I’m curious about how you feel about Laterpress moving forward. I know there are others out there for serialization (Royal Road, Wattpad,) But I don’t believe Royal Road allows a paywall and I think Wattpad is invite only. There is of course ReamStories and good old Patreon but Laterpress is something I’m curious about. I’ve been hesitant to serialize anything on Substack as I feel it would need to be a separate publication.
Here’s a truth that should impact all those decisions. Getting any reader to take an action that moves them away from Substack is about as hard as making a sale. If you want to offer your subscribers something to read, put it in the newsletter. A short story. A serialization. (I just started serializing my second novella.) Reserve asking someone to leave Substack for sales and other activities which can’t be done here.
Mind you, I’m just researching all these things myself, but this is what I’ve found.
Look at your number of “likes” for a guide. In my experiments so far, my click-thru rate from post to store has been 10% of the number of likes.
Thanks for writing that section "Don't Write about Writing about Writing on Substack" - that's what I've been working on but didn't really have a clear expression of it in my mind... so thanks!
To avoid confusion, I'm going to talk about your store and your free promotion. You mention two books. If Voyage is your first book, that's a good choice to include in promotions. When you're inviting "teasing" people to come to your bookstore, focus on the series, and include images of both books. That way new people and readers who have the first book will all know you have something to offer. Even though you give the book away in promotions, in your welcome emails you can offer Voyager for free as well, but link it to your store, not your promotion. In the store, Voyager will be free. Price the second book as you desire, but I agree with the idea of making it half price.
Let me know what you think of Bookfunnel for the purpose of a bookstore. What payment processor are you thinking of using? I decided to go with Laterpress for fiction and PayHip for nonfiction. Fourthwall looks good if you want sell merchandise. Reamstories is good for subscriptions if you're part of a voraciously read genre, you have a series, and you want discoverability through their collection of titles. For store options, the greatest thing that Bookfunnel and Payhip offer are ease of upload. Uploading the EPub to Bookfunnel is easy, but they're web-based reader is a little trickier--unless you paste the story in chapter by chapter. I haven''t tried to upload an ePub to Ream, so I don't know if it suffers similar difficulties.
Does Bookfunnel offer anything other than deliverability through a supported payment processor? Bookfunnel is still champion for the promotions, but I'm not sure if it offers much in the form of a store--other than the fact that your books are already uploaded.
Oh-- how many books. I say open the store even if you have one. If you have a short story and sell it for a buck, open it. Update it as you have more material--and announce the addition to your store with fanfare. The reason is that your readers need exposure to the idea of the store, repeatedly, before they're likely to visit. And they'll have to visit repeatedly before they buy. In the meantime, you're optimizing your store and your invitation, and then you're building your subscriber base and offering great stories that maintain a good rate of interaction.
With this in place, as you approach 1k subscribers, you should be selling a book here and there, sporadically. We begin to have a chance at steady sells when we surpass 10 bookstore visits per post--and I think for most of us, we'll need north of a thousand subscribers for that. If we have everything in place, we can start making those sales once the traffic is right.
I’m curious about how you feel about Laterpress moving forward. I know there are others out there for serialization (Royal Road, Wattpad,) But I don’t believe Royal Road allows a paywall and I think Wattpad is invite only. There is of course ReamStories and good old Patreon but Laterpress is something I’m curious about. I’ve been hesitant to serialize anything on Substack as I feel it would need to be a separate publication.
Here’s a truth that should impact all those decisions. Getting any reader to take an action that moves them away from Substack is about as hard as making a sale. If you want to offer your subscribers something to read, put it in the newsletter. A short story. A serialization. (I just started serializing my second novella.) Reserve asking someone to leave Substack for sales and other activities which can’t be done here.
Mind you, I’m just researching all these things myself, but this is what I’ve found.
Look at your number of “likes” for a guide. In my experiments so far, my click-thru rate from post to store has been 10% of the number of likes.
You can read all my results so far at literarysalon.substack.com.
Thanks for writing that section "Don't Write about Writing about Writing on Substack" - that's what I've been working on but didn't really have a clear expression of it in my mind... so thanks!
I'm glad it helped.
So, if the book I'm currently teasing is "Voyage of the Dawn Breaker," that one should be on Bookfunnel, but not for free.
Contracts and Chaos is my second book, but I don't want to give it away. I'd be more interested in selling it for half-price.
How many books would you suggest having before creating a book funnel store?
To avoid confusion, I'm going to talk about your store and your free promotion. You mention two books. If Voyage is your first book, that's a good choice to include in promotions. When you're inviting "teasing" people to come to your bookstore, focus on the series, and include images of both books. That way new people and readers who have the first book will all know you have something to offer. Even though you give the book away in promotions, in your welcome emails you can offer Voyager for free as well, but link it to your store, not your promotion. In the store, Voyager will be free. Price the second book as you desire, but I agree with the idea of making it half price.
Let me know what you think of Bookfunnel for the purpose of a bookstore. What payment processor are you thinking of using? I decided to go with Laterpress for fiction and PayHip for nonfiction. Fourthwall looks good if you want sell merchandise. Reamstories is good for subscriptions if you're part of a voraciously read genre, you have a series, and you want discoverability through their collection of titles. For store options, the greatest thing that Bookfunnel and Payhip offer are ease of upload. Uploading the EPub to Bookfunnel is easy, but they're web-based reader is a little trickier--unless you paste the story in chapter by chapter. I haven''t tried to upload an ePub to Ream, so I don't know if it suffers similar difficulties.
Does Bookfunnel offer anything other than deliverability through a supported payment processor? Bookfunnel is still champion for the promotions, but I'm not sure if it offers much in the form of a store--other than the fact that your books are already uploaded.
Oh-- how many books. I say open the store even if you have one. If you have a short story and sell it for a buck, open it. Update it as you have more material--and announce the addition to your store with fanfare. The reason is that your readers need exposure to the idea of the store, repeatedly, before they're likely to visit. And they'll have to visit repeatedly before they buy. In the meantime, you're optimizing your store and your invitation, and then you're building your subscriber base and offering great stories that maintain a good rate of interaction.
With this in place, as you approach 1k subscribers, you should be selling a book here and there, sporadically. We begin to have a chance at steady sells when we surpass 10 bookstore visits per post--and I think for most of us, we'll need north of a thousand subscribers for that. If we have everything in place, we can start making those sales once the traffic is right.