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

So much here I've never heard of, and some I don't understand. What is AMS? And headline searches? I'm so confused about all these things.
I promote on Facebook, but never used their ads, I'm useless with Goodreads. I promote on Twitter and I have 2 blogs/websites. I also have a youtube and an instagram account that I never use, largely because I find I have so little time.
I wish I were more able to do these things, and could stretch the day. I have things that need to be done before I can even think of doing any promotion. It takes up so much time! :-(

D.J. wrote: "Well done, Shannon. It's easy to set up a free sign up link at Mail Chimp and you can customize your sign up form. It must be, if I managed it. The instructions are all on the website. You can then..."

I always do well on those two sites D.J. So I’m sure you will get some sales and exposure.

Effie wrote: "Itsy bitsy is the best. A launch release won't cost much at all. She works hard for you. But I would recomment a release and book tour package to get some exposure and you will sure to get reviews ..."

My book tour with Itsy Bitsy is doing well, I have gotten some sales, lots of Knep reads and reviews and a ton of exposure - I’m impressed with how Colleen sets it all up. The Hallowed is on tour now.

Hi Everyone,

I'm so glad I found you. I was in the other group for a while, and then when things turned nasty, everyone disappeared. I wondered where you all went, so I contacted Effie and she told me. So here I am.

It's good to read your comments and to be around people who are so supportive of each other. I'm still a novice when it comes to marketing, but I'm learning a lot from your input. I'm struggling with marketing my books. I'm not very savvy with social media. I have a website but I won't go on Facebook because I don't like it. So a lot of what you're saying goes way over my head. But a lot of it has been very helpful, especially which promotion sites are good and which are scams.

I have just released one of my novels as an audiobook. I got lots of helpful advice on what to do/what not to do from Effie and Marie Silk on the other group. So I want to go on the record to thank you both--and anyone else I may have forgotten who helped me.

Anyway, I'm glad I found you. And thanks to Effie for telling me where you all went.

Wishing everyone the best.

You too, Tamara!

I've a freebie on the tenth book in my first series (a bit random, I know) which I've plugged on Freebooksy today. I've hit No.1 in Scottish Crime, 5 in historical mysteries / thrillers, and 399 in Kindle free books - the best I've ever had with Freebooksy! Last time I used them I also had lots of halo sales of other books, so I'm hoping for the same this time, particularly as I've already had about twice as many downloads. It's been a good day!

Hope everyone else is having a good one, too!

Tamara, I'm so glad you found us. We tried to contact everyone we could. Welcome! And I'm a lot like you, I'm not very savvy with social media, I hate FB, and I have to completely overhaul my website to attract visitors. I'm also benefiting a lot from all the good advice and experiences here.

Lexie, congratulations. Those are good results.

I hope everyone else's promotions are going well!

I have to share this with all of you. A few days ago I talked about newsletters. I had done an authorsXP multi author promotion and sent out a newsletter to advertise it. In addition, I offered my own separate giveaway - a $10 amazon gift card. All they had to do was follow me on Bookbub. I'm aiming for 1000 followers. So far I have 643 now. So the winners of the AuthorsXP were named and I notified them but also put it in a newsletter and said I have some news to share soon. But in the meantime, I'm running another giveaway. 3 prizes - the saga box set, the first book in whatever form the winner prefers, and a $10 amazon gift card. The instructions were to take a screenshot of all the places they followed me. The more, the better chance of winning.

You would not believe how many replies I got just overnight! I highly recommend this!

Plus, I'm doing an author takeover on a facebook page author group next week and shared the link. There will be plenty of prizes to win there too. My prizes and many other authors.

Groovy wrote: "Tamara, I'm so glad you found us. We tried to contact everyone we could. Welcome! And I'm a lot like you, I'm not very savvy with social media, I hate FB, and I have to completely overhaul my websi..."

Thanks, Groovy. It's nice to read your posts, again.

Effie wrote: "I have to share this with all of you. A few days ago I talked about newsletters. I had done an authorsXP multi author promotion and sent out a newsletter to advertise it. In addition, I offered my ..."

Congrats, Effie. That's wonderful news!

Tamara wrote: "Hi Everyone,

I'm so glad I found you. I was in the other group for a while, and then when things turned nasty, everyone disappeared. I wondered where you all went, so I contacted Effie and she tol..."

Glad you found us, Tamara. I'm still really new to the marketing end of things as well and have found everyone here to be very helpful.

Effie wrote: "I have to share this with all of you. A few days ago I talked about newsletters. I had done an authorsXP multi author promotion and sent out a newsletter to advertise it. In addition, I offered my ..."

Wow, that's an awesome result, Effie! Thank you for sharing that!

It's a great way to build your followers. I'm hoping that with more bookbub followers I can get accepted for a deal again. It might help my chances. Just a shot in the dark. But either way, it doesn't hurt to have those followers.

That's great, Effie:) What a good way to interact with and keep your readers' interests.

I want to mention something some of you may find helpful and may save you some money. For those of you who haven't heard about it, Sitespinner is a web building software where you can build your own website and publish it without going through a third party; or always having to pay someone every time you want to make changes to your website; OR paying a monthly bill to a site just for the website. All you pay for is your web host and domain name that you choose to publish it to.

I've had the same software for over 10 years now, and have never had one problem. It's old now, so I'm going to upgrade to Sitespinner Pro. I highly recommend it for anyone who want to build their own website and avoid monthly fees. I hope this helps. Here's the link:

http://www.sitespinner.com

Wow! I never heard of it. I'll check it out. Thanks.

Wow there is always so much to catch up on when I come on this chat.

I was actually going to ask about Bookbub ads and then you guys already gave a wealth of info so thank you for that!

Do you guys have any info on Goodread ads? Any success with that?

My books are moving along and I am going to publish two together in the beginning of October, I am excited that I now have a date! I am going to put them on pre-order some time in August. So yay for progress!

What is everyone's opinion on August for book sales? I usually do one book promotion a month but I'm considering skipping next month. My gut feeling is August will be slow, but I figured I would ask some of you that are more experienced because I'm not always knowledgeable. Thus far I've noticed that around holidays are good times to promote, but August has none. I was thinking holding off until Labor Day weekend. Opinions, please?

I would do a few days before Labor Day. I'm going to plan one then too. Most people have their books for the summer, except for the ones that read several each week.
Labor Day Weekend for some is the last downtime in their backyards to relax an read. For others it's too busy with parties. But if they project that the kids will be in school the following week, they might be ready to load up on books again.

And that's my amateur psychoanalysis for the day! LOL

Thanks, Effie!

As for my free Kindle promotion today, I had over a thousand downloads with a Freebooksy feature so it was a fairly productive day. I had a great birthday. This past year has been a struggle, what with my mother dying suddenly and losing my job, so I'm happy to see it end, and I feel optimistic that this coming year will bring a lot of good things!

I think I'm going to concentrate on Labor Day weekend too. I feel your instincts are spot on, Effie.

I didn't know about your mother. I'm so sorry.

I'm just going to suggest you don't constantly do free promotions. At some point it would be nice to make money. Unless of course you decide to make one of your books permafree as a lead in to the other books.

What your ratio of reviews to free downloads? I was wondering. Do you find it's worth it? Reviews are great. We all want them but we want sales more, right?

Marie Silk gave some good advice and a different perspective on doing a free promotion. I may try it for only a day or two based on what she said. It will be the first time. I'm not ready to do it yet though.

Effie, Congratulations on your hard work, successful newsletter, and promotions! Great ideas,

My Freebooksy 24 hours is over so I can report I had 3,447 free downloads, plus enough halo sales to pay for the promotion. I had no other promotions running at the same time, and I've already had further halo sales today. I'm delighted!

Shannon, no months are as bad for me as April and May. August isn't bad, here anyway, as people are loading their Kindles for their holidays and we in UK have a couple of public holidays in the month. So if your sales are international it could be worth it!

Great results, Lexie, Effie and Shannon. Lexie, by halo sales, do you mean follow on sales for the former free book or for your other books?

Lexie, what genre is your book and how much did your promo cost? Is it part of a series? Great results! Thanks for sharing!

D.J, My book was the tenth in a series and I have another series of three (so far) and four stand alones. Sales (halo sales, as I call them) on all of them rocketed (in my terms!) yesterday.

D, My genre is historical crime fiction (Georgian Scotland). Freebooksy cost I think about $80 for the day. I'm a bit surprised, looking back, that I spent that much, but it turned out to be worth it!

Great result on the free promo, Lexie :). I would say it's especially great that it was on #10 in a series. In my experience, a promo with that many downloads will keep residual sales coming for 2-3 weeks, tapering down toward the end of that time.

I've always had sales during/after a free promo with the exception of the free promos that only got a few downloads because I didn't arrange any paid advertising. It's worth mentioning again that these are full price sales (2.99) I'm talking about, not countdown sales. So my ROI on free promos is significantly higher with free promotions than with 99 cent sales.

Stephen wrote: "Do you guys have any info on Goodread ads? Any success with that?

My books are moving along and I am going to publish two together in the beginning of October, I am excited that I now have a date! I am going to put them on pre-order some time in August. So yay for progress! "

I haven't personally run Goodreads ads, but I can tell you what I've heard reported from authors who have run them, as well as my brief experience with GR advertising.

The consensus I've seen with GR ads is they lead to the book being added to a lot of "want to read" lists, but not actual sales that can be attributed to the ad. Similar to the old GR giveaways I think. It gives exposure on to-read lists but not much else.

That being said, I've bought a few books based on "you might also be interested in this" suggestions from GR that were actually targeted quite well. However I don't know if these are publisher "pay per click" ads because some of them are very old obscure books. I see these suggestions even though I have Adblock Plus on my browser. If I see one that interests me, I usually look at the book on GR then add the paperback format to my Amazon cart. I might not get around to actually buying it til months later, so sales from someone like me wouldn't even register to a publisher that it was a result of that ad.

I think AMS ads have more effective sales rates than GR ads because GR ad clicks don't send the customer to a purchase page but rather to the book's GR page. Readers can of course click the Amazon button underneath the book's GR description (if they know it's there) but extra click requirements like this are where sales are lost.

I once contacted GR advertising asking how to have my books added to their deal emails or twitter feed. I never got a straight answer from them, other than I was invited to spend thousands of dollars on a campaign with GR that included neither of those things.

Important! Check your books on GR!

I just remembered something as I was writing about the Amazon button on GR book pages. I've clicked on MANY of these that DO NOT go to the book's Amazon listing! A lot of them give an error "page not found" or send me to a page of search results, not the book's product page!

I even clicked the Amazon buttons on my own books on GR to make sure they were working and one sent me to a weird book about clowns! All of you should check your Amazon buttons on your GR pages to make sure they are being directed to the books' product pages. I had to edit my book details to ASIN instead of ISBN in order to get that button to work properly. Or contact a GR librarian if this is happening with your books. You really don't want your potential readers getting an error page when they click through to Amazon for your book.

That is a very useful tip, Marie Silk - I never thought to check!

Hi Stephen, Last Thanksgiving a company I’d hired (huge mistake) offered a 10 Book give-away on GR. 874 people responded; 623 people added my novel to their bookshelf; I had 51 sales, and 2 reviews. Someone told me that having my book sitting on readers’ bookshelves is a good thing. I’m not convinced.

Stephen wrote: "Wow there is always so much to catch up on when I come on this chat.

I was actually going to ask about Bookbub ads and then you guys already gave a wealth of info so thank you for that!

Do you ..."
Are you sure about publishing two together? I only ask because I launched 1 and 2 in a new series together a couple of years ago and I don't think many people noticed the second one. It might be worth waiting even a couple of weeks, just to make them distinct.

Thank you, Effie.

I think with giving away books for free, what I am going to do is to do a freebie during the three month period for each book, then reassess. As for reviews..I've gotten three (four is you count one that was just on Goodreads) from the giveaway on the new one which I was rather pleased about. As for the two I just did, I've gotten ratings but not reviews yet. Since one book givaway was the fourth of July and the other one was yesterday, I guess I should give it some more time to see if it generates any, especially since the one I did on the fourth of July was for the book that is nearly five hundred pages long.

Ugh, I made the mistake of opening up some come on for authors in my email box that went on and on with these dismal statistics about how hard it is for the good authors to get their books sold and make a living. It said because of the ability to just publish whatever you want there are some awful books out there by would be writers looking to make a quick buck and it ruins things for the people that have good books because then readers will steer clear of indie books. I have to admit to hating that mindset. Writing books is a horrendous amount of work and anyone "looking to make a quick buck," would be turned off very quickly. They wouldn't be willing to do all the work entailed in promoting your book and building your brand. And I think assuming that no readers would like a book because YOU don't like it or it's not to your standards is a mistake. I've seen some traditionally published books that became bestsellers that exhibited truly awful writing so one can never tell what will resonate with readers.

Marie Silk, as always you share lots of great information. Thanks!

Shannon, So this is my point. You are having free promotion after free promotion. It's great you are happy about the thousands of downloads, but my question is, what are those downloads accomplishing? 3 or 4 reviews is not a good ratio. It makes my wonder if the books are being read. When you go back to selling your book and it's seen by all those people who downloaded it for free, they will not buy it. I would keep the free promotions rare. Don't sell yourself short. I hope this last freebies get you lts of attention!

Marie Silk wrote: "Important! Check your books on GR!

I just remembered something as I was writing about the Amazon button on GR book pages. I've clicked on MANY of these that DO NOT go to the book's Amazon listing!..."

Thank you for the tip, Marie! I just checked both of mine and they go to the correct pages. It is a useful thing to check on though!

Well, in terms of benefits, my KENP is up and I am now selling books when I'm not doing promos which was not happening before. Reviews, eh, I wasn't getting much even when I did the paid promotions and people bought the book. Majority of people don't reviews the books they read, free or otherwise. So yes, no way of telling who reads and who doesn't. Personally, I have a KU subscription, I download anything I find interesting and then if I start it and don't like it I stop, return it, get another. But my KENP for The Playground (which was a free giveaway on July 4th) was 1600 yesterday which means roughly four books were read. So my books are being read. Still the most amazing feeling in the world to know someone is reading something I wrote. It will never cease being the most amazing thing in the world to me, whether I make money or not.

PS: I'm not sure, maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I now think the sales report is showing books downloaded through KU, When I looked, they included a few books downloaded at 0.00 that were not on sale. I think those may be Amazon Prime or KU subscribers, although I am not sure. Those reports confuse me a bit.

Shannon wrote: "Well, in terms of benefits, my KENP is up and I am now selling books when I'm not doing promos which was not happening before. Reviews, eh, I wasn't getting much even when I did the paid promotions..."

I agree, Shannon, it feels amazing!

My sales reports this week showed 12 downloads of a book for nothing that was not currently free. I decided to ignore it and see what happened. Today the number was mysteriously down to 1 free book. I think there might be a temporary glitch - it's happened before!

Thanks Lexie! That explains it.

I’m happy for you Shannon.

Lexie, I think reporting has been slow this week for some reason

Michele wrote: "Hi Stephen, Last Thanksgiving a company I’d hired (huge mistake) offered a 10 Book give-away on GR. 874 people responded; 623 people added my novel to their bookshelf; I had 51 sales, and 2 reviews..."

Michele, with those results, why do you say it was a huge mistake?

Hi Groovy, I say the GR giveaway was a huge mistake because I paid an astronomical amount of money to the company that orchestrated the contest. That’s my bad for not doing my homework and research. I ran one promotion through ERNT for $55 and sold 110 copies.

Thank-you, Michele:)

The 51 sales is a good number but it sounds high to have come from a Goodreads giveaway. Did you have other promotion going on at the time? Giveaways used to be free for authors to set up on Goodreads so you only had to pay for the books and shipping. International shipping could be a killer though. Before I knew about Book Depository, I sent a book to another country and paid over $40 shipping. International giveaways had the potential to be very expensive to fulfill.

I ran a few dozen GR giveaways (when they were free) but I never saw more than *maybe* 5 sales that could be attributed to one. Number of entrants in my giveaways ranged from 1200-2200. They weren't a great source of sales. I just liked to know my book could reach more readers and all I had to pay for was books and shipping in exchange for the exposure.

Hi Marie Silk, The company I’d hired did promote the GR giveaway; but unfortunately I don’t know where or what—again, my bad. The amount I paid for the company to do the promotion could have paid for four BookBub ads, which I’m sure would have been a far better ROI. Also, the “expert” recommended that I send hard copies with a personalized note. So I paid for the book, a box for mailing, and the cost of shipping—around the U.S., and three to the U.K. it’s embarrassing to admit my stupidity. Your exposure sounds far better-good for you.

Michele, we’ve all been burned at least once. That’s why on our other thread I told everyone one to stay away from this woman, G. E . Johnson. She has author buzz and some other fake companies. I also told everyone PUMP UP YOUR BOOB was a big rip off.

Thanks, Effie.

I may have mentioned this in the other thread, but I'll bring it up again here.

If your books are offered on Kobo, be sure to get access to the "Promotions" tab on your KWL dashboard. You have to request it; it doesn't just happen.

This is the only way I know to get access to Kobo-specific advertising. A useful feature is that many of the available promotions don't require an up-front payment; you pay through a percentage of your sales, which makes for a very low barrier to entry and a guaranteed low cost of sales. Since Kobo is the Kindle for the rest of the world, it's worth pursuing.

Thanks for that, Lance. May decide to try going wide again, as I don't get many KENP reads even when my book's on promo. I believe you also have to register your book with Kobo directly, not through Smashwords, to gain access to Kobo promotions.

Well, I finally set up a mailing list through Mailchimp. I still found navigating it a little confusing but I think I managed to send people a welcome email who subscribe to my list.

Okay, this has nothing to do with books. But I just want to say that concerning Wimbledon, Serena got what she deserved, and Kerber deserved that win. Now I can concentrate more on my book until the US Open. Effie, I can't wait to see your daughters walk the players in. Don't forget to let me know what day!

Now, back to book talk!

Groovy,

You have to give Serena credit. she's come back from an illness and giving birth. Plus with both of those she's a bit out of practice. I think getting to the finals with all she had to deal with was incredible. She's the Queen on hardcourt. she will win the US open, I predict. I'm not sure where Eleni will be assigned this year. I know she will be working the USTA booth for sure. Hopefully, at least one of her shifts will be to walk out the players.

Anyway, back to book talk . I'm doing an author takeover on a facebook page/group on Thursday. The event is running for a couple of day and will feature several authors, many are bestselling authors. One is one I admire so much. I'm so excited to be included! There will be chats, contest and giveaways!