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

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

Thanks Mik,
I'll have to check them out. Anytime I read a good Indie book I want to help that author and maybe this is a site that will let me expose those books to a wider audience than I can do on my own.

D. Good idea. I've posted a few notices for other authors on my FB page and used tweets to try to do the same thing. So far I've only done that for books I've read and think people I have as friends would like.

Update, 4 sales yesterday with no ad going - expect a few tweets that I put out. Probably residuals from ad blitz over the weekend.

Hi all,
Here are my latest promotion info. Promo was for Shepherds on sale for 99 cents. Only money maker so far was ENT. See results below.
Bknights/Fiverr 1 sale cost 5.50
KBT 31 sales cost 25.00
ENT 74 sales cost 15.00
Booksends 47 sales cost 25.00
ebookhounds 8 sales cost 3.00
So far, that's it.

Hi all,
Thanks for those sharing their experiences. Here's my 2 cents worth. I decided to do a 99 cent sale for an older novel, Shepherds, scifi action. My first round was emails to friends, family, etc. As expected 0 sales but then those who'd want to read this kind of book already have. The hope was more that someone would forward the email to one of their friends who hadn't read the book.
Part 2 was a KindleBoards Discovery ad. My latest experiences with KB ads has not been good but because I had better results in the past, I thought I'd try again just to validate more recent results. Zero sales. Conclusion, forget KB, they've lost readers and don't reach people we want to reach.
Today's ad is through Fiverr and here's where I could use some help. It is the $5.50 ad that they say goes out to 50 FB Kindle groups. Like, which groups? How can I find any of them to see if the ad actually went out and what it looked like? Do any of you who've used Fiverr know?
The rest of my lineup has KBT, ENT, Booksends and ebookhounds. I'll report results.

L.S. thanks for tip on Bkinghts-fiverr. I opened up a conversation with them and seems they agreed asking for a review before doing anything was a mistake. I'm going to remove it and wait to see what they do.

Hi all,
Glad to see this discussion is continuing. All the info helps. I don't have any results data to report but I would like to share a strange (or at least it seems strange to me) interaction I've had trying to line up a promo ad. Based on various feedback from a number of sources I've requested a promo through Bknights which appears to be tied to fiverr. Okay, only $5.5 though the website had several different looks depending on how I logged on. I went cheap as a what if trial. Got confirmation that they'd run the promo but not for the days I wanted so traded emails and they changed the date but so far I still haven't seen anything from them and it appears I cannot review it until the day it comes out. Now they ask for a review. I give them 4 stars and I feel generous since I have not seen any work from them yet. Oh, not so good, can I remove that review as it hurts whom ever is doing the work's ranking. I suppose I will remove it but it seems crazy to ask for a review before there is anything to judge what will be done and then be surprised that they don't get an excellent review. I know I'm venting. So, has anyone else had experience with fiverr? Maybe there is something buried earlier on here that I missed or don't remember. Appreciate any comments from this group.

Lee,
Thanks. Anyone else tried them?

L.G.
2/16: ReadCheaply (FREE) + $20 Facebook Boost = 7 Books (5 Amazon + 2 B&N)
The verdict: Facebook not worth it. I’ll try ReadCheaply again since it is free and there is nothing to lose.

What's the URL for ReadCheaply? That's one I am not familiar with.

Hi Jack,
Darwin's World for 99 cents is on Bargain Booksy today with Kindle, Nook and Apple links. Last one down on my email.

I recently applied for an ENT spot and so far have heard nothing. It's been a couple of weeks. Based on what's been said here I am wondering if my request is just lost in cyberspace.
Another note, ereaderbuddy - back in October I requested an ad with them for mid-November. Mid-December I got an email stating that my request was too late for their deadline and therefore they did not run it. Seemed a bit useless. Has anyone had other experiences with this site?
And about GR ads getting books added to people's "to read" lists. A little checking shows people add it to their list with tens of thousands of books already on their TR list. Not much of value to us except maybe for ego. I haven't noticed people with that long a TR list ever going back and actually buying something off that list. Mostly I think they are too busy adding more books to it.

I've tried Awesome Gang a couple of times with poor results, 4 sales once and 2 sales the other time. Can't wait to see what Jack gets out of his ad.

Hi Ken,
If you decide to try a FB campaign let us know how it works out.

More good info. Thanks for sharing, Lori, L.G. and Jack,
Just one note about ads that I forgot to mention before. I've tried the "post boost" through FB and did not see any value from it. Lots of "views" meaning nothing.
GR ads had similar results. The only good thing about the GR ad was it charged against my pre-set amount for clicks until my pre-set max was used up. Very little sales value to me.
Anyone else have any experience with either of these methods?

Great info, thanks to all. Jack has certainly got us going and with some cooperation maybe we can put our $ into the promo sites that give us some benefit which will help them and keep money from those who do not deliver for us. So far the only "ads" I've done that netted me $ were a posting on Goodreads that netted me 6 sales but cost me zero and a free listing on eBookLister that got me 4 sales again with zero cost. The next closest to breakeven for me has been Books and Tips which I've used twice and nearly reached breakeven both times. A while back I came close once on an ad on Kindle Boards but more recent ads there have been severely disappointing. I have yet to get on BookBub but certainly plan to try again. Also have not tried ENT but likely will. I did try BookSends once got a number of sales but was a long way from reaching breakeven. One ad on eBookSoda was a dismal failure, only a single sale that day. That's it from me.

Hi all,
Yes, Jack has started something pretty important to all us Indie authors and I hope everyone who has data will share. I don't have much but here's a tidbit. I don't have any specials going so normally wouldn't spend money to promote. However I saw a site called ask david which promotes books in various ways and the fee is $15 for a year with multiple books okay. So I paid the $15 and submitted a scifi book of mine titled Shepherds. It took a few days until I got emails detailing the promo process and when it would begin and what I might do to help things along. The various ads were certainly professional looking and seemed to touch just about every social media there is. Claims are 37,000 subscribers though no way to know if they are readers who actually buy books based on the ads. So far, after day 2, zero sales. Perhaps not surprising since the book is not on sale. Since I've got 11 and a half months to use this, I may try some other approaches and maybe put the book on sale to see what happens.

Jack, I couldn't agree more. Having subscribers doesn't mean any of them are buying books. I haven't really done much promotional work yet but know that to succeed I need to and have tried to get better tracking what ads I place, what genre they are in and what the results are. Residuals have so far been nearly zero but I have also been watching and trying to figure out how sales are connected to ads, if they are.

I decided to look into BookSends (I think Jack said it did well for him) and found that they list the number of their subscribers by genre/category. Looking back at my notes I see that I did use them once and did pretty well but not quite well enough to make money. Here is their list of subscribers taken from their website.
Free Book of the Day 100,000
Mysteries/Thrillers 48,000
Romance 36,000
Erotic Romance 12,500
Fantasy 26,500
Science Fiction 20,500
Teen/YA 19,000
Horror 17,000
Action/Adventure 29,500
Historical 30,500
Literary 14,000
Nonfiction 26,000
Children’s Books 15,000
Men’s Fiction 4,500
Women’s Fiction 11,500
Christian/Religious Fiction 7,200

I'd be happy to ask for info from a promo company about details to their subscribers by genre? Any suggestions as to which company and what genre would the group want the data broken down into?

Yes, lead on Jack. And I agree with Anna in that there seem to be a lot of people trying to get us to support them with ads that don't pay us anything. Based on this discussion I'm going to plan a new promo using only the sites that pay us and see what that nets.