Nerdology 101: Author Transparency Post
Intro
Hey readers, writers, and bookish people of all kinds! Welcome back to Nerdology 101. Today is now our 23rd post and the 1st one to happen after my new dark romantasy book, The Fate of Angels and Demons came out. I’m going to take a moment here to just say YAYYYYYYY! I’ve been so excited about this book release for so long. I’m overjoyed to see it on the market finally! Everything about TFOAAD has been emotional for me, from writing and editing, to design, launch, and release. My body, heart, mind, and soul have been poured into this wonderful story and no matter what these insights look like, I have no regrets about that.
Perspective
For point of reference, I’m going into writing this blog post just as blind as you’re going into reading it. Usually, I write my blog posts the Saturday before they post. This time, however, the topic makes that impossible to do. Instead, I’m writing the intro, perspective, and what to expect sections that I don’t need the actual insights for on Saturday and the insights won’t actually be plugged into it until the day of the post so I can provide you with the most up-to-date, vital information about how my new release is actually doing. This post will go up at the normal time, Friday at 3PM EST, just like every other Nerdology post, but I won’t know what it’s going to say until the morning of. I might be getting on here to tell you all that I’m totally flopping, that I’ve managed the ever-elusive miracle of viral success as an indie, or anything in-between, but I’ve already announced my topic on IG and Bluesky (my two largest followings) so there’s no backing out now. I’m not one to back down from a challenge.
What to Expect
In this section, I’ll go over the catagories of the insights I’ll be sharing:
Sales, broken down by edition (ebook not included. I’m unlikely to be able to see ebook sales on the IngramSpark dashboard that soon after release since they take roughly 2-3 weeks to appear in my sales reports).
Engagement, how the posts about the book are doing on IG, Bluesky, and TikTok.
Reviews, reviews are always available on the reviews page of this website, but I’ll talk about how many I have, the books current ratings, and what that might mean for the books long-term success.
Stock, are there any brick-and-mortar stores that have the book or have ordered it to my knowledge?
Events, the amount of interest I have from stores/conventions/etc. (This is the only section I know a little bit about ahead of time, obviously, since it requires me to schedule said events. Be ready for a huge announcement in this section).
Marketing, what’s working for me and what isn’t?
Places where I could use additional support from people who want to help me reach more readers.
Conclusion, an overall assessment of how the book is doing.
* Exact place I stopped writing pre-release.
Sales
Okay! Here we are. It’s Friday morning about 10AM now. So far, 4 special editions have sold at $30 each ($120). I haven’t seen any paperback sales come in on Ingram yet, but that’s not entirely surprising for me. The special edition exists as an alternative for people who want a physical copy and I see why most people would opt for it because it’s freakin’ gorgeous. I do know of two ebook sales even though, as I stated in my explanation of this I can’t seem them quite yet. They came who people who tagged me or showed me their orders. At $6 each, that’s an additional $12 . Thus, I’ve made $132 in sales so far. I’d say that’s pretty good. I paid $150 for my cover, so I’ve almost made that back in just a few days. Of course, there’s still a long way to go before I actually make my money back, but we’re off to a great start, in my opinion.
Engagement
Engagement is up! In part, this is due to the fact that I finally got up the nerve to make some reels with me in them. My reach and engagement have gone up since. I still solidly suck at social media, but again, I think we’re moving in the right direction. In the last 30 days, I’m reach 3.3k views on IG with 224 interactions. On TT I’ve at 2k views and 102 engagements, which is awesome since I just started using the platform a week and a half ago. On Bluesky, it’s hard to say what my views or interactions are since they don’t have analytics insights like IG or TT. I can say that it remains my largest following at 912 followers.
Reviews
I sent out 25 ARCs for this book and 6 reviews have gone up on Goodreads, giving me about a 24% rate there (which is normal for an author in similar positioning to myself, from what I can tell). Of those reviews, 2 have rated the book 5 stars, 2 have rated it 4 stars, 1 has rated it 3 stars, and 1 has rated it 1 star. Overall, that’s a 3.67 rating so far for this book. Across all of my books, though, I have 25 ratings and reviews that average to 4.12 stars. This is one of the areas where I can say I’m definitely still struggling a lot. For those who don’t know, Goodreads doesn’t really recommend a book to people until it has 25 reviews (title specific, not overall for the author). Getting more reviews would go a long way toward increasing my natural reach.
Stock
There are no brick and mortar bookstores I know of that have stocked The Fate of Angels and Demons at this time, though this is something my PA and I have recently turned our attention to.
Events
So far, I have two conventions on the books for this year. One is Smoke and Embers in Thunder Bay, ON this October from the 23rd to 25th. The other has yet to announce my attendance officially yet, so I’ll refrain from doing that so we can announce it at the same time. It is a pretty major con, though, so I’m excited about it.
Marketing
I’ve tested a few strategies so far. IngramSpark’s email promotions, BookBub Ads, IG ads, and free marketing opportunities. Of them, not only is the free stuff free, it works better than any of the paid advestising FOR ME. Instead, the highest impact form of marketing that I’ve seen is actually not coming from me at all. As they say, word-of-mouth is the best type of marketing. Posts from platforms like the Indie Author Collective and Little Lost Bookshoppe & Beyond, as well as from individuals, have done me a great deal of good. You can see a lot of the posts others have made about me and my book here in my media and mentions corner where I’ve collected and embedded the posts I’ve seen.
Support
If you’re a reader looking to support me, here's the key takeaways (in order of importance) of how you can best do that.
Order the book, in any format.
Review the book, whether you loved it or hated it, leave your honest review.
Post about the book online. Even if you don’t have a large following, this acts as a vital form of social proof that tells the alghorithms people are talking about the book.
Conclusion
The Fate of Angels and Demons is doing good for a newly released, self-published novel, but there’s still so much room for improvement. I plan to continue working on things from my end, and I hope, dear reader, that you will continue supporting me from yours. Thank you. Hope to see you back next week for another segment of Nerdology 101. Until then, have a nerdy week!
