Indie Advent Calendar 2019 - Promo for all!

[Kay]

Hi guys!

I know many of you will have participated in my yearly event but for those of you that are new - Indie Advent Calendar has run over December 1st-25th for three years now. It's an opportunity that any indie author can take part in to help showcase our books to readers looking for Christmas presents or wanting to treat themselves.

You can see the past events here
http://kaymacleodbooks.com/iac2018/
http://kaymacleodbooks.com/iac2017/
http://kaymacleodbooks.com/indie-adve...

This year I'm intending on doing things a little differently.
Instead of asking participants to write a post and send it to me, I'm going to use StoryOrigin as the main platform.

This site allows you to post a free book which readers can download in exchange for signing up for your email list. It also hosts group giveaways so we can all promote the event and then the people we reach can browse through and download the books that catch their attention.
There is also the opportunity to promote books in Kindle Unlimited together. The site is also free to use right now as it's still in beta, so everyone can join this promotion.

In doing it this way, we get more long term value from the event because we can reach out to interested readers through our mailing lists afterwards or get more page reads on KU depending on which part you sign up for (you can join both if you have a book to give away and a book in KU, but remember you can't give away a book while it's in KU due to Amazon's terms.)

I'll still host a main site page on my website but I won't be doing daily posts. This means that all entries will get better exposure because there won't be any books that people can't see until later in the event!

I'm posting this so soon so you have chance to get signed up for Story Origin and put together the free book you want to give away.
You can just put up a book you already have for sale or you can write a short story that connects into your other work if you don't want to give away a full length piece of work. This should give you enough time to get it ready by December 1st.

I'll probably do another big physical giveaway to generate interest for the main event if people are willing to donate again, but as we're giving away free ebooks across the event, there won't be the daily ebook giveaways. I'll probably arrange something where you can do your own limited ebook giveaways on your own site and I link to it from the event page but I'll have more on that in the future.

Also, what platform would be best for you guys that I organise interest on? I have Whatsapp, Groupme, and Facebook Messenger and would prefer to use one of those for updates rather than sending out a million emails this year lol!

Any ideas to help make the event awesome are always appreciated!

Take care,
Kay

[Kay]

Alex wrote: "Hi, Kay, I've been a participant in previous years, as you know, and would love to take part again, but I don't have a mailing list so I don't know if I would be able to.

As for platform, I only h..."

Hi Alex!

You can still put a free book up on there without collecting email addresses for your mailing list! That's just an added bonus for those of us that do have them. You can give readers something to try and hopefully they will go on to buy more of your work :)
You can also put something into the physical giveaway if you want. (I'll have pictures up of all the prizes so your cover will still be in front of everyone that visits the landing page)

I'll try to figure something out for anyone that can't take part in these ways but that will be a little later on if they really need it.

Thanks for your interest!

[Kay]

Alex wrote: "Great.

I'll get myself sorted with an account on the site and begin making prep. I'm glad you've given me lots of notice, I'll need it, lol.

Now to decide on what book(s) to give away."

Yeah, it's definitely a new approach so I hope I've given everyone enough notice! I've only recently joined myself but there are some great promos that are working well on there and I felt like it's time to shake things up a bit ;)

[Carole]

I want to help!

[Kay]

Carole wrote: "I want to help!"

You're the best! Thanks :D
I'll have more info and precise details a little later, I just wanted to make sure everyone has time to sign up to the site and get their free book sorted! I'll send you an email with the bits I have so far :)

[Dale]

I'll be in again this year. I already have an account with StoryOrigin, although I haven't done much with it. I'll await further instructions.

[Nat]

I'm interested... but I don't currently have a mailing list because Mailchimp purged my account from lack of use. Can I just collect emails to use in my own mailing program through this? I'm a bit mailing list shy due to the purging when I had no warning and it wasn't even in the fine print that I'd have my account closed. Or, does anyone have another mailing list suggestion where they do not close you down?

Thanks!

[Erica]

I'm in!

[Carole]

Great!

[Carole]

Can someone help Alex? I don't know what Story Origin is.

[Anna]

Me neither. So sorry! I mostly know nuffink.

[Erica]

Sorry! It is on my to do list, but I haven't signed up yet. Looks like there may be some YouTube tutorials. Maybe you can find some answers there until someone in the group is able to help?

[Rhonda]

You can contact story origin and the owner will contact you back fairly quickly to answer any of your questions. He’s very nice and very helpful.

[Dale]

Hi Alex,

I set up my account several months ago but have done very little with it, so I may not be much help. That said, I set up "universal book links" for my books, which can then be used in various promos both on and off Story Origin. What these links do is provide a Story Origin page where all sources for your books (Amazon, B&N, Apple, etc.) can be accessed in one place. Users can pick the source they want for their purchase/download. I also tried a newsletter swap, but I'm really not sure how well that worked out. I found it a bit confusing. After that, everything started up with my job change, house change, and whatnot, and I've had very little time for either writing or marketing, so I didn't do much else with it.

[Kay]

Alex wrote: "Thanks, Erica and Rhonda. I might give that a go,

Right now, though, I'm not sure what I need to do to be ready for the advent calendar. Am I doing a reader magnet, a direct download, review copy..."

Hi Alex!

The reader magnet is what you need for the Advent Calendar promo.
Direct downloads are for sending out ARCs and review copies let you follow upon reviewers once you've released a book.
If there's anything specific you're struggling with, there is a tutorial section on the site or there's a Facebook group here https://www.facebook.com/storyoriginapp/ you can contact the creator and he's super helpful and quick to respond to questions.

You can ask me too but I'm not always around with work and stuff :P Hope you find the site useful!

[Kay]

Nat wrote: "I'm interested... but I don't currently have a mailing list because Mailchimp purged my account from lack of use. Can I just collect emails to use in my own mailing program through this? I'm a bit ..."

Hi Nat,

You can just collect email addresses on StoryOrigin and download them as a CSV file to import to a mailing list at your convenience at a later date. I'm using Mailerlite now, I did used to use Mailchimp but I'm finding Mailerlite much more user friendly and cost effective.

[Kay]

Just as a quick message to everyone, thank you for all your interest! I'm not on here regularly at the moment because I'm in the last stages of sorting out a release but once that's all done I'll figure out more details for this year's event. I'll also be setting up a Facebook group with a messenger chat to organise everything as that's the platform most people want to communicate on.
Thank you all so much!

[Kay]

Alex wrote: "Thanks, Kay. Initially my issue was not knowing what section I was supposed to be dealing with. Hopefully I'll be able to sort it out from here, though I do have another question

Do I put up the e..."

It's totally up to you what you want to give away. You can give a whole book or make a sample file with a few chapters.

The site only allows you to submit one book per event but you could get around it by making a single file with two books and putting on the cover that it contains two stories.

My own giveaway is a welcome pack with a bundle of short stories set in several of my worlds as well as the first five chapters of my fantasy novel.

[Kay]

Hi everyone!

I'm sorry to say that because of some health issues I've had this year, I won't have time to put everything together for my usual Indie Advent Calendar event. I'm hoping to return to it next year though, it's been so much fun in the past and I love showing off everyone's work!

I would love to showcase you guys in another way though. I work part time for a large supermarket and they've asked me to do a book signing in our local store as part of a Christmas charity event. I'll be donating £1 per sale of my own books while I'm there but I was thinking of putting together a book hamper that people can enter to win by making a donation to the charity. If you'd like to donate a book (or more than one!) for it, I'll be displaying them for the day so everyone that will be able to see them and if you want to send over any bookmarks, postcards, flyers, or other swag, I'll give those out too. It's quite a big store and will be super busy that close to Christmas! Our charity of the year is https://www.clicsargent.org.uk/ which helps young people with cancer, all the money raised from the raffle will go to them.
Of course, I'll be taking lots of pictures of the donations and sharing them on my own social media and thanking you guys on my companies pages too.

The event is on December 14th so please send me anything you'd like to donate or have given away as soon as you can to make sure it arrives on time 🙂

If you need my home address, please send me a message.

Thank you in advance for any donations, you're all amazing and I know we can make a difference in these young people's lives while showing the world the incredible things we produce!