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Publishing and Promoting
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The Numbers Thread - What Works and What Doesn't
I like the way you're going about it Andrew, but have never tried a giveaway so can't offer any data. I've built up 31 Amazon reviews over two years with a simple trick. When people tell me they bought my book, I respond, "Thank you. If it's been useful, perhaps you could put up a couple sentences as a review on Amazon."
I've got new data in from this past weekend:10/4(Sat)-10/6(Mon): 54 copies given away - book started with zero reviews, but got one over the weekend
So far I'm not seeing much difference between days of the week - or at least, not between Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
But there's still a lot to find out and I'm going to keep posting numbers. I'll try something different next weekend.
I'm in the middle of a Kindle countdown - will try and add my data when it is over
I have done many kdp free days in the past, pouring great effort into the marketing of some and absolutely none with others. On the low, low end I once ended a 2 day giveaway and only had 12 downloads! On the other hand I have also seen nearly 1100! Marketing efforts alone seem to only affect the qty on the order of a hundred or so but that doesn't mean you shouldn't.Like sprinter, its all about getting off the blocks with the most momentum. If you can score a few hundred downloads by noon, you should fare pretty well. So yes, marketing is important but it's not a guarantee.
I should say that all these results have been in short suspense fiction.
Downloads come much later as in over the next few weeks or months. They have to read your book first, right? I think us eager authors forget that step sometimes.
Here were the links to the books I talked about above
http://www.amazon.com/Bobby-Short-Sto...
http://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Sand-Sh...
I did a KDP givaway a couple of years ago, and got close to 1000 downloads and not a single review, even from someone who knew me and told me she loved it.I'm interested in how the Kindle countdown works and what's the best day to start one.
The results are in on my countdown - another waste of effort. Back to normal pricing and occasional sales. I have had a GR campaign running in the background which has created some to read clicks. I think I'll stick with that.
I have found that giveaways and countdowns need to be heavily advertised, at least in Facebook genre-specific pages or groups, to be worth the effort. The best any of my books have done is 8000 giveaways, with a big sales bump afterwards. That was a year ago, when giveaways had more impact and was accompanied by listings on about 10 announcement sites. Countdowns have had less impact, but have always led to a small sales bump when I have announced it on my blog and in a couple of other low investment ad sites like Fussy Librarian or the All Mystery Newsletter.
A critical factor to makes giveaways and countdowns work is to have a killer book page and a very professional author page on Amazon. Readers are getting very savvy regarding free books and will be much more apt to choose a book if the description and cover look professional.
As they should, Carmen. And good job, by the way. Even a year ago it was starting to be more difficult to do successful giveaways. Now we are in a rapidly expanding environment and I think it's only logical how it is panning out. Logical, supply demand theory, whatever you want to call it. There are only so many readers with so much time and patience. Its only natural to seek out the best experience as a reader.As a writer this explosion has been wonderful and full of opportunities. As a reader I have many times found more frustration than joy over the indie world even to the extent that the most popular books turned out to be lemons in my opinion ... and immediately The Neighbors comes to mind. (Sorry to offend anyone.)
But while this era is full of opportunity, dumb luck, and steep learning curves, I believe when it shakes out down the road, the well seasoned and skillful authors will win, as they should. But just thank God those damned guardians are finally falling away, Cheers to that!
Mod
I'm interested in how the Kindle countdo..."
FWIW: I try to schedule my countdowns now to begin on Thursday or Friday and run for 4 days only.
I have to envy anyone who got 1000 free downloads; I never got more than about a hundred, but then I don't do nearly the amount of pre-advertising that others do. Blog entry, FB entries, that's about it.
I'm intending to try either Fussy Librarian or ENT listing in conjunction with my next countdown; maybe that will make a difference. But no freebies.
Still, there are huge numbers of free books, not only on Amazon but also on Apple's iBooks, and a mass of readers who simply aren't willing to spend for something to read. Even if contemporary authors stop providing freebies, there's Project Gutenberg's 'classics'. Those books became classics because they're good. Granted, Gutenberg sweeps up a few non-classics too, but that just adds to the free reading.
Maybe I shouldn't whine too loudly; I looked at the weekly NYT bestseller lists and I hadn't read anything from most of the authors and only one or two past books by those who are extremely prolific. As for the rest, despite bestseller status, meh...
I am doing a Kindle Countdown Deal now. As far as I can tell Amazon does nothing to let folks know about it. The top sellers list is about impossible to find. What a waste.
A little while ago I carried out a Twitter experiment and I think authors are going to find this VERY INTERESTING! Stay with me here, because THE FIGURES WILL ASTOUND YOU!You see I’d been wondering if Twitter really helps to sell books. I suspect that all we accomplish by retweeting each other’s tweets, if that’s the correct terminology, is that the whole thing just goes round and round and round and never really reaches the decision maker; i.e. the reader.
Well anyone can count how many tweets they tweeted, compare it to how many books they sold and come up with a figure. But that’s nuts! I wanted indisputable proof.
So this is what I did. I have a book promotion video on YouTube (you can find it on my home page on Goodreads) that receives very good response every time someone views it, but that’s not very many people. So on a Tuesday night at mid-night I made a note of the number of people who’d viewed it to date. Then on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I carried on re-tweeting other authors’ work as usual, but the only thing I promoted for myself is this YouTube video. For 3½ days this is all I did on Twitter, tweeting the same video in different formats and of course continuing to re-tweet other writers. And I kept a close eye on the results.
I now know exactly who’s re-tweeted it and because I can look and see how many followers each of these people have I also know exactly how many people this video has been re-tweeted to. Whether they’ve picked up on it or not, who knows? But that’s not the point of the exercise.
So here we go; Over a period of 84 hours my YouTube video was tweeted to 470,117 people, not far off half a million. And out of those 470,117 people who received this tweet, 26 of them actually clicked on the link.
To put that into perspective 0.005% of people receiving the tweet about my YouTube book promotion video actually opened it and had a look at it! That means that 99.995% of people receiving this tweet have either ignored it, which is more than likely, or had the decency to re-tweet it to their own followers, but without actually looking at themselves.
And in those 3½ days I sold one book. (I actually sold three others, but they’re not the subject of the YouTube video)
The statisticians amongst you may now be saying that some people may have received that tweet but from different twitter users. True, but some people have also re-tweeted it more than once, at different times of the day, so the figures balance each other out (kinda).
The point I’m making here is that I have to reach almost half a million people on Twitter to sell one single book. And considering I earn about 35p for every book sold, that’s a lot of hard work. If I want to sell 100 books, and earn myself £35, my tweets have to reach over 47,000,000 people worldwide!
Does Twitter help sell books? Yeah, I’d say so, but this is a measure of the amount of hard graft that has to be put in.
Wow, Karl, that's a pretty decisive conclusion about tweeting and Youtube promotional videos.I started another giveaway today (to see what it's like when you start on Sunday). I'll post the results here when I get them.
I don't do any hard measuring. But my estimate is that for every one sale on Twitter, you could make three on FB. So to me FB is a better tool to make a sale.
I noticed a long time ago that I can't possibly keep track of all the tweets sent my way. Like the late Carl Sagan used to say, there are "billions and billions" of them. And I'm only following about 1200 people. I've seen so many variations of the "Please buy my book tweet" that I scroll right past them, in search of something interesting. Karl's experiment proves what I've always suspected. All those tweets and retweets fall on deaf ears.
When I had my first KDP giveaway, it was May of 2013 and free downloads were still on the rise. I also did a fair amount of promoting on Facebook, Twitter and various free book sites.
I suppose a fair number of those downloads for Sportsman's Bet are still hidden away on Kindles all over the country. But as far as an uptick in sales, I never saw one.
Although on the day of the giveaway, it was Number 1 in the top 100 British Detective Mysteries.
I like to say of all the books nobody wanted to pay for, mine was the most popular.
I have done the giveaways on Amazon and received less than 200 downloads for each book and no reviews. After I thought about the free books I have on my Nexus and iPad which I have yet to read I guess I understand; either the books weren't worth a review or it was downloaded just because it was free.
So, Friday night I decided to try a different type of giveaway. If you purchased my book which is 99 cents during the pre-order period you would be entered into a drawing for a Kindle Paperwhite. I posted the link on Facebook, twitter, Goodreads and Yahoo questions. In a matter of hours there were almost 300 page views. In all probability I thought after that many page views someone would have engaged the offer. Not one. I thought it was a great idea, but I guess not. Take a look. Where do you think the failure is? http://brigittamoon.blogspot.com/2014...
Brigitta
So, Friday night I decided to try a different type of giveaway. If you purchased my book which is 99 cents during the pre-order period you would be entered into a drawing for a Kindle Paperwhite. I posted the link on Facebook, twitter, Goodreads and Yahoo questions. In a matter of hours there were almost 300 page views. In all probability I thought after that many page views someone would have engaged the offer. Not one. I thought it was a great idea, but I guess not. Take a look. Where do you think the failure is? http://brigittamoon.blogspot.com/2014...
Brigitta
Brigitta wrote: "I have done the giveaways on Amazon and received less than 200 downloads for each book and no reviews. After I thought about the free books I have on my Nexus and iPad which I have yet to read I gu..."You might want to check and make sure your contest is legal. In some states, requiring a purchase to participate in a contest constitutes an unlawful lottery. In other cases, there may be limits on the value of a prize for a contest in which purchase or other consideration is required to enter.
I did a search for Md. laws and found that for the contest to be legal it must say no purchase necessary. Thanks. I never thought about that. Maybe I will just do a random drawing from the reviews of the book.
Brigitta
Brigitta
Brigitta wrote: "I did a search for Md. laws and found that for the contest to be legal it must say no purchase necessary. Thanks. I never thought about that. Maybe I will just do a random drawing from the reviews ..."You're welcome. :) I'm a bit OCD about laws that most people don't think of or pay attention to. It makes me really good at compliance issues, but my boss thinks it's both my best and my most annoying quality due to how often the words, "You can't do that" come out of my mouth. :D
I cancelled the page and will now move on to another idea.
Brigitta
Brigitta
Hi all,I just finished another Select campaign. This one I started on Sunday.
10/12(Sun)-10/14(Tues): 28 - book has zero reviews
This is an absolutely abysmal result for starting on Sunday. When I started three day campaigns on Friday, I routinely gave away between 50 and 100 books. When I tried to start on Saturday, I gave away 54 - but a Sunday start to a 3-day campaign moved just 28 books.
All three days in this latest campaign were very low volume but Tuesday was particularly bad, moving just 5 books. It broke the usual pattern of the third day doing better than the second - I'll post an image later to show you what I mean!
A kindle countdown would work if Amazon would promote it. If they had a page to go to with the day's free or discounted books it would bring much more traffic but apparently the only readers who know about your deal are the ones you tell (who have probably already read it) or who fall across your book site on Amazon.
Here's the image as promised (scaled down to meet the forum standard - you can follow the link to see the full-size version if it's hard to read)
Full size: http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u1...
Belle wrote: "A kindle countdown would work if Amazon would promote it. If they had a page to go to with the day's free or discounted books it would bring much more traffic but apparently the only readers who k..."Belle,
I agree with you.
I essentially haven't told anyone about my giveaways (except you all in this thread, and you I haven't told which book I'm giving away) - so we can safely assume my data is very "pure" - ie: independent of outside influences that might be driving sales, such as marketing.
All four books shown in the above chart were posted to Amazon originally on the same day in mid-September. They have the same style of cover and are in the same genre and are approximately the same length. In short, they should be very apt comparisons to one another.
What's left to distinguish between their giveaway numbers - as you rightly pointed out - is how people happen across them on any given day.
This is bad news for me but it does provide valuable information about which days are the best for your operations on Amazon.
Mod
Mod
But there are likely hundreds of giveaways and countdowns every day, so I have no idea how Amazon selects the books they feature. And it appears that at least some of the books on the e-mailer aren't discounted at all.
Has anyone ever suggested to Amazon that they send an email listing all the discounted/free books available, by genre, on a given day? I'm thinking that I might do that, but my usual Amazon experience is that all you get in return are boilerplate messages.
I've had good success and high numbers of interest in gieaways but I've yet to see these translated into more book sales. I'm not sure it really does the job of getting the word out there. The intangible, however, is that if the book you gave away is actually read and enjoyed and probably passed around the family and friends, they will want to buy some of your other books.
This troubles me so much. Not because I believe free give-aways lead to poor reviews (which I do), but I honestly feel giving our work away for free could see the beginning of the end for our industry. The traditional publishers could very well be sitting on the side-lines waiting for the Self-Publishing Indie industry to implode.If you've got five minutes please look at my blog on this subject. I look at both sides of the coin and explain my fears;
http://awomanswisdom.wordpress.com/20...
I think this is a global issue, by the way
I agree. Amazon has conditioned the reader to get free reading material with their Kindle. Wait long enough and it'll show up free. Pages promoting free books are exploding. But the industry will not be able to maintain itself this way. Something will have to give.
Has anyone tried the Amazon pre-order campaign? Mine has nine days to go but I don't see the purpose. I don't see where Amazon promotes the pre-released books for Indie authors. Am I missing it?
Brigitta
Brigitta
Mod
For that matter, it would be nice to launch a new book with a 'countdown' but that's not allowed either; the book has to wait for 3 months.
It may well be better for Amazon to do this, but I see no advantage for authors.
I don't expect things to change; too many authors give books away, even when they only have one or two. How many residual sales will they get for their effort? Now for those who've got at least 10 books, even 15, residuals may well be worth it.
But even then it becomes a question of quality. How good is your book, in the opinion of those who bought it? If your reviews aren't coming, readers didn't care enough. And if you're not getting mostly 5 star reviews with a few 4 stars, that translates to lack of reader commitment to you, the author. Result? That freebie hurt all the other authors and it didn't do you a commensurate amount of good as a tradeoff.
I did it once, found it unproductive, decided I'd stick with Countdowns. They DO provide a boost in residuals and a tiny amount of income as well, which is my point of view as an author; readers get a long book for a low price and they're invested in it enough to want to read it, at least the first few chapters, so that's an advantage for readers.
As for quality: ahem. My short story got its first review, 5 stars, from someone in California I've never heard of. So I checked his record regarding reviews. He's done four, one a three, one a four, two are fives including mine. The other guy who got that five?
An obscure fellow named Edgar Allan Poe. :D
I've come to the conclusion that getting a five star review is meaningless. I take Goodreads recommendations for star ratings very seriously. Five stars means you found the book "amazing." Books that amaze me are few and far between. However, there are lots of reviewers who hand out five star reviews like Halloween candy--everyone who knocks at the door gets one. And authors have come to expect five star reviews the same way.I wish that we could accept three stars as positive. How can it be a bad thing if someone says they liked your book?
Judy - I agree, but I also think that any book that still has me thinking about it days later and looking for the next book by that author is worthy of 4-5 stars. It may not be "amazing" in the same way To Kill a Mockingbird or Gone With the Wind is, but I don't need it to be the next literary classic to give it 5 stars. That said, because most people rate books they enjoy at 5 stars, I'm really leery of buying a book rated less than 3-1/2 stars. Which is too bad, because to me a 3 star book would still be good.
Have any of you used the many free/discount/yourt ype of e-book sites which send out email newsletters to their readers? I've a list of around 60 of these. Some have fancy restrictions, some charge a lot, but many of them will offer your book to their readers when it's on a promotion.We've been experimenting a little as we think Amazon is limiting and have had some interesting results.
Anyone wanting to find a list of these website go to www.indiesunlimited.com and check the menu bar at the top of the page and click on book promo sites. If you want an international site try www.Readersintheknow.co.uk
Bookbub is the best of these site but is picky and very pricey. We are looking to get our books up there and will let you know. Most authors tell us their sales pay for the ad.
I'm giving Indiesunlimited a try. I will let you know if I have any results.
Thanks
Brigitta
Thanks
Brigitta
Mod
Apart from comments in my blog above, another reason I'm against free give-aways is that the reader notices the book, thinks, "Well, it's not really my kind of book. I like to buy romance and this is a vampire book. And it's probably crap anyway, but as it's free I'lll give it a go."It then sits on her Kindle for a year or so wih all the other free books she's downloaded. When she eventually gets around to reading it (under the assumption that she's expanding the horizons of her genres) she's completely forgotten it was free.
She hates it. Why on earth would she want to read about vampires? She wants a good juicy romance. So she gives it a poor review.
Now if she'd have had to pay for it, well she wouldn't have bought it in the first place. Now some people might argue that you're attracting readers to your book who might otherwise have avoided it. But do you really want those readers? You've earned no money out of them and nine times out of ten they'll give you a poor review.
I have what some may say is an inappropriate sense of humour, but my books do give you exactly what they say on the tin. IF a reader doesn't like that then I'd honestly prefer they didn't download the book.
Mod
I am very new to this whole book publishing thing that we find ourselves involved with. So I am not sure that my comments are relevant. In a past life I was very involved the the trade show industry which is a very pure form of marketing. Lessons learned from buyers and specifiers: 1) Placing a zero value on something will tell the buyer that that is a products worth. 2) Placing a dollar value on something, even when not necessary will give the buyer an impression of value. In general, more quality purchases will result. 3) Bargain shoppers are not usually representative of the marketplace. (Sometimes they are just hoarders.) Individual experiences may very but I have found that in other marketplaces these were rules to live by. I am not sure about this one yet but suspect the same.
Not sure where this thread started (i'm too lazy to scroll a hundred pages to the top), but the based on the last half dozen posts - the conversation has turned to give aways. I have not participated in the 'free' random discount on Amazon but i did participate in the Goodreads give away. I offered 10 books and was willing to incur the cost of shipping to reach some random folks outside my 'friends and family' extended list. I got a 125 requests and many of those added the book to their 'want to read' list. I wrote a nice note in each book, signed them, and sent them off. Well, i got two reviews out the 10 give aways and pretty much no buys from any of the other 125 folks who originally showed interest. Unfortunately, i think many of the people - even on Goodreads - see free and get excited even if the book doesn't fits into their normal reading profile.
Quick question--I'm fairly new here and was wondering, when some of you refer to promoting on Facebook, are there specific pages you are using or just your own author pages? I write romance and historic fiction. Thanks for all of your insight and your assistance!
Mod
J. wrote: "I use my FB author page. Can't say if others have other pages that they might use."Thank you! My FB author page has about 25 followers so not a lot of help with sales yet! :)
FB now restricts how many followers see a post on your Page, so it's not as useful as it once was. You can pay to boost it or an independent ad, but I follow a group where various individuals have tried paid posts with mixed results. Correct targeting seems to be the key.
KDP Select Free and Countdown promos do work, but as I wrote in a blog post for the Alliance of Independent Authors here: http://www.selfpublishingadvice.org/a...
it's no longer enough to simply run the promo and expect Amazon to promote it for you. They won't.
Why, because there are other authors actively driving more traffic to their site for them and they've found that they sell more books and make more money by promoting those.
This is the only reason their algorithms are showing other people's books rather than yours. The algorithms only kick in when you reach a certain level of sales (or free downloads) and this is relative to the number of sales other books are getting on any given day.
As pdr says above, if you want KDP select to work for you, you have to do some of the work yourself by promoting these promotions.
There are probably 100 sites that you can use although most of them only show your books in the US.
Some are free but most charge a fee for a guaranteed listing.
pdr also kindly mentioned my own site, Readers in the Know, which although quite new is growing rapidly and in many ways totally unique, not least because it's the only truly international site in existence, and because you'll only ever have to enter your book and author details once, after which they'll be permanently listed - even when you're not running a promo:
http://www.readersintheknow.com/home
The Goodreads entry form for contests automatically adds the book to your "to be read" list. You have to actually notice the checkbox and unclick it. This is something I am guessing few people do, so those tbr numbers are always going to be inflated.J. wrote: "Similar to the people who add books during Goodreads giveaways to their "to read" list and when you look at their profile you see that they have 30,000 to read books and 5 on their read list. It i..."
New result:10/17(Fri)-10/19(Sun): 34 - book has no reviews
This makes me wonder about a few things. While this result was noticeably better than the 28 I got on last weekend's Sunday start, there were a few anomalies of note:
First, this is significantly less than previous Friday starts, which generally had upwards of 50 giveaways.
Second, there were very few giveaways on Friday (just 10) whereas previously the first day of the giveaway has been much stronger than that.
It makes me wonder if there's some broader trend that I'm missing. Is there less Amazon traffic in late October, maybe? I'd love to hear any insight/see any data anyone else has on this.
Andrew wrote: "New result:10/17(Fri)-10/19(Sun): 34 - book has no reviews
Is there less Amazon traffic in late October, maybe? I'd love to hear any insight/see any data anyone else has on this..."
Andrew, I may some some insight, though it's not scientifically verified. For people in the U.S. business market (i.e. readers who work), October is historically a VERY busy month. It's annual convention "season." In fact, I have three clients who have their annual events this week! It's also the start of fourth quarter when everything you didn't do during the year has to get done before December 31. Again, this isn't scientifically validated. But in my experience -- as a working girl and avid reader -- I get far less time for myself during the months of Oct-Nov-Dec.
Of course, Goodreads is its own Universe, and my "insight" above could be full of it. LOL
Mod
But that's the good part about being an author who appeals to international readers, as one market slows, the other might just pick up! Canadian sales are down, German and French sales are up, just as happened with US vs AU sales.
It's all bemusing, but amusing; I smile when I see those foreign sales eclipsing my US sales! :D
Here's an example from me:
I've been trying to figure out what's the best day of the week to start a KDP Select Free Book giveaway. I read about it on this forum and some people said Friday, others Saturday or Sunday. Here's data from the last few weeks:
3 day campaigns
9/19(Fri)-9/21(Sun): 51 copies given away - book has zero reviews
9/26(Fri)-9/28(Sun): 100 (exactly) - book has one review
10/23(Fri)-10/26(Sun): 49
10/31(Fri)-11/2(Sun): 35 copies
10/4(Sat)-10/6(Mon): 54
10/12(Sun)-10/14(Tues): 28
2 day campaigns
9/13(Sat)-9/14(Sun): 387 - book has five reviews
Note: Post edited to include later data
This information is pretty tangled up because it's with different books, but maybe with some more numbers we can reach a conclusion. Feel free to share any data you like, not just numbers on this one thing!