How many books does an author need for Direct Sales?
Before we answer that question:
Don't panic if you don't yet have as many titles/products as we recommend for direct sales.
You can still take advantage of our fundamental tools to put you lightyears ahead of your competitors.
And rest assured that we have an offer for help that's designed from the ground up with you in mind.
With that out of the way, let's dive in.
"Direct sales" just means that customers purchase your ebooks, audiobooks, and physical copies directly from your web store.
You can sell directly to your readers in addition to selling your books through someone else's store, like Amazon, B&N, Kobo, etc.
(If you haven't seen it yet, check out this article to learn the six components in the AMMO Direct Sales System, responsible for $25M in annual book sales)
It's hard work, but direct sales has three important benefits:
1. Authors selling direct make significantly more money, on average (source: Kindlepreneur).
2. Authors selling direct aren't completely reliant on Amazon's good behavior.
3. The money from your sales shows up in your bank account within a couple of business days (vs. up to 90 days for Amazon royalties).
A lot has changed since I released the first version of Author Marketing Mastery through Optimization in 2017, and just last week (as I write this), I released Version 4 of the AMMO direct sales program.
The critical piece of information I used as the backbone of the AMMO V4 process is this:
The average advertising cost that authors incur in order to bring in a new reader fluctuates between $12 and $20 for most authors, in most genres, on most days. (source: AMMO author data)
So... ebooks sell for under $10. But it costs $20 to find a new customer in today's book market... after you've already done the hard work of testing and optimizing your direct sales system.
As a consequence, you probably need more than one product to sell to your new customer.
So how many books do you need to have in order to turn a profit?
It depends on your genre, book length, formats, and book quality (as judged by the only people who matter in this equation: your customers).
Here's the best way to understand how these fit together for each format: I'll show you the direct sales process we swear by, and I'll also tell you how many books our most successful authors are currently offering at each step in the process.
Seatbelts fastened?
There are six parts:
The cornerstone of our authors' success over the past seven years is our proprietary book advertisement development process.
It consists of six market tests. I describe each of these six tests in this article.
In direct sales, we deploy our tested ads into "Sales" campaigns, using the "Purchase" objective.
Your ads must feature a visual representation of the titles (in the appropriate format) you're including in your introductory offer.
Our most successful STORYTELLERS (click here for more on the difference between "storytellers" and "problem solvers") offer between three and eight ebook titles in this introductory offer. They offer between three and six paperback and audiobook titles.
Storytellers who write in genres where word counts of more than 60,000 words are common generally need 3 or more books for their doorbuster offer.
Storytellers who write in genres where word counts of less than 60,000 words are common generally need 5 or more books for their doorbuster offer.
Our most successful PROBLEM SOLVERS offer between one and three titles in this introductory offer, regardless of format.
When Facebook and Instagram users click on our ads, they're expecting to see an offer that's consistent with what they've already seen in your advertisement.
We'll show this offer to them in detail at to the second stop in our direct sales process:
The sales page is where we describe our offer in detail.
It must provide an experience that is consistent with the expectations our advertisement established in their minds.
If we showed four paperback titles on our ad image, readers will expect to see these four paperbacks featured on our sales page.
(BTW, I walk through these considerations in greater detail in the direct sales module inside of Author Marketing Mastery through Optimization Version 4).
They're also expecting an offer that allows them to "bundle and save."
And they're expecting to see evidence that you're a professional author selling professional-caliber books to satisfied readers whose book tastes are similar to their own preferences.
This gives them a handful of compelling reasons to give your books a try.
So STORYTELLERS should expect to offer between 3+ (60K words or MORE) and 5+ ebook titles (less than 60K words) in a bundle on their sales page, and to offer 3 to 6 paperback or audiobook titles.
PROBLEM SOLVERS should expect to offer 1 to 3 titles (in any single format) on their sales page.
But we're not done yet.
We still need more things to sell, because publishing is an extremely competitive industry.
And we have another offer to make our readers:
The "Order Bump" is the bookselling equivalent of the age-old question:
"Would you like fries with that?"
We invite our new customer to add one to three additional, highly relevant titles to their order.
Some of our more successful and prolific authors offer an entire series as an order bump offer.
This brings our product count to the following:
STORYTELLERS: 4+ titles (≥60K words) to 6+ titles (<60K words).
PROBLEM SOLVERS: If you're trying to earn money primarily by selling books, you'll need at least one additional title (or similar product -- workbooks, mini-courses, etc).
If you're a problem solver who sells courses, services, consulting, workshops, etc, you'll usually need a total of at least one higher-value product to sell in addition to your book(s).
The checkout page is where your fans officially become proud owners of your books.
As I mention in this article about the essential tools involved in direct sales, we use Shopify as our ecommerce store provider for a long list of reasons, not the least of which is this one:
Shopify's checkout boasts the highest conversion rate of any ecommerce checkout system.
This means that more of our customers buy from us when we use Shopify than when we use anything other than Shopify.
And once your customer completes their purchase, they will have unlocked the next step in their journey with us:
It feels weird for most of us to make an offer to someone who just bought something from us.
But we have to get over it, because readers love to read.
And they can't read any books we don't offer to them.
Our most successful storytellers offer 1 to 4 additional titles in their post-purchase upsell offers.
Our most successful problem solvers offer 1 to 3 additional products.
Which brings our book count to:
STORYTELLERS: 5+ titles in genres with ≥60K word counts, and 8+ titles in genres with <60K word counts.
PROBLEM SOLVERS who aim to earn their money primarily through book sales: 3+ titles (or related products).
Again, though, if you're a problem solver who sells courses, services, consulting, workshops, etc, you'll usually need one higher-priced product (TOTAL) to sell in addition to your book(s).
Next up: EMAIL.
Our email system is an exceptionally powerful ally in our quest to make readers happy.
Many readers won't take us up on our order bump and post-purchase upsell offers, so our email sequences will offer those titles to them again in the future.
And many other readers will have snapped up all three of our offers: "doorbuster," order bump, and post-purchase upsell.
So we'll want to have more titles to offer to our superfans in the future.
Our most successful STORYTELLERS either offer one or more additional titles in their email sequence, or use their email sequence to sell additional titles to those customers who haven't yet bought the entire 5-book catalog (for ≥60K word count books) or 8-book catalog (<60K word count).
Our most successful PROBLEM SOLVERS offer at least one more title or related product in their email sequence. But if you only have 3 titles total, you can just repeat your offers inside your email sequences.
This brings our most successful authors' total book count to:
STORYTELLERS: 5+ books of 60K words or more,
Or 8+ books of less than 60K words.
PROBLEM SOLVERS who want to make their money primarily through book sales: 3+ books total.
And once again, if you're a problem solver who sells courses, services, consulting, workshops, etc, you'll need at least one higher-value product to sell in addition to your book(s).
If you meet the relevant criteria, you should strongly consider selling directly to your readers.
But what if you don't yet have that many books?
Read on...
What does it mean if you have fewer titles or products than recommended above?
It means that you should focus on Click Testing to get readers for your existing titles, and to teach you which book ideas your readers want to see from you next.
We have an enrollment option tailor-made for you inside of the AMMO V4 program.
We'll show you how to click test your ideas for your new titles BEFORE and DURING the writing process as you produce more professional-grade titles (or products) to sell to your readers.
And there's a deadly mistake I want you to avoid.
It's common for authors with fewer titles than recommended above to say this:
"I'll just 'save money' by waiting until I have more books to get started with Click Testing."
But more often than not, this puts them in a tragic situation:
They waste YEARS writing a half-dozen books that NOBODY WANTS TO READ.
(Don't think it won't happen to you. Indie icon Joanna Penn recently discovered that she had wasted an entire year writing a series that nobody cared to buy.)
For early-stage authors, this situation is usually unrecoverable.
It's soul-crushing when authors learn that they've wasted half a decade writing unmarketable books.
You can avoid this fate by choosing to get started with market testing now.
Learn more about the best option for you on the AMMO V4 information page.
If you're a STORYTELLER...
And you have 5+ titles of 60K words or more in the same series or subgenre...
OR you have 8+ titles of less than 60K words in the same series or subgenre...
You should strongly consider selling directly to your readers.
If you're a PROBLEM SOLVER...
You can build a profitable direct sales system that earns money primarily by selling books if you have 3 or more related titles in an in-demand topic area.
And if you have at least one book AND a related product or service at a higher price, you're also likely to succeed at direct sales.
In either of these cases, you should strongly consider selling directly to your readers.
If you have fewer than the recommended number of titles right now:
Learn Click Testing right now to avoid wasting thousands of dollars and years of time and effort.
We have an option tailor-made for you on the AMMO V4 program information and pricing page.
We have more resources for you.
If you're interested in learning more about how Click Testing (which is Phase 1 in the AMMO V4 training curriculum) can help you sell more of the books you have and write highly marketable books in the future, you can see an in-depth walkthrough of the process in this article.
If you're not yet ready for a full-on Direct Sales effort and you're wondering when you should get started with market testing, check out this article for our recommendations.
If you're excited about Direct Sales but want to know more about what's required, we've written articles on the tools and skills we swear by.
