Adventures in Publishing – Week 10

Alas, the time has come to see about throwing some money at the problem of marketing. In aid of this I have spent all day harvesting advice on the subject from the four corners of the web. My preliminary conclusion is that using a paid ad on http://www.bookbub.com in combination with a two-day free giveaway through Amazon KDP Select is by far the best way to get maximum bang for your buck. This is good because two days is all I have left. The other three evaporated in early March as I blindly charged ahead with my first free giveaway only days after publication with absolutely no marketing behind it whatsoever. I still remember how impressed I was by the second day as over two hundred people downloaded my book. In retrospect, this is quite hilarious. I have since learned that 10 to 15 thousand downloads is what you might call a modestly successful run. Lesson? If you don’t tell people where to stop and look, chances are they’ll keep right on walking.

Oh well. I don’t mind being stupid once. Being stupid twice is a different matter. Assuming the boys and girls at Bookbub find my offering a good fit, the two day promotion will go ahead in the first two weeks of May (I have left the dates flexible to garner maximum favor). I have also made a list of lesser forums on which to announce these two historic days when the time comes.

The other piece of wisdom I gleamed from my investigation was that a free listing should be “chased down” by a follow-up promotion for the priced book. For this too I have assembled a list of possible candidates. All in, the budget for this experiment will be around $600-700. I will publish a detailed list of the services I used and the results in a later post in this series.

Wish me luck!