David’s
Comments
(group member since Apr 18, 2018)
David’s
comments
from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.
Showing 1-6 of 6
Dale wrote: "Followed David and Rutvi on FB/Twitter. Welcome!"Thanks!
Petra wrote: "Hi David, I like your book cover, and I liked your page!"Thanks! A friend of mine from college shot it and another friend with a graphic design background did the cover design.
Maybe... I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds rebellious and counter establishment, so I'm intrigued.
I ran a free KDP promotion for my book, Aaru back at the end of march. It was a three day promotion, and I offered it on consecutive days through Book Cave, Book Sends, and Read Freely as well as a Facebook ad campaign through my FB writing Website. I'll say in advance, I have always been skeptical of paid services for anything IndyPub related because there are so many bogus promotion sites out there that just want to take your money without much demonstrable benefit. However, these sites came highly recommended, so I was willing to give it a try just to see.Over the course of the promotion I got just under 3,000 downloads and the novel hit #2 for Kindle New Adult & College Fantasy, #4 for Kindle SciFi, #4 for Kindle Paranormal/Urban Fantasy, and it peaked at #93 for all Kindle Books. Also, I'm still getting a pretty steady stream of KENP reads every day since, which was not the case before this promotion.
Needless to say I was pleased with the results, but after reading so many comments on here regarding struggle with getting accepted to these types of services, I think what I did most right (without any conscious planning or skill at all to be perfectly honest) was I didn't try to run the promotion the day the book came out.
Aaru came out in July 2017. The promotion was March 2018, so I had eight months to promote on my own and get reviews. By the time I submitted to the above sites, I already had over 80 reviews on Goodreads and in the 40s on Amazon (with 3.84 and 4.2 respectively star ratings). All three of the companies mentioned got back to me with approval in less than an hour of submitting, and I think their excitement was based on the book's preexisting, demonstrated appeal - demonstrated through a fairly large number of positive reviews.
I have done some advertising for Aaru on FB with mixed results, but the bulk of my efforts in terms of getting those initial reviews was probably 95% or better through the use of Twitter and E-mail. First, I made sure my query was tight (concise request with vital book characteristic info, professional sounding blurb) then I went to Twitter.
On Twitter, I searched the terms "book reviewer," "Book blog," "Book Reviews", "vlog", "book blogger" or anything else similar. Then I'd click on the "Latest" tab and just scroll down the list of recent book review posts. By clicking on the links to new book reviews it would take me to the reviewers website or blog. Virtually all of them have submission guidelines and contact info listed on their sites. This would then let me send requests to the reviewers who were most likely to accept my work AND to those I know are still active because they are posting review links to Twitter in real time, which cuts out virtually all the orphan blogs and prevents wasting time sending queries to inactive reviewers. I did this every day or two for a couple of hours - maybe send a dozen/couple dozen requests a day and as a result got a fairly steady stream of reviews
I ran a free KDP promotion for my book, Aaru back at the end of march. It was a three day promotion, and I offered it on consecutive days through Book Cave, Book Sends, and Read Freely as well as a Facebook ad campaign through my FB writing Website. I'll say in advance, I have always been skeptical of paid services for anything IndyPub related because there are so many bogus promotion sites out there that just want to take your money without much demonstrable benefit. However, these sites came highly recommended, so I was willing to give it a try just to see.Over the course of the promotion I got just under 3,000 downloads and the novel hit #2 for Kindle New Adult & College Fantasy, #4 for Kindle SciFi, #4 for Kindle Paranormal/Urban Fantasy, and it peaked at #93 for all Kindle Books. Also, I'm still getting a pretty steady stream of KENP reads every day since, which was not the case before this promotion.
Needless to say I was pleased with the results, but after reading so many comments on here regarding struggle with getting accepted to these types of services, I think what I did most right (without any conscious planning or skill at all to be perfectly honest) was I didn't try to run the promotion the day the book came out.
Aaru came out in July 2017. The promotion was March 2018, so I had eight months to promote on my own and get reviews. By the time I submitted to the above sites, I already had over 80 reviews on Goodreads and in the 40s on Amazon (with 3.84 and 4.2 respectively star ratings). All three of the companies mentioned got back to me with approval in less than an hour of submitting, and I think their excitement was based on the book's preexisting, demonstrated appeal - demonstrated through a fairly large number of positive reviews.
I have done some advertising for Aaru on FB with mixed results, but the bulk of my efforts in terms of getting those initial reviews was probably 95% or better through the use of Twitter and E-mail. First, I made sure my query was tight (concise request with vital book characteristic info, professional sounding blurb) then I went to Twitter.
On Twitter, I searched the terms "book reviewer," "Book blog," "Book Reviews", "vlog", "book blogger" or anything else similar. Then I'd click on the "Latest" tab and just scroll down the list of recent book review posts. By clicking on the links to new book reviews it would take me to the reviewers website or blog. Virtually all of them have submission guidelines and contact info listed on their sites. This would then let me send requests to the reviewers who were most likely to accept my work AND to those I know are still active because they are posting review links to Twitter in real time, which cuts out virtually all the orphan blogs and prevents wasting time sending queries to inactive reviewers. I did this every day or two for a couple of hours - maybe send a dozen/couple dozen requests a day and as a result got a fairly steady stream of reviews
