Launching Fiddling with Death

Lloyd Lofthouse
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The 3rd Thriller in the Josh Kavanagh Series

Fiddling With Death’s official book launch started February 10 and ended the 17th, with the earliest reviews any of my books have had. Usually, it takes a month or more after a book launch for the first review to appear. This time, the first four came out before the end of the launch.

Novel News Network book review | February 12, 2025
I really enjoyed Fiddling with Death. I was captivated from beginning to end. The setting and time comes through perfectly with the imaginative writing. It’s a great suspense with all of the ups and downs and a great plot with equally wonderful characterization. Buckle Up! Lloyd Lofthouse brings you a great story with action and suspense the entire way.

Texas Book Nook Review | February 14, 2025
An adventure that with a clear and easy-to-read layout is beyond that a pretty exciting book. It’s great that Lloyd Lofthouse has so cleverly painted the people, the time, the events. I felt with the characters and their journeys I believe this story is well done and has the ability to reach people in a powerful way all the while entertaining to the very end.

Amazon Review
Joshua Dalton | February 16, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars Great fast read
Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2025
Verified Purchase
Book 3 of the Josh Kavanagh series picks up were book 2 left off and keeps the storyline moving right along. Can’t wait for the next book to come out .

Review from The Indie Express | February 17, 2025
This was an electrifying page-turner with shocking twists and a jaw-dropping conclusion. The pace, really makes this for me. It’s so well done and really keeps the reader on edge and giving just enough with each chapter. Technical detail is convincing but not too much to be bogged down, it was smartly blended into the thriller elements. All the characters, locations and actions are believable, smooth like you are there.


BEFORE the BOOK LAUNCH

Book Launches don’t start with the release date. Planning and booking all the steps for a book launch takes time and it isn’t free.

  • There’s was the Amazon Kindle Pre-Oder page to get ready for Fiddling with Death
  • The BookBub New Release for Less Feature along with four BookBub ADs running for all seven days of the KCD.
  • The 29 different Deal Site ADs spread out over the 7-day $0.99 KCD for the first book in the series The Patriot 0ath
  • A book blog Tour through RABT Book Tours
  • Net Galley, a platform where publishers can distribute digital review copies of their upcoming books, using XPRESSO Book Tours to deal with that.
  • Creating and programming four Facebook META Ads with Amazon Attribution tracking links that started running on February 4, 2025. Two are still active.
  • And fine tuning the Amazon ADs — hundreds running in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and Australia

All that Work Started Months in Advance Back in 2024

Now that the book launch for Fiddling with Death had ended, the results for those seven days are in.  The promotion wasn’t just about the third book in the series. It was about all three of the thrillers, explaining why the most effort was focused on the first book, not the latest one.

The Results for those Seven Days

The Patriot Oath

  • 210 eBook or paperback sales
  • 20,138 KU-page-reads equal to 56-eBooks read
  • Started with 330 ratings/reviews and ended with 337 | 4.3 average

Never for Glory

  • 9 eBook sales
  • 9,144 KU-page reads equal to 25-eBooks read
  • Started with 94 ratings/reviews and ended with 98 | 4.5 average

Fiddling with Death

  • 74 eBook or paperback sales | 45 were early purchases
  • 8,257 KU-page reads equal to 22 eBooks read
  • Started with no ratings/reviews and ended with four | 4.2 average

The Josh Kavanagh Thrillers 3-book box set

  • 5 book sets, that were all early purchases
  • 433 KU-page reads

What did I learn?

  • Never run a BookBub New Release for Less Feature again.  $700 is too much to pay for 14 sales. Also, never use BookBub ADs. The results were disappointing to say the least, and the cost was more than $500.
  • Book a longer, larger Book Blog tour and start earlier using RABT Book Tours.
  • Do the same with Net Galley using XPRESSO Book Tours.
  • Repeat all the rest

Next: Start writing Play Judas, the 4th thriller in the Josh Kavanagh series.

Responses to “Launching Fiddling with Death”

  1. acflory Avatar
    acflory

    Congratulations, Lloyd! Great reviews. 🙂 I have to admit I almost fell off my chair at the cost of the promotion though. I’ve never done a Bookbub event but I wonder if it’s had its day?

    Reply
    1. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
      Lloyd Lofthouse

      Back in 2013, 2014, and 2015, my first novel was accepted for the Feature Deal once each year for about the same price. The first two times, more than 2,000 copies sold for $0.99 each time, making a profit of about $700 above the cost of $700. The third time, BookBub turned my submission down but said if I offered the book free, they’d accept it. So, I paid about $700 to give it away. More than 40,000 copies of the eBook were downloaded and within a few months the number of reviews had doubled. that was in the low hundreds. Today, My Splendid Concubine has 1,453 reviews and has sold [not free] 24,388 copies and has had almost 670,000 KDP page reads.

      From what I have read about Feature Deal results today, the eBooks sold are not where they were back then but are still significant compared to similar deal sites. To break even, you have to sell about 1,000 copies back then and today.

      Here’s a paste and copy explanation how more review may add to more sales over time:

      Generally, books with more reviews tend to sell more copies, as positive reviews act as social proof, influencing potential buyers to purchase a book based on other readers’ positive experiences; however, it’s important to note that high sales often lead to more reviews, so the correlation isn’t always a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

      Key points to remember:

      Social proof:
      When potential buyers see a large number of positive reviews, they are more likely to trust the book’s quality and are more inclined to buy it.

      Algorithm impact:
      Platforms like Amazon may prioritize books with more reviews in their search algorithms, making them more visible to potential buyers.

      Not always a direct causation:
      While reviews can boost sales, it’s often the case that a book with high sales will naturally accumulate more reviews.

      Now, fast forward a decade and another factor is the click through rate.

      I have run ads on Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Facebook ADs tend to generate more clicks. For $10 a day, The Patriot Oath gets about 500 clicks a week. Amazon ADs don’t even compare for the click through rate. To get that many clicks from Amazon ADs a week would cost a LOT more.

      Another copy and paste follows

      More clicks to a book on Amazon lead to more sales because they indicate that more people are interested in the book. This metric is called the click-through rate (CTR).

      Explanation
      Click-through rate: The percentage of people who click on a book listing after seeing it in search results.
      Sales: The number of books sold.

      Sales page: The page where the book’s cover, blurb, metadata, and reviews are displayed.

      How to increase sales
      Improve the book cover: A standout cover can increase the CTR.
      Write a compelling book description: A good description can help convince people to buy the book.
      Get positive reviews: Reviews can help convince people to buy the book.
      Use Amazon ads: Amazon ads can get people to the book’s sales page.
      Target search terms: Target search terms with high search volume.
      Increase budget: Increase the budget for Amazon ads.

      Another copy and paste

      Amazon’s algorithms likely consider a book’s click-through rate (CTR) when recommending products, but other factors are also important.

      Explanation
      Click-through rate
      The percentage of shoppers who click on a product listing. A higher CTR indicates more interest in the product.

      Reply
      1. acflory Avatar
        acflory

        I can’t tell you how grateful I am, Lloyd. I’ve literally copies everything in this reply and pasted it into a new folder called ‘advertising’ because…I literally didn’t have a clue what the click through rate was. Or to be honest, what any of the other stuff is either.
        I’m surprised by the strength of the Facebook click throughs. Do those CTRs rely on having a strong /presence/ on FB?
        The question is kind of moot as I’m not on FB and wouldn’t be able to afford advertising even if I were. I’m just curious. At this point I think I’ve pretty much given up on marketing. 😀

      2. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
        Lloyd Lofthouse

        You are welcome.

        Until, I took the on-line recorded class from Matthew J.Holmes, I didn’t know how to use Facebook. I’ve had a Facebook page for years but seriously neglected it. Before I started running Facebook Ads, I updated it, which wasn’t easy and came with speed bumps and frustration.

        The Facebook AD dashboard is as confusing as imaginable. i’ve been through Matthew’s coure almost two times. When I paid the lifetime price for the coarse, I thought the price was reasonable. It may be higher now. I don’t know how much you could afford, but I think the lowest daily cost to run Facebook ADs is $5 a day after knowing what to do. With $5 a day, it takes longer [about two weeks] to let the Facebook app learn and improve the results.

        I’m spending $20 a day right now. I just checked the last nine days since the launch of Fiddling with Death ended. Eight of those days earned more royalties each day than the cost of the daily AD spend. And the one day that didn’t earn enough was 0.60 U.S. cents short.

        https://www.matthewjholmes.com/jumpstart-facebook-ads

        Matthew is offering a FREE 7-day email course. The first one I took lasted two hours and it was also free. Still, it took me more than a month to work through all of his paid online videos teaching how to use Facebook ADs properly, and I often had to stop the video to take notes, there were so many steps to remember. I’m still learning and struggling to remember everything I’ve already learned. Still, since I paid for lifetime access to those videos, I do go back to them for refreshers. I have two ADs running now spending $20 daily, $10 for each one.

        https://www.matthewjholmes.com/

        If you decide to take Matthew’s course, learn everything first until you are confident you know what to do. I didn’t do that and launched my first DCTs before finishing the course. That cost me more than it should have because I made mistakes by not finishing his course first. You may want to go through it once straight through and then a 2nd time slower taking notes.

      3. acflory Avatar
        acflory

        Ah…thanks Lloyd. I will check out that link but even if I knew what I was doing, ads are simply not an option for the foreseeable future. My interest was more academic as I couldn’t make head nor tail of the terminology much less the concepts it was based on. I literally didn’t know you were paying for people to see and ad and click to…get more info? go to the book being advertised?
        -blush- I kept thinking ‘why would anyone pay for clicks?’ I see now that those clicks are expressions of interest that may lead to a sale. So I’m already better off than I was. 😀

      4. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
        Lloyd Lofthouse

        Life is a journey
        Learning is a journey
        One step at a time
        As long as we have purpose and keep following that path, step by step
        The end of that journey is when we leave

        At least that’s how I see it

      5. acflory Avatar
        acflory

        I like that. I’ve never believed we have a default ‘use-by-date’. I’ve met 92 year olds who were more with it than may of those in their 30’s and 40’s. 🙂

  2. Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt Avatar
    Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt

    Sounds like a full-court launch – hope it keeps going well, and you acquire lots of new long-term readers.

    I agree with you that $700 is a ridiculous advertising cost for 14 books.

    Reply

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