Seems to me that writers need a lot of PR sales help and advice. 1've posted my Promotion results in several places where other readers can access it. Now I'll tuck them in here to help with October's sles push
THE PLAN
Kindle countdown deal for 5 days, our novels reduces to 99 cents then rising to 1.99 and back to the original price of 3.99
Beginning Wednesday, May11th 2016 finished Sunday, May 15th
BOOKS ON PROMOTION
Kindle versions of ‘Tizzie’ and The Effects Of Henry’s Cage: Elean’s Story’
The reason I ran the two books was to see the difference in sales between my book, which had an Amazon rating of 4.3 and eleven reviews and my writer colleague’s just launched novel. We both expected that my sales would be far better because I could advertise at most of the book sites which sent out newsletter to their readers. Very few book sites accepted a new novel, most only take novels with at least five 5 star reviews and a star rating of 4.
2
PREPARATION FOR THE CAMPAIGN.
During April I sent out regular blog posts, tweeted about the campaign, posted on Goodreads in various groups which allowed an author to advertise, and posted a note on the home page on my author’s website.I spread the news verbally too, and wherever online I could find.
DAY 1, Wednesday May11th 2016
1
Announced the opening of the promotion via Google Plus, Linked In, Twitter, Pinterest, Goodreads, my personal blog and website.
I used a front page promo on the ReadersintheKnow.com website where I have an author’s page. My colleague had a front page announcement on AskDavid.com.
2.
Each day I had organised promotions for our books in book sites which sent out email newsletters
BOOK PROMOTION AND NEWSLETTERS: WEDNESDAY BOOK SITES
http://www.ebooksoda.com would not accept a newly launched novel, but did accept mine and made a good job of a place on the website and in their newsletter. Nice clear website without overcrowding of the book covers.
http://www.thefussylibrarian.com is harder to get into. It did accept my novel and made a good job of the newsletter, the book on their site, and offered an author webpage.
www.readersintheknow.co.uk accepted both books and did a good book of the day advert and place in the newsletter. The site offers a good author page and useful perks.
www. http://readingdeals.com Here we went for the free promotion version and did not get a place. However as there are over 50,000 readers, the website is a good clear one and the newsletter well produced I think it might be a site worth using.
https://choosybookworm.com, again the free version of a promotion is a lucky dip and we did not succeed. It might be worth paying as the newsletter is good.
http://www.freebookshub.co.uk/authors Again a nice, clean, easy to see website, with a good promotion of the novel. I missed seeing the newsletter.
RESULTS.
Kindle Sales were 110 which was great. The promotion had worked.
DAY 2, Thursday May 12th
1.
Put a sale reminder on Google Plus, Linked In, Twitter, my personal blog and website.
My colleague had a front page promo on the ReadersintheKnow.com website where she has an author’s page. I had a front page announcement on AskDavid.com.
2
I set up the Indiesunlimited.com Thrifty Thursdays e-book sale for both books.
3.
BOOK PROMOTION AND NEWSLETTERS: THURSDAY BOOK SITES
http://www.peoplereads.com provided a good clear website coverage of both books and promoted both novels in their newsletter.
http://askdavid.com is a little different but well worth using. Their promotion is for 6 months. They have a very good website, promote the author and book very well at the site, you even have to write a special unique blurb for them, and they supply you with promotion on their Twitter book site. They also give the author fifteen special tweets to use. Their twitter site is specifically for their signed up readers.
http://www.worldliterarycafe.com I found their website too busy and with too many ads. Missed the newsletter too.
http://www.thekindlebookreview.net..This is not a bad site but a little expensive for what they give which is only the same as the other sites. Also my serious historical novel was promoted as a romance which the site seemed to favour.
http://www.freebookdude.com gave a one month sidebar but the site was a little crowded and the book covers smaller than on other sites.
RESULTS.
Kindle Sales were 129 which was great. Also by this time my novel, ‘Tizzie’, had risen in the ranks:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,320 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#78 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction
#133 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Historical
This meant more Amazon PR for the novel.
My colleague had sold 3 books.
DAY 3, FRIDAY May 13th
1.
Put a sale reminder on Google Plus, Goodreads, Twitter, my personal blog and website.
2.
BOOK PROMOTION AND NEWSLETTERS: FRIDAY BOOK SITES
http://www.freebookshub.com/authors Not a bad site but it did put my book up as Free which it was not. Didn’t see the newsletter.
http://ebookshabit.com We went for the free ads and missed. It would be worth the $10 fee because it is a good clear site and has a good newsletter.
http://awesomegang.com Not bad but only 7,000 readers.
http://www.blackcaviar-bookclub.com This was an interesting site which did a good webpage spread and newsletter.
RESULTS.
The Kindle Countdown promotion had now raised the price to $1.99, so sales dropped to 19 and my colleague had 2 sales. The Amazon rankings for my novel, ‘Tizzie’, went to 88 in the top selling 100 kindle historical novels. However that still meant promotion from Amazon.
DAY 4, SATURDAY May 14th
1
Chatted about the promotion and sales on Google Plus, Goodreads, Twitter, my personal blog and website
2
BOOK PROMOTION AND NEWSLETTERS: SATURDAY BOOK SITES
http://www.ebookbargainsuk.com I hoped for better UK sales from here. It is an interesting and expensive site to use, which only send out a newsletter and does not showcase books on its website.
http://www.goodkindles.net did a good job with a nice webpage and newsletter coverage. This site had an enormous number of readers and I thought was worth paying for.
RESULTS.
The Kindle Countdown promotion had now raised the price to $1.99, so sales dropped to 11 and my colleague had 1 sale. My Saturday morning amazon rating was now:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,429 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#90 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction
#144 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Historical
Also, thanks to the AskDavid.com promotion, I received 24 tweets and retweets about Tizzie from people I did not follow but who were linked to the AskDavid.com site, and from a couple of Tweet book sites. Good coverage for me as an author even if the sales had dropped.
DAY 5 SUNDAY MAY 15TH
1.
Chatted about the promotion and sales on Goodreads, Twitter, my personal blog and website
2.
BOOK PROMOTION AND NEWSLETTERS: : SUNDAY BOOK SITES
http://www.booksends.com This works like a cheaper version of Bookbub and works in a similar fashion. Well worth the fee as there are many readers but again you have to be accepted.
http://ereadernewstoday.com Another very good site, expensive and works like bookbub and has a large number of readers.
RESULTS.
The Kindle Countdown promotion had now raised the price to the normal price of $3.99, so sales dropped to 11. The Amazon rankings for my novel, ‘Tizzie’, went to 98 and 99 in the top selling 100 kindle historical novels. However that still meant promotion from Amazon and I had raised my mana (prestige) at Amazon for a short while. I do not know if they store such information and that makes me a ‘noted’ author. It would be nice to think they did!
CONCLUSIONS
Was the promotion worth it? I certainly covered my costs in sales, but not by a large amount. The sales have dribbled on in ones and twos since the promo.
My followers on Twitter shot up, my profile on Amazon shot up, my books received a lot of attention, my website and blog were visited. I learned where best, for my serious historical novels, to find promotion. I found a lot of sites promote free books only or give them priority, and quite a few sites are heavy on Romance. Certainly the sites with a big readership and a good newsletter produced results. This was clearly shown as far as sales for my colleague went. She could not promote her books in at the sites with newsletters and only sold a total of 9 books. Obviously the first thing an author must do is get those reviews and the star rating then they can start promoting for sales. Overall most of our sales were in the USA, with a few in the UK and Australia.
Would I do all the work again? Yes I would.With Amazon publishing over 3 million books a year we authors need to get out there and market our books. I shall be doing a major promotion like this at the end of the year, but it won't be a kindle Countdown. I know the Kindle Select programme allows you a few dollars if readers read your book - so much per page - but I think I should be getting more UK/EUopean sales and will just have a five day 99cents/pence sale I thnik next time.
p.d.r. lindsay
Showing posts with label PR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PR. Show all posts
Thursday, 2 June 2016
Wednesday, 20 April 2016
The Kindle CountDown Sale.
It seems to me that this PR business is nearly as bad as chasing a literary agent! It took a full week to get the Kindle Countdown Sale set up. By the time I had struggled through the first day of setting up adverts I had a headache. Still I did get all the information need for each book advertising site. At least I have it all in a file ready to go. But every site had something unique to fill in as well. AskDavid.com refused to take the blurb as the main selling point, authors had to provide something unique and not seen elsewhere! Sigh!
Anyway around five to seven book promotion sites a day will be promoting our books.
This is an experiment to see if a five day push does boost sales and will I get my expenses back? Should be fun watching what happens.
Thus May 11th, May 12th, May 13th, May 14th and May 15th will be days when my fellow authors and I will be watching the sales and seeing which book news email site provides the best results. There will be much analysising of results and either cheers or sighs!
Let's hope for cheers.
Anyway around five to seven book promotion sites a day will be promoting our books.
This is an experiment to see if a five day push does boost sales and will I get my expenses back? Should be fun watching what happens.
Thus May 11th, May 12th, May 13th, May 14th and May 15th will be days when my fellow authors and I will be watching the sales and seeing which book news email site provides the best results. There will be much analysising of results and either cheers or sighs!
Let's hope for cheers.
Thursday, 7 April 2016
Indies and PR
If any Indie author hasn't yet found her or his way to the Author Hangout then it's about time someone gave them a helping hand.
The Author Hangout is the podcasting branch of the bookmarketingtools.com team. People who are most helpful, friendly and full of great ideas about marketing for Indie writers.
The podcasts are interviews with best selling authors, marketing gurus and others successful in the PR business. I have learnt a lot from listening to what has and has not worked as far as sales go for these successful authors. If you, like me, shrink from social media because it is one vast area of confusing interaction then go and listen to those podcasts full of helpful advice about social media.
I no longer shy away from using Twitter for discreet PR purposes and find ideas like the following a great way to mix with 'nice' people on Twitter and talk to other writers.
Seems to me that any Indie not tuning in and taking advantage of the ideas really doesn't want to sell books. And any Indie without their helpful and free list of what to do leading up to and at a book launch really needs help.
'In episode 32 of The Author Hangout, Bestselling author Leeland Artra shared a great way for authors to use Twitter:
"One of the things I do is I participate in these things called Tweet Teams. What you do in the Tweet Teams is you work with some other authors and you give them interesting things to say about you and they give you interesting things to say about them. And then, you talk on your Twitter feeds about them and they talk on their Twitter feeds about you and you mix that in with all the other stuff that you normally do. So I’m always sending out quotes and little factoids and stuff like this all day every day. In addition to that, about 20-30 additional tweets per day about other authors or stuff that’s coming, interesting things like that. In exchange, I have about 10 or 20 other authors that are every day sending 3-4 tweets about me."
This is genius! We always talk about how authors need to partner together, and this is another great way for authors to do that. People have room to read other books, so it isn't a zero-sum game. By promoting other authors who are promoting you, you are able to get a boost that other authors simply do not have.
Start finding authors in your genre who you can partner with in this way, and then start helping each other out.'
The Author Hangout is the podcasting branch of the bookmarketingtools.com team. People who are most helpful, friendly and full of great ideas about marketing for Indie writers.
The podcasts are interviews with best selling authors, marketing gurus and others successful in the PR business. I have learnt a lot from listening to what has and has not worked as far as sales go for these successful authors. If you, like me, shrink from social media because it is one vast area of confusing interaction then go and listen to those podcasts full of helpful advice about social media.
I no longer shy away from using Twitter for discreet PR purposes and find ideas like the following a great way to mix with 'nice' people on Twitter and talk to other writers.
Seems to me that any Indie not tuning in and taking advantage of the ideas really doesn't want to sell books. And any Indie without their helpful and free list of what to do leading up to and at a book launch really needs help.
'In episode 32 of The Author Hangout, Bestselling author Leeland Artra shared a great way for authors to use Twitter:
"One of the things I do is I participate in these things called Tweet Teams. What you do in the Tweet Teams is you work with some other authors and you give them interesting things to say about you and they give you interesting things to say about them. And then, you talk on your Twitter feeds about them and they talk on their Twitter feeds about you and you mix that in with all the other stuff that you normally do. So I’m always sending out quotes and little factoids and stuff like this all day every day. In addition to that, about 20-30 additional tweets per day about other authors or stuff that’s coming, interesting things like that. In exchange, I have about 10 or 20 other authors that are every day sending 3-4 tweets about me."
This is genius! We always talk about how authors need to partner together, and this is another great way for authors to do that. People have room to read other books, so it isn't a zero-sum game. By promoting other authors who are promoting you, you are able to get a boost that other authors simply do not have.
Start finding authors in your genre who you can partner with in this way, and then start helping each other out.'
Monday, 2 March 2015
Start here, Indies, if you want to succeed in the Brave New Indie World.
When I started having to become a 'business person writer' and help to sell our Writer's Choice books I found the most useful collection of information, practical, doable, and easy to use at Book Marketing Tools, website: http://bookmarketingtools.com
Sign up for their free email newsletter and recieve helpful information like the following which is from their last email newsletter to me. They are a real boon to the Indies. Thank you, Shawn and R.J.
• eBook Submission Tool - If you have run a free promotion, you probably know how long it takes to submit your books to the free ebook sites on the web. Hours, right? Not anymore, our eBook Submission Tool allows you to submit to 30+ free ebook sites in just minutes by giving you just one form to fill out, and pre-filling the rest of the forms. Awesome, right?
• Reading Deals Book Promos - Last summer we launched ReadingDeals.com to help authors promote their free and bargain books. We have continued to grow and grow our list of readers who want to hear about your free and bargain book promotions! We have free (not guaranteed) and low-cost (guaranteed) promotion options available for authors like you.
• Ultimate Author Checklist - We sent this to you when you first joined our mailing list, but maybe you forgot about it. We walk you through step-by-step for setting up your book marketing engine, including the passive steps that you just need to set up once, and the on-going promotional things you should be doing.
• Reading Deals Book Reviews - One of the biggest struggles we know people have is getting reviews for their books. With our connections to readers through Reading Deals, we created a review club that you can take advantage of. Upload your book to our system, and readers can organically choose your book to read and then leave a review for. Readers get free books, you get real, genuine reviews from readers. The best part is, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg like other review services that are outside of the budget of most indie authors!
• The Author Hangout Podcast - Our podcast contains over 13 hours of interviews filled with book marketing tips, ideas, tools, best practices, and more. If you haven't listened to The Author Hangout yet, you should definitely get started today. We have interviews with over 25 guests!
• Getting Reviews for Your Book Guide - We recently created a new guide that walks you through the steps to help you get more reviews. We explore a lot of free and low-cost options that you can use to get more reviews for your books, which helps give social proof which will convert more people browsing your book page into buyers.
• Book Marketing Tools Blog - Our blog has over 75 posts, interviews, guest posts, and guides filled with great book marketing, writing, and publishing tips and ideas to help you.
Our goal is to equip authors like you with the tools, education, and community to help you to sell more books. The above list is our group of tools and resources to help you! Be sure to use these to your advantage to sell more books, build your list of readers, and become a bestselling author!
-Shawn & R.J. from Book Marketing Tools
http://bookmarketingtools.com
Sign up for their free email newsletter and recieve helpful information like the following which is from their last email newsletter to me. They are a real boon to the Indies. Thank you, Shawn and R.J.
• eBook Submission Tool - If you have run a free promotion, you probably know how long it takes to submit your books to the free ebook sites on the web. Hours, right? Not anymore, our eBook Submission Tool allows you to submit to 30+ free ebook sites in just minutes by giving you just one form to fill out, and pre-filling the rest of the forms. Awesome, right?
• Reading Deals Book Promos - Last summer we launched ReadingDeals.com to help authors promote their free and bargain books. We have continued to grow and grow our list of readers who want to hear about your free and bargain book promotions! We have free (not guaranteed) and low-cost (guaranteed) promotion options available for authors like you.
• Ultimate Author Checklist - We sent this to you when you first joined our mailing list, but maybe you forgot about it. We walk you through step-by-step for setting up your book marketing engine, including the passive steps that you just need to set up once, and the on-going promotional things you should be doing.
• Reading Deals Book Reviews - One of the biggest struggles we know people have is getting reviews for their books. With our connections to readers through Reading Deals, we created a review club that you can take advantage of. Upload your book to our system, and readers can organically choose your book to read and then leave a review for. Readers get free books, you get real, genuine reviews from readers. The best part is, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg like other review services that are outside of the budget of most indie authors!
• The Author Hangout Podcast - Our podcast contains over 13 hours of interviews filled with book marketing tips, ideas, tools, best practices, and more. If you haven't listened to The Author Hangout yet, you should definitely get started today. We have interviews with over 25 guests!
• Getting Reviews for Your Book Guide - We recently created a new guide that walks you through the steps to help you get more reviews. We explore a lot of free and low-cost options that you can use to get more reviews for your books, which helps give social proof which will convert more people browsing your book page into buyers.
• Book Marketing Tools Blog - Our blog has over 75 posts, interviews, guest posts, and guides filled with great book marketing, writing, and publishing tips and ideas to help you.
Our goal is to equip authors like you with the tools, education, and community to help you to sell more books. The above list is our group of tools and resources to help you! Be sure to use these to your advantage to sell more books, build your list of readers, and become a bestselling author!
-Shawn & R.J. from Book Marketing Tools
http://bookmarketingtools.com
Monday, 16 June 2014
It's June, and half way through already. May disappeared in snow storms, frosts and floods! This is unheard of as May is the last month of autumn and therefore usually grey, louring and foretelling of winter. It does not act like winter and dump on us with cold snow and heavy rain.
Seems to me the climate is crazy. Could it be that thing the Americans don't admit is happening? We know all about climate change in the Pacific. All those tiny atoll islands now losing their drinking water as the sea rises or suffering violent waves washing over their homes. Some islanders have already had to leave and come to New Zealand.
Last winter we even had icebergs off the South island coast. Antarctica is melting fast and the glaciers are slipping. I think we should move all climate change nay-sayers to Antarctica and let them measure the effects.
The floods have made my land a revolting mess of squelch and mud. So much so that I nearly lost my gumboots this morning. I cannot open my road gate without wearing gumboots and have to travel to town with boot on board. Our local council is useless. We need a new larger culvert at my gateway to replace the inadequate one already there. No response from the council officials, of course. They spend their whole time saying NO and dodging what is legally council responsibility.
No change at Amazon and Goodreads either as they dodge their responsibility to prevent cyber bullying. Having watched, with horror, the bullies at work and then have Goodreads tell me that their so-called reviews, without having read the book, were allowed. Ah me! I'm trying to get Goodreads to allow readers a private review system where they can be as nasty as like but their one star nastiness is not counted against the poor writer's rating. I will keep trying. I have stopped giving star ratings to any book I read and can't give 4 or 5 stars to. It seems to me to be grossly unfair to affect a writer's rating for the simple reason of personal preference which has nothing to do with whether a book is badly written or not.
PR work for Writer's Choice goes on. I am learning daily of new sites and newsletters where I can get our books mentioned. It is time consuming but I hope the work will pay off and in future I will know which sites work for us and how to do it so that I save time.
The technology is killing me though. I never think the way the website designers do and consequently I spend ages on each website searching for pages hidden behind weird buttons or incorrect labels. It takes me ages. I'm wrestling with shelfari right now. I've seen its icon on several authors' websites and thought I ought to have one too. Looks neat. Joining up was easy, moving the darned icon has proved impossible.
It's going to be a cold snowy week so thank god for the huge log burner and the 20cubic metres of firewood. I can write and stay warm.
Seems to me the climate is crazy. Could it be that thing the Americans don't admit is happening? We know all about climate change in the Pacific. All those tiny atoll islands now losing their drinking water as the sea rises or suffering violent waves washing over their homes. Some islanders have already had to leave and come to New Zealand.
Last winter we even had icebergs off the South island coast. Antarctica is melting fast and the glaciers are slipping. I think we should move all climate change nay-sayers to Antarctica and let them measure the effects.
The floods have made my land a revolting mess of squelch and mud. So much so that I nearly lost my gumboots this morning. I cannot open my road gate without wearing gumboots and have to travel to town with boot on board. Our local council is useless. We need a new larger culvert at my gateway to replace the inadequate one already there. No response from the council officials, of course. They spend their whole time saying NO and dodging what is legally council responsibility.
No change at Amazon and Goodreads either as they dodge their responsibility to prevent cyber bullying. Having watched, with horror, the bullies at work and then have Goodreads tell me that their so-called reviews, without having read the book, were allowed. Ah me! I'm trying to get Goodreads to allow readers a private review system where they can be as nasty as like but their one star nastiness is not counted against the poor writer's rating. I will keep trying. I have stopped giving star ratings to any book I read and can't give 4 or 5 stars to. It seems to me to be grossly unfair to affect a writer's rating for the simple reason of personal preference which has nothing to do with whether a book is badly written or not.
PR work for Writer's Choice goes on. I am learning daily of new sites and newsletters where I can get our books mentioned. It is time consuming but I hope the work will pay off and in future I will know which sites work for us and how to do it so that I save time.
The technology is killing me though. I never think the way the website designers do and consequently I spend ages on each website searching for pages hidden behind weird buttons or incorrect labels. It takes me ages. I'm wrestling with shelfari right now. I've seen its icon on several authors' websites and thought I ought to have one too. Looks neat. Joining up was easy, moving the darned icon has proved impossible.
It's going to be a cold snowy week so thank god for the huge log burner and the 20cubic metres of firewood. I can write and stay warm.
Friday, 6 July 2012
Sometimes...
A magic wand! That's what I need. Or more properly a belief that the future will be less crazy than the last four years.
To be jobless is demeaning. Trying to create work by setting up and running a Language School and Writer's Retreat is dispiriting when the P.R. and adverts attract lots of queries but few bookings. (Four this year so far.) The idiot neighbour's daily harassment is wearing, especially as he's taken to creeping along the boundary hedge and suddenly leaping up with deafening hyena-like laughter or shouts every ten minutes.
And it is so depressing to note that I have not been able to afford to plant anything like the number of hazel, almond and fruit trees which would bring me in enough money to buy more trees and pay some bills.
Thank God for the Writers' Choice co-operative and my three colleagues egging me on. If we can get all our books launched in October, work hard at the PR, maybe there will be a small income, and I will be able to say that the chaos of the last four years is over and my fifth year home in N.Z. will finally be one where I can stop worrying about where the money will come from for this week's food and afford to buy some new underclothes. At last!
To be jobless is demeaning. Trying to create work by setting up and running a Language School and Writer's Retreat is dispiriting when the P.R. and adverts attract lots of queries but few bookings. (Four this year so far.) The idiot neighbour's daily harassment is wearing, especially as he's taken to creeping along the boundary hedge and suddenly leaping up with deafening hyena-like laughter or shouts every ten minutes.
And it is so depressing to note that I have not been able to afford to plant anything like the number of hazel, almond and fruit trees which would bring me in enough money to buy more trees and pay some bills.
Thank God for the Writers' Choice co-operative and my three colleagues egging me on. If we can get all our books launched in October, work hard at the PR, maybe there will be a small income, and I will be able to say that the chaos of the last four years is over and my fifth year home in N.Z. will finally be one where I can stop worrying about where the money will come from for this week's food and afford to buy some new underclothes. At last!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)