A Kindle Scout sequel

Hey guys! My kids are asleep, soundly, and I'm watching the second season of the Santa Clarita Diet. If you're not watching this gem, shame on you. It's fantastic.

So...I thought I'd do a follow-up to my second Kindle Scout campaign. The follow-up is, I didn't win. Which is a bummer. When you win, you get a $1500 advance, another round of editing, and Amazon's marketing power. That helped me loads when I won my first campaign in 2016. I guess I'm being greedy. Anyway, the big takeaway from my loss was Amazon's reason for it.

They said there wasn't as much scout interest in a sequel as they had hoped. And they cited a common occurrence--the return on investment isn't there for subsequent books in a series. At least, not from a publisher's standpoint.

This brings up an interesting phenomenon. Indie authors typically survive on series. That's their bread and butter. Some authors have a free or cheap starter as a way to funnel in readers to the rest of the books, and as readers get invested, they spend the money on the remaining books. So you might take a loss on Book 1, but you'll more than make up for it on Books 2-10.

But, I suppose that model doesn't work quite as well in traditional publishing, which Kindle Press kinda is. It's a unique model, one that I explain here. For KP, it makes more sense to pass on sequels because the authors will simply self publish them. This buoys the first book in Kindle's catalog without them having to invest $1500 to do it. Does that make sense?

I suppose I'm a glutton for punishment. I am doing a second campaign with a mystery standalone. I was so encouraged by Amazon's feedback on my writing that I can't help but hope they'll like a new story. And if not, well, it's ready to be published.

Wish me luck.