Dhayaa Anbajagane's Blog, page 3

Cover of the week

It's Sunday again, and that's call for a new cover of the week! If you missed the last one, it was on the School of Good and Evil Series and you can find the link here.
So what's this week's cover?

 














 Sand

This weekend we're taking a look at Hugh Howey's Sand.
Now this guy has the best resources for anything an Indie Author might need, so you should take a look at his website if you need anything.

So now, this cover is gorgeous but what actually makes it work?

Landscape

So the landscape has been designed and portrayed really well. The main purpose of this part of the cover is to show you a major setting in the book. The cover portrays the lawless town that the story takes place in. The broken down houses and the sandstorm look give the reader a vivid image of where the events unfold.
The dark hill in the background has been blackened on purpose and so it adds a sense of mystery towards it. The moment you properly look at it, you go "What is that thing?" or "Why is it hidden?" and that is exactly what that part of the cover was meant to do.

Sky

The sky is one of the major positives of the cover. The gradient of grey to blue that the cover uses is really eye catching, creating eye popping colors while blending them quite well. Overall the sky and the landscape merge well without any blaring differences.
The stars are very nicely portrayed in the cover, the combination of few bright ones and many dark ones creating a good contrast. The additional effects on the sky, namely the folded-line one, is very good and gives the cover a treasure map look, the look of something that lay buried under the ground for a long. And if you've read the book, then you'd realize that perfectly aligned with an important aspect of the story.

Text

This is the real star of the cover. The fullstop after the title is just sheer genius. There are no artistic that i can describe for the cover, other than the fact that it looks amazing this way.
The tag lines are well colored, changing from blue to white when the essential final statement is made.
The author name is made larger and given a kind of rough look to fit in with the landscape with the cover and it works beautifully.
The credentials below that, the "New york times bestseller" statement, is made small enough to stay out of the way and yet be legible at the same time. It's color, if you notice, is the same as that of the sky's gradient so the colors of all the fonts are in perfect unison with the ground-sky color change.
It's also really important to notice that the font used for all the text has been meticulously selected and used, so the type of font majorly influenced the cover as well.

Conclusion

The biggest that makes this cover look great is that all of the colors it uses sticks to the brown-grey-blue gradient that's formed by the land and the sky. The sky's blue color is eye popping and the few bright stars in it make it stand out even more so. The text's font is really beautiful conveys the feel of the story in a very straightforward manner.

Changes

I don't think I have any changes to make to this wonderful piece of art. Don't feel the same? Comment and let me know what you think about the cover.

Setting up a book's Categories

Categories are the single most important thing that you might need to sell you book.
Especially if it's already selling.

Confused? Well, don't be. I'll explain to you everything that needs to be explained. Here we go.

So you have your book selling around 0 copies a day. Now you decide to hire an ebook promo site (if you want info on where to go for such sites click here ) and the site has your book chugging along. It probably gets you at least 15 copies on the promo day (if it isn't you're probably doing something wrong)

Now these 15 copies in a day, will increase your book rank to somewhere near the 10k - 15k range. Why did you hire an ebook promoter? Because you wanted people to see your book. Now the ebook promoter has done his job and shown it to everyone he could. What do you do now? You could spend money on another promoter but that'd be bad marketing.

What you should do is use Categories. Now how do you do that?

If you go to the kindle bestsellers tab you can see the kindle ebook categories on your left hand side

Let's take my book series for example. It's a Science Fiction book that's directed towards the YA crowd. Now I can either put it in Sci-Fi or in Young Adult Sci-Fi (You can actually chose both if you want to but read on to understand why you shouldn't do that)

First let's check out the Sci-Fi genre category.

So now we've gone to the Science Fiction Category. Our main agenda isn't with the first page here but is instead with the last one.

This is the overall rank for the 100th ranked book in Sci-Fi. and you should know it's pretty hard to get into the top 5k of books so this is poor category choice. This category is far to competitive for your book to fight in. Unless your book is super strong already and is surging with sales this isn't the category for you.

Now I also told you guys that my book was a YA targeted book, so let's check out YA Sci-Fi and see if that category suits the book.

So now we're in the young adult category. Let's see what the 100th ranked book is like.

Whoa! The book is all the way at 26,690! That is much much easier to get into. I need to sell maybe 10 books a day to get into it, which means if I sell 15 in a day after using the promo we mentioned before, then we get much higher up, and that means I get my book featured on the category list.
Now how does this help us? Let me explain.
Everything on the internet is about the number of people who view it. You may have a link that gets clicked on only 0.1% of the time, but if you send enough people to the link, you'll get plenty of clicks in a single day. 
The same way, if enough people see your book, there will definitely be substantial sales. What's our secret to getting discovered? Well, there are plenty of them, but this one here is the most crucial.

Get onto the right categories.

That single piece of advice can help you get a steady surge of books. Hope it works out for you! if you have any questions feel free to contact me.

Cover of the Week

So this is the first post in a new section that I will be calling "Covers of the Week". I'll basically put up a book cover every week (Mostly Sci-Fi and Fantasy, because that's where my expertise lies) and discuss key elements that an author needs to consider before trying to design his book cover. So here's the first cover I'm reviewing.

 

School of Good and Evil

This series has beautifully designed covers that connect and give the 'series' feel to both books. Let's see what it is that's great about these covers.

Character Portrayal

Character portrayal is a very delicate thing in the book cover industry. It's like being given a delicate ingredient to cook. You can turn it into the most marvelous dish or it could end up bitter and tasteless.
The cover utilizes an illustration instead of a real life photograph to portray it's characters and that is a top class choice, especially if you're in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy league.
Both characters in book one hit you immediately with their personalities. You can see that one is very arrogant while the other reserved (No points for guessing who's who!)
The second cover does especially well in that it pictures a guy's illustration, which shows that he has a lot of interacting time with both these characters. Putting him in the middle of both those girls shows that there might be a love triangle or some sort of fight between the girls where he is involved.
I, of course, have not read the book so those plot lines are mere speculation from the cover design.
So overall, these characters are a perfect ten on ten.

Background

The backdrop for a book is essentially what primarily draws you into the cover, and is responsible for giving you the overall theme of the book. This one is simply brilliant, and chooses 'Castles' as a common theme, which works well since the book is centered around princess like things.
The first cover immediately shoes you the split nature of the book or the things that will happen in the book, with one side showing the bad side and the other the good (Black might be good too, don't write it off already).
The second one has a equally adept cover selection, with the lower half and upper half contrasting well. The color selection, red and blue, is classic and works well with certain modifications. The background is really good, but maybe it could have been better. So let's give this a nine out of ten.

Text

The text on the first cover is almost void. The author's name is literally the only thing that can be considered as text since the book name is up on the symbol/banner.
But there is a certain significance in this text as well. The author's name has been sized down instead of being maximised to use up all thaat available space. This give teh background more eye-space and that helps the overall theme of the design.
In cover two, we have a line added, saying "New York Times bestseller". This could have been blown up too, but instead it's been shrunk down a bit to let the cover background rule the party. Overall quite a bit of modesty shown by the text.

Symbol

To me, this is the hero of the cover. Both books have this symbol screaming to be noticed. It's beautifully designed with the swans giving it the fairy-tale like effect. The swans are well covered, showing a dark theme and a light theme to represent the two sides of the story. The shield adds more to the 'fairy-tale' theme and works to improve the entire cover. The banner below the symbol has a few good colors and works well at displaying the text.
The second one adds an extra banner and does so with a good shape, somehow creating an illusion of the cover not being covered when it actually is. The extra butterflies add a certain flair to the cover. It seems unnecessary but it works and that's what matters.

Conclusion

In the end, the covers work because they stick to a common theme for everything, for the series as well as the cover.
Cover one stuck to a split theme, choosing to show a dark as well as a light theme in almost everything it portrayed. From the background to the characters to the symbol.
Cover two stuck to the lay out of cover one and added elements where necessary. That helped it stand out while remaining connected to the entire series.

Changes

There is probably one choice I would make in this cover. I'd make the text on the banner fit the dual theme, changing one side to a darker theme.

How would you change this cover? Express yourself in the comments section.

The Ocean at the end of the Lane Book Review

This book is amazing.

I felt I had to start out with that statement. The book deserves at least that much of an opening line. It is simply marvelous, beautiful and comes out as magical as Neil Gaiman intended it to be.

The story is about a little boy (who's name is never mentioned throughout the whole story and you never realize it until the end), and his life after something magical happens to him.

This isn't your regular 'peter pan comes flying through the window story'. It was powerful, realistic and shows you the nature of the human world. The story revolves around this unnamed boy and his new friend Lettie. The magical part of the story is very unclear and it's mechanics are hardly explained, but Gaiman surges through the story without the need for such explanation, albeit small ones here and there. In fact I'd have to say that the lack of explanations is what makes this even more mysterious. The story turns a little dark in the middle patch of the story, but it's believable and realistic, and not the kind which makes you go 'That could never have happened'

The book deals with very powerful emotions, from fear and happiness, to distraught and hatred. Everything through the eyes of a seven year old boy. The story is extremely powerful and I feel the need to keep saying it over and over, because it's emotions overwhelm you to the maximum.

I would love to tell you more, but I believe in reviews that don't have a spoilers, so I guess this is going to be all. Don't miss out on this book. 

How I got 200 followers in 10 days

Twitter.
It's an important part of any business, brand or personality. It's basically a network where you broadcast your opinions in less than 140 characters.
Why the character limit? No one knows, but it works in secluding the good from the bad, so no complaints about that.

I started updating my twitter account around the time I started the website, which was about ten days ago. This was after I'd left it Idle for a really really long time (I'd gotten tired of using it)
My account was at 285 followers on Day 0 and just today morning my twitter followers capped off at 500. That's 200 twitter followers in just 10 days!

So how exactly was I able to make this transformation? Simple. By using an amazing free online tool called Tweepi. You too can rack up your twitter followers using this simple and effective strategy.

Let's say you're an author like me. And you write romance books. Now, you know that anyone who's following Nicholas Sparks loves romance books (Or they might have a thing for him too but that's an anomaly we don't consider).
So you take Nicholas Sparks' twitter username and go onto Tweepi. This site has an option called follow the followers which is really really cool.
You enter in the guy's twitter username into the search bar and hit enter. And voila!
You get a list of all the people who follow Sparks' and now you can follow them too. And you can filter out things you don't want, like inactive follower's or non-english speaking accounts and so on.

But wait! Why are we following them you might ask? Isn't the whole point of this exercise to get twitter followers?

Well, yeah, but you have to give to receive.
Sorry about the cheesy comments. Here's an actual explanation for the whole thing.
Twitter is a community, not a fan page or anything like that. So unless you're super famous, you're never going to get a million followers by not following some yourself. The whole point of the twitter network is to create a twitter tribe by having a large list of people you follow along with a large (preferably larger) list of people who follow you. And the point of tweepi is, once you get quite a bit of followers, you'll start to pull them in on your own. and then it's bye bye tweepi. Until then, this amazing site is your best bet.

So does using Tweepi help you rack up followers?

Well, yes it does, but that isn't the only thing you should be doing. People run after you once they realize you have some cool content, like this blog I have or something else. So sharing the content you create is the best way to rack up your twitter followers. It doesn't even have to be the content that you make. Found a great post on the corner of the internet? Share it! Odd's are people will like it and follow you for finding such good content.
There is of course the question of how you tweet about your own content, but I don't think it's valid that I post about that right now. Probably a little later. I'll be sure to update this post with the link once I post.

So the secret to twitter? Use Tweei and provide content. That's all it takes.
Happy Tweeting!

The Dhayaa Update

Hi guys,

I've just finished the plot design for the third and final book of the Quest Saga, BeQuest. I must say it's really exciting and I can't wait to get started on it! I've got a new year's resolution of 3k words a day. But that seems to be unrealistic right now. I think time is a better way of scaling it. So let's say 3 hours a day? I'll just try out different things and look at what to do from there.

Meanwhile, I'm opening a new section up on The Indie Way. It's called "The Cover of the Week" where I pick up a cover that looks good and analyze the kind of elements that the author used in having it designed. Though it says cover of the week, I'll probably take a few covers; one cover for every category. So that'll be going on along the side as well.

I do have to make the release of AcQuest official though. The consumer copies are still not ready. I'd say about 90% at max.

I also have to re-edit ConQuest and update it as a second edition. I hope that'll boost sales a bit. I just got a kick ass cover for both the books, but the one for ConQuest is just leagues ahead.

So I have my work cut out for me. I do have quite a bit of free time from the 2nd of jan though, and I'm hoping these things will come together during that time.

Cheers!
Dhayaa Anbajagane

A Hundred Foot Journey Movie Review

It's about 11pm and I just finished looking past the credits to this amazing movie.

A Hundred Foot Journey.

This is basically a story about a young Indian kiddo who loses his family business in India due to some rebels and then travels abroad with his family in search of a place to settle down. So they finally settle down in a small village in France and start a restaurant. Unfortunately for them, their main competitor, a two star Michelin restaurant, is right across the road. The story goes about how this guy tries to become successful and get out of the shadow of the big restaurant..

The best thing about this movie is the beautiful character development and emotions. They were very realistic and hidden. They all had good backgrounds and integrated well with the story, only changing at the perfect point. My only problem with this story, is that the story turned out to be a little to unrealistic when towards the end. A few points could have been made a little more believable. Else this is a sublime sequence and a must watch for any person who can sit through it.

Bookbub : Break through the fortress

Bookbub.

The pinnacle of ebook marketing platforms, and unfortunately, it isn't easiest to get into. It's like this. Imagine an experienced mechanic (Bookbub). Now there comes along a small boy who wants to build a complex toy and sell it to the other kids(The author). Now the mechanic tries to analyze and see if the kids would like the toy before actually trying to build it, and that's what happens in the real world.

Bookbub analyzes books and selects them after checking if It'd perform well with their subscribers. Bookbub lists a few requirements on it's site, which are the most basic needs you will need to satisfy if you want to even have a chance of being considered.

Free or discounted by at least 50%. We promise our members that we will only feature books that have been deeply discounted.The best deal available. We won’t consider a book if it has been offered for a better price in the last 90 days, or if it will be offered for less in the near future.Error free. We look for content that is well-formatted and free of typos and grammatical errors.A limited-time offer. While we do consider permanently free books, we otherwise don’t feature low-price offers that are always available.A full-length book. Novels and collections of short stories or novellas should be at least 150 pages in length, works of nonfiction at least 100 pages, cookbooks at least 70 pages, middle grade books at least 100 pages, and children’s picture books at least 20 pages. We currently do not feature stand-alone novellas or short stories.Widely available. We only feature deals that are available on at least one major retailer. And the more, the merrier.Lastly, we will not feature the same book more than once every 6 months. Nor will we feature the same author more than once every 30 days.

They also have some tips which when satisfied will further push forward your chance to get a listing

Price point: We rarely feature books priced above $2.99, and the greater the discount, the more appealing the offer to our readers.Date flexibility: We have a limited number of spots in each category, so a broad range of possible promotion dates makes it more likely that we’ll be able to include your title.Professional presentation: We look for books with professional and appealing covers.Customer reviews: Customer reviews and ratings help our editors get a better sense of how other readers have responded to your book. However, there is no specific "minimum requirement," and reviews are only one factor out of many that we consider.Critical reviews: Write-ups from trusted editorial sources can also help us evaluate your submission. Same goes for awards, bestseller lists, and other accolades.Retailer product page: Because we direct our members to the retailer product pages for the books we feature, we want to ensure they have a good experience once they arrive. We look for product pages that are informative, clear, well-written, and error free.Subject matter: Certain genres and subgenres perform better with our readers than others. There’s a chance we simply don’t have a good place for your title right now or that the particular subject matter of your book isn’t as good a fit as others in the same category. However, we’re constantly expanding and adding new lists, so stay tuned for updates.

But these things are quite trivial things compared to Bookbub's actual selection process. After long intensive research, I've been able to see similar trends between the books that Bookbub lists on its newsletters.

1. Get a review with the big four

What are the big four? Well, they're huge review magazines who publish reviews that even the big publishing houses look up to. The main four in no necesaary order of superiority are, Publisher's weekly, Kirkus reviews, The Booklist and the Library Journal.

The fifth, dark horse, is Amazon's very own reviews. They are quite credible but much less so when compared to these other reviews.

A book that's been listed on Bookbub usually has a review by one of these big sites. The majority of the bbooks have TWO reviews from the Big four while the rest have one review. These reviews seem important then? Of course they are!
How do you get them? Well, right now, Publisher's weekly and Kirkus reviews are the only one's who're allowing Indie authors to hire their services, and be warned, the princes are skyrocketingly hefty. The Publisher weekly's process seemed quite complicated when compared towards that of Kirkus. 

2. Author Awards

As ironic as it may seem these awards are easier to come by than a proper Big 4 review, especially if your book is wacky and unique. The big four hate that kind of stuff.
I haven't done extensive research on this part, so I'll update as I go along.

3. High ratings, large no. of reviews and good sales rank

This is basically stating that your book has to be a bestseller if you want it to go through. Does it seem odd to you that Big 4 reviews are given more priority than the bestseller rank? I believe the reason is because when you go to Bookbub you're going there because your book rank is poor so it wouldn't be fair to judge upon that now would it?

Anyway, if you've got some sort of good selling book you might get picked up.

4. Free vs Paid

Assuming you have at least a 100 reviews in the bag with a 3.8+ rating on amazon, you have a much better chance of getting a list as a free listing rather than a paid one. I think it's probably because, as a free book, the book usually does generally well with the customers and Bookbub can use that general data and plot to see if the book will do well in the paid segment or not. So the next time you submit the book, assuming your free listing went well, go with a paid one and you should see your book go through the metal jaws of Bookbub's selection process.

5. Book cover and Goodreads

I'm splitting this section into two because both don't seem to have much credibility going towards them, as far as bookbub selection processes are concerned.

The Book cover

I've seen a book in paranormal series, that was position at no sales in a around half a year, be picked by Bookbub. The series has very beautifully designed book covers, each one matching the design of the other. Plus it was also a YA and teen Paranormal romance. Those things sell quick and fast.

Goodreads

I've seen one post about how a Goodreads campaign helped an author get onto Bookbub after a few attempts. It doesn't seem very credible but it's sure worth a shot. Increasing the number of Goodreads reviews for you book never hurt after all did it?

Conclusion

And so we come to the end of the Bookbub discussion. If you really want to get a listing with Bookbub and change the faate of your book, then I suggest reading this carefully.

More books = More sales

So say I have one book.
I sell that one book, at maybe 50 copies a day (You're a good author!) and let's assume on average all the books cost 2.99$

So now I have two books.
I put one out one both on kdp and promote the heck out of them. I easily make triple the sales compared to the usual. At a price 0.99$ i make 0.35$ and at triple I make 1.05$ Not a significant difference, but when i have TWO books, the BOOKS themselves help me promote each other. So I get more than triple the sales. So I make a considerably larger amount of money.

Now how does this work?

It has to do with Amazon's algorithms for their ebooks. I'm not going to get into the free Algorithm's cause that's an article for another post. Let's talk about the two most important categories.

Recommended for you : If your book sells a lot, then Amazon will recommend it to people.

Also boughts : Based on what your customers bought after they got your book, you can end up in the Also boughts list which is probably the easiest list to get into. 

The other lists depend of frequency of sales as well and are quite complicated. So say I get onto one of these lists. Both my books are on this list and then I have 2 more ways for people to see my books. Two powerful ways..

But this is for just two books. An author who has a good catalogue of maybe six or seven book scan rock kdp using proper strategies.

Always try to have two books on promo at once :

Preferably one free and one paid. Paid gets you sales and free gets you the visibility and readership. The perfect combo. I'd suggest running the paid promo either right after your free promo or halfway through your free promo. This way, you give the readers a chance to go through your second book and therefore, get them more interested in the second one.

Another super tip is when to update the free book's manuscript with a link to the discounted book at the very end. You can write a short blurb about the book and state that it's being sold for just so and so dollars and ask them to get it while the deal is hot. This is called a call to Action button. The most interested visitors will visit the page and definitely consider buying the book.

Consider having first book of the series as a permafree :

I cannot speak for this technique since I am yet to try it, but it is very very highly acclaimed and I suggest it if you have three or more books out. Setting your first book to a permanent free state( and and advert) and selling the others gives you money and viewership as well. Again, like with the first one, make sure you add links of all your other books at the end of this one. For those of you who don't know how to get your kdp book permafree this is how you do it.

You upload your ebook onto smashwords and then set it to 0.00$ (Smashwords lets you do this), and then you can go to your products page. If you scroll down you'll see "Tell us about a lower price", and you can go report. You can keep reporting but it's only counted once since Amazon keeps track of your IP address. So if you're lucky it takes a few hours, if you're not, a few months maybe.

There is absolutely no certainty in the change in pricing of permafree to paid and vice versa. So you don't much control over this, and that's why I don't really suggest it.

Have a extravaganza sale every year :

The motherload. Give out the first book as free, and then sell everything else at a paid discount promo (preferably 0.99$ for everything) gets you immense sales and visibility. Update the sales page of every book to make sure people know about the massive sale. I'd recommend you do it before major holidays because that way you don't get caught up in the Big 5 (Traditional Publisher's) books from esteemed authors. The only thing going for ebook is the price and Christmas is one time of year, ebook prices from even the Big 5 drop considerably. So the best time of year is definitely not Christmas, but right before it. This way, if your book gets a lot of sales by some christmas miracle (And by lot I mean a LOT), then you can ride on your own organic 'long tail' and have an after party for your extravaganza sale.

 

Now please note that for any of these marketing schemes to work, you have to be :

A really popular authorHave amazing reviews and ratingsAlready have a good viewershipHave a solid base as an author

Now if you don't have these then the fail safe option is to get the best eBook Promo site you can. Click here to check on that

 

The best ebook promo sites

So the main question we all have is, where should we spend our money and when should we spend it?

So here are a list of the top few ebook Promo sites that really crack the amazon list if you get a listing with them. I'll list them in a reverse order of ranking to give you a little suspense.

5. Fussy Librarian

The Fussy Librarian is a very good place to advertise your books. They work at very cheap rates, ranging from 9$ to 14$ depending on your genre. You can check the official list here

Like all ebook promo service, these guys have a requirement scheme as well, although it isn't very hard to get past. Here are their conditions.

10 reviews and a 4.0 rating on Amazon OR 10 reviews and a 4.0 rating on Barnes and Noble, 11 to 19 reviews and a 4.0 rating, or 20 reviews and a 3.5 rating. If you have 10 reviews split between Amazon's various stores -- like US and UK -- your book is eligible.A price of $5.99 or less. They encourage you to sell at $2.99 or less.

I have to say that seems pretty reasonable for the price and stuff. As a Science Fiction Author I've only tried Sci-Fi with them, and I have to say I wasn't overwhelmed by the results but there were some sales. They have around 90k subscribers, so if your book is in a popular category I'm sure it'll sell well.

4. ENT (eReader News Today)

This guy is was like the Chuck Norris in his old days. He commanded amazing coverage, being able to boast about rocketing a book from nothing all the way to #1. But alas, he has become older and he's fading fast in the light of his new competitors
He's still a huge name though, just not the best option out there anymore. It's got it's fb + twitter following to total north of 600K, which is A LOT of people.
His main selling point is that he takes 25% of the sales me makes for you. So if you made 40 sales on a promo, but only 10 through ENT, then only 25% of than 10 goes to him. No more. Pretty cool huh? You'll never EVER lose money with him so he's a safe be.
He does have a better option though, his featured book of the day deal, where your book is extensively promoted for a shy fee of 60$. I'd personally go for the 60$ one, it's not out of the league in terms of expense and the price seems to be worth the cost.
They don't have extensive rules other than reminding you to keep the price low and have a few good reviews. If you stick to that, then you're sure to get in with a listing.

3. BookSends (Previously called BookBlast)

Booksends is a dark horse to the leaders of the pack. With a subscriber list of 100K it hosts plenty of deals for prices from 10$ all the way to 125$. Their prices increase as time goes by, because of the proportional increase in their subscriber list. These guys have a few requirements too.

At least 5 reviews, with a high overall average, and an attractive cover.A planned sale price of less than $3 and at least 50% off full price.Due to limited space, authors are asked to submit just 1 book at a time and are limited to one ad per 30 days. We will not feature the same book more than once every 90 days.Novellas and short story collections are unlikely to be accepted at paid prices.If a book has been free in the previous 90 days, that's the only price they're willing to feature it at.

So Booksends is a really cool place to head to and you should really give it a shot. I'd recommend it to start an initial burst of sales for your book.

2. FKBT (Free Kindle Books and Tips)

These guys are a huge name, and their founder is in the top ten reviewers on Amazon, so he seems to know what he's doing. They boast a subscriber list of 750K (that's 75 with a 0) and while they admit that only around 100k people see the posts, you have to realize that a 100k is a pretty big number! Not the kind of number you use in everyday blog traffic statements.
Now their plans are very simple. And go north of 25$ all the way to 200$. They're very efficient and quite back logged, requiring you to book a spot on their list in advance. Highly recommended site.
The site needs 8 reviews to average out at 4.0 while four of those reviews have to be verified. The moderators personally read every review and then take a decision on entering your book. Quite a professional process I have to say.
They do provide good results and overall a cool site :)

1. BookBub ( No surprise there)

Here it is, the holy grail of book marketing. The device that can give life to any book, or rather it can give life to only a few kinds of books and that's where the problem starts. Imagine Bookbub to be a mechanic. And you're a automobile engineer. Now you're not very experienced nor do you have any funding (Publishing firm analogy), so when you need help you go to the experienced mechanic (Bookbub), but the mechanic's reputation is on the line. So he makes sure he can fix your makeshift car before he accepts to fix it.

Bookbub works the same way. It only accepts a book IT thinks it can sell. It is simply THE MOST exclusive ebook promo site there is, and with good reason too. Boasting a subscriber high of almost 2 million for the genre Mystery, this platform has easily achieved a 10 million user base for all the genres combined

The biggest problem is their willingness to accept you.

The Bookbub requirements list a separate post on it's own. I highly recommend that you give it a go, because if you can follow it and get your book listed on bookbub, you've pretty much guaranteed more submissions and thus, secured a huge resource on your hands.

For more on Bookbub's selection process, please click here.

Conclusion

These five sites are the pinnacle of ebook marketing, so if you have money to spare, don't look elsewhere, this is the place to go.