C. Gockel's Blog, page 151
October 16, 2013
"Don’t quit. It’s very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not,..."
- ANDRE DUBUS (via kadrey)
October 15, 2013
Advertising Your Original Fiction
So it’s 2 weeks and 2 days since my Bookbub promotion. It was definitely a success. For a while I Bring the Fire was in the top 10 for free books, and now it is still hanging out above the top 1000 range.
Even better, Monsters and Chaos have seen a huge boost in sales.
Still, just as I noticed 2 weeks after I Bring the Fire first became free, 2 weeks after my Bookbub promo sales and downloads have started to decline. Which makes me believe I need to do some sort of promotion every week.
Fortunately, due to the glories of affiliate linking, some types of promotion are free or close to it.
Want to advertise your ebook? Check out the sites I’ve uncovered to help you meet your goals & budget.
Updated with social media stats!
October 14, 2013
October 10, 2013
Thinking of doing a second in a series sale? Learn from my mistakes (and manage your expectations)
Orange=Permafree I Bring the Fire Part I Wolves FREE downloads
Blue=Monsters: I Bring the Fire Part II sales
On September 29th I ran a sale of Monsters. Usually $3.99 I offered it for $.99 via Bookbub. I did this to:
To raise the rankings of I Bring the Fire Part I: Wolves—I hoped by a lot—and hopefully piggy-back on Amazon’s own ranking system. The higher your download position, the longer you stay up at the top—when you get into the top 100 people browsing Amazon are more likely to see your story and download it on a whim with no effort on your part.
Raise awareness of the existence of Monsters, Chaos, and In the Balance (I get a lot of emails asking me if there is more than just IBF Part I on a regular basis, even though I have a list of stories in the front and back of the book).
Boost sales—‘nuff said
The results—I did all these things, but not as much as I expected. The results have not been nearly as impressive as my first Bookbub promotion. That said, I will probably do this again. But I will make some changes:
I will advertise the 99 cent promo at EVERY free advertising site I possibly can. See my master list for places where you can advertise for free (or almost free). I never made it past #111 on the Amazon sales ranking. If I had made it above 100, to the top 20 for instance, I would have stayed higher in the rankings a lot longer.
I will piggy back on the boost I get from the Bookbub 2nd book blast by advertising the first book on every free site as well. If you look at the chart above, IBF Wolves didn’t really shoot up the charts until, quite by accident, ENT advertised it. But I didn’t get up into the top 100. Sigh.
Overall, glad I did it. It has helped sales. The chart above lies a little too—I have an anthology out now that allows people to download and purchase I Bring the Fire Parts I, II, and III all at once for 50 cents off the price of doing so separately. It’s been more successful than I anticipated—but dragging down sales of II & III!
I Bring the Fire - Uploading to Wattpad (Finally)
I am uploading “I Bring the Fire" to Wattpadd—Wattpadd’s like fanfiction.net, but more for original fiction (although it works for fanfiction too. Hmmm…transferring my fanfic there might build my base).
Will let you know how it goes!
October 9, 2013
Thank You Reviewers!
I Bring the Fire has almost 100 Reviews on Amazon! Thank you rainymom, Gene, J. Stefan, Cathy Bass, Maryellen Lorkowski, Nocturnus, Steven Bowins, David in Houston, and Debbie. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed Monsters, Chaos, and In the Balance since my last shout out: kettle corn, momofsporefan, Sarah, R. Blist, Barbara R. Forman, Jan Dishong, rajmohan dharmaraj, Nocturnus, and Carolyn Dymock, sandra g, momofsporefan, Norma Rodriguez, R. Blist, Jan Dishong, Linny02, LizG, DB, JRTLVR, Sifsdottir, Chococat Mom, and momofsporefan.
Your support means a lot…now to get back to writing Part IV!
October 4, 2013
8 Tips for Evaluating Online Advertising Options for Free E-Books (And Anything Really)
No matter how beautifully you write, if no one can find your story, you’ll never get read. Unless you’re a very prolific blogger with a huge following, advertising is probably the way you need to go. But there are a lot of advertising services for ebooks, and new services are coming on-line everyday…how do you choose?
I’ve spent over 8 years now in online-marketing. In honor of that, I want to share 8 tips for writers, artists, and entrepreneurs for evaluating solid ONLINE advertising opportunities:
1. First, know the stats on the best. Bookbub is awesome, it is the Holy Grail of book promotion. No. Really. They clearly break down how many email subscribers they have for each genre. Email is still probably the most effective medium for advertising. People who opt in to have their inboxes cluttered are HIGHLY motivated. For instance, for Mystery Bookbub has about 900K subscribers, for fantasy only about 270k. They price according to reach. This tells you EXACTLY how many of their subscribers will potentially be interested in your story.
Here are Bookbub’s social media stats as of this post: Facebook 944K followers. Twitter 63K followers. Pinterest: approx. 900 followers. When a potential advertising partner promises you social media promotion, compare their numbers to these!
2. Emails that are shorter with only one to three promotions are a better deal. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go with services that list a lot of offerings, it’s just you should count on it being cheaper than a “feature”.
3. Emails should only come once a day. Subscribe to a service…if they annoy you with multiple emails during the day, they are annoying other people. If they’re cheap or free, they may still be a good deal, but if they’re expensive, pass.
4. Emails are targeted based on the genre of interest. Self-explanatory really!
5. Big buy buttons on the website and emails. Buttons perform better than simple hyperlinks or worse…the URL spelled out. (Yuck! Ugly, and difficult to respond to).
6. Social media posts are attractive, and/or witty and well written. A post with a picture and a choice excerpt is going to perform better than a dry rehash of the first sentence of the description (Yes, I’ve seen that).
7. Banners…I haven’t tried them for ebooks. I actually make banners and emails for a living, and banners, while good for name recognition, are not the best deliverers of conversions.
8. Does the link in the advertisement go directly to the place of sale? Every time a customer clicks you risk losing their interest and/or time. If a banner, email, or Facebook link takes a customer to an intermediary page, you’re going to lose a lot more of them.
BONUS (ESPECIALLY FOR MY ENTREPRENEUR FRIENDS)
Google and LinkedIn: the cost for Google & LinkedIn is too high for inexpensive products. However, they are great for “high-end” items. And LinkedIn in particular is great for B to B products, especially niche items.
Well, there are my 8 and a 1/2 cents. Anyone else out there got tips, or something that worked for them?
