I try to be an optimist in business. There’s always someone who’s making a breakthrough when everyone else is down…

…and I think, Why not me?

(It’s usually NOT me, but one can always hope!)

I have many, MANY author friends who’ve said their sales are down 30% (or more) since March 2020.

They are scaling back on marketing purchases until things improve.

That is one way to go.

Me, I’m writing and publishing as much as possible – I’ve put out a book every single month for this entire year, and I am scheduled to maintain that pace through 12/31/2020. I am also working my butt off doing MORE marketing than ever before. Hopefully, when things improve, I’ll be in a good position; but if things head south again, I’ll have learned how to weather difficult times.

 

But it made me think.

If people scale back because things are down, then things get MORE down.

• The authors buy fewer ads for books because the readers aren’t buying books.
• The advertising site has less money because the authors aren’t buying ads; maybe they cut back on hours, so
• their employees have less money – to buy books, among other things.

You get the idea.

We’re in this together, gang.

It occurred to me that authors are a lagging indicator when things are going bad. We buy our ads in advance, so when the crap hits the fan, we’ve alerady spend money for March and April. But when things start to improve, many authors will buy more ads – when we see things improving. Which is after it starts to happen. We’re a lagging indicator in our ad buys.

But we can be a leading indicator if we are watching our business.

My sales results lately have been really good, and they are headed in the right direction (see chart, below). Maybe not as good as February, but way better than June. Much better than late August. Much better than early September. It doesn’t matter if the bars on that chart are tracking $5 for $5000, or if they are just for a week; that wasn’t the point. My sales are TRENDING in the right direction.

I have to believe it’s not just me.

It’s too soon to tell, but I think things are on the upswing.

There will be plenty of people who don’t see it. This trend isn’t six months or a six weeks. I’m just saying, that might be the bird on Noah’s ark that indicated that there was dry land up ahead somewhere and maybe things were going to start getting good again.

Like I said, I’m an optimist in business.

But it looks good to me.