We complain* about being trapped in the World War 1990 vortex but cranking out new novels in that universe has a great side effect. Sales of the old novels spike:
Each color represents one of the previous five World War 1990 books. Those massive spikes of the last few days coincide with the spike in Three Seas sales. All this without ads.
Here's what's happening. New readers see World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas and think, Battle of Three Seas....aircraft carrier on the cover...wait, there's more just like this. Wow, oh wow....where do I start?
It's branding at this point. We know we like Jameson's Irish Whisky, so they don't have to advertise to us. Everyone knows Japanese cars are high quality vehicles you can drive into the ground. They don't need to advertise that fact. Alternate history fans know what they're getting when they see the next World War 1990 novel is published.
We are very good at what we do.
*Having ideas is like having pitching, you can't have too much of it.
It's Advertising Week here at William Stroock dot Blogspot dot com, where we'll be discussing everything we know about advertising.
As mentioned yesterday, we've learned we don't have to advertise any longer. Which seems strange. Yet it is true. You see, the algorithm is doing all the work, and it is in the algorithm we've believed for three years now.
But we have to admit, during the first week of this month sales were slow. Not disastrous, but slower than unusual. We chalked it up to the Wuhan Virus from Wuhan China and everyone being stuck at home. But about ten days ago things really kicked in and daily sales of World War 1990: Battle of the Three seas are fabulous. We're in the top 20 in Australia and Canada (top 10 with 'Trudeau's' people, actually) but not yet in Britain. Which means there's room for growth. Let's see, in the USA we're #17 as of two PM. USA! USA!
We have another nagging fear, this one about advertising. During the first five years of our writing career we learned tons about advertising. We learned right on through to our final advertising lesson in 2017: you don't need to advertise. But we're concerned that we haven't learned anything new since then.
There's always something to learn. We're in real Rumsfeldian territory now. We know what we know, but we don't know what we don't know.
