stacey cochran guest post: CLAWS 2.

Today I'd like to introduce someone we've seen here before, promoting new book, CLAWS 2. So without further ado, Stacey Cochran!

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Thanks, Dawson, for letting me visit your blog in the midst of my CLAWS 2 Blog Tour. More than anything else, I need folks to read and write reviews of my book.


So I thought I would write about my perceptions so far regarding two closely linked series books. As you may guess, CLAWS 2 is the sequel to CLAWS, which was an international bestseller on Amazon Kindle in 2009 and 2010.

So far, the month of July has been my most profitable month this year, and I attribute a significant portion of this success to the new $2.99 price-point and 70% royalty rate for CLAWS 2.

However, what I did not anticipate before the launch of CLAWS 2 was that its release would coincide with a large bump in sales for the first book in the series. Maybe in some dark corner of my mind, I had considered the possibility that this might happen, but if I did, it was certainly not conscious.

I just liked the idea of writing a series of novels like CLAWS, CLAWS 2, CLAWS 3, etc. I thought it would be cool, but I wasn’t thinking at all about how one book might affect sales of another.

An interesting thing to note is that the first book in the series has actually out-sold the new release nearly 3:2 during the first three weeks of the launch, and it is up nearly 400% over previous month-to-date sales.

The lesson that I’m learning with this is simple. If you have two (or more) closely-linked series books, many readers who discover you on your 2nd or (hypothetically) 3rd or 4th novel will first go back and buy the original novel. Many folks will buy the books together. Others will only buy the first book and see if they like it before moving on to other books in the series.

It’s worth noting, too, that I’ve maintained a lower price-point for CLAWS (99 cents), and that is likely contributing to new readers giving the book a shot.

Whatever the case, I now have hard data to support the hypothesis that publishing series novels with closely-linked titles can affect sales of all books.

In the months ahead, I may experiment by dropping the CLAWS 2 price-point to 99 cents, while raising the CLAWS price to $2.99. Or dropping both to 99 cents. Or raising both to $2.99. The point is that if you’re doing pretty well with a series, you can change the prices around every so often to experiment with sales #s and data to see what works best.

Well, thanks for having me at your blog today. If folks want to find out more about me, you can visit me on the web at: http://www.staceycochran.com

And, of course, more than anything, I need some good reviews of CLAWS 2 on Amazon. So check us out there, everybody, and please write a review. Thanks so much!


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Stacey Cochran was born in the Carolinas, where his family traces its roots to the mid 1800s. In 1998 he was selected as a finalist in the Dell Magazines undergraduate fiction competition, and he made his first professional short story sale to CutBank in 2001. In 2004, he was selected as a finalist in the St. Martin's Press/PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Contest. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife Dr. Susan K. Miller-Cochran and their son Sam, and he teaches writing at North Carolina State University.