Why the big relaunch of The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters series

It's the big one: Why. The. Relaunch.

Oof, this is a hard one for me today.

Why did I decide to relaunch my books?

In short, because they failed.¹

Okay, they didn't fail by my definition of the word. I wrote the books to the best of my ability at the time, I launched them to the best of my ability at the time, and I marketed them long-term to the best of my ability at the time.

For me, in my Enneagram Type 1 Perfectionist/Reformer way, this was a success. Whether a book made money was beyond my control, outside of creating the best book I could with the best launch/marketing plan I could.

That was how I defined success.

But at some point, you've got to pay the bills.

And these books were not paying the bills, not in their first-edition format.

I tried Amazon ads. I tried Facebook ads. I tried BookBub ads. I couldn't get any of them to break even, let alone make a profit so I could start paying myself back for the investment in editing and covers for them.

Not to mention to pay myself for the loads of time I spent creating these books!²

I tried free group promotions and cross promotions with other authors. While these didn't cost me any money and did yield the occasional sale, they:

• Didn't yield enough sales to justify the time I spent looking for promotions, booking promotions, and sharing promotions; and
• Weren't scalable in my experience, not enough to generate enough money to pay the bills or even to pay a meaningful portion of the bills.

And that was after publishing four books and two prequels in the same series, when the conventional wisdom is to start advertising after you have three books in a series to break even and after four books to start making a profit.³

Granted, the prequels only somewhat counted as being in the series, and indeed, I didn't see nearly as much readthrough⁴ to my prequels as through my main books.

So there I was, mid-pandemic (this was in the latter half of 2020 and into 2021), with a series of four books and two prequels that I couldn't get to make a profit no matter what I tried.

While it was possible that I didn't try hard enough or long enough with a given strategy and that I should have tried longer instead jumping onto the next thing that might work, I decided to take a look at my readthrough⁴ before returning to one of those strategies I'd tried earlier. I'd found some recommended benchmarks, and so I could compare my readthrough numbers to the numbers recommended for success.

The results were bleak.

My readthrough from Book 1 to Book 2, in the first editions in Kindle Unlimited, from September 2020 - December 2021 was…46%

According to Help! My Facebook Ads Suck by Mal Cooper and Jill Cooper, the warning sign for readthrough from Book 1 to Book 2 in Kindle Unlimited was...75%. 😬

But it wasn't all terrible.

My readthrough from Book 2 to Book 3 and from Book 3 to Book 4 in Kindle Unlimited in that same time period were both about 90%, which was about right according to Help! My Facebook Ads Suck.

So, there was hope.

At this point, I had three choices:

• Assume the low readthrough from Book 1 to Book 2 was due to a branding issue. Somehow, I was targeting the wrong readers for Book 1. Go back and fix the cover, blurb, pricing, etc.
• Assume the low readthrough from Book 1 to Book 2 was due to a craft issue.⁵ I didn't write a good enough book. Go back and fix Book 1.
• Assume this series was broken and/or just didn't vibe with enough people to ever make money. Use what I learned writing and marketing it and go write something new and (hopefully) more marketable.

Now, conventional wisdom said to go with the third option, especially since I'd gotten the best covers I knew how to get, had hired a well-known professional for the descriptions of Book 1, Book 2, and the only paid prequel, and had already toyed with the price of Book 1 a whole lot.

Not to say that I couldn't have toyed with the packaging of my books more, but it seemed unlikely that I was going to get the kind of gains I needed to make these books profitable (and worth creating more books in this series!) without a bigger change.

A single choice remained: 

• Abandon my books and write something new and hopefully better, using all the fun craft stuff I'd learned along the way over the last ten years of pursuing my dream of being a full-time author with a full-time salary from writing; or
• Dive back into my books and re-edit them so that they're something new and better, improved with all the fun craft stuff I'd learned along the way over the last ten years of pursuing my dream of being a full-time author with a full-time salary from writing.

Everyone—and I do mean everyone—said never to go back into your books, never to re-edit them.

Well, I didn't listen.

More on that next time.

Until then, happy reading!

Betsy

P.S. For completeness:

• The first editions of my books in The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters series were called: A Brush with Vampires (Book One), A Brush with Betrayal (Book Two), A Brush with Blood (Book Three), A Brush with Fire (Book Four), The Unleashed Creation (Prequel Book One), and The Impossible Creation (Prequel Book Two).
• The analogous second editions are called: School of Shadows (Book One), School of Glass (Book Two), School of Blood (Book Three), School of Midnight (Book Four), Chain of Flame (Prequel Book One), and Chain of Magic (Prequel Book Three, since I added a new prequel between the original Prequels Books One and Two).
• I've also added two new books to the relaunch: Chain of Shadows (The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters: Book Zero) and Chain of Blood (Eversfield Academy: Vampire Origins #2).
• The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters series has previously been called The Clan-Vampire Clash and The Vampire Hunters of Eversfield Academy.
• The Eversfield Academy: Vampire Origins series has previously been called The Clan-Vampire Clash Stand-Alone Prequels and The Vampires of Eversfield Academy.

The epic list of side notes and digressions:

1. I don't really mean fail here. In general, I'm careful with how I use that word, mostly because a book can be objectively well-written but it still may not find its readers and/or enough of its readers may not exist (for more on this concept, see Russell Nohelty's excellent article on this, “Objectively good and subjectively your jam…"). So for me, in general, I succeed whenever I finish a book that meets my internal standards. And then I succeed again when a book is launched according to my standards. And then again when it does post-launch promotions, etc. As long as I do things to the best of my ability at the time, nothing fails, regardless of the actual money it makes or does not make. (Now, whether to continue promoting or working on a book or series that's not making money is another question. But I don't consider a book or marketing activity "failed" simply because it didn't make (enough) money.)
2. It takes me roughly 600 hours to create a book in The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters series, from outlining through final draft ready to be published. And the magical urban fantasy world is already created for this series! Although, I do tend to run long for a young adult urban fantasy series, with my books in this series usually ending up between about 70,000 words (about 350 paperback pages) and 80,000 words (about 400 paperback pages). Or at least this is my best guess for how long it takes me. Recently, I've been using the Harvest Time Tracking App to track my time (which I'm loving by the way, nerd that I am), so I may have a better estimate in the future.
3. I do not have a reference for this unfortunately. It’s just something I’ve heard as a rule of thumb from many sources in the indie publishing sphere. Your mileage may vary.
4. Readthrough is the percentage of readers who buy, download, or read one book and then go on to buy, download, or read the next book in a series. A simple example of this calculation is: (# of sales of Book 2)/(# of sales of Book 1).
5. Ouchhhh.