Lincoln Cole's Blog, page 7

Summer Solstice - C. Chase Harwood - The Last Rats

C. Chase Harwood was kind enough to include his short story, The Last Rats, in the Summer Solstice anthology. Bastion Saturn is another fantastic science fiction entry in the Kindle Scout family, and you should definitely check it out below!

Bastion Saturn [image error]

In 2101, having conquered the Solar System, most humans are choosing to tie their minds to an Artificial Intelligence. The only place to be free of AI is living off-world, with Saturn and its vast system of moons serving as the wild frontier. The only caveats to living there: the funds to fly a billion miles into space and a pledge to keep vigil against the threat of AI. Otherwise, what you do out there is your business.

Career scoundrel/petty-thief Caleb Day finds himself broke and unemployed when he arrives at his new home among the colonists of Saturn's moons, so he takes a job as a cop. When law enforcement takes a turn for the less-than-just, Caleb refuses to sit idly back. After rescuing and escaping with several civilians, Caleb and his new comrades are now fugitives who must beg, borrow, and steal their way across Saturn's moon colonies to survive. 

Tensions rise as Earthlings begin looking at Off-Worlders as threats. Keeping his friends safe among Saturn's moons is no longer Caleb's only challenge--he must find a way to protect the last vestige of remaining free humans if they all want any hope at staying alive.

About C. Chase Harwood

Kindle Scout Winner, C. Chase Harwood made a career in Hollywood, decorating sets for film and television before turning his passion for story telling into clicks on a keyboard. While scaling the walls of the screenwriting world, he chose to experiment with prose and found a fondness for Scifi-action-adventure. Within that framework he gets to explore the countless ways that humans interact while under duress. "Life is all the more lived when the consequences are high. When told as a tale it can be quite a page turner," says Harwood. He lives in Los Angeles with his costume designer wife and young boy girl twins.

C. Chase Harwood also put together a unique cover for his short story! 

Definitely check out this story in the anthology to find out more about the world of Bastion Saturn!

From the Author

Dear reader,

If you want to continue following the adventures of Spruck Jones and Natalie Beal, along with a host of other characters trying to survive in the vast reaches of space, check out Bastion Saturn, available on Amazon as an ebook and in softcover. Also, keep your eyes out for the sequel, Pirates of Saturn. More details can be found on my website — www.cchaseharwood.com

Summer Solstice - L.G. O'Conner - One Summer Day

L.G. was kind enough to include a short story in the Summer Solstice anthology. Her book looks incredible! Her short story is called One Summer Day, and it is a prequel to Shelter My Heart!

Shelter My Heart [image error]

Devon, an ailing, young CEO-in-training due to inherit his dead father’s conglomerate saves the day for Jenny, an engaged young woman on her way home to see her family. To repay his kindness, she agrees to be his date for his family’s annual society gala and convince the board that he’s healthy and going to marry. Two weeks are all Devon needs, and two weeks are all Jenny can give—until the stakes rise, forcing Jenny to answer the question: How far is she willing to go to save Devon’s life?

About L.G.

LG O'Connor is a corporate marketing exec by day who takes her author cape out at night. An avid reader, she loves books with memorable characters that make her heart sing. She's the author of the urban fantasy / paranormal romance series, The Angelorum Twelve Chronicles, and Caught Up in RAINE, her contemporary romantic women's fiction debut. Shelter My Heart (a Kindle Scout Winner) is the second novel in her romantic women's fiction series, Caught Up in Love, a series which follows three women in the same family on their road to redemption and a second chance at love. A native 'Jersey Girl,' she's always in search of the perfect cup of coffee and fine Italian leather. Her perfect hero always keeps the heroine fed. You can find Recipes from Raine's Roost (which first appeared on Joyce Lamb's USA TODAY Happy Ever After blog), by Caught Up in RAINE hero, Raine MacDonald, on her blog: lgoconnor.com

Praise for the Caught Up in Love Series Caught Up in RAINE (Book #1) 2017 IPPY AWARD-WINNER (Bronze) in Romance

"O'Connor's contemporary romance is very realistic and will tug on the heartstrings of probably more readers than she expected . . . Jillian and Raine have faced a lifetime's worth of secrets and heartbreaks . . . you'll want to cheer them on until the very end."

~RT Book Reviews

“The plot is driven by a May-December premise that is blown away in the sexy love scenes.” ~Library Journal

"For all the contemporary romance fans out there, this book is for you." ~Night Owl Reviews

"Urban fantasy author O'Connor (Trinity Stones) branches out into romantic women's fiction with a sexy tale of angst, guilt, love, and hate." ~Publishers Weekly

"LG O'Connor had me at "hello" with this plot…a hard to beat Romance for 2016. . ." ~HEA Romances with a Little Kick Blog

"This story is both beautiful and haunting. . . I loved every second of this sexy, sweet and romantic book!!!" ~The Romance Reviews, Top Pick, 5 stars

“O’Connor delivers a unique women’s fiction story packed with emotion, humor and sexiness. I could not turn the pages quickly enough…” ~Caridad Pineiro, NY Times & USA Today Bestselling Romance Author

"WOW! What an absolutely fantastic story! I absolutely fell in love with Raine, and wanted Jillian for a girlfriend! Well written and very relevant as a contemporary romance with two amazing, memorable characters." ~Carla Susan Smith, Author of A Vampire's Promise

Book Review: When the Leaves Fall by C.A. King

Today, I will be reviewing When the Leaves Fall by C.A. King which was an OnlineBookClub.org Book of the Day for June 7th, 2017!

About the Book [image error]

Ralph wakes up to what others only experience in a nightmare. Chained to a shed, he has no idea where he is, or who his captor is. His memories are blurred at best. As the days press on, he finds himself experiencing a roller coaster of feelings. Hunger, thirst and pain become his only companions. Flashbacks of a happier time are all he has to keep him going. As his situation deteriorates, he finds himself doubting he ever had the very thing he wants most - a family.

When Leaves Fall is a dramatic thriller with a twist. Keep the tissue box close for the ending.

WARNING: Sad ending

Review

Ralph was an excellent lead for this story, and it was very disjointed when he woke up and was tied to the shed. His confusion and fear was evident, and as the story unfolded I found myself truly engrossed and trying to figure out what was going on and what was going to happen. 

The twist was interesting and I didn't really see it coming, but I can't really say much about it without giving away a huge feature of the story. That, actually, was one of my problems, because even though it was superficially unique and well-written, it was also short and lacked a little bit of depth that might have brought it more to life. I was able to sympathize with and understand Ralph, but I felt like there was more there we weren't privvy to.

I'll rate this book 4 out of 5 stars because of how interesting it was, but it wasn't perfect by any means and could have used with a little more length to help add depth to the story. For people who enjoy strong books with provocative endings, this one is for you.

About the Author

C.A. King was born and raised in Halton County. She currently resides in Brantford
Ontario, Canada with her two sons.

After the loss of her loving parents and husband, Ms. King was devastated. She
decided to retire from the workforce for a year or two to do some soul searching.
It was during this time that writing became her passion. She found she was able
to redirect her emotions through her writing and in 2014 decided to publish some
of her works.

"I need to thank everyone for being so wonderful. It's amazing when someone reads your work and enjoys the story. I already have people waiting for future books to be released."

Carol Ann King is proud to have her name join the list of Canadian born authors. She hopes her writing will help inspire another generation of Canadians to continue adding to the literary heritage and rich culture Canada already has to offer. Her books in The Portal Prophecies series are fictional fantasy stories based on opening the door to possibilities.

Check it out at Online Book Club here!

Book Review: Apollo's Raven by Linnea Tanner

Today, I will be reviewing Apollo's Raven by Linnea Tanner, which was an OnlineBookClub.org Book of the Day for June 6th, 2017!

About the Book [image error]

Can a Curse Control Ancient Britannia? 

The world is in turmoil. Celtic kings hand-picked by Rome to rule are fighting each other for power. King Amren's former queen, a powerful Druid, has cast a curse that foretells Blood Wolf and the Raven will rise and destroy him.

King Amren reveals to his daughter, Princess Catrin, the grim prophecy that his former queen pronounced at her execution for treason to him:

The gods demand the scales be balanced for the life you take. If you deny my soul's journey to the Otherworld by beheading me, I curse you to the same fate as mine. I prophesy your future queen will beget a daughter who will rise as a Raven and join your son, Blood Wolf, and a mighty empire to overtake your kingdom and to execute my curse.

Catrin is trained as a warrior and discovers she is the Raven and must find a way to block the curse of the evil former queen. Torn between her forbidden love for her father's enemy Marcellus, and her loyalty to her people, she must summon the magic of the Ancient Druids to alter the dark prophecy that awaits her.

Will Catrin overcome and eradicate the ancient curse? Will she be able to embrace her forbidden love with Marcellus? Will she cease the war between Blood Wolf and King Amren? Will she save Ancient Britannia?

Apollo's Raven sweeps you into an epic Celtic tale of love, magic, adventure, intrigue, and betrayal in Ancient Rome and Britannia.

Review

The strongest part of this book for me was just how well put together the Celtic ideas and the representation of the lead women. Catrin was really well defined and had a lot of personality, which isn't something we might have seen in similar books like this. The author does a great job of creating the rich world as well, and the choices Catrin is forced to make bring the story to life.

There were some parts of the story I didn't enjoy, and I felt like it dragged on at times, but the fight scenes were incredibly well put together and easy to read. They were all fast-paced and full of action, and they helped keep the story moving forward in a clean and interesting way. It felt very unique at moments and I appreciated the attention to detail.

I'll rate this book 4 out of 5 stars because of the fact that it felt like certain sections weren't necessary, and I can easily recommend this to people who like stories about Romans and Celts and clashing cultures. It is also great for anyone who likes strong female leads that jump off the pages.

Check it out at Online Book Club here!

Kindle Scout Campaign - Guide - Part 3 - Reviews and Results

First, some Book Keeping

Time to start reviewing some of those services I mentioned last week. Several of the promotions haven't gone out yet, so you'll still need to wait for those, but there are other ones I can mention and tell you how well/poorly they did.

I also wanted to share a link to something I've been working on putting together. It isn't complete, but the intention is that it will show selection data by month/day as well as genre and subgenre. Right now it has all of the selected books and some of the authors filled in, and then I have to go back through and add in the genres to track those.

Ideally, this will help anyone who wants to see how often they pick books, what time of year they pick certain kinds of books (i.e. when is the best time to submit romance/sci-fi/etc.). I had an old spreadsheet that I stopped updating because I rebuilt it into this, so please enjoy! Everyone can view, but if you would like to collaborate on it with me and hopefully help fill in some of the missing details (as well as add more stats!) let me know.

Once the sheet is done, I'll add some analytical information (like best time of the year to submit based on aggregate data by genre) but until then, you can at least see which months get the most books picked.

Selection Data
Onto the analysis!

Right off the bat, there are two services I would like to talk about on the positive side of running this campaign. The first is AuthorShout.

AuthorShout

I actually didn't really know what to expect with this campaign option, mostly because it was only ten dollars. They offer to promote your book for the entire month for the meager fee and will even go so far as to build out share images for you. I hadn't really heard much about them for or against, but for ten dollars it was pretty easy to give them a shot.

Here is one of the images they put together for the campaign:

What this told me right away was that they put some work into it and didn't just pump out crappy images. Don't get me wrong, a lot of it is probably placeholder, but they are attractive images nonetheless.

They also custom built tweets based on campaign data, including the tag line, blurb, and other features to get readers to check out the listing, which is nice. It isn't just a flurry of 'go nominate this and get a free copy' tweets.

Finally, the results: they have a landing page built for my book, and from the first couple of days it showed up in the top 50 external sources of traffic. Each day, the number went up (I had 11 clicks directly from that landing page on June 1st and that number kept climbing) and that doesn't even count the number of clicks that they brought in from twitter directly to the campaign. I'm expecting a sizable number of clicks to continue trickling in through the end of the 30 days, and if the book is selected they will continue promoting it even after the campaign is over with.

For ten dollars, this service is hard to beat. It is better than the $129 option I paid for with my last campaign, and the fact that it trickles in nominations rather than blasting them all at once is a huge bonus and makes it the perfect supplement to other services.

https://authorshout.com/

Melrock Kindle Scout Promo (Fiverr)

I honestly signed up for this one late, and it was on recommendation of a friend of mine who recently ran a campaign. I had honestly never heard of her services, and I figured I would give it a shot (for $30 bucks, which isn't too terrible).

First problem, though: she offers two services, a 30 day and 15 day kindle scout promo. I was caught in the middle of this, and since it was only a $5 difference it seemed kind of pointless to chop it down to only 15 days. I went ahead and signed up for the 30 day, figuring that I would just lose out on the 5 days that had already run. I decided not to approach her about prorating because I wasn't really that worried about it.

However, she had the campaign live and ready to go (with custom share images) in only about two hours, and she added in additional twitter support without my requesting it because I had missed out on the previous five days. She worked fast and seemed genuinely interested in helping to promote my book, and she has also worked to put together custom tweets and promotions to help drive nominations.

I can't track results as easily with her promotion since most of it comes from twitter or overlaps with other options, but if nothing else I'm happy with the exposure she has been giving me. I will ask her later in the campaign if she has any analytics I can share on my blog about the results, but I can still recommend her service to anyone who wants a strong advocate of their books to post. Here is one of the share images she created for my campaign:

https://www.fiverr.com/melrock/kindle...

Moving on with some more information: My newsletter blast early in the campaign didn't perform nearly as well as I would have liked. I only saw about a 5% click through rate, which was about 4% lower than I expected. The newsletter was set on auto resend, so it will blast out to everyone who didn't click as well which will hopefully bring those numbers up.

I also have a newsletter planned later in the campaign for the giveaway I'm running, so it will hopefully funnel some of the newsletter subscribers who weren't willing to support me out of their own goodwill into doing it with the chance of winning something!

Speaking of the giveaway...

Gleam Giveaway

My giveaway started on June 1st, and the primary goal of the giveaway was to drive people to my campaign page to check out my book. This was a new promotional idea I wanted to try out, and so far it has paid off. From the very first day it went live it directed quite a few clicks to Amazon, and the people it directed seem to be very engaged with the book. There are other entry options, including voting Raven's Peak book of the year at online book club and checking out anthologies on Amazon, but the first and most important is to check out my kindle scout entry.

To help drive traffic to my website (and hopefully back out to kindle scout) I signed up with a couple of giveaway promotion websites (namely, GiveawayPromote.com and sweep-stakes.com) to hopefully push a lot of extra traffic to my giveaway page. I also submitted the information to a lot of other sites to promote the giveaway, and the results in general have been really good. They diminish over time, but it serves as great trickle content for multiple purposes (website traffic, nominations, votes, email subscribers, and possible new fans).

This is one of the more expensive things I've done, but it isn't a ton of work and can be done quite a bit cheaper than I planned. For example, signing up for gleam is free and most sites you submit to have a free option to promote giveaways. Your prize can be as low as $25 dollar gift card (I wouldn't recommend going any lower) and that can still drive hundreds of people to your campaign, if not quite a few more.

Freebie Campaign

This one hasn't actually started yet, so I won't be able to give results until later. That being said, I have over 100 authors signed up and 120 books total, which means there should be a lot of people driving traffic to my website. I've made my requests to check out the book unobtrusive, but with luck it will pan out and get a lot crossover traffic to my page.

I'll let you know more about the results in the coming days, but for now know this is something I'm excited to see how it goes.

Summer Solstice

The anthology isn't quite finished yet and I'm still collecting stories, but this is another place wherein I'm hoping to create high value crossover traffic. Basically, the goal is to direct people to my newest anthology and then get them to click over to my campaign as well.

With luck, this will also get a fairly substantial number of views and clicks and really pay off. I'll let you know more about how well this did toward the end of the campaign.

Library Book Signing - Handouts

I had really high hopes for this promotional idea, but it didn't really pan out. I left a bunch of bookmarks around different places and asked family and friends to hand them out as well, but in general the response has been thoroughly underwhelming. 

Most of the people who came to the book signing weren't interested, and they simply weren't the right audience for my book. That being said, the signing itself was a success and I sold nearly all of the books I brought, it just wasn't right for the campaign.

I have confidence that the handouts can work, but for me it has been a problem of wrong place and wrong time.

A few recommendations I would have for it, though: don't tie your campaign to the handouts too tightly. What I did was build a landing page for the handouts, and then on the landing page it features my campaign. After the campaign ends, I will be able to change the landing page and continue handing out the cards. If, on the other hand, you link the cards to your Kindle Scout page, then you're crippling them once the campaign ends.

Book Trailer

I had a book trailer put together for this with a collapsing letters effect to capitalize on video formatting. It turned out a little lighter than I would have liked, but in general I'm happy with it. This will be useful for social media sharing.

Upcoming

That's all for now. I'll have more results and information later on once more promotions run, and hopefully I can post more analytical data.

I won't post any concrete results until after the campaign ends, so you'll just have to be patient for now!

Other Entries

The Everett Exorcism on Kindle Scout!

It is up for nomination and I would be thrilled if everyone would be willing to go and check it out. Read the excerpt, see what you think, and if you like it click that nomination button!

So far the campaign is going really well and I've already surpassed the entirety of the Raven's Peak campaign in page views! If anything, the number I'm getting daily should continue climbing because now I have quite a few big promotions rolling out!

Keep an eye on my website over these next weeks because I have a ton of things in motion, including a gleam giveaway with over $130 in prizes, an instafreebie giveaway with over 100 free books and samples, and countless other promotions!

I also have blog posts about my kindle scout campaign coming out every weekend on Sunday, so you can expect another one of those shortly! This one is shaping up to be really interesting with a lot more information and direct results than previous. The one after that will have even more information detailing how well some of my other promotions are paying off!

All in all, it's been a pretty amazing campaign and I've been working like crazy to redesign my website and make things cleaner and nicer! 

Book Review: The Poems of Robin R Rabii

Today, I will be reviewing The Poems of Robin R Rabii which was an OnlineBookClub.org Book of the Day for June 1st, 2017.

About the Book [image error]

The Great Architect of All Reality, another name for the unknown source that created the foundation for existence, had the wherewithal or playfulness to riddle creation with an eclectic mix of contradictory forces in humans and nature. In its infinite wisdom or ultimate boredom, the Architect instructed evolution to create humans … and some say this act added stupidity to the divine designer’s mix!

While stupidity serves a critical role in helping us discern the behaviors that stall our climb up the evolutionary ladder, it is the active pursuit of connection, one of the Architect’s “hidden” ingredients, that allows us to scale the ladder of evolution with speed and begin reconciling the appearance of differences between us. Connection exposes the illusions of separation and provides the opportunity to reunite diametrically opposed perspectives we inherit or acquire through our social, cultural, religious, and ethnic conditioning.

The poems in this book are the insightful expressions of an author who is passionate about creating harmony between humans, the most complex of the Architect’s riddles. Through his words, the author attempts to elevate and worship the ordinary moments in life; expose the poisons in becoming a political or religious ideologue; explore the strained relationship between the intellect and the heart; ponder the cosmic aspects of patriotism; reveal the invisible demons of love; and convey sensitive, but instructive, snippets about race and color. Mixed in with these thought-provoking utterances is the author’s ailing sense of humor, offering the opportunity to view serious matters through the lens of comedy.

Through the solemn and amusing prose, there is an opportunity to begin new conversations that may help us acknowledge and, through introspection, challenge our silent conditioning—a first step in finding the keys to meaningful connection and harmony in all human affairs.

Review

The cover for this book was immediately captivating and really hooked me into wanting to read more.  I was excited to pick it up and hopeful that it would be full of some amazing poetry, and to a small extent I wasn't let down. The problem I ran into was that a lot of the poems weren't amazing. They were okay, but they didn't really suck me in with either the language or the content.

I enjoy reading poetry and didn't really find any major problems with this, except maybe that it got a little bit wordy and tried too hard to sound clever, but it never really lived up to my expectations of it. I suppose I wanted a little more sci fi and storytelling, and it just didn't really have that.

I'll rate this volume a 4 out of 5 stars because it had a few poems that I truly enjoyed, including The Promise of America, but I think some of them also got repetitive and a little bit boring. There were some good ideas and a lot of strong selling points, but it felt sort of weak when all was said and done.

Check it out on Online Book Club Here!

Three great books on sale for only 99 cents!

Check out all of the books by MN Arzu for only 99 cents!

[image error]

First Contact has never been easy.

Despite the rumors, the US Government has been able to deny First Contact with an alien race for decades, but with good reason: it hasn't happened yet.

When a strange signal comes from an isolated area in the forests outside of Seattle, they find that First Contact is not going to happen with big ships and grand world-wide messages. Aliens, it turns out, like to keep their existence quiet.

Breaking a great number of rules, Seattle's resident alien has come back from a quick trip to his home planet to tell his human wife the truth about himself. Even if he has to do it behind a glass cell and the military in between.

Buy Today
[image error]

When an injured merman is found washed up on a beach in Maine, his arrival at the ER leaves his new doctors at a loss of how to treat him. Worse, how are they going to keep him from the military's eager hands?

One reporter is hot on the trail of what she believes is an elaborate hoax—or the story of a lifetime. A story that has her tracking elusive clues into an ever-growing house of secrets surrounding one of the richest families in New York City.

For merfolk have been hiding in plain sight for centuries, and are now torn between sacrificing one of their own—or telling humanity the truth.

Get a copy!
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Someone is hunting the merfolk. 

While the Council has been busy between possible talks with the United Nations and following clues into the man who killed Scott's parents, rumors of dead mermen are reaching the news. Is the hunter human or one of their own? More importantly, how is he so easily finding victims who have learned how to hide over centuries?

Seeking to drag their assailant into the light, they might not be prepared to pay the cost, both to the merfolk, and much less to their family.

Buy Today

Book Review: Immediacy by Fred Emil Katz

Today, I will be reviewing Immediacy byFred Emil Katz, which was an OnlineBookClub.org Book of the Day for May 30, 2017!

About the Book [image error]

Explores a new paradigm for understanding social-psychological situations in which we live our lives.
Along the way it illuminates the seductive appeal of cults and false messiahs, ways in which morality can be ennobling as well as deadly, the power of prayer, and the hidden side of personal careers.

Review

I found the views expressed in this book to be interesting and compelling, and even the presentation felt clean and well-delivered. The cover is very bland, but since it is a work of nonfiction I can forgive that.

The author did an incredible job of sourcing his material and making it easy to look up the texts and ideas he was referencing. I found myself jumping to those during particularly interesting passages, and I have to say I was impressed with just how good a job he did in explaining some difficult topics simply. His ideas of immediacy and the way they affect our day to day lives was quite compelling.

I'll rate this book 4 out of 5 stars because every once in a while it felt like the author was repeating himself and trying to really drive home a few points a little too much. It would have been better if he took a step back and let the readers deal with the issues rather than explaining them so many different ways. It is a small complaint, though, and I think a lot of people will find valuable information here.

Check it out at Online Book Club here!

Kindle Scout Campaign - Guide - Part 2 - Services

The Early Days

This is a continuation of my campaign information, and if you want to check out the first post I made about this, you can find the link below to part 1.

My campaign is running really well, and I've begun promoting it to try and bring in more nominations. I'm not really doing any general promotional things right now, focusing more on the bigger things I can write about later in my campaign.

Breakdown5/24/17 - Campaign Submitted

I received my link on this day and submitted to multiple different locations for promotions, including Scout Boost, Books Butterfly, and OnlineBookClub.

 Scout Boost - This is something I haven't tried before. They charge $94 dollars (get 25% off with code: 25%-OFF-NOW) and feature your book in newsletters and other places to get nominations. They only send out up to three books daily, and you can schedule the promotion up to four times (I did it twice because after a while I expect the returns to dramatically diminish). This is scheduled for the 7th and 16th of June to run.Books Butterfly - I used this service last time around to get views on my campaign and they did an excellent job for me. I'm hoping they do just as good this time (I requested 6/8 and 6/18 as promotional days but waiting to hear back from them).OnlineBookClub - This is a wholly new service, because it isn't even something that they offer. Several of my books have been featured as books of the day on Scott's website, and Raven's Peak was even book of the month in April and got a lot of publicity. Setting up my campaign to run on June 13th is something of a trial run, and if it goes well he might be able to open this up to be a permanent offering to reach his 35,000 newsletter subscribers and 170,000 website members.

I also scheduled advertising to go out across several social media sites, including Facebook (+Instagram), Twitter, BookBub, and Goodreads. I also submitted to Bing, GoogleAds, StumbleUpon, and Reddit and those were declined until the campaign begins (since the links show 404 until the campaign goes live). So, now I know which sites actually check and which don't really care!

5/26/17 - Campaign Begins

Today, I resubmitted to the self-serve advertising locations since the site is actually live. With all of the ads, I set my bids incredibly low (a few cents per click at most) because I would rather simply not get any impressions than spend too much money on the advertising. I'll tweak as I go and drop off the lowest performing advertising platforms to focus my efforts once I see who is responding.

I also submitted to two other paid platforms today:

Author Shout - This is another website that runs a promotion during the entire month, and it only costs ten dollars. I'm not really anticipating any huge results out of it, but if it manages to trickle in several people a day I will be thrilled with it.https://authorshout.com/promote-with-usBest Indie Press - This is one that I am leery about using simply because of it's lack of presence or information, but it is one that I sincerely hope proves my reservations wrong. It's expensive ($250, but $50 off with Coupon Code: TS50) and I wouldn't have done it except I want to test it out and report my findings with it. I've seen a recommendation of it from someone I trust, so I'm willing to give it a shot and review.

http://unbouncepages.com/bestindiepress_kindlescout/

Other things I've set up that don't cost money...Newsletter - I set up two different automatic resend newsletters today, spreading them over my campaign to cover as many days as possible. I thought about segmenting it out and trickling it in, but I ended up just doing blasts. *Note* The reason I set two newsletters is one is for my campaign, and one is for another promotional thing I will mention shortly.Blog Posts - I've been writing these slowly and scheduling them in advance. My goal is to get about five to ten posts going during the campaign, some promotional and others informational (like this one).HeadTalkers - Sort of self-explanatory, I set up a couple of these to help drive people to all sorts of different promotions. With luck, I'll get the twenty-five supporters I need to make these a reality (shouldn't be too hard).Drive-By Promotions - This one is a little bit tricky because it requires a lot more effort to set-up as well as effort in general. Most people won't have time to do things like these, and my goal is more just to see how everything comes together long term.Instafreebie Group Giveaway - I am hosting a group giveaway on the site for multiple genres with over seventy participating authors and even more books. I've done many of these before, but for this one I timed it so that it would start around midway in my campaign and run until it ends. Basically, authors sign up to promote their free books, I host the group, and we all direct traffic to the giveaway page. What I did was put global promotional links on my website (at the top and bottom) to drive website traffic over to my campaign page. (If anyone wants to join the giveaway, the signup is here). I usually get several thousand page views during promotions like this, so with luck at least some of those readers will nominate my campaign. It takes a lot of work to organize and setup, along with custom page design.Handouts - I didn't do this last time, so this time I put together bookmarks, rip sheets, and QR codes for people to get to my website and then head over to KS to nominate. I also built custom landing pages to track traffic so I will know exactly how successful this part of the campaign is in bringing traffic. I'm going to a book signing on Memorial Day and I plan to hand out as many things as I can, and then I'll also be leaving bookmarks in as many shops, bookstores, and other places as possible. The other thing I did was make sure the bookmarks took people to my website, not the campaign site, so that after the campaign is over I can simply change the landing page to feature something new and still gain benefit out of that traffic.Gleam Giveaway - I'm going to run a custom giveaway, also during the second half of my campaign. I'll be giving away a $50 dollar gift card, some custom The Everett Exorcism T-Shirts, and a paperback set of my World on Fire series. Altogether the prizes cost about $130 dollars, and the giveaway serves multiple purposes. I have a lot of entry options to help promote my books and brand, and one of the main options is to check out my book on Kindle Scout. This helps because I can drive people to the giveaway itself to reach an audience my normal promotions might not hit. It is also the feature of my second newsletter (so the first drives people to my campaign directly, the second drives people to the giveaway to hopefully catch the people I missed the first time around).Summer Solstice - This was the exact opposite of the IF giveaway, because rather than scheduling it around the campaign, I scheduled to campaign to overlap with it. I put together several anthologies, and this will be the third one in a series of them. The Solstice is June 20th, and the book will be launched to begin heavily promoting that day. Much like the IF giveaway, the hope is to catch drive-by readers who come for the anthology and would like to support me. This one is incredibly difficult to put together and requires a lot of time and effort, and I do it to help cross-promote with a lot of friends and great writers from the Kindle Press World.

Basically, my hope is that I can drive a lot of traffic to my website for various purposes, and then customize the content on my website to unobtrusively funnel people to my campaign to check it out, too. The nice thing is I'll be able to track a lot of the results to see how well the various efforts performed.

My initial guess is that the drive-by options will be too much work/time expense for most people to put together, but I still felt it was necessary to mention them and hopefully help people think of ways to create their own drive-by promotions. It helps you practice funneling and website design as much as anything, and then when you try to do similar things to help promote real sales the experience is invaluable.

The other benefit of this is they don't usually cost money. It's more work, but if your checkbook is the problem and not time than these can be invaluable ways to save money while still bringing people to your campaign!

Results

So far, I have been getting over 200 page views per day, with the number running closer to 300 and peaking at about 420. As far as advertising goes, Facebook has been generating the strongest results, with twitter, google, and stumbleupon just behind it. Bing has been slow, but staying cheap, but reddit, pinterest, and bookbub have been somewhat floundering in results with clicks costing far too much to be worthwhile. I'm ramping those ones down and focusing my efforts in the routes with the strongest results.

My larger advertisements are also ramping up. My giveaway went live on Wednesday and my solo email went live Thursday of this past week (I have another one planned later in the month for the giveaway feature). I still haven't heard back from the service recommended by Tom Swyers so no idea if that one is going to pan out at all (they said contact back within 48 hours and it's been many days).

Upcoming

Next time I'll start reviewing the services I submitted to and giving you all an idea of what works and what doesn't. There were some services I didn't use this time around simply because I already analyzed them in my book and didn't want to spend more money (I'm more interested in trying and reporting on new things than simply getting campaign results).

I'll also post more statistics later on (don't worry!) and let you know how each individual piece performed. Hopefully, with all of the information I gather you'll be able to make your own campaign the perfect one for you!

If you want more in-depth analysis of just how Kindle Scout works and how to set-up a campaign, check out my guidebook. I already broke down things like the hot & trending lists, categories, blurb/cover/excerpt, and many other details that go into the basics of running a campaign.

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