BOOK PROMOTION SITES--THE ONES THAT ACTUALLY WORK! > Likes and Comments

Your numbers sound great, Effie, and so cool that you're seeing audio sales too. I had a look at your book on Amazon and saw that it's enabled for Whispersync audio and has a fantastic rank in the Whispersync subcategory. Response from audio listeners tends to be high with free promotions because they can get the audio at a steep discount after they download the ebook for free.

Thanks, Theresa.

Marie Silk wrote: "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 ..."Excellent info. FYI, note on site says CBR aren't taking self published books. (Darn.)

What? Thanks for that, Sheila. I was going to wait to see how Marie Silk liked it before I tried it. But since they don't take self-published, oh well.

I hope it goes well for you, Marie Silk. But, I do have a question: You mentioned you've been running a free promo on one book for two and a half years. So does this mean that it's a perma-free book? That you're not going to put a price on it in the future?

I was planning to submit my book in the hopes of a review with Compass Book Ratings, but when I read they don't review independent books, I asked about how to advertise with them. I sent an application and check through the mail (they aren't set up with Paypal) and emailed the ad image and information.

Groovy, book 1 to my series has never been permafree. What I meant when I said I have been running free promotions on it for two an half years is that I've used the 5 free promotion days every 90-day Select cycle. The book's regular price is 2.99 and it has sold many copies at this price when not on free promotion.

Marie Silk,

I didn't even know there were rankings for whispersink. I'm going to see if I can figure out how to find it. How did you see it?

I don't see the rank on your book today, but yesterday it showed at #14 in the Whispersync audio for Romance category. The ranks show on the product page along with the Kindle Store ranks when it reaches a certain level in Whispersync sales.

I've never seen a whispersinc ranking on my product page and I can't find it now. Yesterday, I had a lot of audio sales.

Effie, if you look at your book on Amazon right now, it's showing a Whispersync rank. I took a screenshot in case you want to save it. Awesome ranks by the way!

Thank you! Yes, I noticed it now. I never had before seen a rank with whisper sync. I was a t 29 over all and 1, 5, 5 on the others the other day. I'll be interested to see where I'm placed when I do back to a paid ranking.

Yes, well done, Effie. Those are brilliant rankings, especially as they're in very popular categories.

Book Cave running a promo now for anybody interested:

Submit your book by midnight (PT) on October 7th and get a discount on your next promotion. You can submit up to three months in advance.

10% off for books discounted to $0.99–2.99: 10fallpromo2018

15% off for books discounted to $0.00: 15fallpromo2018

Thanks, DJ!

Yesterday was the last day of my free promo on book 1. The .99c deal is still on until 10/6. Here are the final results on the free promo. I had a total of 7,142 free downloads. My best performing day was the third day with over 2,600 downloads. That day I had ads in freebooksy, full hearts romance, fussy librarian and series spotlight in authors xp. I hope this information helps you to decide on who to use for advertising next time around. I do think there are many factors. My genre is women's fiction/ contemporary romance. Some sites perform better with certain genres. I'm happy with the results on this promo. I'm not sure if those number are low, average or high for a free promo as I've never done one before. I'm sure if Bookbub had approved me it would have been significantly higher.

In addition to those numbers, my .99c deal is doing very well with very little advertising. I usually stack several ads in one day and have ads in each day of the sale. I only had one ad day, and not even every day. There has been a day or two where I didn't advertise at all. I'm assuming the free book is helping the second. Plus, I've had a spike on the third at regular price. My audiobook sales are steadily rising. I'm so happy about that because it's been a very slow start on them.

So Marie Silk, I need your advice since you were the one who convinced me to do the free promo. It was good advice. The exposure to the entire series has been beneficial. I can see it already. With very little advertising, Waiting for Aegina sold 81 books on the .99c promo. I think this is due to the exposure it received from the first book being free. I only had a $13 ad with ReadFreely and an $18 ad with bookcave. For once I made more money than I spent. Also my KNEP has soared to over 4000 today. I haven't seen those numbers in a while. I tend to average between 1,500 - 2000 per day.

So my question is, do you think it would be worth doing a free promo on cyber Monday? Yes, I'm already thinking of it because the better sites require a lot of notice.

Effie, I'm so glad your promotion was a success. I hope you continue to see increased KENP and steady sales of the sequels over the next few weeks. About Cyber Monday, I don't believe I've run a book promotion on it before, but some authors seem to have decent results with the right advertising. Here is a write-up from the Booksy blog about book marketing during holidays: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/2017...

From what I've seen on free promotions with non-Bookbub paid advertising, download numbers over 2K (in one day) are great and higher than average. For me, depending on promotion frequency and other factors, Freebooksy generally brings in 1K-2K downloads. Fussy Librarian and Book Cave each bring in several hundred plus downloads.

Sometimes a book gets lucky and has instant Amazon exposure (independent of paid advertising) during a free promotion. I know of one author who had over 600 downloads in one day without any paid advertising. That's not really typical from what I've seen. Usually with no paid advertising during a free promo, my book shows well under 100 downloads for the day.

Marie Silk,
Thanks for the link to the holiday marketing article. Good info that I hope I can use, provided I actually get my next book out there before the holidays have come and gone.

Thank you, Marie Silk,

Great article. I'm going to consider all of this and plan.

But, Effie! What happened to "we work so hard on our books, we shouldn't have to give them away free," speech? Just kidding, I'm glad you had such good results with the free promo.

I have to admit, that during one KDP free promotion, my book was being downloaded in the thousands in one day. I got scared and stopped it. When I start the promotions again, maybe I should see that as a good thing IF it happens again.

Thanks for the article, Marie Silk.

Have a fun weekend, everyone. I hope your promotions go well!!

I still believe that. But after Marie Silk stated how it could work in my benefit, I had to consider it. I had to adjust my thinking and see it as a marketing strategy and it worked. Would I put a book on permanent-free? No. I really had no intention of doing this again for a long time if at all. But I need to think of the many ways I can use the upcoming holidays to my benefit.

Here's the thing that still bugs me though. Of all those thousands who downloaded the book, how many will actually read it? I wouldn't be surprised if many kept it uploaded, thinking they'd get to it eventually, but in the end delete it to add new books they found for free.

And I'm so glad it worked, too.

As for the downloads, I've read that, also. You shouldn't get excited about your book being downloaded in big numbers, because it probably won't get read anyway, and will also probably get deleted for the new batch. A reader will treasure your book more if they paid for it. That's when it will for a certainty get read.

I agree, and this is one of the many reasons why I never wanted to do a free promo. However, I've had more paid sales at regular price since my promo. Significantly more. And my KNEP right now is up to 8,000 per day. So if nothing else, it brought attention and exposure to my books. That's why I had to change my mindset and think of it as a marketing strategy. I'm hoping at least some of the people that downloaded it for free will read it. We shall see...

Exactly - what I call the halo sales, the sales of other books around the free offer, are what makes it worthwhile for me.

Affirmative, Lexie:) I can't wait to get my book-house in order so I can get started!

Again, my apologies for my late response. I didn't realize a computer's life span is 5-6 years; my eight year old computer died and it's been time consuming and frustrating to get everything working again. For some reason, this thread is going into my spam folder and I can't figure out how to get it out. There used to be a feature on the Mac called "Not Junk"; and I can't find it.

Nevertheless...thank you Groovy. And, Effie, WOW, your numbers are off the charts. Good for you!

Thanks, Marie Silk. Yes, I can end my relationship with Page Publishing when the contract expires, which is in 18 months.

I did have a promo with ENT on Oct. 5th and my rankings went from
419,000 to 8,706. Plus I sold hard copies and half a dozen audio.

I'm going to stop promotions for 6 to 8 weeks then apply for BookBub. The lady who helped me fix a problem with my website (BakerviewConsulting.com) said that BookBub likes to offer deals that are not promoted often.

Love the conversations in this thread. Again, apologies for my tardiness.

Robert wrote: "Just started promoting my book using Facebook, Twitter, and tumblr. Honestly looking for advise on the best ways to help promote my story. Any suggestions to make the most of these or others I may ..."

Hi Robert, congrats on your new book. This is an exciting time for you and I have two pieces of advice. 1. Watch your purse strings. There are lots of ways to promote your book without having to spend money. Do you have a website? Pinterest account? Are you on Twitter? Get these going and post often and meaningful content, not just 'buy my book' stuff. 2. Sign up for Bitly.com and track all your marketing strategies. If you boost a post on Facebook, use a Bitly short code and you'll be able to check and see how the boost did.

The basic plan on Bitly is free.

Good luck and have fun. :)

Congratulations on those books results, Michele, and on that new computer. I'm also due for a new one:)

Does anybody know of any effective ad sites that cater to Nook, Kobo, or iBooks?

I'm running Amazon Headline Search Ads (or whatever they're called now), which are goosing my sales along a bit. I still have very little opportunity to go after readers on the other platforms. I run Kobo promotions through KWL whenever they let me, but that's about it.

Tomorrow begins another round of a sponsored ad on Amazon. It took me 6 before I sold any books; this will be my 8th one. I was told to experiment, keep at it and it will pay off. I like sponsored ads because: 1) they cost as much as I'm willing to shell out; 2) I don't have to give away my books and hard work; 3) I'm a bit more confident real readers buy my book and will read it; 4) halo effect--it has led to readers buying my other novel.

Sheila, I like your reasons for doing a sponsored ad on Amazon. Let us know how it went.

Lance wrote: "Does anybody know of any effective ad sites that cater to Nook, Kobo, or iBooks?

I'm running Amazon Headline Search Ads (or whatever they're called now), which are goosing my sales along a bit. I ..."

Hi Lance, I posted the list below earlier this year when I planned to publish my books wide. You can also try Bookbub "cost per click" ads, similar to the way Amazon ads are set up, except you can send the link to ibooks or google if you want. The ads go by genre or similar authors. I would not personally pay for bulk impressions because the cpc is cheaper/better when I bid for individual clicks instead. All this being said, my books sold so little on the wide channels compared to their KU potential and Kindle sales that I returned my books to exclusivity with Kindle Select.

I'm finding that some of the promotional sites are also Kindle exclusive, so they won't really serve my purpose of promoting to a new audience. I'm listing my notes below for anyone interested. I hope it will save you some time :).

"All channels" refers to the major players: Amazon, Nook, iBooks, Google


Bookbub: all channels
Book Adrenaline: all channels except Google
Robin Reads: only Kindle and Nook
Booksends: only Kindle
ENT: all channels
Book Cave: all channels + Smashwords
Book Basset: only Kindle
Reading Deals: all channels + Smashwords
Book Raid: all channels
OHFB: only Kindle
Freebooksy: all channels
Book Gorilla: only Kindle
Book Runes: only Kindle
Digital Book Today: only Kindle
Fussy Librarian: all channels + Smashwords
Riffle: all channels
Manybooks: all channels + Smashwords

Hi, I'm new to this party so please excuse me if I ask repeat questions. From your post I gather you returned to the Amazon fold and now have your books exclusively with them, am I correct? May I ask why you went back? I just removed my three books from KDP Select and uploaded them to a wide range of locations using Draft2Digital. I'd appreciate your thoughts. Blessed be, Tinthia

Thanks for the list, Marie. Very helpful.

Tinthia wrote: "Hi, I'm new to this party so please excuse me if I ask repeat questions. From your post I gather you returned to the Amazon fold and now have your books exclusively with them, am I correct? May I a..."

Hi Tinthia, yes I did re-enroll my books in Kindle Select when I could see my books were going nowhere with wide distribution. After a month of heavy promotion, all my books' unit sales on Smashwords, Apple, Nook, Kobo, and Google combined were barely 10% of all sales that month, with Kindle making up the other 90%. The wide sales weren't enough to see a tail of sales on the channels, so over the next two months, my books didn't sell more than a handful on all those wide channels combined. My books perform well on KU, and the Select free promotions have led to most of my sales, so it didn't make sense to keep the books published wide.

I've read many articles written by other authors to support this. It's one of the main reasons I stayed exclusive with kindle. I make as much money, and sometimes more, on KNEP (pages read by subscribers). It doesn't pay to lose that money. The sales from the other platforms wouldn't come close the the KNEP payment.

Marie Silk wrote: "Tinthia wrote: "Hi, I'm new to this party so please excuse me if I ask repeat questions. From your post I gather you returned to the Amazon fold and now have your books exclusively with them, am I ..."
Thank you for the response. Food for thought.

Effie wrote: "I've read many articles written by other authors to support this. It's one of the main reasons I stayed exclusive with kindle. I make as much money, and sometimes more, on KNEP (pages read by subsc..."

I've thought of heading back as well, however, by doing so I lose the ability to offer the book for free in promotions not part of Amazon. I need to mull this over a bit more.

My promotion for book 1 ended on Monday. I did an ad on bookgorilla on Wed the 10th which netted 5 sales. I ran a boosted facebook post throughout the week but no other ad on the 11th and there was 1 sale. I did a BargainBooksy ad on the 12 and netted 8 more sales. There was no other ad but the boosted facebook post for the rest of week and got 2 sales on the 13th and 1 on the 14. None on the 15th which was the last day.

Curiously, there was no KENP pages read at all, although I made sure to list it was free to KU. Not bad, but nowhere near breaking even.

I'm sorry you didn't get the results you wanted, Theresa, but on the positive side, you got sales! And possibly more followers! And exposure! Yes!!!

Promoting, I think, is the hardest part of being an author. It sucks! But it's crucial. I wish there was this magic button you push and the promotion takes care of itself, leaving you the freedom to just write. But we're not in that perfect world, are we?

So, congratulations to you, Theresa, and to everyone on their endeavors to get their hard work out there to be noticed. Hopefully, that next promotion will be better than the last.

I am still stuck on finishing my next book and am spending more time writing and trying to get it finished before the end of November, which means no promoting time. But that's okay.

I haven't heard from y'all in a while, but I hope you're all doing well with your promotions and writing.

Oh, and I think, for me, staying with Kindle is best. I have yet to hear where Kobo, Apple, and Nook does any better. At least with Kindle, you're on Amazon where millions of shoppers have the opportunity to see your work.

My books have been exclusive to Amazon. It doesn't seem worth the extra effort when most of the sales come from Amazon, but maybe they'd do better and get more exposure going wide.

Anyway, I've noticed that prices to advertise have gone up while sales have gone down. So I like the sites that have kept their prices lower but still get some sales like Fussy Librarian and eBook Discovery.

I haven't tried Amazon ads yet but that's my next step. Any advice from anyone who's tried it?

Groovy,

I didn't do any promotion for about 3 months when I was finishing the last book on my trilogy. The priority was to get it up for sale for summer reading. It didn't hurt me a bit. I did continue to put up one or two posts a day on FB, Instagram and twitter. But that was it.

I feel as if my head is in a spin just now - I'm working frantically on No.4 in series 2, while No.1 in series 3 is about to go live tomorrow. Given that they are set approximately 8 centuries apart I'm just wondering why I did this to myself! But I think everything is in place for the launch - going wide, with Kobo and Smashwords too, as I don't seem to make that much from KUP. Maybe I'll change my mind later!

God luck Lexie. I hope you have a successful release!

Effie wrote: "God luck Lexie. I hope you have a successful release!"
Thanks!

Thank-you for the encouragement, Effie. It's good to know that it's okay to step away from all the promoting and just write:)

Take a deep breath, Lexie. It's going to work out. I hope you get lots of sales and exposure. Don't forget to let us know how it went. All the best!

Thanks for the encouragement Groovy. I agree promoting is one of (if not the hardest) thing about being an author.

I am happy I got some sales. (Wish it was more and wished I had some KENP reads) but it is what it is. I'm still new to the promotion thing and am still learning. Maybe I should join Instagram or use Amazon ads? It's hard to figure out what to try sometimes.

The important thing is I'm doing what I love, even if its not profitable. I need to get back to writing as well.

Good luck on the release, Lexie!

Theresa, you are so right. Good for you. I, too, would write even if I never earned a dime. Writing gives my life spark:) It may seem slow, but you are building followers. So, get to writing that next journey.

And it has been discussed here that Instagram is a good place to go. I have seen people post their wares there and before you know it, sales are coming in, and the business has become popular. That's where I'm going next. I'm not looking for overnight success, but I do hope to give more exposure to my books (and my baby blankets)

Have a safe weekend, everyone.

Thanks to all for sharing. I still need to get with Instagram. I have an account but am really not good at using it. Anyone who wants to share tricks that work, I'm all ears - well not exactly ears here.

Groovy wrote: "Theresa, you are so right. Good for you. I, too, would write even if I never earned a dime. Writing gives my life spark:) It may seem slow, but you are building followers. So, get to writing that n..."

Yes, I agree. I write because that's what I do. It drives me, lol. It does sound like Instagram is the next place to go. I just try not to get so caught up in social media all the time that I have no time to write (or other obligations.)

I had another $0.99 sale on one of my backlisted books with Christian Book Heaven. Sold 11 books, just like last time and some KU reads with it. Not too many on the list, but I sold to about 0.5% of them. I had an ad with Readfreely on my new release that wasn't discounted, the best they offer, and didn't have as much luck, but my genre is Christian romantic suspense, and I rarely see that type of book now, on their ads, plus the price was higher than most. I have two more ads to go this fall..

There are ad sites that cater to Christian romance and clean romance. I wish I could think of them right now. I will try to jar my memory. You might want to try bookcase for one. They are quite specific with weeding out content and readers. Also, authorship is a great site for building genre specific mailing lists.