Making the Most of a Book Promotion
Planning a free or discounted book promotion? As a follow-up to my previous post on planning a book promo, I would like to share several other resources I have found especially helpful for creating a solid book promo strategy.
I. Your Audience
Are you planning on using any of the many sites/newsletters that promote free and bargain eBooks? If so, you might want to take a look at this BookBub post describing the audience that purchases books from these sites. Earlier this year, BookBub surveyed bargain eBook readers and the results. Did you know that most of these readers enjoy genre fiction? Or that most will buy a discounted book from an author they’ve never heard of? This data may indicate that, for example, it may be especially helpful for a new indie fantasy author to promote their titles using similar bargain book sites. Check out the BookBub post for more helpful stats about bargain readers.
II. The Price of Your Book
The above BookBub post also provides helpful information on pricing your book during a promotion. Their data indicate that the higher you price your book during a promotion, the less likely readers are to purchase that book. While running a book promo, it might be more helpful to make your book free or lower the price to 99 cents for the most downloads.
“Promoting your Series: Free vs. 99c,” a post by author Nicholas C. Rossis, provides more helpful data on pricing strategies during a book promotion. Continuing from the data provided in the BookBub post, this post compares 99 cent books to free books during a promotion, finding that the latter tends to get more downloads. This is especially helpful if you’re promoting a book series: making the first book in the series free can also help increase sales of the rest of the books in your series.
III. Case Studies of Other Authors
Before launching my first book promotion, I read case studies of authors detailing their experiences running discount book promotions for ideas I could implement in my strategy. An important caveat is that even if you do the exact same things another author did, it’s unlikely that you’ll have the same result due to factors beyond your control. It’s important to set realistic goals for yourself during a promotion. Some authors may get thousands of downloads because they already had an established fanbase and a mailing list (neither of which I had when I did my first book promotion). In addition to providing ideas for what I can do to promote my book now, these posts are also helpful in thinking ahead and considering what may be possible once I have established my name as an author. A couple of these case studies:
1. Becky Wicks, a romance author, wrote a post about her strategies for getting over 20,000 copies of her book downloaded without using BookBub (especially helpful because authors often find it difficult to get their book accepted by BookBub). She describes which book promo sites she used, how she used Twitter to spread the word about her promo, and strategies to encourage readers to review her book. She used this plan to launch her book to the top of her category. No matter your genre, I’d recommend checking out Becky’s post for ideas of what to do during your book promo.
2. Annie Jacoby detailed her experiences promoting a book series by making the first book in a series permanently free. She emphasizes the importance of continuing to promote a permafree book (otherwise your sales will eventually plateau), writing interrelated book series, and publishing on platforms beyond KDP. Read more about her experiences in her post on the Kboards forum.
There are plenty more case studies online about running a book promotion. If you’re planning a book promo, I’d recommend setting aside some time to do a search on your preferred search engine, Kboards, or the KDP Forum for more posts like those two to get an even broader idea of how to run a successful book promo and figure out which strategies are likely to be the most helpful for you.
What resources have helped you create a solid strategy for promoting your book?
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