Brandon Ellis's Blog, page 6

12 Days: My Self Publishing Journey (Part 8 of 12)

Promoting my second book by promoting my first book

I received two sales today for my second book, “The PureLights & The PureLight Order“. I was thrilled!

Now, let’s see how my top promoting day was. When I say, “top promoting day”, I mean that I spent most of my time months before my free promotion marketing for this day. I could have easily marketed my book for every day in this promotion, but that would have been a little spendy. Since Sundays are traditionally the best day for paid books and free books, I thought I should let most people know that today, Sunday, my book, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem,” would be free.

Let’s go over today’s stats

By 9:30 this morning, 617 people had downloaded my book and I was ranked just over 1,000 in overall rankings and 3rd in my category.

By 11:30 this morning, 864 people had downloaded my book and I was 894 in the overall rankings.

By 1:30 this afternoon, 1,147 people had downloaded my book and I was 603 in overall rankings.

You can see where this is going…

By 3:30 this afternoon, 1,456 people had downloaded my book and I was 401 in overall rankings and 1st in my category.

By 5:30, 1681 people had downloaded my book and I was 163 in overall rankings, still 1st in my category.

By 9:30 this evening, 1712 people had downloaded my book and I was 122 in overall rankings, and yes, still 1st in my category.

By 11:30 at night, 1896 people had downloaded my book and I was 116 in overall rankings. Yes, still 1st in my category.

I suspect I’ll break over 1900 downloads by midnight.

That’s a record for me. I, for a moment, thought I’d actually break through to the top 100 amazon rankings in free books, but it doesn’t look like I will.

My Thoughts?

It was a ride. I continued to check my stats throughout the day, saying, “Yes! Our plan is working.” Who’d think that an author would be so excited about giving his/her book away? How times have changed.

At one point in the day–when I found out I was #1 in my category–I scrolled down my category page, stopping at the books ranked #10 and #11. On that point of the page, my book was hidden from view. I called Jenna, my 12 year old daughter, and Hunter, my 14 year old boy, into my office to look at my computer screen.

They walked in the room, stared blankly at my screen, wondering why I wanted them to look at it. I said, “Remember yesterday when I was ranked #5?”

They looked at the screen and said, “Yes.”

I frowned, “But, where am I now?” I slowly scrolled up the screen, showing the books ranked #9 and #8, sighing, “I don’t know where my book went.”

They continued to look, obviously not giving a care in the world where my book was, until I got to the #5 ranked book where my daughter responded with, “Uh oh. You’re not there anymore dad. Sorry.”

I continued to scroll up.

#4.

#3.

I smiled. “Uh, wait. What? Is that me? Huh?” I pointed at the screen. “#1!?”

My son started cracking up and my daughter said, “Good job, daddy!”

Then they left the room, like teenagers do when they want to get back to their important “things”. At least they showed some interest for a moment? A tinsy, winsy moment? I had fun with it, though. I love those guys.

More thoughts…

If I would have made two days of marketed promotions, I’d no doubt be in the top 100 amazon rankings by tomorrow, but like I said, I would have spent a pretty penny to do so.

Let’s see where this takes us.

Until then…

 

12 Days: My Self Publishing Journey (Part 7 of 12)

Promoting my second book by promoting my first book

The end of day 1 of my promotion is here. I had a total of 265 downloads. I was hoping for more, but apparently Saturdays aren’t like Sundays. I’m expecting double the downloads tomorrow. It’s not “good” to expect things, so I’ll just say, I “hope” the amount of downloads double by the end of tomorrow.

265 isn’t great.

There is no rhyme or reason why I didn’t get very many downloads, perhaps because the main push of my promotions are starting tomorrow?

Why?

I decided to promote on most of those free ebook promotion websites on Sunday, July 28th. I’ve heard from other authors that Sundays are the best for free ebook downloads. I guess it’s most everyone’s day off to relax and read.

Ranked 5th in…

Right now I’m ranked 5th in free ebooks in the Fantasy/Magic category for Young Adults and Teens on Amazon. I’m crossing my fingers for a #1 ranking tomorrow. That’s my goal, of course. I’m ranked #968 in all of free ebooks. That’s the lowest in the free ebook section that I’ve ever been.

The Main Reason…

…for promoting my first book was to get people to see that I have another book that they could purchase and download. My “idea” didn’t work. I had a big fat “0″ purchases for book 2, “The PureLights & The PureLight Order“.

Now, I assume, that if someone who downloads my book and likes it, they’ll then buy my second book in the series. However, when people download books for free, you never know if or when they’ll get to reading it. It may take months for someone to finally read my book, then purchase the second book. Nonetheless, that’s how the book industry works, so I shouldn’t be expecting anything more.

There’s that “expecting” word again.

I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Cheers!

Part 8

12 Days: My Self Publishing Journey (Part 6 of 12)

Promoting my second book by promoting my first book

So, it’s here. Only one more hour until the promotion starts. Right now, it’s 11 pm (Pacific Standard Time) and I’m still working diligently on my second book. The editor, of course, found an error in chapter 3 in my second book and she’s working on it as I write this post. We went over the mistake about 20 minutes ago, verified that it was indeed an error,  and as soon as we’re done fixing it, I’m uploading book 2 back onto Amazon so that it will be there when people download my first book.

Editing 101

After writing a story, an edit is a must. Then another edit. Then another, until you’ve reached the point where your head is about to explode and you want to curse at kittens. I know, it sounds a little overboard, but that’s not where it stops. A week after the edits are complete, you pick your book back up and edit again, and again, and again, then you start actually cursing at kittens–if you can find any. By the end of the edits, you’re pounding your head on the desk as you pull your hair. A week later, you pick up your book again and edit.

It’s a long process and by the time you’re done, you realize you can edit the book another dozen to two dozen times. It’s never-ending. Even J.R. Tolkien of the Lord of the Ring Novels complained about his book–twenty years later–saying he could have edited this part and that part better and so on and so forth.

That’s why it’s so important to have an editor. They not only fix the grammar, spelling mistakes, and comma placements, they also help you with your plot and characters. If a certain spot in the story doesn’t make sense, they point it out and help you patch it up. An editor can take a so-so story and make it a masterpiece. They are the other piece of the writer and without them, most writers are lost. They are the hero/heroine behind the scenes. They should be applauded, paid more, and given lots and lots of smiles when you walk by them on the sidewalk. You’ll know an editor by the massive crease in their brow.

Kindle Previewer

Before approving my book to be published on Amazon Kindle, I look at the Kindle Previewer. It’s a free application from Amazon that allows you to see what your book looks like on the Kindle–before it’s downloaded on Kindle. This is where I spend hours upon hours reading through my book, making sure the indents are correct, the spelling has been spell-checked properly, and everything is kosher. Writing a book is a lot of work, a lot of happiness, and a lot of in-between! But, worth it.

Promoting on a large email list

Where I live, there’s a very large email list of networkers who are always advertising their services. I’m on the email list and have been on it for over five years. It’s time to introduce my second book to them by introducing my first book. I’m going to tell them about my free promotion that starts tomorrow.

I’ll tell you how it goes…

 

12 Days: My Self Publishing Journey (Part 5 of 12)

Promoting my second book by promoting my first book

If you just arrived at my strange and yet extremely popular posts of my self-publishing journey, then let me tell you what I’ve been writing about.

This Saturday, July 27th, I’m doing a free ebook giveaway for my first book, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“. The free promotion will end July 31st, making it a 5 day free event. Check it out if you like incredible books that will knock your socks off and keep you up late because you can’t put it down.

Okay, I’m a little biased.

The goal of this promotion is to get my new book, “The PureLights & The PureLight Order“, some lovin’ as well, which is book 2 in this series. When people read my first book, then perhaps they’ll like it and purchase my second book.

That’s the goal.

And, the process of promoting isn’t an easy task. It’s a lot of work, a lot of trial and error, and a lot of luck involved. This is my third free ebook promotion for ”The PureLights of Ohm Totem” and each step I’ve taken has garnered me more and more ebook downloads, but as of today, I’m still not where I want to be.

So, this third time around, I’m shooting for the stars, expecting between 10,000 and 20,000 downloads. And, I’m doing my best to get the word out about this coming free ebook promotion of mine. I’ve been writing about all of the blogs, ebook promotion websites, tweets, facebook strategies, and so on and so forth, that I’ve been submitting my ebook to. I’ve written about all of the sites I’ve used and even wrote about one of the sites that I was hoping to get approved for, but was knocked off my high horse with a big, “Nope! We aren’t going to promote you, BUDDY!” Apparently, I didn’t have enough customer reviews for my book.

Them’s the drawbacks of a newer book.

And, just to let you know, I’m currently looking for more reviews.

My second book

Last night, after battling my headache, which my massage therapist (girlfriend) and I finally defeated (YAY!), I downloaded my second ebook, “The PureLights & The PureLight Order“. Yes, it’s up and you can go here to see it. The next process for my second ebook is to create a physical book. I do that on CreateSpace, where I’ll go through the PDF creation stage, then upload the PDF of my second book onto CreateSpace, upload the cover, go through the many steps it takes to get the book reviewed for submission approval, grab a proof to approve it myself.

After all of that, I set the price and decide if I want to pay CreateSpace $25 dollars to do an expanded distribution. That means they’d send your book to stores, such as, Barnes and Noble, if they request it. I’ve not chosen that as of yet. I’m still mostly focusing on the ebook process of publishing. I’ll get to the POD (Print On Demand) as soon as the dust settles a bit around me.

The Dust Settles? What?

The ebook process of publishing is a lot of work and as a new self-published author, a father of 3 children with a full time job (other than writing, promoting, publishing, etc.), my time is thin and I only have the ability to do so much.

So, what I’m saying is that I need to take it slow. Don’t rush, because when you do, you ruin (everything). I’m taking each blog that I’ve read about on “How to Become a Millionaire in the Self-Publishing Ebook Business in a Matter of Days with No Experience or Expertise Under Your Belt At All” with a grain of salt. For the 99% of authors out there, and the million dollars we may want, it doesn’t always come “right away” or “ever”.

Okay, so tomorrow is the big day. The first day before blast off and I have to get all my little things in order. I’ll be keeping these posts coming while monitoring my downloads–which I’ll give to you at the end of each day.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed, hoping for thousands and thousands of downloads for book 1, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“.

Keep your eyes here…

…a miracle is about to happen.

12 Days: My Self Publishing Journey (Part 4 of 12)

Promoting my second book by promoting my first book

I just got off the phone (not email, this time) with Barry Eva. He was interviewing me on his radio show, “A Book and a Chat.” I think it went okay. The host, Barry, was a joy to talk to and really eased me into the interview. I’ve never given a radio interview before, so I didn’t know what to expect.

Take a listen: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/across-the-pond

Barry’s blog: http://abookandachat.blogspot.com/

If it’s not up on his websites today (July 24th), then it will be up by tomorrow. I should have used a different phone when I talked to Barry, because my phone sometimes echoes the words that I just spoke right back into my hear. So, I get to speak and hear an echoed playback of what I just said while I’m still speaking, sometimes making me fumble my words. Nonetheless, I had fun.

POD (Print on Demand)

I received a wonderful email today from a fellow author asking me what I’m planning on doing with POD. Is it something I’m adding into the equation of my promotion?

Since POD only consists of 10% of my book sales and I can’t do a free promotion for physical books, I’m looking at POD (CreateSpace) as a bonus if I sell any of them during my free promotion and thereafter. Other than that, I haven’t put POD’s in the equation, as of yet. We’ll see if I do.

The Radio

This was part of my promotion as well. What I’ve come to the conclusion, when being a guest a radio program, is to not sound like an idiot. And, as I’m listening to the radio interview right now, I’ve concluded that I sound like an idiot. Today, I woke up with a headache because of yesterday. I had worked nine hours of sports therapy (my other job), so that’s my excuse.

Anyway, I will forgive myself. It was my first interview. So, moving on…

The Cover

…is complete. It’s here, if you want to take a look. I’ve gone over and over it, trying to get it as perfect as I can. The radio show host, Barry, took a look at my cover, and comparing it with my older cover, said he couldn’t see much of a difference. If you take a closer look, you can see that the background image on the new cover is a real image and the background image on the old cover is a painted one. I wanted my cover to look a little more attractive and eye-catching.

eBook Tracker

I’ve gone ahead and signed up with Kindle Nation Daily’s eBook Tracker. That is supposed to, according to the website, “ see the impact of marketing efforts and price changes on your books’ sales ranks and pricing, know right away when sales start to flag on one of your titles, and see how your books’ rank and pricing data compare to those of your competitors!”

Now, if I didn’t have a major headache, then I’d continue typing more of what I’m doing with my ebook promotion, but I’m going to go and get some some therapeutic massage work on it right now, so I’ll be back up and at ‘em by tomorrow.

Cheers!

12 Days: My Self Publishing Journey (Part 3 of 12)

Promoting my first book by promoting my second book
Editors

Today my editor blasted me for how I wrote the first chapter in book 2, “The PureLights & The PureLight Order“. When I say, “blasted”, I mean that she tore me apart, beat every inch of me, and then, to top it all off, threw me to the pigs–to be eaten…alive!

Okay, it wasn’t that bad.

All she did, metaphorically, was tackle me, then pick me up, and body slam my sensitive “writing” soul. Then she dusted me off, telling me that the rest of my book “is great!” She applauded me on it. She even told me that she thinks my book is going to “take off”. However, the most important part of my book–chapter 1–is supposed to grab the reader. It apparently didn’t.

Fast forward five minute – My shoulders were drooped forward, my lips in a frown, and my mind screamed, “I need to write better!”

Fast forward another five minutes – My smile is back, my hope is up and we’re fixing the first chapter. In fact, we made it much, much better.

More about editors

I’ve had two editors edit my books. They both were and are very talented. One of the editors, the one I’m using for my second book, is an extremely talented artist and thinks that I need to change the book cover to my first book, so…

We changed my book cover

We added some things, changed the background, and if you scroll down a centimeter, you’ll see it.

The old cover is below.

So, you be the judge. The second book cover you see is my “baby” and was with me since the beginning (of my book publishing career), so I have a lot of love toward it. However, it didn’t sell. I’m hoping the second one is a little more appealing.

What else am I doing?

I’m glad you asked.

When I read the book, “Self-Printed”, by Catherine Ryan Howard, she wrote about the professionalism of self published authors compared to traditionally published authors. She advised self-published authors to be as professional as can be. She gave an example of what a mistake from a self-published author looks like.

When you go to amazon and click on the book cover, it pops up a sample of one to two chapters for the potential customer to read. In that sample, you’ll see the cover image, the table of contents, copyright, etc..–just like most books. However, many self-published authors make the error of skipping the table of contents, copyright, etc., and go ahead with chapter 1. The self-published author making this mistake thinks that if he/she started the sample on chapter 1, then the reader won’t have to wade through all that muck (table of contents, acknowledgments, copyright, etc.–how many times can I write “etc.” in this paragraph?). All that putting chapter 1 at the beginning of the sample does is scream, “SELF-PUBLISHED AND UNPROFESSIONAL!!!”

On the road to my free promotion

I did one more thing that I hope will help with my free promotion for book 1, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“. Besides making my book free for 5 days, and all the other things you read about in my previous posts, I just went to Kindle Nation Daily and paid $29.99 for their Kindle Free Book Highlighter. They have a lot services that I wanted to use, but I chose the least expensive, ’cause I’m not a millionaire author as of yet.

Here is what Kindle Nation Daily says about their Kindle Free Book Highlighter program: “Your free book listing will be included in a post (like this one) listing up to 15 free books that will appear on the Kindle Nation website with a link (like this one) for the 131,000 fans of our Facebook page. The post and the Facebook update will go up on our website between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern time, almost always before 1:30 pm EST. If you are having trouble finding your post, please check our Facebook page after 2 pm EST.”

My excerpt

What’s an excerpt? An excerpt is a small “teaser” of your next book to entice the reader to go ahead and buy the next book in the series. That’s what I just added to my first book. I put an excerpt of chapter 1 from book 2, “The PureLights and The PureLight Order,” into the last pages of book 1.

Wow, it’s late. I gotta go…

See you tomorrow!

Part 4

12 Days: My Self Publishing Journey (Part 2 of 12)

If you haven’t read part 1, then click here.

Otherwise, carry on…

Day 2: Promoting my second book by promoting my first book

I just got off the email (yes, email, not phone) with Stewart over at Exposure4all and I’ve just been verified and approved for his marketing services. He’s going to market my book to over 380,000 twitter followers. He’s going to send 30 of my tweets over a 6 day period for only $7.60. To me, that’s a great deal and I feel lucky he went forward with my book and is helping me with this promotion. He’s an extremely busy man, so I’m thanking my lucky stars. Now, let’s see if it gets me anywhere. I’ll let you know when the promotion is over, since, well, it hasn’t even started yet.

I also just got off the email with BookBub and they informed me, regretfully, that they had to turn me down. I had signed up with them to send my book to their readers. They have one of the biggest lists of readers looking for “Fantasy” books–over 230,000. I’ve talked with many authors who have used BookBub’s services and those authors went from very little sales to over, on average, $8,000 worth of sales in just one month.

I’ll just shake it off.

Okay, I’m back and I just figured out that life goes on.

Anyway, my book just didn’t quite meet their requirements. They wouldn’t tell me exactly why I wasn’t accepted, but my guess is that I don’t have enough reviews. I have fourteen 5 star reviews and one 4 star review. It seems that most of the books that I’ve seen advertised on BoobBub have over 50 reviews. My 15 reviews doesn’t compare. So, I’ve got to concentrate on getting reviews for my book!

My goal

I’m aiming high, but I want between 10,000 and 20,000 downloads for my free book. If I can get more, then I would love that. Again, the reason I want so many downloads is the potential to raise my book’s ranking on Amazon. I don’t know exactly how the Amazon algorithms work, nor does anyone else, but what we authors have seen through the years is the more free downloads one gets, the higher they are placed in the Amazon rankings AFTER the promotion is over, plus, it gives you the chance to do what I’m doing with this promotion–give away my first book, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“, for free with the hope that some of those free downloads will transfer into sales for my second book, “The PureLights and the PureLight Order”, which will be on Amazon by the first day of this promotion.

“This” Promotion

I keep typing “this” promotion, but if by chance it’s been a while since you’ve read part 1, then I’ll give you a little reminder of what I’m doing.

Amazon gives each author 5 days of promoting their own book for free on Amazon. An author, if they sign up under a certain program with Amazon, will be able to do “this” promotion every 90 days. Now, each 90 days the author has the choice to promote their book for 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, and so on and so forth. So, if an author promotes their book for 2 days one week, then 3 days the next week, then that’s fine. They just can’t extend past 5 days for that 90 day period.

Wow, I hope that made sense.

Here goes…

What I’ve done leading up to this promotion are several things that I, like I said before, hope can get me between 10,000 and 20,000 downloads or more. I started this promotion and signed up for the programs you’re about to read about, months ago. My thought is that if you get in line earlier than the rest, then you get more of a chance to be seen. You see, not all promotion sites will guarantee you a listing. You can submit your book to them without knowing that on the day you want your book listed, it’s too full and your book got kicked off the train. Thus is the reason I planned early–too make sure I have a seat on the train.

Let me take you on a ride. Follow me…

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The absolute first thing I did was sign up with eBookBooster. They submit your book to 50+ sites. If they can get me on all of the free websites that help me promote to everyone out there that my book is free, then great! If not, well, I didn’t lose much. Last time I submitted to ALL the sites myself, it only gathered me 450 downloads. This time I let the pro do it. We’ll see how it goes.

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I then went over to the World Literary Cafe and signed up to their social media book buzz program. It only runs in July and August. Here is why it’s so cool.

From the World Literary Cafe, themselves: “WLC has partnered with FreeBooksy to help promote author’s free titles for the month of July/August. If your book is free, you can gain the exposure listed above (Standard Social Media Book Buzz without the excerpt) IN ADDITION, 30 lucky authors who purchase a Social Media Mania promotion for July and whose book is free will ALSO be included in Freebooksy’s daily email. The email goes out to thousands of readers who own Kindles and have specified their genre interests.  FREE titles may purchase this option only once/month per title. The Standard package may be purchased for multiple days.”

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I have over 7,000 followers on twitter, so I’ve set up 5 tweets with TweetDeck that will be sent everyday from July 27th (first day of my promotion) to July 31st (last day of my promotion).

I set the same type of tweet system up with Exposure4all, but to over 380,000+ twitter followers.

I went to BookBlast and signed up for their genre specific emails. They have subscribers/readers who are looking for certain genre’s to read. I signed up for their “Fantasy Subscriber List”. There are over 8,000 on that list.

I signed up with Kindle Fire Department where they will advertise my free book, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“, to 52,000 of their fans.

And, I’m talking to you, who will send 10,000 of your friends, family, and associates to my book.

So, for you, I thank you muchly (new word).

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I don’t know why I’m not just typing, 1., 2., 3., 4.. I’m typing out the numbers and, to top it off, in a vertical format. I have my 2 year old daughter in my office with me as I type, so maybe that’s why. She’s giving me the “just have fun, DAD!” jive. And, right now she’s reading books to me…

…she’s making me play with a stuffed puppy dog, now…

…oh, wait, she apparently want’s me to dance with her. Hold on a sec…

…okay, I’m back.

A fellow author’s help

If you remember yesterday’s post, I mentioned a woman by the name of Claudia Harbough. She wrote the book, “Her Grace in Disgrace“. And in only a month, she’s almost hit the top 1000 most popular books on Amazon. It means she’s selling just over 100 books a day. Wow! I’m not selling that many a month.

She had asked for my email, saying that she would like to help me with my marketing, not because I’m neat or anything, but because she’s awesome. And, of course, I want to get my book out because I’ve written one that I think is wonderful, entertaining, well-written, and inspiring, so I’d love it if I could reach more people. Now, she hasn’t emailed me yet, but she said she would soon.

I’ll keep you updated. Until tomorrow…

Cheerio!

12 Days: My Self-Publishing Journey (Part 1 of 12)

Day 1: Promoting my second book by promoting my first book

Yesterday, on twitter (no, I’m not a twitter-holic), I followed a fellow author. She messaged me soon after I followed her, saying that she took a look at my book (my first book), “The PureLights of Ohm Totem” and liked it, which she’ll be buying and downloading on her Kindle soon. She asked me if I’d like to take a look at her book to see if it would be something my wife would like (I don’t have a wife, but that’s a different story. I do have a girlfriend, though). I clicked on the link, read the description, liked the reviews, and so I bought the book. It’s titled, “Her Grace in Disgrace” by Claudia Harbaugh. Then, upon further reading her amazon page, I saw that she had only published it a month ago, but her book was about to break the 1000 rankings on Amazon! What!? Wait! How did she do that? And, to top it off, this is her first book!

Now, if you’re not an author, you’re probably thinking, “So, what’s the big deal?”

Well, here’s the big deal. If it’s an author’s first book and they JUST published it, most don’t expect, and only wish, to break the top 1000 books on Amazon kindle (ebooks). Those are the best ranked, most profitable, most loved books on Amazon. It’s an author’s dream to reach that, though it’s my dream to eventually reach the top 100, then the top 10, then #1. Yeah, we can dream, can’t we?

Anyway, if you’re like me before I became an author and don’t know what Amazon rankings mean, then let me explain.

The top eBooks on Amazon rank from “1″ (being the most popular) to “1,000,000+” (being the least popular or least purchased). To get to 1,000 on Amazon means you’re selling your book at quite a high rate–a little over 100 books a day.

Now, again, how did she do that?

Well, I had to know, so I went ahead and asked her. I don’t have the answer(s) yet, but she’s going to take me through the process sometime this week via email. I can’t thank her enough and, on the same note, I can’t wait to use her techniques. More on that, later…

A quick story of my first promotion on Amazon

When my first book, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“, came out, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I published it, crossed my fingers, did a couple of free promotions on Amazon and didn’t sell very many books. The idea with the Amazon free promotion was to be pushed to a higher ranking on the genre page that I’m listed in–on the “free books” portion of that genre category. I did so in hopes that thousands upon thousands of people would download my book for free, read it, and tell everyone they knew about it. And, when their friends, family, and acquaintances found out about my book (certainly after the free promotion was over), they’d run home as fast as they could just to take a glimpse at this amazing book, buy it, and spread the word to more people. I’d be on top of Amazon in no time, but not in the free category–in the paid category.

That didn’t happen.

The first free promotion got me 184 downloads on a 2 day promotion. Amazon allows an author to choose up to five days to promote their free book, but I only chose 2 days because I wanted to do another promotion a month later (you get 5 free days every 90 days on Amazon). Anyway, I got as high as “19″ on the FREE eBOOK “Fantasy – Epic” genre ranking system on Amazon. That’s a mouthful.

And, to make things a little worse, I only sold 15 total books after that promotion was over. Not great!

I was distraught, confused, and…giddy. I know, how could I be giddy? Well, now had a challenge in front of me. I had to figure out how to become a top author on Amazon.

Second Promotion

Okay, so I learned my lesson. I needed to read what other “successful” authors did to get them on the best-sellers list, other than write a brilliant, well-written book, which I felt I did (my book placed 4th in a large writing competition and 1st in its category). So, I get to pat myself on the back. Way to go…me.

I bought several “how to self-publish and make a gazillion dollars” books and read blog after blog on the subject. I spent endless hours learning the self-publishing ropes.

Categories

One of the first things I learned was that I needed to put my book in a specific category. I had mine in “Fantasy” and “Fantasy – Epic”. If people are looking for “Lord of the Rings” or “Game of Thrones”, then they’ll see those books on top of those categories, which has over 77,000 books. If someone wanted to find my book in that category, they’d have to shuffle through over 400 pages of books to find, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“, and when they got there, after a long grueling day of searching, they’d have to read my reviews, my description, my bio and decide if it’s a book they’d want to buy.

I don’t think that’ll be happening any time soon. And, if someone does that? Then…wow!

So, the new categories I chose were “Fantasy – Visionary” and “Juvenile Fiction (Young Readers) – Fantasy and Magic”. There were, at the time, less than 10,000 books in each of those categories. There are authors out there who suggest going even further down the category line to try and find a category that has less than a 100 books in it. I couldn’t find one that fit my book with anything under 8,000 books.

Free Promotions

Many of the books and blogs I read said that they used certain websites to promote their free eBook for FREE. Yes, they will promote your ebook for free, as long as your book is currently being promoted on Amazon for free (as I said before, Amazon allows you to promote your book on Amazon for free for 1-5 days every 90 days or so). These books and blogs also pointed out that those free websites do a masterful job of letting thousands upon thousands of interested readers know about your book.

Hmm…I thought for a half a second, then jumped on that ban-wagon as fast I as I could.

I found over fifty of these sites. I submitted my book, my book’s description, my book’s cover image, my author profile picture, my bio, etc. to those websites and on the day of my promotion, they tweeted my ebook on twitter, sent my ebook cover and description in an email to their subscribers.

*Side note for authors: Here’s a link to a website that has a list of 50+ websites that you can submit your novel to, or, if you’re super busy, they can submit your book for you to each website for only $40–eBookBooster.

These websites claim to have thousands of subscribers or twitter followers or facebook likes and they’ll send your free ebook link to each and every one of their fans. Some of these websites will charge $5 to guarantee a listing of your book, because sometimes they don’t have enough room or time to promote every book that gets submitted.

So, what did I do? I submitted my book to ALL of them. I paid a few websites $5 in order to guarantee me a spot on the day I promoted my book, giving me the feeling that I was on the right track. I was going to get my book out there for everyone in the entire world to read. I was going to finally make it as a writer. No problem. No problem at all!

How many days I promoted my book for free this time around?

3 days.

I made sure the days would be Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I chose those days because I read that they are the best days to promote your free ebook. Then, after the promotion, I read that Thursdays are the best days. A little later, I read that “FreebieFridays” are the best days, especially on twitter. Months later, I read it doesn’t matter. My conclusion? No one knows.

My stats for the second promotion

On the day of my second promotion I was a ball of jitters and high spirits. Here it was, the day that five thousand or five million people will download my book, making sure I’m the numero uno (#1) in my genre category for free ebooks.

Again, that didn’t happen.

My book was downloaded a whopping 450 times. Now, as you can see, that’s not at all what I was hoping for or expecting. At least a 1,000 downloads? Please? Throw me a bone?

My begging, my groveling, and my crying got me no where. I actually didn’t do any of that, but thinking about it, perhaps that would have actually got me somewhere.

By the end of the first day of this promotion I was surprised to see that I was 2nd in my “Fantasy – Visionary” category. I had over 200 downloads on the first day and by my third day, I still had some free downloads trickling in, and was able to remain near the top of my category.

What did that get me?

When the promotion was over, I was up at the 19,000 ranking for all Amazon ebooks. That’s not great, but it’s better than where I was at–the 200,000 ranking–where no body would find me. It’s a lonely, murky place down there. Shortly after, I had 30 paid purchases, which meant that 30 people paid to download my book and read it on their kindle. Again, not great, but better. And, I had some great reviews that came in after the promotion.

Reviews

Those wonderful, incredible reviews. They’ll either bring you warmth and happiness or rip your heart out. They’ll also be very difficult to obtain–at first.

By the beginning of the second promotion, I had about five reviews. All of them were 5 stars. A couple of months after the second promotion, I had 14 reviews. Some of them were because of the second free promotion and some of them were because I sent out my ebook to professional reviewers and professional review bloggers. About 1% actually read my book and reviewed it. Right now, I’m still waiting on three of them who said they are currently reading my book and will write a review once they’re done.

I don’t want to explain every single way to get a review, so if you’re an author, then go here: PageLily - How to Succeed on Amazon (they are my favorite ebook conversion/formatting company–cheap and professional). PageLily has partnered with a company called “AMC” that will help you get reviews, morally, without paying for them or badgering people to review your book in order to get them. So, watch the AMC video after you click the link above.

How I’m currently doing my “third” free Amazon ebook promotion, which starts in 7 days (July 27th)

The very first sentence on this post was: “Day 1: Promoting my second book by promoting my first book”. And, we’ve finally made it here. I’ve learned a lot from my past experiences and have made a lot of changes on how I’m going to promote my book this time around, though it’s ten times the amount of work compared to the first two promotions.

So, here goes…

For the next 12 days (including today) I’m going to keep you updated on this journey–promoting my second book by promoting my first book. It’s going to be fun, informative, clever, and just a plenitude of great reading.

What I’ll be doing

I told you about all those websites I went to in order to promote my first book for free, remember? Well, I’m doing it again, but with a little twist, because my second book, “The PureLights & The PureLight Order”, is coming out soon. In fact, I’m bringing it out a couple of days before I start this third promotion, making it available by the time this promotion begins.

But, this little twist and what I hope to learn from the woman at the beginning of this post, Claudia Harbaugh, will be in tomorrows edition of 12 Days: My Self-Publishing Journey. Perhaps I can use her techniques, her tid-bits, and her brains, to make my books rise to the top.

Stay tuned… part 2

*Second side note: If you’re a struggling author that needs help, then go and get the book, “Self-Printed“, by Catherine Ryan Howard. You won’t regret it. I just finished it. It’s the best book I’ve ever read on self-publishing. After that, go to the website A Newbies Guide to Publishing and wade through J.A. Konrath’s archives to figure out how he became successful. He’s a full disclosure author, giving you, as a writer, as much information as he has accumulated throughout the years. You’ll be blown away.

12 Days: My Self-Publishing Journey

Day 1: Promoting my second book by promoting my first book

Yesterday, on twitter (no, I’m not a twitter-holic), I followed a fellow author. She messaged me soon after I followed her, saying that she took a look at my book (my first book), “The PureLights of Ohm Totem” and liked it, which she’ll be buying and downloading on her Kindle soon. She asked me if I’d like to take a look at her book to see if it would be something my wife would like (I don’t have a wife, but that’s a different story. I do have a girlfriend, though). I clicked on the link, read the description, liked the reviews, and so I bought the book. It’s titled, “Her Grace in Disgrace” by Claudia Harbaugh. Then, upon further reading her amazon page, I saw that she had only published it a month ago, but her book was about to break the 1000 rankings on Amazon! What!? Wait! How did she do that? And, to top it off, this is her first book!

Now, if you’re not an author, you’re probably thinking, “So, what’s the big deal?”

Well, here’s the big deal. If it’s an author’s first book and they JUST published it, most don’t expect, and only wish, to break the top 1000 books on Amazon kindle (ebooks). Those are the best ranked, most profitable, most loved books on Amazon. It’s an author’s dream to reach that, though it’s my dream to eventually reach the top 100, then the top 10, then #1. Yeah, we can dream, can’t we?

Anyway, if you’re like me before I became an author and don’t know what Amazon rankings mean, then let me explain.

The top eBooks on Amazon rank from “1″ (being the most popular) to “1,000,000+” (being the least popular or least purchased). To get to 1,000 on Amazon means you’re selling your book at quite a high rate–a little over 100 books a day.

Now, again, how did she do that?

Well, I had to know, so I went ahead and asked her. I don’t have the answer(s) yet, but she’s going to take me through the process sometime this week via email. I can’t thank her enough and, on the same note, I can’t wait to use her techniques. More on that, later…

A quick story of my first promotion on Amazon

When my first book, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“, came out, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I published it, crossed my fingers, did a couple of free promotions on Amazon and didn’t sell very many books. The idea with the Amazon free promotion was to be pushed to a higher ranking on the genre page that I’m listed in–on the “free books” portion of that genre category. I did so in hopes that thousands upon thousands of people would download my book for free, read it, and tell everyone they knew about it. And, when their friends, family, and acquaintances found out about my book (certainly after the free promotion was over), they’d run home as fast as they could just to take a glimpse at this amazing book, buy it, and spread the word to more people. I’d be on top of Amazon in no time, but not in the free category–in the paid category.

That didn’t happen.

The first free promotion got me 184 downloads on a 2 day promotion. Amazon allows an author to choose up to five days to promote their free book, but I only chose 2 days because I wanted to do another promotion a month later (you get 5 free days every 90 days on Amazon). Anyway, I got as high as “19″ on the FREE eBOOK “Fantasy – Epic” genre ranking system on Amazon. That’s a mouthful.

And, to make things a little worse, I only sold 15 total books after that promotion was over. Not great!

I was distraught, confused, and…giddy. I know, how could I be giddy? Well, now had a challenge in front of me. I had to figure out how to become a top author on Amazon.

Second Promotion

Okay, so I learned my lesson. I needed to read what other “successful” authors did to get them on the best-sellers list, other than write a brilliant, well-written book, which I felt I did (my book placed 4th in a large writing competition and 1st in its category). So, I get to pat myself on the back. Way to go…me.

I bought several “how to self-publish and make a gazillion dollars” books and read blog after blog on the subject. I spent endless hours learning the self-publishing ropes.

Categories

One of the first things I learned was that I needed to put my book in a specific category. I had mine in “Fantasy” and “Fantasy – Epic”. If people are looking for “Lord of the Rings” or “Game of Thrones”, then they’ll see those books on top of those categories, which has over 77,000 books. If someone wanted to find my book in that category, they’d have to shuffle through over 400 pages of books to find, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“, and when they got there, after a long grueling day of searching, they’d have to read my reviews, my description, my bio and decide if it’s a book they’d want to buy.

I don’t think that’ll be happening any time soon. And, if someone does that? Then…wow!

So, the new categories I chose were “Fantasy – Visionary” and “Juvenile Fiction (Young Readers) – Fantasy and Magic”. There were, at the time, less than 10,000 books in each of those categories. There are authors out there who suggest going even further down the category line to try and find a category that has less than a 100 books in it. I couldn’t find one that fit my book with anything under 8,000 books.

Free Promotions

Many of the books and blogs I read said that they used certain websites to promote their free eBook for FREE. Yes, they will promote your ebook for free, as long as your book is currently being promoted on Amazon for free (as I said before, Amazon allows you to promote your book on Amazon for free for 1-5 days every 90 days or so). These books and blogs also pointed out that those free websites do a masterful job of letting thousands upon thousands of interested readers know about your book.

Hmm…I thought for a half a second, then jumped on that ban-wagon as fast I as I could.

I found over fifty of these sites. I submitted my book, my book’s description, my book’s cover image, my author profile picture, my bio, etc. to those websites and on the day of my promotion, they tweeted my ebook on twitter, sent my ebook cover and description in an email to their subscribers.

*Side note for authors: Here’s a link to a website that has a list of 50+ websites that you can submit your novel to, or, if you’re super busy, they can submit your book for you to each website for only $40–eBookBooster.

These websites claim to have thousands of subscribers or twitter followers or facebook likes and they’ll send your free ebook link to each and every one of their fans. Some of these websites will charge $5 to guarantee a listing of your book, because sometimes they don’t have enough room or time to promote every book that gets submitted.

So, what did I do? I submitted my book to ALL of them. I paid a few websites $5 in order to guarantee me a spot on the day I promoted my book, giving me the feeling that I was on the right track. I was going to get my book out there for everyone in the entire world to read. I was going to finally make it as a writer. No problem. No problem at all!

How many days I promoted my book for free this time around?

3 days.

I made sure the days would be Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I chose those days because I read that they are the best days to promote your free ebook. Then, after the promotion, I read that Thursdays are the best days. A little later, I read that “FreebieFridays” are the best days, especially on twitter. Months later, I read it doesn’t matter. My conclusion? No one knows.

My stats for the second promotion

On the day of my second promotion I was a ball of jitters and high spirits. Here it was, the day that five thousand or five million people will download my book, making sure I’m the numero uno (#1) in my genre category for free ebooks.

Again, that didn’t happen.

My book was downloaded a whopping 450 times. Now, as you can see, that’s not at all what I was hoping for or expecting. At least a 1,000 downloads? Please? Throw me a bone?

My begging, my groveling, and my crying got me no where. I actually didn’t do any of that, but thinking about it, perhaps that would have actually got me somewhere.

By the end of the first day of this promotion I was surprised to see that I was 2nd in my “Fantasy – Visionary” category. I had over 200 downloads on the first day and by my third day, I still had some free downloads trickling in, and was able to remain near the top of my category.

What did that get me?

When the promotion was over, I was up at the 19,000 ranking for all Amazon ebooks. That’s not great, but it’s better than where I was at–the 200,000 ranking–where no body would find me. It’s a lonely, murky place down there. Shortly after, I had 30 paid purchases, which meant that 30 people paid to download my book and read it on their kindle. Again, not great, but better. And, I had some great reviews that came in after the promotion.

Reviews

Those wonderful, incredible reviews. They’ll either bring you warmth and happiness or rip your heart out. They’ll also be very difficult to obtain–at first.

By the beginning of the second promotion, I had about five reviews. All of them were 5 stars. A couple of months after the second promotion, I had 14 reviews. Some of them were because of the second free promotion and some of them were because I sent out my ebook to professional reviewers and professional review bloggers. About 1% actually read my book and reviewed it. Right now, I’m still waiting on three of them who said they are currently reading my book and will write a review once they’re done.

I don’t want to explain every single way to get a review, so if you’re an author, then go here: PageLily - How to Succeed on Amazon (they are my favorite ebook conversion/formatting company–cheap and professional). PageLily has partnered with a company called “AMC” that will help you get reviews, morally, without paying for them or badgering people to review your book in order to get them. So, watch the AMC video after you click the link above.

How I’m currently doing my “third” free Amazon ebook promotion, which starts in 7 days (July 27th)

The very first sentence on this post was: “Day 1: Promoting my second book by promoting my first book”. And, we’ve finally made it here. I’ve learned a lot from my past experiences and have made a lot of changes on how I’m going to promote my book this time around, though it’s ten times the amount of work compared to the first two promotions.

So, here goes…

For the next 12 days (including today) I’m going to keep you updated on this journey–promoting my second book by promoting my first book. It’s going to be fun, informative, clever, and just a plenitude of great reading.

What I’ll be doing

I told you about all those websites I went to in order to promote my first book for free, remember? Well, I’m doing it again, but with a little twist, because my second book, “The PureLights & The PureLight Order”, is coming out soon. In fact, I’m bringing it out a couple of days before I start this third promotion, making it available by the time this promotion begins.

But, this little twist and what I hope to learn from the woman at the beginning of this post, Claudia Harbaugh, will be in tomorrows edition of 12 Days: My Self-Publishing Journey. Perhaps I can use her techniques, her tid-bits, and her brains, to make my books rise to the top.

Stay tuned…

*Second side note: If you’re a struggling author that needs help, then go and get the book, “Self-Printed“, by Catherine Ryan Howard. You won’t regret it. I just finished it. It’s the best book I’ve ever read on self-publishing. After that, go to the website A Newbies Guide to Publishing and wade through J.A. Konrath’s archives to figure out how he became successful. He’s a full disclosure author, giving you, as a writer, as much information as he has accumulated throughout the years. You’ll be blown away.

Vote for Your Favorite Cover for my Second Book, “The PureLights and The PureLight Order”

Please Vote on my next book cover.  My next book comes out July 27th (The PureLights and The PureLight Order) and I need the right book cover and I would love your help deciding which one it is. If you could type in the letter of your favorite cover in the comment section below this post–either “A”, “B”, or “C”–then I’d be so very grateful. It will help me out a lot. Thank you so much! I’ll post the winning book cover in 3 days.

- Brandon Ellis,

www.thepurelights.com