When marketing your book, where did you get the most bang for your buck?

[Chuck]

What was the total cost? How many books were sold during the campaign? (I'm trying to estimate cost per book sold.)

Why else did you like the program/ad campaign/whatever?

I'm hoping the answers will not violate the rules as I'm seriously looking for actual experience people had.

Thanks!

[[deleted user]]

Ad from Ereadernews today

[Ken]

There's a long and sometimes rambling thread in the Goodreads Author Feedback group with exactly this title, and it has a lot of data.

Mine have been ENT, The Midlist (now defunct), Fussy Librarian, and Free Kindle Books & Tips. I've found that most of the free promotion sites don't really deliver any worthwhile results.

The catch is that what works for one author and book rarely works for another, so you do have to experiment.

[Dylan]

Book Raid is free and gave me good results. It was by far, the best bang for the buck. Because, you know, it was free. I had good results with Fussy Librarian as well.

OnlineBookClub.org was a really amazing experience. It's expensive at $150 and I didn't make my money back, but for that one, it's very unique and you get quite a bit of exposure out of it. I think the right book there would actually make its money back. I promoted a satirical novel, which isn't the easiest sell. Also, on Twitter, I felt like a rock star the day of the promotion. hahaha

I'm running a Book Gorilla ad today. I don't know what the results will be like, but so far it's looking good.

[Mike]

I had disappointing results with Fussy Librarian but I think this was partly because of the book's genre; it wasn't right for that service. I have had much better results from BargainBooksy - but again, not for all my books; they're of different genres. I suppose different sorts of readers subscribe to different email lists.

[Thomas]

Are you talking about only marketing online? Or any marketing at all?

[Tara Woods Turner]

I had great results with Fussy Librarian and so-so results with book Gorilla. Book Gorilla was $30 more expensive. So...yeah.

[Christina]

Hi Chuck,
Since we already have a thread for this, I'm going to close this one. If you go here, https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
You'll see that several if our members have shared not just their experiences, but a pretty good sized list of marketing sites that I went through and updated recently. We intend to keep that thread current as well, so it should continue to be a valid resource. Thanks.