Marketing Strategy for Tao Wong: Adventures on Brad (II) (Patreon)

Alright, let's break this down by series. We'll tackle the Adventures on Brad series first, since it's an interesting case study.

Current Status 

The Adventures on Brad series is the first series I ever released. It's a slice-of-life young adult fantasy LitRPG. A lot of it is modeled on stuff like Konosuba and Dan Machi, so it's a little lighter, a little sillier with the world building a little less firm. I learnt a lot since writing it, so the series is fun, but has its flaws (craft perspective).  

Anyway, I wrote 6 books, each of them around 40-50k. They were written to fit the 'light novel' format and sizing, thus the smaller number. 

If I had to call it a specific type of series, I would call it a cash cow. I haven't published into it for a long time (over a year at this time of writing) but it continues to generate a good source of income.

Tactically, it's a 'feeder' series with a permafree book one that is wide. That means I give away hundreds of copies of the book a month, with AMS and FB advertising dedicated to the series (mostly book 1) to drive those giveaways. 

Once a month, I also push a paid promo newsletter (generally one with wide links). All that means that the series generates a decent return with advertising cost less than 5% of revenue and wide sales at 10% and creeping up every year.

Audio revenues hold steady or drop every year in Audible which is why I took the entire series wide and wide audio continues to increase or hold steady surprisingly.

Future Status

I put the series on hiatus for writing since I had no inspiration for the work. It did not help that book 6 that was released a while ago was not that financially successful. It wasn't bad, but for the amount of time it took to write, it wasn't great. Still, the biggest issue was that I found myself uninspired to keep writing.

Recently, my brain figured out another story arc, one that will let me 'end' the series in a nice way with a possibility of more books in the future. But if I never wrote another book after book 9, it would be a satisfying conclusion. To me (and hopefully) the fans.

So, the current plans is to write 3 more books.

For marketing purposes though, it's been over a year since I released. Knowing that, I have decided against doing a release every time I finish a book. Instead, I am going to test a new tactic out.

I'm going to rapid release books 7-9. I am (hoping) to have all the audio recorded too, so that I can not only rapid release the work but do simultaneous audio and ebook releases at the same time.

This means I am holding back the books (well, patrons get to read them but that's about it) till all 3 books are done. Timeline on that is unknown since the books are written between work on 'play' days. I figure it'll probably be end of the year or middle of next year before it's ready.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue to do more of the same for the series as a whole, giving away book 1 and promoting the other books in the series. Hopefully, by the time book 9 is ready, there will be significant pent-up demand which will see a nice bump in sales.

If not, that's fine. It's a nice cash cow that I can continue to exploit with minimal effort.

Other Languages

One thing to point out about exploitation is other languages. I am currently translating the series into multiple languages (right now, mostly Portugese and Spanish!) via the translation sites like Tektime and Babelcube. I'm also doing a direct translation of the series into German.

Again, exploiting the IP to generate more income. Eventually, I'll be able to take the work and make paperbacks  and maybe even audio, though I might make royalty share audio rather than PFH. 

I'd note for the most part, the amount I've earned in other languages for AoB is currently, tiny. But, a lot of small income streams eventually add up. And if / when the LitRPG markets in those languages blow up, the books will be available. 

Comments? Questions?