What Happened When I Gave Up My Amazon Sales Rank for Lent By Sandra Hutchison

In 2017 I made a little chunk of money as an indie novelist on Amazon, thanks to my first novel THE AWFUL MESS being in one of their Prime reading promotions. Including that one, I had three stand-alone novels out, and I enjoyed some read-through of the others, too, especially in Kindle Unlimited. 

But as all authors know, just because something is selling well one year doesn’t mean it’s going to continue doing that. I’d also had some early success with Amazon ads, but they soon stopped working in any predictable way.

Fundamental rule: The ground is always shifting under you when you’re an indie author. (Traditional authors, too, but your publisher probably notices the shifts before you do.) 

So, I figured, maybe this was a good time to figure out how to use BookBub ads.

A terrible thing happened: They worked. I could schedule an ad and get a nice rank boost on at least a couple of my titles. My bestseller began to spend most of its time in the respectable neighborhood of the teens or twenties, with occasional bumps up into the thousands. My revenue rose well over $1000 a month. An audiobook company bought the audio rights to it. It was all looking pretty good.

Wonderful, right? Until I looked at the bottom line. Because most of those ads cost more than I was earning from them.

I told myself I was learning. I told myself I was keeping things ticking along in preparation for the release of my fourth novel, DISORGANIZE ME. I rationalized it with an old rule from sailing in my youth: it’s much easier to turn the boat when you’ve got some good speed going. 

And then the new book came out, and it bobbed around in the water for a little while, and it sank. Miserably. I couldn’t even sell it to my own audience. (Wrong cover, wrong copy, wrong story, terrible launch, who the heck knows? It bombed.)

And meanwhile I was still losing money on the Bookbub ads, which began to work even less well as the competition increased. Word was getting out about them. 

Then Lent arrived. I had developed heartburn, so I’d already given up chocolate and cut back on sugar. What to do? What would it be healthy for me to drop? What was I addicted to?

Oh. Yeah. That. My sales rank. 

I checked it multiple times a day. Sometimes multiple times an hour. When I was tired, my hand would just go there and click, over and over, nonsensically.

Could I really let that go? Would it be good for me to let that go? (Ha, like I didn’t know.)

So I stopped almost all advertising. (I had one remaining Amazon ad that would barely get any impressions, but once in a while a book would sell, and since it wasn’t losing money, I kept it going. If you get one of those to work, don’t shut it off.)

Sales and revenue began to drop on all the books, though not as fast as I expected. It accelerated when I left Kindle Select. Still, it takes a while for some Kindle Unlimited readers to get around to their stash. Every once in a while, there’d be a little inexplicable spike. The general trend, however, was lower, and then lower still. 

Conversely, my business bank account stabilized and began to rise again. But not so much because I wasn’t losing money, as because there’s a 60-day lag on Amazon royalties.

Because it was so depressing to do so, I stopped checking sales rank as often. Because I no longer had to monitor my BookBub ads or come up with new copy and design or audiences to test, I had at least another hour in the day for writing or reading or something else.

But the best thing? By the time Easter arrived, I stopped feeling as if my status as an author depended on at least one of my books having an Amazon sales rank better than 50,000 at all times.

Because ultimately it didn’t end up mattering that much.

Was I still able to pay my bills? Yes, thanks to the rest of my life. Was I still happy, or at least not miserable? Yes. Did I still get the occasional reader or reviewer who warmed my heart? Yes. I was also writing the next novel with less distraction, and more because I wanted to than because I had to. 

I do take my writing seriously, and it will always be more than a hobby, but I think it’s a lot healthier to avoid identifying too much with it. (This is probably a much greater temptation, of course, when real success comes along!)

Probably not coincidentally, around this time I also started to read for pleasure again, instead of just because I needed to play well with others or stay on top of the trends.

So it was good. Excellent Lenten choice. Highly recommended.

Now, the caveats: I’m close to a reasonably comfortable retirement as long as I keep my needs simple, so I can afford to do this. Barring catastrophe, I don’t have to hustle. But maybe you do. (And if you have to hustle, I can’t really recommend writing fiction as the way to do it, unless you know your uncle at the studio is going to make it into a really successful movie, or something.)

Also, I enjoyed the break a little too much. I’ve been a much lazier product manager since Lent began. I’ve frequently chosen the next home improvement project over the tedious work of publishing. I’m also struggling with the novel I’m drafting. So, yeah, my sails are flapping and the boat is drifting. 

So it’s not that in forty days I suddenly became totally Zen about my writing. The poor performance of the last two books has definitely hit my self-confidence. I know that if I were traditionally published, my career would probably be over, something I’ve seen happen to too many talented friends.

But while it’s not all rainbows and unicorns on this side, it’s still okay. Because taking that break helped me separate my ego from the books. It helped me stop throwing good money after bad. (It also helped me make time for some dreaded financial chores I’d been putting off.)

Taking that break meant I remembered to make time for parts of my life that have nothing to do with writing, like friends and family. 

And, yes, it also gave me some strategic distance and got some new ideas flowing that might be good for the writing someday. Or not.

I’m sharing this just in case it’s something you need to hear right now. If you’re feeling stressed out by your feelings about your current relative success as a writer, there are worse things than taking a step back, however that might look for you. 

I still wish you every success. But more than that, I wish you some nice cleansing breaths and some moments of joy that have absolutely nothing to do with your place in this crazy business.

—

Born and raised in Florida, Sandra Hutchison survived a transplant to a small, snowy New England town during high school and eventually stopped sulking about it, though it’s possible she’s still working it out in her fiction. She’s the author of four novels including The Awful Mess: A Love Story, which was one of five general fiction semifinalists for the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

Before that, she worked for over seventeen years in publishing as an acquisitions editor, marketing manager, copywriter, and creative director. In addition to writing, Sandra teaches part-time at Hudson Valley Community College, which is near her current home in upstate New York. Learn more at sheerhubris.com, Facebook, or Twitter (but beware, Twitter is where you’ll find her at her most obnoxiously political).

DISORGANIZE ME

She’s a professional organizer who prefers to keep everything in its place. He’s a scrappy laborer who’s proud of his Puerto Rican heritage. But neither knows the whole truth about their origins, and that’s going to be a big problem when ICE gets involved.

“A nuanced, warm, and necessary read, especially now. I couldn’t put it down.” – Barbara Bos, Managing Editor @womenwriters

“With compassion, warmth, and a clear eye for what matters, Hutchison shows us how messy love can be and, ultimately, how worth the trouble it really is.” – Margo Catts, author of AMONG THE LESSER GODS

“…Hutchison weaves real-world issues into this contemporary novel with nuance and care and without overpowering the central story of two young people figuring out how they fit into society, their own families, and each other’s lives.” – Jennifer Klepper, author of UNBROKEN THREADS

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips