BOOK PROMOTION SITES--THE ONES THAT ACTUALLY WORK! > Likes and Comments
Well release day came and went! I ended up with 33 pre-orders which is not what I was hoping for, but still something to be happy about. In the UK the first book in the series hit number 1, and the second number 3 so that was great. In the US there was no exciting rankings.
I did have something weird happen though, my dashboard said 33 pre-orders but only 22 showed on my sales dashboard on the day of release...any idea how this can be!? I emailed Amazon but haven't received a reply yet.
Effie I see you like Instagram for boosted posts, do you find it useful without advertising? I was going to start running a page but then I saw I can't link directly to my blog or Amazon page (I know in ads you can) so just regular posts didn't seem to have so much purpose. Thoughts?
Well done Stephen for that good ranking - you should be very happy! I actually had the same problem with my pre-orders, but never received a response from Amazon. Moon Dreams had 10 pre-orders listed but then only 8 sales on release day, very confusing. Has anyone else had a similar problem?
Marie-Silk I am going to follow your advice and try a free day for the first book in Game Hunter. October being Halloween, and my main characters being zombies it seemed like the right time. Any advice on what day I should pick?
I am going to try a few Halloween gimmicks like competitions and giveaways during October. Any of you had success with making use of a particular holiday?
I've had a food blog for several year and my instagram photos are linked on the side bar. I'm on Wordpress. Here is an example of one of my boosted instagram posts:https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn2UmboDHsw/
So the post is what I created as the teaser. Then in comments I added the buy link and an extra line or two and appropriate hashtags. It cost me maybe 10$ and I had over 800 likes. I definitely had a boost in sales, not huge, but I also had a rise in KNEP. Plus, it's exposure. The more they see the book's name, the more readers will thinks it's a well known popular book and will eventually want to buy it. I have several of these teasers for each of the books in the trilogy.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmNFMP2BA...Here's one that I posted but haven't boosted. I plan to in the next few days. This might be more traditional for books in all genres.
I've just started on Instagram with two posts for the first in my new series - it's slow at present but I'm hoping it might speed up. Two things though, from my perspective - I don't own a smartphone so someone else has to do the posting for me, and also yes, it's for 'younger' people than Facebook, and the usual crime fiction audience tends to be closer to the Facebook using age. So check to see if you fit the profile!
Effie, thanks for letting us look at your instagram post. I tired my first one yesterday (well first one that had anything to do with my books) and have no idea whether it is going anywhere or not. The book I posted actually is well suited for high school aged and so seemed okay to try. One question, I don't see any link that leads to someone buying the book, which I didn't try to post either, but I wonder if that should be included somehow. I did get a few likes and some were from people I don't know.
I am glad they got it straightened it out too. Stephen, congrats on the rankings you got. I wish you continued success.
I really should start working with Instagram.By the sound of it, it seems to be a better way to reach readers... I admit I'm behind on the tech savvyness of what's in or not.
So instagram is a bit strange. With Twitter and Facebook you can add a clickable link. If you notice, I have the link in the comments but it’s not clickable. When you promote, though, there is a shop now or buy now option to click. Also, if it’s not a promoted post they can still go to your profile. You should always have a link there to either your website or a link to your books.
Mark wrote: "Well done Stephen for that good ranking - you should be very happy! I actually had the same problem with my pre-orders, but never received a response from Amazon. Moon Dreams had 10 pre-orders li..."
Mark, I'd try for a BookBub promo with your first book in the series free. Since it's a good theme for Halloween, maybe they'll accept it. If you do submit it, be flexible on your dates.
Effie wrote: "So instagram is a bit strange. With Twitter and Facebook you can add a clickable link. If you notice, I have the link in the comments but it’s not clickable. When you promote, though, there is a sh..."Thanks. I'll have to make sure I have it covered.
Congratulations, Stephen! That's good news.Thanks for showing us your post, Effie. I'm still learning about Instagram. So, now I know that your links won't work unless you pay for a promotion. That's good to know.
Thanks Everyone!
To be honest, the featured BookBub promotion I was put on was a bit of a let down actually. When someone says they are to feature you on their massive global list of readers, you kind of expect a sort of surge of interest! But, alas, I did not. A reminder that nothing happens overnight! Persistence and longevity seem to be a more trustworthy yardstick.
Stephen, was it a submitted deal you were accepted for or a bookbub ad you set up? The submitted deals are usually a sure thing and very successful. The ads still do okay but nowhere near the numbers of the submitted deal.I have my very first ever (thought I'd never do it) free promotion starting tomorrow. I'll let you all know how it goes. I didn't go crazy with advertising. I did a decent amount but not as much as I usually do. I'm going to promote it on social media continually in the next few days.
Well, it’s only the first morning of my free book promo. I only set up 2 paid ads today. Book cave and read freely. I created my own post and shared it on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I boosted it on Facebook and Instagram. I also manually shared it on several book groups on Facebook. I’ve already received thank you comments from twitter followers for the book. As of right now,9 hours into the promotion, Ive had 300 downloads.
Hi Effie,Wow thats super impressive! Good going!
Mine was an accepted BookBub featured Ad that they sent out to a targeted audience. But still zero sales! I cannot think with it at all! I wonder what was wrong...?
Congratulations, on your first, free promotion, Effie. 300 downloads, already--good for you!!!Sorry, Stephen! I know what it's like to have high expectations for an ad that had zero results. But that comes with the territory. Remember, you've also gotten some very good results, too.
How is everyone else doing?
Impressive, Effie!I'm prepping for my release on Monday. My links will go live tomorrow to ensure its all in working order come Monday morning. Wouldn't want it to still be updating while readers are trying to get it.
Something doesn't sound right, Stephen. I'm sure you paid a lot for that featured deal. I remember when I had mine. I paid close to $700. I would contact them and ask what might have gone wrong.My first day with the free promo ended with 1,118 downloads. Tomorrow I have an ENT ad going in. I always do really well with my ads for my 99c deals with them, so I expect to do well with the free deal.
I've never had a free ranking before because this is my first time. Right now I'm at 128 in the kindle store overall. #1 for women's fiction historical, #18 for women's fiction romance & #19 for contemporary women's fiction. I have no idea how this will affect my paid ranking when my price does back to normal or what these free rankings will do for me, if anything.
Good luck with the release, Theresa!
I'm just waiting for my Itsy Bitsy tour to start for my book launch - I've already had some preorders and interest, so I'm crossing my fingers nervously for the next stage! I'm supposed to be starting to write the fourth book in my second series tomorrow, but my head's all full of the new series so it's hard to focus! After the book goes live I have some promos stacked as well as Itsy Bitsy - Bargain booksy, Fussy Librarian, Book of the Day and Just Kindle Books, so we'll see what happens. Never done quite so much for a launch before!
What a let down, Stephen. I have only ever heard of amazing results from Bookbub. Perhaps it is something about the featured new release rather than the the book on sale like their normal emails... Well done Effie for your smashing results as normal!
I got an answer on the missing pre-orders, apparently if the card doesn't go through or something like that it still shows up on the pre-orders but not the actual sales. So that it explains it, though the percentage is higher than I would have guessed.
Unfortunately Bookbub rejected my book again, but I have booked in with Book Barbarian, Book Gorilla, Book Cave, Book Sends and Fussy Librarian which I have used successfully before, so hopefully this will prove fruitful.
In the meantime i am not stressing about sales and am really enjoying writing the first book of my next series.
Thanks all for the updates. I have no ads right now - promo department is on vacation. Okay, really I'm just too focused on finishing book 2 in my suspense/thriller series that I can't think straight. Still, I appreciate the news here and will be sure to use the knowledge gained sometime.
Great results, Effie!Good luck, Lexie!
Stephen, I agree with Effie. Something doesn't sound right. What day did the BookBub ad email go out? What genre? What price was the book? Are you sure the book was discounted on the day? If no sales, contact them.
It's so encouraging to see how everyone is working hard on their projects. Like some of you, I'm focused on finishing the last book I'm going to write for awhile. So, no promoting at this moment.I hope your promotion goes well, Theresa. All the best!
Excellent results, Effie!
Good for you, Mark. Hope you get great results! I agree, enjoy writing. That's mostly what it's all about.
Lexie, make sure and let us know how your launch went.
Thank you Effie and Groovy! Release day (at least for the Kindle version of book 3 is tomorrow. The paperback might take another day or two to be live.) My promos for book 1 is still a week or so away so I'll update on that after its over.
Best of luck to everyone working on projects or running promotions!
Ho all,for those of you not promoting and only working on your books, I say, good for you! When I was finishing the 3 book in my saga, I spent minimal time posting ads. I also didn't run any promotions that would consume my time. It's all about priorities.
Lexie, I've dine well with all the sites your setting ads with and itsy bitsy is the best for book tours. You'll be pleased.
Mark, I was only accepted once in 2016 for a bookbub submitted deal. Despite my decent ranking, hundreds of ratings and reviews, and my books winning awards, I haven't been accepted since.
Stephen, your situation is puzzling. Please let us know if you get some answers.
So I just finished the second day of my free promo. The first day I took ads with read freely and bookcave. Read freely made a mistake and set my book price at .99c instead of free. Like I stated yesterday, I also posted on social media on my own to advertise. Despite ReadFreely's error, I still had 1148 downloads.
Today I only took one ad on ENT - ereaders news today. and I created my own social media posts. I finished the day out with 1,392 downloads.
Let's see what tomorrow brings!
Wow, Effie:)And yes, Stephen. We all hope you get this resolved, and let us know how it turned out.
Oh my goodness..I've had email problems and missed many posts. Effie, congratulations on all of your free downloads! IMPRESSIVE.
Stephen--so sorry to hear about your experience with BookBub. I'd have high expectations too.
Sorry, Mark...I've also been rejected by BookBub on numerous occasions.
Good luck, Theresa, Mark, and Lexie!
Congratulations, Stephen on your excellent ranking.
Last July I'd shared my dissatisfaction with a promotion I'd bought from OnLineBookClub.org. I'd contacted Scott (the owner/facilitator) and he agreed to transfer the cost of the promotion (from which I'd received zero sales) into a Book of the Day, which was featured on 9/20. I had over 500 twitter posts, over 300 comments on my author FB page, and my Amazon rankings went from 601,367 to 21,972. Sales stayed even for the two days following the promotion. Unfortunately, because my publisher (Page Publishing who publishes books without agents) doesn't post the actual sales numbers until two months later, I won't know the exact number. (Frustrating.) This Friday I have a promo scheduled with ENT--which has produced the most sales in the past.
I did a book tour with LOVEBOOKSTOUR, and while Effie has had excellent results, I have to say I was very disappointed. First, the date she'd given me was in September, and unbeknownst to me, the tour took place in August. In all fairness the facilitator had family emergencies, and I think she forgot to notify me of the date change. I received a few book blogger reviews (positive)...but there was no discernible impact on sales. Oh well...
I am pleased that some of you are having success. Here is a bit of frustrated author ranting:
I launched my book almost three months ago through Amazon and KDP. Frankly, they stack the deck against us. Pay or disappear from sight. I did the three-month exclusive with them.
At one point in the first weeks, I had the names of seven people on FB who claimed to have my printed novel in their hands waiting for me to sign it and Amazon said I sold five. I contacted them and they assure me that their numbers are correct.
My wife was with one when she bought it online and it didn't show up. They say it shows up when it ships. There is not enough information to know if it was that buyer or someone else.
We have no access to their actual records. It would take nothing to write code to knock off a few books or e-books from their list without us knowing it allowing them to keep even more profit.
Then they took about $8 for dispersal of my funds. They don't have to do this with purchases, so why do they hit us with it? Because they can. We work for years on a book and they add fees everywhere to strip it away. That measly $8 is a great number of e-books and paperbacks that we sell that could be used towards promotions or editing services.
I was going to do the free e-book give away on Amazon, but they were going to charge me for every book of mine that we gave away. An average e-book takes about 1.5 mb of space. I build websites and that is nothing to host or send.
Well, back to my cave to gnaw on a bone and work on the second book in the series.
Michele, I'm so glad onlinebookclub worked out, and sorry lovebooktour didn't. I'm sorry she had a family emergency, but she's running a business where people pay money for results. She should have refunded you some of the money back, or given you a free tour. But I have read this excuse over and over where if there's a problem with the tour service it's because they had a family emergency, just saying. A more professional site can deal with emergencies and service their clients right at the same time. Thanks for letting me know about this. It tells me not to go with this booktour service.Sorry, David.
David, authors can schedule and run "free promotions" through KDP Select for free. It's a perk of being enrolled in Select. There is no per-book charge. However if you want to do an Amazon giveaway of your own book in which you choose an amount of copies to give away, you need to pay full price for each copy. About the paperback issue...you are not the first person who has reported this problem. I hope you get it straightened out with them and get properly credited for your sales. It could be an issue with a delay in reporting via expanded distribution.
Michele, is there any way you can publish direct? I'm sorry for your frustration with those companies. I haven't seen much sales result from blog tours, but they seem useful for things like gaining followers, internet exposure, and sometimes reviews. Good luck with your upcoming ENT promo!
Posting again here: I've been a bit nervous about the transition from Createspace to KDP Print, especially after KDP gave me error messages when I tried to manually create the books in KDP print myself. I went with the easy transfer option once CS/KDP offered it to me (transferring everything over with a few clicks). I waited a couple weeks then ordered my books from Amazon to make sure they printed correctly. The books just got here and I'm pleased to report that they look exactly as they should with the current/correct files.
That's good to know, Marie Silk. My transition was also very smooth but I haven't ordered any print copies yet. I have enough in stock for my next couple of events.Michele, I'm sorry you didn't have a good result with Love Books Group. I hate when someone is disappointed by one of my recommendations. I am actually doing a tour with them this week for the third book and she has more than one stop per day set up.
I never expect actual sales from a tour. I expect exposure and hopefully reviews.
The free promotion is going quite well and I backed it with a kindle countdown for Waiting For Aegina (0.99c) starting today. Well, yesterday, it's after midnight. The promo on that is slow going, only 35 sales today, but I had a spike in sales on the third book too, which is still at normal price.
Today, Evanthia's Gift had 2,563 downloads. I posted an ad I created on Twitter, Facebook and instagram. My paid ads today were Freebooksy, Booksends, Fussy Librarian and full hearts romance.
For the .99c deal I used ads on Bargainbooksy, and ereaders news today.
During the last couple of days since I began the free promo, my KNEP has plummeted. Hopefully, it will rise again once the promotion is over.
As of now, my ranking in the free bookstore is #35 in the kindle store, #1 in historical women's fiction, and #7 in contemporary women's fiction.
It will be interesting to see what happens after the promotions are over. This is my first go at the free promotion.
Marie Silk wrote: "Posting again here: I've been a bit nervous about the transition from Createspace to KDP Print, especially after KDP gave me error messages when I tried to manually create the books in KDP print my..."How about the barcode on the back? Is it the ASIN number or the ISBN?
That's a good question. Someone else mentioned they didn't include it.
A.J. and Effie, the barcodes on the back of my books have the ISBNs. I used my own ISBNs from Bowker rather than Createspace-provided ISBNs. Maybe that makes a difference?
Good to know. I also purchase my own ISBNs from Bowker
The numbers for your free promo look fantastic, Effie. I hope you see lasting effects from this promotion for a while!
I hope so! I only tried this on your recommendation. You know I was against this. But I had to look at it as a marketing strategy and I can already see that it is paying off. As a side benefit, my audiobooks are getting attention. The sales on them have been slow to say the least. I'd be lucky to sell one every two weeks. I've sold 10 in the last two days!Today, I have no ads in for the free promo. No paid ads. I wanted to see how effective my own posts were without the backup of the advertising sites. So far I've had 400 downloads.
I also have no ads in for the second book at .99c. There must be an overflow from yesterday. Readers opening newsletters today. I've had 62 sales so far.
Effie, those are such good results. I can only hope that when I start promoting, I will do just as well. Does this mean you may try free giveaways again?
I'm not sure. I think you can overdo something like that and then it has less value. If I did it would be a while from now. I think my next promotion will be for the box set.
I've been running free promos on the same book (first in a series) for two and a half years now. The download numbers have gone down some, but not as much as one might think. My free promo from 10 days ago had 1288 downloads. That was with Freebooksy, Fussy Librarian, and Many Books on a 1-day free promotion. The KENP usually spikes the day after the free promo. I don't use the 5 free days consecutively because sales and ranks seem to do best when the free days are spread out over the 90 day Select cycle. Most of my sales and reviews are a result of these promotions. Sometimes I will run a countdown on the second book in the series to coincide with the first book on free promotion, but the sequels usually sell well at full price during and after a free promo of the first book. I don't use countdowns very often but it's nice to have the option.
Right now, in between promos, I'm trying some new things. I bought ad space on a website called Compass Book Ratings. I found out about this site through a Goodreads group for clean reads. Readers use the site to see books rated similar to the way movies are rated for content. They only charged me $10 for a full month of ad space with prominent placement on the site. I'm not sure if it will amount to anything, but I'm grateful for the chance to try at that price and will hopefully reach new readers looking for clean books. I'm boosting a Facebook post about my book. Honestly it's expensive advertising, yet I'm paying less per click than I do with AMS, so I feel there's some value there. I get more ROI in the form of royalties from ads with the paid promotion sites. With Facebook--the page likes, shares, likes/comments, and clicks have a different kind of value imo. I checked the box to include my Facebook boosted post on Instagram, but Facebook is the only social media that I'm active on.
Marie Silk, I boost post all the time and I think it's very inexpensive. Unless you are talking about marketing ads, not boosts. I pay $10-$15 and promote for a couple of Days on facebook and Instagram (By checking the box) I do have an Instagram account and that social media site is way more useful for advertising than facebook these days. One of my boosted posts just ended. The results showed that 886 people engaged.I am starting to see my KNEP spike back up to where it was. I originally only wanted to do 2 days for the free promo but ENT gave me a date 5 days out so I went with it.
Effie, did all those engagements come from one boosted post? I'm not getting that many when I spend $20 or less. Do you boost it to your FB followers or different targeted audiences?
Yes, from one boosted post. I set ups specific target audiences. I named it book audience. I targeted the US, UL, Canada and Australia. Then for interests I targeted romance, love story, saga, kindle, kindle unlimited, audible, friendship, family, second chance romance, coming of age, bookclubs. That target audience is saved and I can use it over and over or I can create another and choose which one I want to use. Most of my engagement come from Instagram.
So with no paid advertising today, just my own social media posts, I had 508 free downloads on book 1 and 75 sales on book 2 at the .99c sale. I also had 12 sales on book 3 at regular price. It was good to see my KNEP spike back up to almost normal at 1409 KNEP today. Tomorrow is the last day of the free promo but the .99c on book 2 will last until 10/6. I have a book gorilla ad for the free book. Nothing set up for the .99c book until 10/4
That's pretty amazing, Effie. Congrats!
And I wish everyone a safe, fun weekend!!!!