# Are Self-Published Sequels Difficult to Get People's Attention?



## sunaynaprasad (Mar 27, 2020)

A while back, I've read that self-published children's books are some of the hardest books to sell. While I've had (maybe) thousands of downloads for the first book since it has become permafree (sometimes I've had hundreds in one day), the sequel still barely sells. I've had one sale yesterday and the last time was more than 3 weeks ago. I've updated my title to something stronger by asking on polls and a certain Facebook group for self-published authors. I've had the cover created by a professional illustrator, although I did do some small edits to it, myself, such as changing certain colors to make certain items easier to see, and writing the title and author name in a font based on what others preferred. I had a professional copywriter write the blurb, too. And the reviews are very good. I believe the look-inside is fine, as well.
Regardless of the self-publishing popularity the past 10 years or so (maybe shorter), I've heard that traditional publishing is becoming more popular again and more writers are turning to that instead of self-publishing. Is that actually true? Is it also true that self-published children's books are super-difficult to sell, especially sequels?
I have been using different eBook promotion services for my sequel. But even those have had little to no success. I know I can't submit my books to a traditional publisher after they'd been self-published. I was working on an unrelated book for commercial publishing, but I pushed that aside.
I'm assuming that Amazon probably won't let me make the sequel permafree, even if I make it free on other eBook sites. I do have paperbacks for both books. I've been holding off the ideas of doing audiobooks, but if they make a big difference, I might consider having audiobook versions available for my audience.
Has anyone ever self-published a series? If so, did you struggle with later books, too?


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## Ma'am (Mar 27, 2020)

Freebies don't necessarily mean anything because a ton of people will download anything that's free then never look at it again. If you aren't getting any good reviews from it and the sequel isn't selling, then I would stop there and try something different rather than continue with a series that isn't paying off.

Also, I don't think it's that self-publishers are "turning back to" trade publishing," so much as that the large publishing companies have always been very picky and only accept a small percentage of what's offered. Most of the self-published books out there either were not, or would not, be accepted by the big publishers. So it's not really the self-publishers' choice, in many/most cases.

I don't know how much research you've done into children's books but if you haven't, I suggest studying a ton of children's books in the age range you're writing for. Also, be sure you know the word lists and other familiarity to be sure your work is at the right level for your age group and interesting to them. If you haven't already, join the big children's book writers' association and take part in all they have to offer (I forgot the name now).

Aside from that, if children's books are what you really want to do,  just keep going! Keep learning and keep writing. You usually have to have a lot of good books out there to start getting notice with self-publishing. Also, if you can get an agent, go for it.

Sorry if this is obvious; I don't know what level you're at with your writing. Good luck.


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## RWK (Mar 27, 2020)

I currently have a trilogy, a series of five, and a series of three with at least one more in the series pending. 

I find that as a whole, series are a slow but steady sell.

I will second Ma'am: freebies are a waste. Most people assume that a free book is junk, while those who do download freebies are 
either hoarders or who never buy books.

From my time on the Amazon author boards, I am told that children's books are the second least-selling works out there.

Trad publishing is still on a decline in the face of the tsunami of indie authors and works.  

If giving away your books got them read, I would do that. It doesn't work. It will get you downloads, but not reads.


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## sunaynaprasad (Mar 28, 2020)

Yes, I haven't had a review of book 1 since February and there are 63 ratings and reviews so far in the nearly year and a half it has been republished. 
I did find some services where I could submit both books, although separately. I do find that sales and downloads happen more simultaneausly, with book 1 towering the number of downloads book 2 gets. The issue is that many ebook promotion sites require discounted or temporarily free books. Book 1 is permafree and book 2 is 99 cents all the time. I guess promoting both stories together per service would benefit more than doing just book 2.
I will admit, though, that I will rarely buy sequels from authors I haven't heard of, unless I've read their first book or they're a big name who produced a major franchise, like J.K. Rowling with her "Harry Potter" series.
I know AMS ads are an option too. Although I've had success with book 1 after it was made permafree, before that, I have received few to no sales. I am concerned that that might happen with book 2. Also, I'm budgeting more these days to the coronavirus keeping me from working.
So, when that ebook service promotes my books, maybe it will make a difference.


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## Ma'am (Mar 29, 2020)

I wanted to go back and check a few things here. I'll re-post when I get time.


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## apocalypsegal (May 16, 2020)

> Regardless of the self-publishing popularity the past 10 years or so  (maybe shorter), I've heard that traditional publishing is becoming more  popular again and more writers are turning to that instead of  self-publishing. Is that actually true? Is it also true that  self-published children's books are super-difficult to sell, especially  sequels?



My understanding is that more authors are coming to self publishing than the other way around. It's harder to get a good contract from trad pub, as they're dropping advances and generally just grabbing rights for no money.

Self published children's books are indeed a hard sell. It's one category that still works better for trad pub, and especially for paperbacks. Ebooks for kids aren't that popular still, despite advances in tech.




> I have been using different eBook promotion services for my sequel. But  even those have had little to no success. I know I can't submit my books  to a traditional publisher after they'd been self-published. I was  working on an unrelated book for commercial publishing, but I pushed  that aside.



It's hard to promote something that is a hard sell to begin with. You can submit to a trad pub house, but it's unlikely you'll get any interest unless you are selling really well, and then why would you need them? They won't do more for you than you can do yourself.




> I'm assuming that Amazon probably won't let me make the sequel  permafree, even if I make it free on other eBook sites. I do have  paperbacks for both books. I've been holding off the ideas of doing  audiobooks, but if they make a big difference, I might consider having  audiobook versions available for my audience.



You can try to get them to price match, but what's the point of giving the books away? It's good you have paperbacks, that is where you should focus sales. Make sure your book looks like those that are selling in your category, make sure the blurb is good (it's not always going to work to hire copywriters, because they may not understand how product descriptions work for self publishers). Make sure your cover is right for this type of book, and that if it's normal, that you have illustrations.

I wouldn't sell an ebook sequel for .99, unless the other books like yours are at that price. I suspect they aren't, in this case. People have come to distrust cheap books to some extent, as they also can free books. Free is only worthwhile if it's bringing readers to the other books. If it's not, then raise the price and focus advertising on channels that work for children's books. You're aiming for the parents in ads, as they're the ones with the money.


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## apocalypsegal (May 16, 2020)

Also, I wouldn't bother with audio books until you can get these selling. And get more than two books out. More books tend to sell more books, provided they're properly written and presented (cover, description, categories).


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## Ralph Rotten (May 16, 2020)

Childrens books are a whole other beast.
For one, with children's books you are not actually marketing to your audience.
Kids don't have any money.
You have to market to their parents.

Don't ask me how to do that tho.


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## RWK (May 17, 2020)

Biro said:


> Why not bother with audiobooks?



They are expensive, so the competition is higher.


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## RWK (May 17, 2020)

Biro said:


> How do you mean?  More expensive to purchase and more competition or the production of them?



Audio books usually run from $11 to $20, much higher than e-books, so you're going to want some author cred before you break into that field.


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## KellInkston (May 17, 2020)

Hiya!

Freebies are *fantastic* when you get something in return. True free generally isn't very effective for the reasons mentioned above, but if you were to say, wriggle a free book in front of someone in return for their email to subscribe to your super awesome fiction newsletter, then it would be a great use of your time. Setting up a click funnel for a free ebook only takes an hour of your time or less once you know how to do it, and it'll continue generating leads for you day after day. What's more is that the reader expended a little extra effort to get it, so they're actually quite a bit more likely to read what they got from you. As a general rule, the greater the *perceived* price, the more valuable to the reader. It takes a little while to make a superfan out of a reader, so it's very important that you give them as much content that they'll actually _read_ as possible. The moment you tip them over into your world they'll search out your stuff on their own.

Onto the topic of sequels. Ebook sequels _can_ work great but they need to be well promoted via their first book. Hardly anyone who hasn't read the first book in the series will jump ahead to the second, so it's vital that you make the "funnel" from book one to book two as seamless as possible. The rockier you funneling process it, the fewer readers you'll see convert down the line for the series. Sometimes all you need to do is advertise the first book better, and other times you might need to sharpen your second book's sales page so that people will be more likely to click.

It's taken me years but I'm starting to figure it out, finally 

I hope this is helpful and answers your question.


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## RWK (May 17, 2020)

Biro said:


> But what about those who join Audiable and can listen to them for nothing?



Audible is only free for 30 days. The fees pay royalties, and they certainly don't have every book available, much less for free. It's like KU, and like KU it pays authors.

I make more money off KU pages than I do from e-book and paperback sales combined.


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## apocalypsegal (May 18, 2020)

Biro said:


> Why not bother with audiobooks?



They are expensive and time-consuming to deal with, another entire new thing to learn. If you can't sell now, it's best to get that resolved before jumping into something else. Once you have a good handle on regular selling for ebooks and print, then you can consider doing audio. Many authors are finding they can do quite well with audio, but they have spent the time in the trenches getting their publishing going first.


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## RWK (May 18, 2020)

Biro said:


> Actually it's almost an entirely different market and a fast growing one which has no relation at all to written books of paper or Kindle.
> 
> Audio is used by many different people while they work or other things in situations where they cannot read.
> 
> But then if you dismiss it as expensive and time consuming I guess why should we bother.



It there most certainly a relation. My most recent novel was just picked up for audio by Tantor Publishing. The big outfits watch e-book sales and recruit from there.

Self-publishing in audio is definitely expensive and time-consuming; even the publishing companies take months to get an audio package ready for the market.


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## RWK (May 18, 2020)

Biro said:


> I meant from people who listen to audio.  Some people who listen to audio would never bother with a book.  Myself included and the audio would be a variety of things from factual to stories.



This is a writer's forum, not a listener's. 

The relation is, if the book will sell in electronic format, it will likely sell in audio; if it tanks in e-books, why waste the expense and time of creating audio books (4 months, on the average)?


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## sunaynaprasad (May 18, 2020)

My books have been selling better and I'm getting more reviews now. Not drastically, but it is a good step up. I am having audiobooks being worked on for both my books. I used ACX and I didn't pay anything to have the stories recorded.


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## sunaynaprasad (May 18, 2020)

The audiobooks aren't published yet. I might have selected a plan where I didn't have to pay. But I'm not sure.


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## Ma'am (May 18, 2020)

You either pay your voice person the agreed on amount or they get a royalty on each audiobook that's sold. Those were the two choices when I did it, anyway. I was not aware of any way that you didn't have to pay at all.


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## sunaynaprasad (May 18, 2020)

Oh okay. I'll check again.


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## RWK (May 19, 2020)

Ma'am said:


> You either pay your voice person the agreed on amount or they get a royalty on each audiobook that's sold. Those were the two choices when I did it, anyway. I was not aware of any way that you didn't have to pay at all.



Getting picked up by a publisher. Then it costs you nothing, and you get an advance & royalties.


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## Ma'am (May 19, 2020)

Biro said:


> Was it very expensive Ma'am or if you went down the royalty route were the payments too much?



No, it wasn't that expensive though I don't recall the exact amount now, in the neighborhood of a couple hundred dollars. I just paid it directly because I didn't want to bother with someone else getting a share of each sale indefinitely. 

You have a wide choice of voice actors. I just picked someone kinda new and low cost but you can also pay much more for someone with a lot of high level credits at it.


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## Ma'am (May 19, 2020)

RWK said:


> Getting picked up by a publisher. Then it costs you nothing, and you get an advance & royalties.



 Well, I don't think that's what the OP was asking about but it's certainly another option that someone could try for.


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## Ma'am (May 19, 2020)

Biro said:


> On this point.  There may be lots of very good books out on Amazon which never get many sales because of the way people have to trawl through the millions to find their reads.
> 
> Apparently some people say the place is just full of dross.  Full of badly produced and bad books.  So getting book sales is more down to marketing than writing as a good book can have excellent reviews but still not get the attention of the readers because it doesn't pop up in a readers face as a 'marketed' book does.
> 
> Perhaps the same will or has already happened to audio books?




I think the same is happening with audio books, yes, because just as with the self-published print and e-books, there's no gatekeeper.


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## RWK (May 19, 2020)

Biro said:


> On this point.  There may be lots of very good books out on Amazon which never get many sales because of the way people have to trawl through the millions to find their reads.
> 
> Apparently some people say the place is just full of dross.  Full of badly produced and bad books.  So getting book sales is more down to marketing than writing as a good book can have excellent reviews but still not get the attention of the readers because it doesn't pop up in a readers face as a 'marketed' book does.
> 
> Perhaps the same will or has already happened to audio books?



There's a lot of books on Amazon, true, but a lot of people sell a lot of books without formal marketing, myself included. You won't make a living at it (at least, I don't, but I'm retired) but Amazon is still a plentiful venue if you're in the right genre. With the sample option and KU, people can try before they buy. And no, it isn't full of dross.

Audio is a different venue because while you can put out an e-book or PoD book for free, audio requires expenditure. The better a product you want, the more it will cost. If you want an experienced narrator with a suitable voice using professional recording equipment, you're going to pay. The same goes if you are going to hire a trained editor, cover artist, or doing marketing.

I looked into audio some time ago, but I'm not interesting in sinking that much time and effort into a project; its the same reason I don't bother with marketing: because in the end, it would take away time from writing. The only reason I'm going into audio now is I was contacted by a publisher; they're going to do all the work and pay me besides.


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## Ma'am (May 19, 2020)

I only make a couple hundred bucks a month from my self-published titles, even less now because I haven't self-published anything new in a few years. But it's passive income and I mainly do it because I enjoy it anyway, not for a serious income. Which is not to say I would mind more money from it...

Anyway, I get weirdly confused when people talk about all the self-published garbage to sort through on Amazon. I know it's true, but I guess the thing is, that's more a worry for readers than for writers. 

I do the best I can and mostly self-publish without even trying for an agent or publisher first because I already know that most of what I write wouldn't interest any that are large enough for me to want to bother with. 

I do a lot of small how-to books, for ex. and while I'm pleased to get a few bucks per month off them, I know the big publishers wouldn't bother with such small potatoes. They'd want a bigger topic or bigger name or both. Same with a lot of other types of writing, such as memoirs, poetry, short story collections. Even if your writing is solid, there's just not much market for such books by unknown authors. So you could make your rounds with the agents anyway first or just skip that step. Personally, a small press, micro-press or collective usually doesn't offer enough for me to want to give up the fun of getting to do everything the way I please. But that, too, is just individual preference, nothing wrong with trying for it. 

To get back on the original topic, I probably wouldn't do a self-published sequel unless the first book did well _unless_ I was doing it for the love rather than for the money in the first place. Anything could always take off sometime and become wildly popular, who knows. But I wouldn't expect it.


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## Justin Attas (May 24, 2020)

I'm curious to answer this question when I release the sequel to my own self-published ebook. I've heard that the most important thing in general with sequels is that they can stand alone, even though they continue a story. If not, they're hard to sell. As long as your readers' enjoyment of the sequel isn't _contingent, _on them reading the first one (the can piece together details from context clues) then it theoretically shouldn't be harder to sell than the first book. Theoretically. But, like many things in writing, theory rarely holds up.


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## RWK (May 24, 2020)

Justin Attas said:


> I'm curious to answer this question when I release the sequel to my own self-published ebook. I've heard that the most important thing in general with sequels is that they can stand alone, even though they continue a story. If not, they're hard to sell. As long as your readers' enjoyment of the sequel isn't _contingent, _on them reading the first one (the can piece together details from context clues) then it theoretically shouldn't be harder to sell than the first book. Theoretically. But, like many things in writing, theory rarely holds up.



I disagree. I'm constantly being urged by readers to extend this series or that. I extended what I thought was a stand-alone into a trilogy due to popular demand.

The thing to do is once you've got a squeal, reduce the price of the first book as a gateway device.


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## Cephus (May 24, 2020)

Justin Attas said:


> I'm curious to answer this question when I release the sequel to my own self-published ebook. I've heard that the most important thing in general with sequels is that they can stand alone, even though they continue a story. If not, they're hard to sell. As long as your readers' enjoyment of the sequel isn't _contingent, _on them reading the first one (the can piece together details from context clues) then it theoretically shouldn't be harder to sell than the first book. Theoretically. But, like many things in writing, theory rarely holds up.



That is false. The best selling books in genre fiction are series. People want the story to go on. When you put out a new sequel, you find a ton of people going back and buying the first couple of books. The whole point is to get people to dive into your back catalog. Series are effective for doing that. Stand-alone books don't perform nearly as well in general.


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## RWK (May 25, 2020)

Biro said:


> The problem with peoples books is the amount of characters in the story.  How does one voice actor do all those different voices and still narrate the story.  I think there is at least 40 different people in my book alone who have speaking parts. From 3 different countries and about 10 different accents.



I wonders about that, too. Turns out it's not a dramatic performance. It is one narrator reading your book out loud.


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## RWK (May 25, 2020)

Biro said:


> I know that or should I say I assumed that which can work in some cases possibly.  But I was watching a well known professional voice over man last year who was giving an example and he was going into character when someone was speaking in the story.
> 
> Possibly because they are called voice actors or talents nowadays?



I just selected my narrator, and from reading countless bios, they all appear to be trained actors. Quite a few big name actors narrate books as well, Sean Bean as one example.

I've never listened to a whole audio book, so I'm just guessing here.


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## indianroads (May 25, 2020)

A bit of thread-drift here, but I'll chime in on the audiobook topic first. 
As a reader, I only listen to audiobooks when I have to travel long distance by car. Driving from Colorado Springs CO to Palm Desert CA is a long and exceeding dull ride, and listening to a book helps pass the time.

Otherwise, I read on my Kindle (I've not purchased a non-electronic book for many years). I read just before going to bed every night, and go through about 3 or 4 books a month.

To the original topic about series books - I have no data to support my beliefs, but I think when readers are searching for a book, and find an intriguing series they will almost always start with the first book in the series. Each book then needs to drive the reader to the next - and a bad book in a series would be like a weak link in a chain. So, unless you're writing GOT or The Expanse, I think the later books will get a lot less traffic.


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## RWK (May 25, 2020)

Biro said:


> So your fella just told the story (narration) and no different characters?  How did it sound when finished?



The publisher isn't done with it. I just picked him last week.

But most audio books appear to have only one narractor.


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