.

Last year, we did an blog post looking at the state of theeBook cover market. We showed you four covers we bought from £16 up to £152, and gave you the opportunity to compare them.

Rather neatly, this post has reminded me we have a couple of unused covers. One of them will be used for a later blog post - Dan and I are going to write a short story in 10 hours of work or less. That's £63.10 in minimum wage labour, and £16.37. in cover design for a total investment value (TIV) of £79.47. For a short story, we think this is about as cheap as it's likely to get. You can go down the fiverr route, but I like to be sure stock images are being licensed properly.

To avoid the results being skewed by our own profile, we'll be using a pseudonym to release it. As befitting a small investment, we won't publicise it via any paid means nor will we spend time submitting it for reviews etc. Doing that would easily double the time investment. We'll price at 99c (so 35c/ 20p royalty). We need to sell 398 copies at that price to cover our nominal TIV of £80.

We'll report back once the story is written and live (including any adjustment for time under/ over that 10 hours) then we'll monitor sales. Do you guys think it will pay off?

Our test cover.

UK borrowing down - good news?

Today the chancellor announced a fall in the UK deficit, a figure of £300 million. While undoubtedly a large amount, this isn't necessarily good news.

The first problem is the word deficit. Many think deficit = debt. Instead deficit is just the shortfall. That means the increase in our debt has fallen, not the debt itself. That would be like me borrowing £20,000 from the bank this year, and £19,999 next year then saying I've been financially prudent.

The fact is, the UK spent £120.6 billion more than it earned in taxes.

Yes £120,600,000,000.00. Looks a lot bigger when we don't abbreviate the 0s to bn, doesn't it?

To put that in perspective, the UK net debt is now £1.2tn, or £1,200,000,000,000.00.

That's 75% of the total GDP. So if every person in the UK put 3/4s of their income into debt repayment we'd be clear in a year. Obviously that's not realistic, and our debt is likely to increase further over the next few years: Even Osborne says so.

Part of today's fall is down to the windfall from selling off licences for the 4G mobile spectrum, but the figure ignores the huge liabilities the government has taken on from the Royal Mail which has a bloated backlog of pension liabilities that it can't meet.

That brings me to the second reason it's not time to cheer: All the figures are estimates, so will likely be revised. There's often an element of massaging in the end of tax year figures. Payments out can be delayed to shift them beyond the deadline which artificially brings down the 2012/2013 figure at the expense of the 2013/2014 figure.

Now, you're probably wondering what this all has to do with publishing/ writing. My answer here is simple: Authors create a product. Economic value attaches to providing a product, or a service. Making things and selling services are the only activity that generates a real return. Bankers, wholesales etc don't add to the product, they simply take a cut out of the middle. The most efficient transactions are where the buyer contracts with the seller. Shorter supply chains mean efficiency, and transparency. For authors the chain is remarkably simple. It's usually Author >> Amazon >> Reader. It could also be Author >> Smashwords >> Amazon >> Reader.

Being a writer is like being a small business owner. You create your works, then try and sell them. No paper pushing, very low interference from middle men. If it's good, and you market well then it sells. If you fail at either quality (relative to price) or marketing, you flounder. Authors are risk takers. It might not be a huge financial risk but publishing is a risk. To your time, to your reputation and often to your money.

The market decides if we sell. That's hugely empowering to buyers. If they don't like an author, it's very easy to avoid them. With review systems, they can give feedback that others can read too (though any such system is open to abuse).

I'd like to think that these small efforts add up. We can't dream up coal, nuclear fuel or food but imagination does provide an income for many authors. Supplementary income can be as essential as a day job.

I guess what I'm saying here is Thank You. Thank you for creating something I want to read. Thank you for taking the chance and putting it out there for readers to praise or criticise as they see fit. But mostly, thank you for contributing to the economy. The future of all countries depends on having more of what other countries want, than we want from them. If you have more to sell than you need to buy then you'll always be good in the long run. Let me tell you, entrepreneurs are in short supply, and authors truly are entrepreneurs.

Spam disguised as flattery.

A few minutes ago, I hit publish on a blog post about twitter. A mere three views later, and the first comment appeared. For a moment I was delighted. I hoped to provoke some comment, and to get one straight away is great.

The comment was as follows

"Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Building a twitter following: The right way, the w...":

I'm amazed, I must say. Rarely do I come across a blog that's both equally educative
and amusing, and let me tell you, you've hit the nail on the head. The problem is an issue that not enough men and women are speaking intelligently about. I am very happy I found this in my search for something relating to this.

Here is my web blog; (Link Removed)"

Building a twitter following: The right way, the wrong way and the grey inbetween?

People ask us how to get twitter followers all the time. Twitter is big business. Having a huge following means exposure. It means people assume credibility. It gives a huge number of impressions for adverts - as long as done tastefully.

There are numerous methods for building followers. They can be broadly categorised as follows:

1. Organic content growth - This is perhaps the most honest method of building a following. Generate good content, and hope people find you. My problem here is that 140 characters is a very short space in which to write any content. Quotes, jokes and twitter art (basically ASCII art modified for the twitter width) all do very well in terms of getting retweets. This takes a long time, but quality followers beat quantity in my book.

2. Organic engagement growth - By conversing with others, you build relationships. Chatting with someone often leads to mutual following. This is high energy, and high maintenance. Those you chatted with only remember you if you say something original, or keep talking. Many authors engage someone just long enough to try and convince them to buy their book. I personally hate this. It's not time effective, and it just feels dirty.