J.’s Comments (group member since Sep 09, 2014)

J.’s comments from the THE Group for Authors! group.

I did a pre-order with my last book and I guess it went okay though I don't see that it helped overall sales any and the pricing for the pre-orders got messed up somehow which led to a couple of not too happy readers. I won't be trying it again. I'd still like to hear what experiences anyone else has, especially if you try it going forward.

Great sales data A.W. Just shows BookBub is still the king. One day I'll get a book accepted there, I hope.
In the meantime, I tried a new promo site, YourNewBook, just to see if they had any potential. I took the $35 (pricey for a new site if you ask me) 1 day newsletter and site posting. Got a few sales that day but nothing more than what I usually get everyday with no ads so my conclusion is that the ad had zero effect. In fairness, I was promoting my fantasy novel at 99 cents which has been through a number of ads at various sites over the last couple of months and I'm guessing many of the "subscribers" at this new site have already seen this book, bought it or decided long ago that they weren't interested. So, no firm conclusion just another data point to consider.

Good information all around. Thanks.

Ah, thanks Marian.

I too am curious about the Kobo promotions. I checked and while I have books that are available through D2D on Kobo I don't have any author page or whatever and there doesn't seem to be a way to promote there. So Marian, how did you get that done?

Way to go Michael. I've never taken a shot at BookBub but author friends who have did VERY well. Let us know how it works out.

Anna Faversham wrote: "Interesting J, and thank you. With Book Gorilla, did you go for the $50 or the $150 option?"

I did the $50 ad with BG. And while for me it was a lot of money, it did help drive the book's ranking to a much better slot that ended up getting it on the Amazon MAMM bandwagon so I've no complaints. There is no doubt that Amazon's algorithm is designed to make them money and if you make some too they're okay with that but it's not their primary goal.

Great discussion here. I too wonder about promoting with Kobo. Any advice?

Hey Jack,
I did some checking into my own results to compare my most recent results for Book Gorilla and Booksends. These are both for the recent launch of my fantasy novel, so at least same book, same timeframe. BG netted 38 buys and 9500 pages read. BS 31 buys and 1500 pages read. Those numbers reflect data for the day of each ad and of course there must have been crossover day-to-day but I can't sort that out. The big difference was the BG ad cost me twice as much so others will have to figure out for themselves which is better, if either.

Hey Jack.
Nice to hear from you again. Thought provoking as always. I think we all need to adjust our ad plan as things change not only for our books and where they may uniquely fit but because sites change, readers subscribe and unsubscribe so sticking with the same plan on and on will probably eventually not work.

Marie Silk wrote: "J. wrote: "Hi all,
Jumping in here in the middle of several good discussions with a totally new question. My newest novel shows 15 (as of today) reviews on Amazon and when I looked here at GR I see..."
I guess that's similar to what I'm seeing.
And to CW - for me the only reason I track (sometimes) reviews is that there are a number of promo sites that won't take ads unless a book has a certain number of reviews and some specific average rating. Some of those are good places to get ads.

So maybe the reviews are linked if you're reading and reviewing on a new Kindle. Interesting.

Yes I know that GR and Amazon are not linked. I'm guilty sometimes of leaving a review only at one or the other. I was just curious if others saw a similar ratio of responses one venue versus another. and if GR generally gets more responses.

Hi all,
Jumping in here in the middle of several good discussions with a totally new question. My newest novel shows 15 (as of today) reviews on Amazon and when I looked here at GR I see it has 35 ratings but only 2 reviews. Question 1 - do others see a similar ratio between ratings and reviews at GR? Question 2 - what about the ratio of ratings/reviews at GR vs those on Amazon?
Not that I think I can do anything about it, just curious.
Have a great day.

Anyone have any experience with Armadillo promo site? I submitted a promotion recently and got an email saying it was going to run (not yet) and that for $20 I could have it sent to several other sites. But, I don't see any way to actually accept that deal if I wanted to and an email to them has brought no response. This is the first time I've tried this site and though I've heard it might be okay now I'm beginning to wonder.
Best to all.

Gillian wrote: "I've just read an interesting article which myth busts Amazon's algorithms. What do you think? http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/2......"
Thanks for this link. I too read it and find it interesting as it does include some valuable insights into how Amazon decides whether to push your book or not. Now I'm going to try to figure what I did right with my last book since it's sold better than anything of mine before and continues to sell (for me) at a nice clip. It has been priced at 99 cents all along and so I wonder if that means many other fantasy novels are also selling at the same price or is there some other profit for Amazon connection when considering the MAMM concept.

Hi all,
Nice to see the discussion carrying on here. For me things have slowed down though my new fantasy still sells a few books everyday so I'm not complaining. I am more determined than ever to get book 2 out and to make sure it is as good as or better than book 1, from the reader perspective.
In the meantime, my wife and I are thinking of putting a children's book that we co-wrote, on sale and line up promo sites. Anyone here used promo sites for children's books? Can you suggest any that are better or comment on ones that are worse?
Thanks much.

Carol wrote: "Hi all. I am going to sign up for a bunch of promotions for my vampire mystery thriller series. Written Word/Bargain Booksy Fantasy Feature, $40.00; The Fussy Librarian $14.00; New in Books The Boo..."

Wow that's quite a lineup. Are these all sites you've used before and what dates and spacing did you set this all up with? Looking forward to seeing the results.

Jack wrote: "FWIW, J: I reviewed Fall. Delivered a fair review, according to my standards. You've probably seen it.
I just got a comment from a troll who objected. According to him(?), I don't know a well writt..."
Hey Jack, thanks for the heads up. I'm with you, just ignore the trolls as the more attention you give them the more they get going. I did check out the comment you got from this guy and right away there's a typo in his comment. Hmm, wonder what that says. Anyway, I went to his reviewer's page and I see he trashes lots of books, so be it. Maybe that's what makes his day.
In the end Fall keeps selling despite not having many reviews and even one that said it was crap.
I'm sure it isn't for everyone but someone likes it and I guess those are the people I wrote it for.
Have a good day and thanks for the info.

I am planning to just hang in with Select and see how long it goes. My concerns come from having no idea what is driving readers to continue to buy and/or download and read the book, which by the way is Fall of the Western Kings, my first shot at fantasy. I was excited to get 15,000 pages read the first month it was released and this has been pretty overwhelming. As I mentioned earlier, I pretty much took Jack's plan from a while back and ran with it, especially the idea of putting the book in Select. I did not do Select for my earlier books. The biggest monetary part of this is the pages read as at 99 cents a copy, there isn't much money from the sales. So, I'm just going to ride the wave as long as it goes and work hard to have book two ready (and at least as good) before people all forget about the series.
Thanks again to all of you for the advice.