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By far the biggest mistake I have made was underestimating my reach. I'm by no means a bestselling author, but I chose a publishing platform (lulu) where not as many people go. I did this because I prefer lulu's print quality to Amazon, and they also have better royalties on almost all print products. Their only downsides however are that there isn't an easy way to advertise a product listing with them, nor is there any traffic just showing up on product pages. It isn't as huge as Amazon, and for a first-time author just starting out in a weird genre he is trying to reinvent, it meant I wasn't seeing many sales compared to amazon.
But how do I know?
It's simple. I allowed "expanded distribution" on my Lulu book and didn't advertise. I left it alone for two months, and saw 80% of sales came from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk, so 4x more people bumped into my books on Amazon than on Lulu.
This was unfortunate, because Amazon takes a hefty cut unless you are publishing within their platform.
So I moved. I took it as an opportunity to improve the cover design and fix two typos which I found in the first edition.
BUT WHAT I DIDN'T DO, AND THIS IS THE BIG MISTAKE...
is I didn't take the old ISBNs with me.
I had been told by numerous people in numerous places that you can't change publisher and retain the old ISBN. I believed this a year ago, but tonight 10/01/2022 I discovered that this information is wrong.
You can keep an ISBN for a reissue with Amazon as long as the binding type, paper type, size of the book, and interior contents are the same or very similar.
This is upsetting, because my sales have been negatively impacted by people finding the defunct 1st edition and thinking it isn't available, then giving up. I know this has happened because I can see the clicks on those pages, and two people have told me they struggled to find the book.
So I polished my SEO (search engine optimisation) and I've got WHOBUILTTHEHUMANS.COM at the top of google (Matt Haig's THE HUMANS was briefly beating me, and before you ask WBTH came out first, the titles are coincidental and yes, it does annoy me sometimes)
and this might help a bit. People will see the website, they'll click the website, they'll buy off amazon.
But how to scrape that pesky dead lulu product page (which leads to a disappointing ERROR 404 message) from history?
I've emailed them. I'll see if it's possible. But I've been doing a lot of emailing and it's bothersome. I've been creating work for myself because of the way WBTH came to exist. I did things the long way round. I didn't do a kickstarter, I had pre-orders on Etsy, meaning postage was pre-set and I lost money on the ones outside the EU. I fucked up the barcode at least four times with Lulu, and again with Amazon. I took a while to understand the advertising console in Amazon, and botched a bit of the metadata so nobody could find the damn thing. But it's okay, fucking up is part of the process. In fact I now fuck up on purpose on instagram. I am quite happy to make a fool of myself because it means I'll be a better teacher, both for future me and future you, if you're an author.
But it can be bothersome sometimes. I emailed Neilsens (the ISBN people) and had them basically erase the original WBTH ebook and paperback ISBNs from their records, effectively meaning I paid for two ISBNs (only £20 but it's annoying) that I thought I couldn't use after a point because I'd improved the book and moved to a new platform, but apparently the new cover and new intro wouldn't have upset Amazon... the people I spoke to on facebook were wrong. But I don't blame them, they might have been right at some point, and from talking to other self-pub authors, a lot of us seem to hear a thing once and not research it properly. It's really my mistake for taking people as authorities. I had missed that little line on Amazon because they have many, many, many terms.
So now I'm thinking. Can this be fixed? Can I resolve my search engine optimisation to redirect all Lulu traffic back to www.whobuiltthehumans.com or should I do something radical, something strange and basically ridiculous.
SHOULD I BRING THE FIRST EDITION BACK?
I could price it lower, remove expanded distribution, and add a disclaimer and link to the product description so people would go get the new one
but that feels so pointless, and as much as I love and miss the 1st edition, I want it to be something that only a select few people got their hands on. That was what drew people into the pre-orders way back in 2020.
I won't be doing it, but I admit it is tempting. It's certainly easier than going back in time and undoing the list of fuck-ups that led to me basically wasting two ISBN codes.
So, what are your thoughts on this?