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What worked for you?

Nothing...

Oh sorry, I'll try harder. I know I've made sales through Goodreads (some truly encouraging people in this group - my grateful thanks to you) but as mine is the third in a trilogy I'm really dependent on the trickle down effect. This has plus points because sequels don't need as much advertising.

Ah... I advertised all three of the books as being 0.99 each and it seemed quite a few bought all three.

Facebook Takeovers have been a game changer for me. Ever since I’ve met tons of readers, gained new fans and sales have for the first time in a year been consistent. I also attribute this to the release blitz I did for my sequel too. Every bit helps and you don’t have to spend a ton. Heck takeovers are free advertising and readers are greedily seeking out new authors and books.

Not only that- it builds your base of followers- that means reviews. It's one of the only ways left to get reviews.

I would like to learn how to do this. I slashed our Facebook budget and am slow to get new followers. Combined with all mine and my kid's pages we have close to 40,000 followers.
I think that's a sizable community and I don't have a problem sharing them if it helps sell our books.

That’s a great amount of followers. For sure engage them with takeovers. You won’t regret it.

I don't know where to start!! I know another author who does them- she's developed a huge following.

You could do a day a month or several. I mostly see people do this around release time. For example use Michael. He’d get some if his other horror authors to come on for half hour to an hour and engage with questions, trivia and giveaways. Thank the host for having them and sometimes they even purchase and giveaway a copy of the hosts books. That seems to go over really great.

Some ask people to follow or share their post (whether a page or buy link)for whatever the prize is. Then they leave that open 24 hours to let others who couldn’t participate see and enter. After that (I do this due to people stealing prizes by cloning the winners Facebook account-craziness) I contact my winner privately and discuss how to get them their gift. Announce that the giveaway is closed on your thread after doing this and that’s it.

I do also suggest that after your 24 hours or whenever you choose to be finally done, to close comments so that your old posts doesn’t override a current authors takeover time the next day.

Authors do takeovers in private reader groups and pages as well as huge blog groups when they’re opening it for anyone to signup. It’s a really good free way to get yourself out there.

Okay- I'm going to see if I can do this- Any horror writers out there who want to participate in a takeover? I'm going to have Brit call you tomorrow 'cause I don't understand any of this lol.

Lol ok

I’ve been looking into doing takeovers on Facebook and stuff, but — and I might be wrong here — I don’t feel like the payoff matches my investment. Sure it’s “free” but my time is valuable too. I could be writing. Or working. Or relaxing. Or using another promotional tool. So nothing is REALLY free.

I mean, when you look at it from a pure economic perspective; Are those 10+ hours I will have to spend to connect with a group and to maybe engage with a dozen readers during a takeover really worth it?

I know tons of romantic authors who invest hours in takeovers and stuff but never really do the numbers I’d expect because:
A. They are marketing to the “wrong people”: for example a group has more authors in it than readers or
B. Readers have participated in so many takeovers that they are no longer as effective as they were.



Or maybe I have unrealistic expectations, I don’t know. But I’m not sure the payoffs I’ve observed from a far are worth my time.

Carole wrote: "Okay- I'm going to see if I can do this- Any horror writers out there who want to participate in a takeover? I'm going to have Brit call you tomorrow 'cause I don't understand any of this lol."

Neither do I!!!

I learned you have to use the best resources- Julie used to do Facebook "things" (for my son- that was always the books we pushed)- were they takeovers? I never paid attention- that was her department.

He's got a decent fanbase- and most of the people he connected with- joined his mailing base and write reviews. I dunno- I have to do something- all my old methods are not working so well.

I remember a few phrases from my days when I ran my own company. One was 'outsource your weaknesses'.

I have never forgotten that.

A successful member of my family taught me another: work on your weaknesses and turn them into strengths.

I have elected to use both life-changing bits of advice above and apply where appropriate.

Book launch? What's a book launch? This is where I need serious help. I'm publishing my third book and have no idea how to 'launch' it. Third. For the other two I hit publish and then used my quiet voice on social media 'excuse me, er... excuse me, I've published a book. Is anyone out there?'

The Facebook takeover terrifies me. Yes OK, you take it over for half an hour, that's not that long. But what do I say?

I will be doing a series of tweets and Facebook posts. I've got a few hundred on a mailing list I can send to. (I rarely read mailing lists myself so I don't expect others to.) Beyond that... there is a risk of spending so many hours dedicated to (insert launch idea here) and it just not working.

Well here's my outlook and my experience:

The time i spend on takeovers isn't very time consuming, because i schedule my posts a day before. So not only do I have time to think of fun interesting things to post early on, I'm not tied down to posting live. I'm currently one hour into my group takeover on "Shades of Read" today and facebook alerts me when people respond. So I can write etc, unless it's a more interactive post requiring an immediate response from me.

Next, I have to believe it works. Up until I tried it here were my stats for doing essentially nothing: Author Group: 14 members, Newsletter: 75, Author Page: 155, Sales: Lucky if I get one per week on Amazon after May 2017. Took book One out of KU, because well page reads were zilch.

Since the takeovers March 26th 2018: *Put Book One back in KU* Author group: 155 (not a ton, but way better), Author Page 300 likes
Newsletter: 800 (With an open rate of 70%)

Now the kicker for me is that in within two weeks of the takeovers I sold as many books in 2 weeks, (roughly 70% of my newsletter, although I can't say for sure it was all them) than I had for the entire year alone and still am selling every day since. And that's just book sales. That's not the thousands of page reads I'm getting every day too.

At the end of the day, it's about what your goals are and what you want to see happen in your career. Am I killing the rank algo's on Amazon? Nope. Anywhere near bestseller status? Nope. But last night I texted Carole a photo from a reader that was raving to a group of thousands about my book. A book she found because another author group had a takeover and I took a leap and did it. I was scared crapless but I did it. And now people are asking about the book and sharing what they loved about it. Things that would not be happening if I didn't take that leap of faith. Will it spread and maybe I get some new readers, I hope so. That's the goal.

Anything worth wanting, you have to be scrappy about going after it. Free, paid or otherwise...Unless you're a Rockefeller lol.
To soar in any career, you have to take a leap. Sure you could end up in a mangled mess at the bottom of the ravine, but that's a possibility with anything. Get up and try again. I know I will.

Well, that's it for my point of view on it guys. I hope you all at least try something, anything. Have a good one! XOXO

What type of thing do you post on your FB takeovers? A couple of things worry me. One of them is coming up with interesting content. The other is having good enough vision on the day to respond to things-I can’t control that one.

It just depends. Erica posted this example over on the Magazine thread about examples:

1. Hi, my name is _____ and I am the author of _________. I am excited to be here today. To start it off, I would like to get to know you better. Comment with the most exciting place you have ever visited. Everyone who comments will be entered into a drawing for a kindle copy of my book __________.

2. I am currently in the process of releasing a new novel about _____. Something interesting about this book is __________. Please follow my Facebook page to learn more. Once you have followed me, comment "followed" on this post and you will be entered into a giveaway for ___________.

3. Outside of writing, I enjoy ___________.

4. Some form of a game post. You can find all types of ideas for games by searching social media games.


I include pictures, ask them to do interactive things like:
"My book is set in a smalltown. Post a pic or gif of your hometown in the comments below!" With this you can have a winner or just leave it as is and engage with the picture, by asking where theyre from etc.

The next best thing is to join a few takeover groups as a reader and just watch what everyone is doing. You can join Shades of Read and just observe, plus you can see what other authors have done as well. Its a romance book groups so the focus will be on that. You can also search for book takeover groups on facebook and check those out to try and find groups for erotica, sci etc

I've heard of these takeovers, and pondered them, but wonder about how well it would work on a book that doesn't fit in a niche? Do these work best for those books that have lots of obvious company, such as being romance, or fantasy, or sci-fi, or horror? Are there generic ones that offer a mixture of genres?

Well the ones we’re offering is generic but typically you want to find a group that matches your books genre. The readers are there so they want to see that specific thing. With ours I’d suggest telling your followers that you’ll be doing a takeover, have them join the group so they can support you and the incentive for them is to stick around and learn about new authors as well as the chance for any giveaways too

Most the time they are genre specific and put on by genre specific Facebook groups or individual authors who seek out other authors with similar books. We will be doing some for this group and the Indie Authors Monthly magazine group that are for everyone. Here is the thread with more info on a couple coming up in a few weeks: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I have had mixed results with takeovers and release parties. However, I can say that some of my most active fans and followers have found me this way.

Thank you, Erica and R.L. I'll look further at the opportunity and see what I think. Greatly appreciate the opportunity..... another thing to learn! My brain is so full. :D

Lol you’re welcome.

I also find that after the first one or two, they get easier. You can see what type of posts had the most interaction and reuse posts, or slightly tweaked posts, in future takeovers. I usually try to leave at least one giveaway open past my takeover time so that people who join later can still participate.

I completely understand that feeling, lol. Let us know if you have any other questions. :)

Thanks for the info. On paper it looks very straight forward. I have questions like how do you go about actually sending them a copy of you book as a prize? Do you just email a .mobi or is there another way that’s used?

I do straight to kindle mobi. Contact your winner via messenger and announced that they won. Tell them to add your email to their documents in Kindle and give you their kindle email. then you send the mobi with no subject no signature just the mini attachment and they get it auto delivered to their device.

I don’t send pdf or mobis to emails anymore. Too many pirates out there. And readers are used to this now so it’s pretty easy.

Ah ok. I was worried about just that. Thanks.

R.L. wrote: "It just depends. Erica posted this example over on the Magazine thread about examples:

1. Hi, my name is _____ and I am the author of _________. I am excited to be here today. To start it off, I w..."

Thanks for posting this! I've thought of doing takeovers but was unsure of what to do and how to do it.

You’re welcome!! Thanks to Erica. Also include some pictures with your text. Readers love cool graphics and visuals too. Try to add a hashtag if you book with all posts I.e: #newrelease #amwriting #amreading or whatever you want. It’ll help people who are not in the group but searching those tags potentially see your posts and want to learn more

R.L. wrote: "You’re welcome!! Thanks to Erica. Also include some pictures with your text. Readers love cool graphics and visuals too. Try to add a hashtag if you book with all posts I.e: #newrelease #amwriting ..."

If anyone wants promo material for facebook DM me. I don’t charge and I don’t require credit because it’s just a hobby.

I need FB and Twitter cover graphics, mine are rubbish. Lol (not my forte). I learnt how to add a layer and that’s it. Yay.