Support for Indie Authors discussion

Hi everyone.

I'm right now dealing with something many authors here must know as a common challange.

I'm planning a 5 day free ebook promotion for my book on amazon, and looking for places where to announce the promo.

Now, seaching on the web is like loosing yourself in a sea of links when it come to these sites. Many are scams, fake sites, another ones simply can't be trusted. Not to say that I would need 1 week to explore all these sites and after it many of them would be already off.

So I found some paid services that says they will announce your ebook in like 30+ sites for you, simple, clean and fast.

Now, does anyone here knows if it really works? Have someone tried it?

I came to this one: http://bookmarketingtools.com/submiss...

Cheers!

Tried that one, and I regret that it worked fine, but I saw poor results.

**Disclaimer, this is simply my own personal opinion of my experience as a self published author using this service.

For sci-fi, try Book Barbarian for free or discount books. After several "free" giveways that I have done, I'm reluctant to do it anymore. $0.99 cents seems to work best. I never really noticed any reviews when I offer for free, unless I have direct contact with the reader.

I'm nearing the end of my 99c Countdown Deal.

Although I paid for a few adverts, I've not made my money back on even one add. :-/
And that was using ones others seemed to have reported success with.

But this is just my experience.

btw I don't do freebies any more, but when I did, the mere presence of them on Amazon seemed pretty successful, but that may have been pure luck.
I found nobody from that bunch left a review though. I'm not even sure how many actually read it.

xx

Facebook and Twitter with the proper hashtag #FREE #novel

Hey Leo, when I was launching my first book, Hindsight, I tried three different routes of promotion. The first was a book promotion package which promised a blog tour, a bunch of tweets, 20 or so honest reviews, etc. In short, I did a lot of work on my PR package to send out and got robbed. The package resulted in 0 reviews, a few different blog spots on blogs that seemed set up by the same company, and a few tweets. None of it helped to move my book.

I went free and pitched out to free-book sites. Got a lot of downloads, but maybe two reviews from that bunch. Did it again later with the same results.

The third venue was a Facebook promotion. Be very specific about your demographic on this one because, despite all the clicks I got, almost none of them converted to a sale. The locations those clicks came from were odd places, making me wonder if there is a bot mechanism in the Facebook ad system that makes sure you get clicks so that Facebook gets paid.

I could be jaded or it could be my cover or description, but these avenues just didn't seem to work for growing a readership base. Free downloads? Sure. You'll get out there, but you'll also get buried by the next day's free downloads.

Better route? Set up an email sign up on your blog, start guest blogging or writing on fan-fiction sites and let that send people your way for a free book or short story in exchange for their email so you can tell them when the next one is coming out. Build relationships with other authors and bloggers and get the word out that way.

All right guys, thank you all.

The book I'm going to promote is the first one of a trilogy, so I maybe giving the first one in a free promotion will increase the sales of the next ones? (That is the theory). I think freebies really only work for series, giving away a single book that has no sequence will make people just download it for free and you will get nothing in return.

Anyway I'm not looking for reviews, I'm really trying to spread the book.

Now, as you guys tell me I don't think any of these paid services really works, so I'm going to dig my way through the thousands of sites where you can post your freebie for free. Oh yes, that will be a saga, I can already imagine all the pain... I think I listed now like 300 sites that says they will advertise your free book for free, maybe after checking all them I will end up with 25 or 30 genuine working ones, and even these ones do not guarantee they will really post your book.

Anyway, I promise I will tell the results of my campaign, and then a list of the sites that really worked.

Feel free to add me as a friend if you want, maybe we can share some experiences, both on failure and success.

Cheers!

Owen I love your idea here: Better route? Set up an email sign up on your blog, start guest blogging or writing on fan-fiction sites and let that send people your way for a free book or short story in exchange for their email so you can tell them when the next one is coming out. Build relationships with other authors and bloggers and get the word out that way.

I was wondering how well this might work and am willing to give it a try as a build up to releasing my debut novel a (part 1 of trilogy) by summer. I keep hearing - build up a fan base. Thanks.

Hi Leo. A few of us are currently in the process of compiling data on free and paid promo sites and unfortunately, I don't have enough data right now to recommend any one over another (except to say that ebooks habit's $10 Twitter promo is useless and if you meet their requirements, digital book today offers a decent boost for free), however, in my personal experience, five days can hurt rather than help.

The reason:
Sales momentum. You want to push your book up high enough on the free rank that it will still sit visibly when you take it off promo, launching the spillover effect. Top 1000 (over all free rank) seems to get a handful of next day sales, but making the top 100 (again, overall, not genre) will get you a big boost. Note: this is pretty difficult to do without a paid ad on a reputable site.

If your book gains traction, that boost is usually good for a few hours at most. The longer your book is free, the more it will drop in rank. This will actually hurt you more because remember, while your book is free, your paid rank is dropping. One day won't set you back too far, but five days can be a heavy hit. Your better off doing one day at a time and getting the spillover sales which will in turn improve your rank.

I agree with Christina,

5 days for a free promo is too long considering that Amazon only allows 5 days per every period. That is a long time without any other promo days to let your book lay stagnant. Especially since timing a countdown deal and free days often are at odds with each other.

If you blast books for 1 or 2 days at a time you can have multiple days of book boosting spread out over months. In my thus far limited experience on the subject it does help your other books as well during this time, and right after as well. I am trying now to get more short stories out just to allow me to have promo days more often to boost the other books!

This also has the benefit of allowing you to have days in 'reserve' if you want to suddenly have a promo, such as for a new book release, or when there is a promo going on here in the group and you can jump on the wagon with everyone! (Which boosts downloads a lot I found in the last promo) Or even, just because it is Tuesday.

Oh, now's here's the thing...

I was pondering a bus stop billboard/poster.
Bus ad also sounds fab.

But who do you approach to go about this...?
(in the UK)

TL. Here only one company handles the graphics for busses. They do all the ads, they do all the installs, they do everything and the bus company is contracted to only use them.
The thing is, printing alone costs $18 or more a square foot, since it needs to conform to the bus. Plus the fee to advertise on the bus. For something like this in a small town you are looking at $1000+ dollars, more in bigger cities.

but your area might be different, the bus company would know though, they would likely have an advertisement section.

you can get car decals for a window for much cheaper for your own car, and get just as much exposure as on a bus. (technically) buses are still bigger and more visual.

billboards are also expensive, looking at a few hundred just for the sign, not the place to put it

Christina wrote: "Hi Leo. A few of us are currently in the process of compiling data on free and paid promo sites and unfortunately, I don't have enough data right now to recommend any one over another (except to sa..."

I think that even a two day freebie is probably ill advised. The book always seems to "sell" less on the second day.

However, you can get a 19"x13" colour poster for 50 cents here. generally if you go bigger, it costs much more because the machine needs to be wide format.

Thanks for the answers.

I understand what you guys are saying about the sales bu remember this is about promoting one book that is the first one of a trilogy, my objecticve is to sell the second and third ones, not the first.

Plus spreading the series over the world.

Christina is spot on. The longer a book a is free, the more it can dampen sales momentum. Free giveaways work as a pulse and the longer a book is free, the less it can benefit from the spillover the pulse generates.

When we started in early 2013, we constantly heard that giving away books was a great way to build goodwill with readers and create a following. That was probably true in 2012 and before, before I conclude that as eroded substantially by now.

What I have observed is a bifurcation of the "market" in people who buy and people who scan for free stuff, but have little intention of buying. At the same time, giveaway appear to attract much less attention than they did 3-4 years ago. Back then, making a book free on Amazon. without an promo at all, often netted 1000+ downloads on a day. Now it seems that has fallen off to a tenth of that or less.

This indicates to me a sea change in the perceived value of a free book. In a nutshell, "free" only has value (that is, a perceived benefit to the recipient) in comparison to the item's perceived worth. If that item's perceived worth has not been established before the item is offered for free, it being free has no benefit.

Putting it another way, you have to make people want something before they care whether you're trying to give it to them or not.

So as with most things, a free giveaway leverages perceived value, but these days it no longer creates a perception a value to the extent it once did. Value must be established by other means.

Have you guys tried announcing the promotion in forums? I mean, forums where people discuss about books.

Leo wrote: "Thanks for the answers.

I understand what you guys are saying about the sales bu remember this is about promoting one book that is the first one of a trilogy, my objecticve is to sell the second a..."

I understand that, but keep in mind that those who download for free may not read your book right away, if ever. The spilover sales I'm talking about tend to lead to sales of the whole series more often than not.

As for your other question about announcing promos, each group has their own rules regarding advertising. There may be a group out there looking specifically for freebies, but I don't know of any myself.

Christina wrote: "Leo wrote: "Thanks for the answers.

I understand what you guys are saying about the sales bu remember this is about promoting one book that is the first one of a trilogy, my objecticve is to sell ..."

Hi Christina.

I'm not talking about goodreads forums but all the forums on the internet about books, games etc. My book is a fantasy one so I enlisted many forums and I plan to post the promo there.

I think that if 1000 people download the first book and 100 buy the next ones (10%) it is already a good deal, maybe I'm being too optimistic about 10% anyway.

Well I see many people here not that pleased about amazon's promo possibilities but this is what we have, right?

10% is a good estimate if you're looking long term. If you're looking for an immediate return, as in the next 90 days, you're lookimg closer to 1%.

Personally, I love Amazon's KDP Select promo opportunities and have been using them as my only marketing tool since 2012. Yes, it is a very different field now than it was then, but it still works. It's just a matter of adjustment of expectations.