Reflections on Kindle Scout

Dawn of the Final Day – 24 Hours Remain

Well, less than 24 hours, actually. It has been almost thirty days since The Shadow Over Lone Oak began its campaign on kindle scout. In that time, I have learned a few things about marketing, stress, what works and what doesn’t. Today’s blog post, painstakingly created using a fidgety tablet, is a summation of my campaign’s results.

First, let’s talk about how useless twitter was as a promotional tool. Due to its rapid post rate and low character count, any promotion I did here flew completely under the radar. Unless you’re a Stephen King or a J. K. Rowling, it’s doubtful that anyone cares about what you have to say here. So scratch that as a future option.

Also, LinkedIn did next to zero traffic for me, so I’ll probably avoid that.

But which social networks/programs definitely helped? Facebook brought in a fair number of folks, especially the initial burst. My ads proved to be helpful in the early going. My $10 Reddit ad was my largest benefactor during the first ten to fifteen days. But neither was enough to hit Hot & Trending.

Scoutboost was the primary force behind my first ride in H & T. The service doubled the amount of views I had at that time and I was in the orange zone for around five days.

But then came another dip and I scrambled to come up with other promotional ideas. I wrote newspaper articles, made videos, created a brochure, and most recently released four short stories with links to my KS campaign. Did these do the job? I honestly can’t say. But I do know that I entered Hot & Trending a second time after they released, so it certainly couldn’t have hurt.

But by far the biggest boon to my campaign (aside from support by family and friends) has been kboards. It’s a fantastic forum community that not only helped nominate my work but also provided great insight into the process as well as emotional support. Knowing that these folks were in my corner while I was also in theirs helped tremendously.

With 1500+views and around 200 hours in Hot & Trending, it has been a hectic up and down ride. Whatever the final verdict – and I’m certainly nervous – everyone who contributed (and even those that couldn’t) mean a lot to me and getting this far wasn’t possible without all of you.

I’ll remember two things as my campaign goes into review:

A pessimist is a what an optimist calls a realist. But a pessimist is also what a realist calls an a-hole.

“Give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for you, in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)