I once more find myself in that stage where I’m contemplating where to go from here. One of the big issues I’m trying to figure out for myself is if it matters to me to be a fiction writer or not. Or if it’s enough to write non-fiction only. It’s a heart-head fight going on and I’m not sure yet which will win.
But while I’m working through that I ran myself a report that looked at sales by series for March-April-May of this year versus advertising spend, which was 95% AMS ads.
And what’s interesting is that for most of my non-fiction I’m spending about $4 for every $10 I make. There was one that was losing me money that I’d already shut down. And another that was closer to $9 for every $10 I make, but overall it’s about 40% advertising costs.
For my fiction, both fantasy and romance, it’s about $7.50 for every $10 earned. I’m still profitable, but half as profitable with those as I am with the non-fiction.
Which bugs me. But is understandable. More competition means higher advertising costs. And as much as I’d love for the conspiracy theorists to win and drive everyone away from using AMS, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
So it raises the question: Do I keep spending advertising money on low-margin products like the fantasy and romance? Or do I focus my advertising money on high-margin products like the non-fiction?
Both are profitable, which would argue for spending that money because I’m making money even if it’s less per dollar. And it’s not like I spend time on the ads. Maybe ten minutes a day total across all of them, so there’s no added cost in that respect. And it is nice to see things you’ve written sell as opposed to sinking in the rankings.
I guess if I had a finite budget for things and was maxing out that budget with the non-fiction it would be an issue. But I’m not. AMS, the way I use them, only spend so much per title.
So I guess I keep them going. But I do miss those lovely halcyon days before everyone else had discovered AMS and I was spending $2.50 to make $10 on the romance and fantasy novels, too…
M.L. Humphrey 