Getting the Word Out - Sharing My Experience

[K.]

Hey all. I am just gearing up for a two-day e-book giveaway and thought I would stop in here and tell you a little about what I have learned about book promotion in the last 8 months and how I am approaching this event as a result.

Things that have worked (to get some notice and books to readers): Goodreads Giveaways, Kindle giveaways, Twitter (to some extent) More on the Kindle giveaways in a minute

Things that have not worked (for me): Goodreads advertising and other Goodreads presence (good for talking about books, not particularly for interesting Goodreaders in my own work - which is a delicate matter as we all know), Facebook (more on that in a minute as well).

My goal since publishing the book last April was to get it to people who might like it (not make money, I knew better than that by the time I published it).

Not surprisingly, giving away the e-book has been (really) the one way to get it in the hands of people who don't already know me. I have used FB and Twitter to tell my friends (a small number - I'm not a platform person) about the giveaways and have generated pretty good results that way. At least my book climbed to the top of its category on Amazon during the giveaways. I used a paid service to send news of the e-book promotions to the big e-book sites prior to the giveaways but it's hard to know how many "sales" came from any of those sites.

I had $100 on account at Goodreads that I just had refunded (it would've lasted til the last trumpet the way the clicks were going) and I einvested that in a few days of Facebook advertising.

I am giving the ebook away on Jan 1 and Jan 2. I did not use any of the paid free e-book placement sites this time out. It will be interesting to see if there's any difference. I will tweet not more than three times that the ebook is free for New Year's Day and the day after (let's face it, those are a bore and a turn-off) and I will post an offer on my FB page. I'll come back here and let you know how it goes. Of course, BTW, if you're interested, check it out on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Up-Back-Away-K-...

[Jenni]

Hello K
I have downloaded your book and I promise a review on amazon, goodreads, twitter and facebook. I won't be able to read it straight away as my son and I have swapped kindles.
I have also written a fantasy adventure. Different in many ways to yours and have just published it on kindle.
DragonZ Eye
Had over 200 downloads over xmas as it was free, now hope to get some reviews.
I don't think it is easy to promote your own book if you are not well connected or good at social networking - not my forte anyway

Good luck and I look forward to reading your book.

[K.]

Hi Jenni - Thanks for your response and for promising a review. I hope you'll like it - esp if your going to review it! Some people, amazingly, don't really care for it - it's a bit of a throwback. But that's life. When I hear a negative or ho hum comment I go look at the reviews for the real geniuses, like Lewis Carroll or George Eliot and it makes me feel better.

The downloads seem to be going along pretty well. That bit of Facebook advertising has been a (modest) jackpot, at least in terms of "likes" - not sure what good those really do for the book but I got a hundred in the last day! That's huge for me as I don't think anyone but friends and family had "liked" the page before I did the ad. FYI. I have a blog for the book that I have really put some time and energy into but no one seems to look at that. Oh well. Thanks again. I will be sure to look up your book.

[K.]

As promised, stopping back around to share some results on the kindle giveaway that I did on Jan 1 and 2. In previous giveaways, I had always used a service (bookster? I can't remember the name) to send advance notice to free book sites and in those cases I gave away about 150 books over three days. This time, I only used twitter and Facebook, but included for the first time a little Facebook advertising in the form of an offer. Result: 70 books over two days - not great, but on the plus side there was lots of action on my book's little FB page. I think I had collected 37 "likes" over 9 months and in those two days I got another 115. So, still modest but huge gain there, relatively speaking. The FB thing was more expensive -$60- than the pre-placement thing ($40 if I recall) but it was sort of nice to see all this people "liking" the book. (I wonder if they had a button that meant "mildly interested" if more people would hit that). I don't think Twitter did much for me this time but I did get one retweet from an author whose book I admire, and whom I follow, so I think that was a gain. Frankly, all those free book sites tweet so much I tune them out and can't help feeling others do the same, but that is only intuition.

[Jenni]

I only advertised on facebook and twitter and got 239 downloads in 5 days. I guess it depends on search words and who's looking for a book as much as adverts.
Sometimes I ignore tweets about free books, other times I have a look.
Guess everyone else is the same.

[D.]

Thanks for all the info. I have 2 Kindle books that I'm trying to figure out how to promote. And I thought writing the books was the hard part! ~D

[Jenni]

Don't get disheartened, there are so many books to choose from, and so many are free.

BUT your books will sell and be enjoyed by readers, it just takes time for the word to spread.
J