Numbers Numbers Numbers

real life publishing data, right here.

Man.

I wrote a whole memoir about “that time I wanted to die” and it felt less stressful (though the causes that caused it were def more) than writing (and theoretically posting) this post here.

Here’s the thing though….if I don’t show you my back end, I could be just another one of those people who like to lie a lot online.

I mean, I know I’m not, but you don’t reallllly know me, right?

So…I’ve decided to barge it.

Because at the heart of a lot of people’s problems with AI is that they refuse to believe that using AI makes certain things more financially viable — and? That it works on the far end.

That readers love the stuff, when it’s done well. (Or oftentimes in my case, goofily.)

(Don’t worry we will get back to Lara and performative creepy! This is just how I am though. I hop around a lot, but everything gets done in time.)

So let’s fucking go there.

Here’s my earnings so far this month on KDP.

The reason I’m showing this is because we’re gonna look more closely at some of that data, and, because I work in a union.

Because I’m in a union, I’m able to see what other people make, and we all know there’s no preferential treatment going on (or that male nurses aren’t secretly getting $5/hr more, etc etc etc.)

It’s great, and I strongly believe in unions. All the way.

AND — because back in 2021 (after I wrote the aforementioned ‘I’d like to die now’ memoir about being a covid nurse) I had the great luck to go to Romance Authors Mastermind virtually, which blew the doors off of my mind, because suddenly I *knew* what I really could *make* if I applied myself hard enough.

I just had to *know* that the ladder was there, right?

And so I’m rolling the dice that some of you are like me.

You don’t need to be given a spaceship — you just need to know that one exists — and then you can figure out how to build it yourself.

Okay, so — this is a relatively low month for me, and part of that is because on 5/9, Facebook decided that I couldn’t have access to my account anymore, and turned off all of my facebook ads.

After freaking out for a whole weekend, I decided to reset my mind and view everything as a Data Drenched Adventure, in which I’d figure out which of my IPs actually *needed* the ads to survive, vs which ones didn’t — and? We’d (my fb ads girl and I) use this chance to officially redo everything with Amazon attribution links, so we’d get a direct idea of the back end FB ad to Amazon purchase data.

The thing was…I’ve been kinda busy. And, FB kept helping me “just enough” with account retrival to make me think it miiiighhhttt be possible, and then I found out my author IG is tied to the old ads manager, so they toyed with me again as I tried to disconnect it….

Today I’ve finally given up and accepted the absolute futility of getting anyone at FB to give a shit (and/or to disconnect my author IG from the old business manager) so we’re gonna be rebooting fresh.

Property by property, starting with the ones that need it most, ‘cause all this shit takes time (ugh.)

(I was working on retro covers for Nightshifted last night before I went to bed, and Ambien Cassie used them to post something lightly funny on Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky. I woke up this morning to an ‘AI slop’ comment over on Bsky. Yo, dog, I can’t help it if you don’t have a sense of humor!)

So — I had a feeling my Nightshifted series was one that was relying heavily on FB ads, and I was right! Here’s it’s trends (combo in English & French, the trend’s the same) —

Over that same time-frame.

Here’s some reasons for that — when I first posted these books, I didn’t put them in KU, so they never got an initial algo boost for Amazon to latch onto.

Basically, I’ve had to reboot this entire series’s persona, to make Amazon ‘Like It’, via the magic of FB ads (and Tiktoks.)

Amazon only wants to (and only exists) to make money. So they’re not going to show your books to people unless people want to buy them — and until you create enough of a self-fulfilling cycle that they’re sure that *that’s* a sure thing, right?

(Come for the AI talk, get an MBA in book marketing with me, heh!)

But I know it *is* possible to make people buy these books — here’s my year’s so far stats for them:

My ads on them prior have definitely been working!

They just don’t have the inherent staying-power & awareness juice that some of my other series have, from my socials and/or other people’s organic content. Which is fine!

One of the things I love about AI is that it’s such a force multiplier. Because back in the olden days, you really did have to pick one or two series to sink all your social media marketing into, time and cashwise, because otherwise you’d run out of both.

But because I can use AI to help me come up with my blurbs and my art and my everything (!!!!) for even older books of mine, I can market ANYTHING that’s profitable quite easily (and/or iterate until my marketing *becomes* profitable, easily!) and wind up making money!

It’s also worth noting here that this was my 5 book trad pub series that debuted in 2012 IIRC — it got an average of $17k per book over the course of that contract over time.

These are my lifetime earnings on these books, now that they’re mine:

And I’m definitely gonna make more than that on a per-book basis, now that they’re in KU (that lovely spike up!) and I’ve got marketing on my side.

The other series that clearly needs FB ads to survive are my dragon ones:

You can see the definitive trend down, as the KU reads run out.

Marketing for these has always been a little rocky, but last month was great —

So I have no doubt we’ll get back there.

Now — one of the things that pissed me off about the timing of FB shutting down that account was the fact that I’d JUST created several amazing ads for both of these IPs of mine, and they’d JUST started running…

And now I’ve gotta reboot everything again.

But this is where we’re at, and where I’ll be reporting from on the efficacy of AI-aided FB ads for these properties in the future!

If you’re looking at that initial graph, and you’re all, “But Cassie, why are you not trending down overall this month, without them?” it’s because Amazon — which loves my romantasy — did a sale on it on 5/11, that spike there, for Mother’s Day, and I’ve been riding the high of that and the natural-algo-stickiness of my Monster Security agency’s books ever since.

Why should you listen to me and my obstreporous advice about book publishing at all though? Who the fuck am I?

Well, I’m me — and? — Bend Her’s currently #9080 in the whole Amazon store — which is (Monday informs me, oh god) top 0.076% of all Kindle ebooks (assuming there are 12 million ebooks in the store.)

So I must be doing *something* right. (Like, uh, every other Tuesday at least.)

Although please don’t be looking at this, thinking I’m rolling around in money — absolutely all of this $ is spoken for, between my $$$ human narration for Love Her, my human German translation of Love Her, my PA who formats up everything (who I keep very busy!) and my TT, IG, and FB ads girls, that’s pretty wiped — but it’s OK.

I can’t sell products (translations & audio) that I don’t have, and I can’t sell products that people don’t know about (via TT, IG, or FB ads), you know?

I’m Empire Building, and building an empire takes time — and if you don’t have time, it takes funds, and if you’re in a lucky as hell spot like I am, you’re able to give it both.

Now — here’s one of the AI videos I’m’n’a set up for FB today — my goal is to finish up Nightshifted ads in English and French — and then get back to my Lara project!

xo!

Cassie