This is a continuation of the Sales Model of an Indie Author post, and part of my musings during and about my journey to become a highly successful author.

This also comes in the wake of the Fifty for Fifty celebration we ran last month. A lot of fellow indie authors asked me how I got there – and they deserve a somewhat longer answer than “hard work”.

As mentioned before, and is often proven by statistics, pay-per-click ads on Amazon, Facebook, Goodreads and the like do not lead directly to sales. Without going into too much detail, your ad needs to be first displayed (impressions), then clicked (click-through), then effective (conversion – resulting in a sale). Usually the percentages for each stage are so low, that whatever you spend on ads is unlikely to be covered by sales.

Mailing list services do result in sales. BookBub is the premier service, but…