BOOK PROMOTION SITES--THE ONES THAT ACTUALLY WORK! > Likes and Comments
On a different note, March was about the worst month I've had in a while. I did run promos for one of my books discounted to 99 cents and had few sales. Sites used and results:GoodKindles 0 sales
Just Kindle Books 1
BookGoodies 0
eReaderIQ 3
Mostly these were trials since I haven't used them much and was curious to see what the results would be. Not likely to use them again and will probably go to the sites that have given better results in the future.
In addition, my Amazon sales were way down and actually a friend who handles my books at various shows sold more of my books than Amazon. Not the usual situation.
One last note, page reads for my fantasy trilogy has gone down to near zero the last few months. I am considering taking them off KU and go wide with them. Maybe open them up to a new set of readers might draw some interest.
As well all know, the market changes and we have to figure out where to go next.
Keep writing and let us all know where the next magic site is.
Plus, D. sorry about your wrist. I hope it heals and you can get back to doing the things you want to do.
None of my books are selling much except my Christmas series due to the free prequel. Yes, I have to find dictation software, Lexie. Thanks, J! It's really hard to do everything. Frustrating!
Hi, everyone! I wanted to pop back in and tell you about my new book The Band. It just came out today, and I've got some promos planned later this week, so I'll update you on those.I actually haven't sold *any* copies today, even though it's the official launch day. Definitely a bummer. I think people are distracted, and understandably so, by the big storms around us, the stock market, etc. All of it seems to make my social media posts not impactful at all. Oh well. We solider on.
Hope you all are doing good and staying safe in these storms! I actually saw a tornado on Wednesday, so.... that's not so fun. Hopefully, we're through the worst of this storm wave.
D. wrote: "I had to bookmark this group to be able to find it. Question for everyone. Have you tried using Amazon's Audible AI voice for an audiobook? What did you think? Is anyone selling audiobooks?I have..."
Nerve injuries are a giant pain. I've been dealing with one in my neck/shoulder for three years or so. It takes a lot of adaption. I have looked into doing audio for my books, both by humans and AI. I don't like the AI idea, but unfortunately affording human dictation is not anywhere near what I can afford right now.
It seems that people are shopping less on Amazon, at least for books. My sales have been down by half, and KENP reads is about the same. Other authors I know have reported a larger decrease than I've seen in sales as well. I've been debating whether it may be worth going wide to Kobo and others, given recent events.
Theresa wrote: "D. wrote: "I had to bookmark this group to be able to find it. Question for everyone. Have you tried using Amazon's Audible AI voice for an audiobook? What did you think? Is anyone selling audioboo..."Interesting you are thinking of going wide. I am in the midst of taking my fantasy trilogy out of KU and doing the same thing. Page reads were really great when the books first came out but have fallen so low it's hardly worth keeping them exclusive. Right now waiting for the latest 90 day period to run out and then actually making the change.
You all definitely inspired me to take my books wide as well. I'm working on getting "The Misery House" and "The Silent Forest" onto an applicable platform. Hopefully it helps! What do you all use? Draft2Digital? IngramSparks?
Has Love Book Tours folded? I can't get the booking form to submit and an email came back undeliverable.
G.G. wrote: "Has Love Book Tours folded? I can't get the booking form to submit and an email came back undeliverable."Have you tried their Facebook page? I hadn't heard there was a problem.
So far my Amazon sales haven't gone down, nor pages read, either, so I'm going to stick there for a bit. I have a couple of books on Kobo and Smashwords, and more that are there but suspended for now, so I could switch fairly easily, I think, if I needed to. I've tried IngramSpark and found it expensive and unwieldy, and though I think it has changed a bit since then I haven't plucked up the courage and mental energy to try again!
Hey Everyone!I've just been preparing my latest novel, Nightshade Station, for release on April 15th. I just created 2 Amazon Ads for it. I haven't faired well with Amazon Ads, but I figured I'd take a chance since it's a new release, and that's the best time to do it. I haven't received any early reviews as my e-mail list is ridiculously small these days, so I'm just planning for a minor release and going live on social media. Hoping for the best, and the book is available for pre-order, so there's that.
I have a few new things to go over for book promoting that I'll need to try as well, but I've been so busy with the book that I haven't had time but I have some now.
Lexie wrote: "G.G. wrote: "Has Love Book Tours folded? I can't get the booking form to submit and an email came back undeliverable."Have you tried their Facebook page? I hadn't heard there was a problem."
No, I'm not on FB, but I'll check out Twitter.
My books are doing well on Amazon. Books are selling and page reads are way up. I tried Smashwords once and was quite disappointed. But this is a very individual business. We're different and so are our books.
Justin wrote: "Hey Everyone!I've just been preparing my latest novel, Nightshade Station, for release on April 15th. I just created 2 Amazon Ads for it. I haven't faired well with Amazon Ads, but I figured I'd t..."
Good luck! Let us know how you get on!
J. wrote: "Interesting you are thinking of going wide. I am in the midst of taking my fantasy trilogy out of KU and doing the same thing. Page reads were really great when the books first came out but have fallen so low it's hardly worth keeping them exclusive. Right now waiting for the latest 90 day period ..."I have a book tour with Itsybitsy about to start - after it finishes in May, I am hoping to have enough information about moving the ebooks to a wide distribution. I have large gaps between reads which might be mostly reviewers when I am doing tours. I'm testing that theory out.
David wrote: "You all definitely inspired me to take my books wide as well. I'm working on getting "The Misery House" and "The Silent Forest" onto an applicable platform. Hopefully it helps! What do you all use?..."I haven't actually moved mine yet, and I may only do it for my e-books. I have to see what formats kobo, nook, etc. accept. I thought Draft2Digital and IngramSparks is for paperback, not e-books, but I am new to exploring this theory.
G.G. wrote: "My books are doing well on Amazon. Books are selling and page reads are way up. I tried Smashwords once and was quite disappointed. But this is a very individual business. We're different and so ar..."I'm glad to hear that, G.G. Good luck and I hope it continues for you.
G.G. wrote: "Has Love Book Tours folded? I can't get the booking form to submit and an email came back undeliverable."I used their Google booking form and there was a glitch with it going through from what I remember. I believe Kelly had to send me a booking link via email. I just had a tour with them in February. As far as I know the email is still working, but I could be wrong.
I found Draft2Digital easy to use to sell my eBooks on platforms other than Amazon, though I only have one that's wide now. My sales and page reads are down too.Good luck to everyone launching new books!
And good luck to us all with the current chaos. Stocks are way down, and prices are about to go way up in the US, so maybe books are now a luxury.
D. wrote: "I found Draft2Digital easy to use to sell my eBooks on platforms other than Amazon, though I only have one that's wide now. My sales and page reads are down too.Good luck to everyone launching ne..."
Maybe books will be everyone's escape from the chaos! Let's hope.
I released my book, Nightshade Station last week! It has 4 sales so far and I'm really going to be buckling down on book promotion and marketing ideas in an attempt to garner more sales. So far I have a list of slides from a webinar of 100 book marketing ideas(5 are missing) and so far I can only do 19 of them...I'm gonna go over the list again and try to see if I can add more. Then when I have the ones I can do I'll try to do 5 of them a week.
Interested to hear how going wide works for everyone and any new launch ideas from Justin. I released all my books in audio using Audible AI voices. They sound better than expected and it was free. I priced them at the minimum price ($3.99). I wanted to advertise them on Chirp (affiliated with BookBub), but they informed me that they don't advertise AI audiobooks. Ugh!
Is anyone selling audiobooks? How do you advertise, and did you pay a narrator?
Theresa wrote: "G.G. wrote: "Has Love Book Tours folded? I can't get the booking form to submit and an email came back undeliverable."I used their Google booking form and there was a glitch with it going through..."
I finally got the form to submit but had to switch from Firefox to DuckDuckGo. I asked for that address you were given and got no rep!y.
D. wrote: "I had to bookmark this group to be able to find it. Question for everyone. Have you tried using Amazon's Audible AI voice for an audiobook? What did you think? Is anyone selling audiobooks?I have..."
Just seen this - so sorry to hear about your difficulty with your hand. I hope it heals faster than expected.
D. wrote: "None of my books are selling much except my Christmas series due to the free prequel. Yes, I have to find dictation software, Lexie. Thanks, J! It's really hard to do everything. Frustrating!"
Dictation works reasonably well... hmm... but it's useful sometimes and fast.
J. wrote: "On a different note, March was about the worst month I've had in a while. I did run promos for one of my books discounted to 99 cents and had few sales. Sites used and results:GoodKindles 0 sales ..."
I've found eReaderIq reasonably good and it is cheaper than most but as we are all probably finding, few sites are worth the price they charge.
D. wrote: "Everything is an uphill battle!"And marketing jobs which I think should take half an hour sometimes take four times that and therefore mess up the precious afternoon I have set aside to do the marketing and nothing much gets done!
I've had pretty good sales with eReader IQ and it's relatively inexpensive. Marketing hardly seems worth it as I usually lose $.Update on my wrist - saw the hand specialist who thinks it's inflammation and prescribed an anti-inflammatory med and thought it'd be better in a week. It's over a week and not better yet. Still wearing the brace mostly after about 6 weeks and it's hard to do everything!
Typing doesn't seem to hurt, but I should keep that to a minimum. The moral is to appreciate and take care of your hands!
D. hope your wrist gets better. As for AI voice-audio, I have a couple of books done that way. Voice seems okay though in a few instances I had to adjust the pronunciation for certain words. Selling audio, not so much. I think I've sold one or two. Hardly worth noting.
Finally made connection with Love Books Tour. But by the time we connected the dates were a month away. Oh well, hoping it will be worth it. D, I hope your wrist heals quickly.
Hi all,Seems things have slowed down here. I thought I'd post the results of my April promo. It was for a scifi book Shepherds, #1 in a series of 2 books. Price dropped to 99 cents.
Ad sites and results follow:
BookBub rejection again
ebookstage (used points) 1 sale
Book barbarian 13 sales
ENT 13 sales
though Barbarian and ENT ran same day so I split total sales 50-50
ereadercafe 19
Bargain Booksy 12
My Book Cave 17
Plus I did sell a few of book 2 at full price. Nowhere near making money on this but at least my name stayed in front of some readers. Interestingly, I sold more books at other sites than Amazon than I usually do. Not sure what that means if anything.
Now thinking about what to do for May, if anything.
I hope everyone else is racking up the sales. I do need to get out to a few in-person events. Last year I sold more books that way than even through Amazon. Ugh, and still find time to write.
All the best.
Thanks for your good wishes for my poor wrist. I think it's slowly improving.I read about an author who sold his books at crafts fairs on weekends and had great success. However, his upfront costs were expensive. Tables, banners, signs, etc. He enjoys talking to people who stop by his display. Sounds like a good gig for extroverts.
G.G. wrote: "Theresa wrote: "G.G. wrote: "Has Love Book Tours folded? I can't get the booking form to submit and an email came back undeliverable."I used their Google booking form and there was a glitch with ..."
Glad you got in touch with them. It's a little odd, smh.
Anna wrote: "I've found eReaderIq reasonably good and it is cheaper than most but as we are all probably finding, few sites are worth the price they charge...."There's truth to that, but considering I get messages from book trailer creatives and others claiming to be able to optimize my sales and ads for $500-600 and "guarantees" increased sales, I think I'll stick to these sites. They aren't perfect and are expensive, but I am able to see tangible results.
Theresa wrote: "G.G. wrote: "Theresa wrote: "G.G. wrote: "Has Love Book Tours folded? I can't get the booking form to submit and an email came back undeliverable."I used their Google booking form and there was a..."
Had to switch from Firefox to Duck and then it submitted immediately. Of course, that pushed the tour date to the end of the month. Also noticed that Amazon won't let me sign in on Firefox. Hmm.
I'm not doing my monthly submission to Bookbub just now (economic reasons) and I stopped my Fb ads for the same reason for a bit, also to see if they sort themselves out after their AI bots turned everything upside down for so many people. However, last month I really did see my sales start to slump so I'll have to go back to ads. When they work, they do work.I used to love Firefox but I thought it had long gone! Perhaps Amazon thought so, too.
A couple of FB ads I ran suddenly were attracting tons of likes from one ethnic group that I did not target. It was, like, 98% all from this group, and many of them men, who usually are not very interested in my work. Then I ran some more ads (very different from those particular two) and the likes started coming from my normal target audience (older women). I have no idea why the other anomaly happened. I got an increase in followers on my FB page out of that, but they are not necessarily people who would be interested in my books, which have little or nothing related to those ethnicities. So perhaps FB threw over to some weird AI algorithm and then backed off of it. ??? EDITED: I ran another ad on FB that also targeted this same audience. It seems when I post something asking for reviews, that is when the ad goes out to these people who will probably never read the book. many of them also posted "amen" in the comments, which was especially irrelevant! Francine Falk-Allen
I am thinking about giving FB ads a try this month along with a smattering of my usual sites. Need to think it through and limit my potential cost, but I think it's time to try something new.Happy writing to all.
Off topic, but maybe someone can help. I do the GR Reading Challenge every year. This year there seems to be some glitches. It automatically adds a book when I finish reading it (maybe after posting a review on Amazon). Then it adds the book 2 more times when I do a review on GR. So a book is added 3x to the list. I deleted it twice and GR deleted it altogether and won't let me add it back on the list. I contacted the Librarians Group, and they never responded.
BEST DAYS OF THE WEEK TO ADVERTISE? Hi. Just wondering if any of you have kept track of which days of the week work best for you when using paid ads (Fussy Librarian, Awesome Gang, Robin Reads, etc...). I tracked sales for my 1st book and found that Tues-Thurs seemed to work best. But for the new novel, I'm not so sure. I stopped tracking the first book during COVID, and things have changed a bit. And I'm not talking about the AMS Amazon ad campaigns. Those are another can of worms [grin].
So, I'm just getting started on paid eBook promotion of this new book and would be interested in any thoughts. Thanks. --john
John wrote: "BEST DAYS OF THE WEEK TO ADVERTISE? Hi. Just wondering if any of you have kept track of which days of the week work best for you when using paid ads (Fussy Librarian, Awesome Gang, Robin Reads, et..."
John, I don't have any specific data. I think there are a few sites that have reported on something similar. You might try Googling it. And if you take the time to do that, share whatever you find out.
John wrote: "BEST DAYS OF THE WEEK TO ADVERTISE? Hi. Just wondering if any of you have kept track of which days of the week work best for you when using paid ads (Fussy Librarian, Awesome Gang, Robin Reads, et..."
My ads work best Friday through Sunday.
FYI, latest ad data:Booksbutterfly 0 sales and at $90 I am sure I won't use them again. They do have a slick website but despite being confirmed, I never found the ad, so don't know if it even ran. It's what I get for trying new sites. Then again, if I never tried a new site, pretty soon I'd be in front of mostly the same audience again and again and that's not likely to work.
I have another ad running today, we'll see how it does.
All the best
Legit marketing sites will sometimes give you a refund if you have zero sales, especially if you can't even find the ad. Worth a try!The sites that work best for me are: eReader IQ, eReader News Today (ENT), My Book Cave, Fussy Librarian, Robin Reads, BargainBooksy or FreeBooksy, and Book Basset (only $9). Sometimes I use BookRaid (pay per click) and Book Gorilla. Of course, BookBub is the best.
When books are pretty stagnant, I do freebies to get them going. .99 cents doesn't seem to get them moving, but I'll set any subsequent books in the series to .99.
I have a question for everyone. Does anyone do this: If an author has a difficult time selling their books via Amazon, is selling direct from their website and using a third party a good idea?
D. wrote: "Legit marketing sites will sometimes give you a refund if you have zero sales, especially if you can't even find the ad. Worth a try!The sites that work best for me are: eReader IQ, eReader News ..."
Thanks for the info. Most of the ones you listed are on my "good" list except Basset. I'll have to try them. Trying for BookBub every month and as of yet, nothing. I am about to take my best selling fantasy book out of KU and go wide. Perhaps that will get me an in at BB.
Interested in any replies to Justin's question about selling from author website. I don't but would consider it if others have good results doing it.
All the best you guys.
I have run an ad a lil nuts, but so far it's only netted one sale. I am thinking of trying eReaderNews, Book Cave or Book Barbarian to give a bit of a boost. I don't have it set up to sell directly from my website, and currently don't plan to. I have noticed that all my KU and orders have been US only over the last two months. I used to get some KU readers from the UK. All of my International readership through Amazon dried up in early March.
At this time, I have unchecked my first book from automatically enrolling in KU when it's term ends at the end of July. I am thinking of enrolling it in elsewhere (Kobo, Nook?) for a little more exposure then as well since I have it priced for 99 cents already. I'm just not sure which one(s) to go with. Besides the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia were traditionally my highest ranking marketplaces.
D. wrote: "Thanks for your good wishes for my poor wrist. I think it's slowly improving.I read about an author who sold his books at crafts fairs on weekends and had great success. However, his upfront cost..."
I do that. Wouldn't consider myself an extrovert but when I put my author hat on I do quite well. The crafting community is great, the fairs are well organised and I knit while I'm there which at least means if it's a slow day I have a sock at the end of it. But it is lovely to meet readers and I've built up a bit of a local following.
D. wrote: "Thanks for your good wishes for my poor wrist. I think it's slowly improving.I read about an author who sold his books at crafts fairs on weekends and had great success. However, his upfront cost..."
Oh, and I reckon I make about £5 profit per book (about half the print price). I pay membership of the craft group plus a fee per fair (some are more expensive than others but most are £20). £5 for petrol on average. Tables are supplied and I've gradually accumulated signs, etc. What makes the difference is handing out postcards / bookmarks to people who might not buy on the spot, but who clearly look at my Amazon page and buy later. I get a lot of repeat business and also make contacts who ask me to talk to local organisations like libraries, women's groups, etc., which leads to more sales.
I've used the AI to audio for a couple of my books, both through Amazon and Apple (different AI) and while I am not thrilled, it seems okay. On the other hand, I am not selling many audio books so hardly has any impact.