Indie Book Club discussion

I thought we could post any marketing strategies or gimmicks we have personnally used that have worked.

I'll start. This is what I used to get my first book ranked really high on the Kindle Top 100 list. There are 2 lists. Top Paid and Top Free. I made it to #42 on the Free list. Blew me away. In genre Sci-Fi, it made it to #1. Last I looked, it's presently sitting at #3.

Anyway, what did I do? Get Amazon to make the book free. But Amazon doesn't let you make something free, you say. How'd I do it? I found the answer on Lindsay Buroker's blog. Here are the steps. Bear in mind, it doesn't always work. However, it's definitely worth a try. Read on.

1. Drop your book's price on Smashwords to free. Resubmit for Premium Catalog approval.
2. Once the affiliate online sellers have updated the listings so that the price is free, go back to your book's listing on Amazon and find the "Report a lower price" link. Use it and have the URL handy to one of the online sellers and submit it to Amazon.
3. Contact friends. Have them do the same thing. The more that report the "lower" price, the better.
4. Wait. It took me 2 weeks before Amazon dropped the price. From there the sales took off. Yes, the sales were free, but what I was looking for was exposure. I wanted to get my book out there.

Two days later the sales on book I was around 1500! Then much to my delight, sales for book II took off. I had people interested in reading the sequel! Since then I've had steady sales on my second book.

Once book I dies down a bit, I'll change the price back and see what happens. Hope this helps someone out! If you drop the price of your book and want help reporting a lower price to Amazon, let me know! I'll be more than happy to help out!

Don't forget to hit up your friendly neighborhood book blogger/reviewer to get a little bit of buzz. Also if you have the time to organize a blog tour try to hit an equal number of blogs that cater to your genre as ones that are a little outside the norm. That should maximize the exposure that you get.

Too true! If you're lucky enough to find a nice blogger, and one that's an indie book fan, then you're golden!!

Speaking of reviewers/bloggers...know of any way to import reviews from...say...Amazon.co.uk into Goodreads or the US version?

Good advice. Making a book free is even more helpful if it's part of a series. It's even a good idea to make book 2 free for a while in order to drive more traffic to book 1.

Jim - not that I'm aware of. The only thing you can do is contact the person who left the review and see if they'll post it to other sites. That's why when I write a review I'll post it everywhere I have an account. At the moment, those places are: Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, Apple's iBookstore, Shelfari, and Smashwords. Oh, I'll also post it on my own website.

D.P. - Exactly. Only in my case, I reversed it. Made book 1 free to drive up sales for book 2. Man alive, I never thought it'd work this well!

Still working on convincing them that Amazon.co.uk isn't the only place people look. :) Next attempt...sad cat eyes and pouting...

Do you need someone else to tell Amazon that a cheaper price exists elsewhere?

Lol. Not worried about the price. I just want my reviews. Will work on prices next. :)

I hear that. In the last couple of days I've received three more reviews for book I and my first review for the second book. I was on cloud 9!!

If your book gets chosen for November you should at least get some reviews out of it. I typically post reviews everywhere I have an account.

Woot. Guess I'll go back to beating on the Refresh button on the poll page. *grin*

Some good ideas, but I'm not going the free route when my book come out later this month. I've been building it up for some time now, contacting people for my book tour, writing press releases, etc. Since my book is horror set in Civil War Missouri, last July I set up a blog called Civil War Horror where I post three or four times a week on related subjects. Now I'm clocking well over a thousand hits month and rank high on several Google searches.
We'll see how all this works once A Fine Likeness is put out before the world. . .

Sean McLachlan
civilwarhorror.blogspot.com

I would agree. If you have just the one book out then it doesn't exactly work too well to make the thing free.

If you have multiple books in the series, then it works in your favor to make the first free to gather interest for the 2nd. Thus far, the sales have been amazing for my 2nd book using this method.

For people with only one book, we're going to be trying a "Buying this book entitles you to get these other books discounted" bit. We created coupons from Smashword good through the end of the year next year and will only give those coupons out through e-mail, so that when we see those coupons being used we'll know we picked up a sale using our "bundling" option. :)