The Marketing Underdog — Episode Three: I Don't Know How to Put This, But I'm Kind of a Big Deal.
I do not know how to put this, but I am kind of a big deal. - Ron Burgundy
Maybe the numbers are not a big deal to some, but they sure are to me. Here is what moved, what stayed still, what I missed, and what I am changing next.
The Numbers
Parenting Unpacked orders: 37 (up from 9 last month 🎉)
Not a hockey stick but a line that goes in one direction and I am going to keep following it.
Maternity Abroad: 4 Kindle orders and 27 Kindle Unlimited pages read.
Someone wants to read it properly rather than scroll it, which is new this month, and I find that satisfying in a way I cannot fully explain.
My First American Coloring Book: 11 copies sold.
I forgot to include this book in the last episode, which is a very on-brand move for a one woman marketing operation. For context: we sold 46 copies the previous month. Eleven is quieter but the book keeps finding its way into people's hands without me doing very much about it. Germany is still its strongest market. I have no explanation for this and I have stopped trying to find one.
Email subscribers: 14 (up from 13 — yay, it is growing!)
One person, but that one person chose to be here and I am going to celebrate that accordingly.
Instagram: 21 followers (up from 18)
Instagram and I continue to have a complicated relationship that neither of us is ready to talk about.
RSS subscribers: 107 (up 33 from last month)
This is the number I am most pleased about this month. Nobody accidentally subscribes to an RSS feed. Every single one of those 107 people made a deliberate decision and I think about them more than the number suggests I should. Plus 33 in one month is not nothing.
What I Actually Did This Month
I added calls to action to the blog posts. The posts that were doing emotional work and then ending with nothing now have a door. The writing was doing its job but nothing was inviting the reader to take a next step, so I fixed that.
I updated the homepage, the book pages, the glossary, and a handful of other pages that were still running on old copy that did not match anything else on the site. The site now reads like one thing rather than several things that happen to share a domain name. This took longer than it should have because I kept second-guessing myself and the answer turned out to be that it was fine and I needed to publish it and stop looking at it.
The Thing I Missed
The Encha o Seu Kindle promotion in Brazil.
I found out about it after it had already happened. It appears to be an important discovery and discount moment for Brazilian Kindle readers and I missed it completely because I did not know it existed. If you are a Brazilian independent author reading this: you are welcome and I am sorry. It is in the calendar for next time.
The Thing Nobody Tells You About Reviews
Reviews drive sales and I have known this since before I published anything. I have also barely left reviews myself. By the time I finish a book I am already three things deep into whatever is next, and I suspect most readers are exactly the same way.
Which means asking for reviews is not asking people to do something easy but asking them to do something they keep meaning to do and keep not doing. The right moment to ask is immediately after the emotional peak of reading, when the book is still warm, before the next thing arrives, not three weeks later in a newsletter but right then.
I have started doing that, one sentence with no pressure, just the honest truth that a review helps the next reader find the book before they need it.
What the Experiment Is Teaching Me
The gap between writing something and having it found is not closed by writing better. It is closed by making sure every piece of writing has somewhere to go after someone reads it.
And the strangers keep finding it. Someone I have never met is reading my book right now, maybe more than one, and I do not know their names or their countries. I just know that the line keeps going in one direction.
That is what month three looks like from the inside.
The Door
Have you read one of the books?
If you have read Parenting Unpacked, Maternity Abroad, or My First American Coloring Book, a short honest review helps the next reader find it. You do not need to write much. Tell them what the book gave you.
Not read one yet?
Maternity Abroad is for becoming a mother in a country that does not yet know you. Parenting Unpacked is for raising children abroad while losing your old sense of competence. My First American Coloring Book helps a child recognise the culture around them and feel more at home in it. The first forty pages of both nonfiction books are free to read.
Want to follow the experiment?
Join the newsletter for next month’s numbers, mistakes, and decisions before they become another episode.
Jessica Gabrielzyk
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the demarketing experiment?
A public record of what happens when an independent author publishes real sales numbers, real mistakes, and real decisions instead of performing confidence and hiding the process. Every month the numbers go up, down, or sideways and all of it gets published.
What does an independent author actually earn per book?
It depends on the format and platform. Paperback royalties on Amazon typically range from 40 to 60 percent of the list price after printing costs. Kindle royalties are either 35 or 70 percent depending on the price point and territory. Kindle Unlimited pays per page read rather than per sale. The numbers in this series reflect orders and page reads rather than revenue because the revenue conversation requires a longer discussion about costs, platform fees, and currency conversions.
Why are you publishing your real numbers?
Because the publishing industry runs on the performance of success and most independent authors have no idea what normal actually looks like. Nine orders in month one is not failure. It is what month one looks like for most independently published books without a publisher’s distribution network. Publishing the real numbers is partly an experiment in whether transparency builds trust faster than polish, and partly a record for other authors wondering whether their numbers are normal. They probably are.
How long does it take to see results from blogging?
Search traffic takes between three and six months to compound for new sites and can take twelve to eighteen months to produce meaningful organic traffic. The posts written now are the ones that bring readers in six months from now. This series exists partly to document that timeline honestly.
What is the Identity Migration Dispatch?
One honest field note, one concept for the thing you have not been able to name, and one story from someone building a life far from where it began. Roughly once a month. Also where the next episode of the Marketing Underdog series goes first.
Who is this experiment for?
Readers who want to follow the books as they find their audience. Independent authors who want to see what the process actually looks like without the curated highlights. Anyone who has ever wondered what it costs, in time and money and uncertainty, to publish something you believe in without a publisher behind you.
The real numbers from month three of a public demarketing experiment.