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99c countdown deal, one sale and two questions
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I have two kids ages 4 and 5. I buy a lot of children's books because I homeschool. Homeschoolers are now 2 percent of the US. That's a lot of people. Here are some tips from my experience.1. Kids books on ereaders don't work. Kids don't seem to get it. If it is interactive, it could work. Otherwise, I need print. I am guessing that will be the case until they are at least 9 or 10.
2. I buy most books based on Amazon alsobots, Barefoot Books promotions, recommendations from other parents and encounters on homeschooling and parenting forums. The one you can control the most is the forums, often Facebook groups. I don't know what all of their rules are, but I personally would not be mad at all if someone promoted a good deal on kids books ONCE in a long while on the homeschooling FB groups I'm in. You could join and contribute in other ways (posting links to other kids and parenting stuff as well as your on) and you probably would be well received. I have only ever been annoyed by one author doing this. She has posted in one of my groups 3 or 4 times in the past month about her one book. I checked it out and it isn't good. Very condescending and now her promotions annoy me. But otherwise, I often use these groups to find books.
Good luck.
Thank you, Arie! Yes, about the ebooks in general, that's the point and I agree. But my books are designed especially for Kindle and, actually, for my daughter. Becuse we often have the situation, when her little brother wakes up while we go to bed, and she need to wait for me while I nurse him back. It is dark in the room and I can't give her a paper book, and I don't want her to play on tablet (we don't have, actually) and do other activities that could make her more awake than I need:)
For us my books (in Russian) is the best solution - she quietly reads under the cover. And I also have feedback from other parents that their kids love to just "flip pages" on Kindle - that's enough interactivity for 3-5yo.
Now I purchase many ebooks from Amazon (to learn "dos" and "don'ts" and yes, many of them are just "digitalised". That's not my case, I believe my books are the best in an ebook format.
2.Thank you! I saved links some homeschooling fb groups. I am a bit scared to annoy people not being a proper member, but probably I must try. The next time I'll do free promotion and maybe that's not a bad thing - to promote a free book.
3. By the way, aren't you interested to look at my books (there are two of them) and give me the feedback?
Thank you again!
Tanja.
Your books are in Russian? That could make it extra difficult to market, although if that's the case you should definitely look at marketing them through language-learning programs. My kids speak Czech but not Russian.
No, these I am speaking of, are in English. I have some more in Russian, but I don't have specific marketing questions about them - I sell them quite fine when make some effort in promotion.
Tanja - if you didn't get the answer to your question about Look Inside, you don't need to do anything. Amazon will automatically enable this option for your ebook one week after it goes live in the store. I think there's something you have to do for print books, but I'm not sure what that is.
Okay, so I see your book has been available for a couple of months now. I would definitely email them and let them know Look Inside isn't enabled.
Thank you, T.H. Yes, I calmly waited for 6 weeks, but then wrote them three emails about it. And silence:(Just thought maybe anybody had the same experience here...
Okay, so totally weird, because my book just went live yesterday and it didn't work, but today it does. So there is definitely something wonky with yours. Keep trying to reach them.
Arie wrote: ". The one you can control the most is the forums, often Facebook groups. I don't know what all of their rules are, but I personally would not be mad at all if someone promoted a good deal on kids books ONCE in a long while on the homeschooling FB groups I'm in. "Can you recommend a couple of groups like that which are worth checking out? I have two books for the 8+ range, and am in the process of working on one for younger kids as well. In the case of promotion I'd probably check with the admins before posting anyway, which is always a good idea.
Thanks!
I actually just ended a weeklong 12-18 Jan. $0.99 kindle countdown deal (no price fluctuation, the e-novel remained $0.99 for the whole week), and have analyzed the results of it with the free-book download promotion I ran in August 2014. I think the new Amazon system of ranking an e-author and kindle book is intriguing, timely and refreshing. Here's the blogpost:
Lessons from the week-long kindle countdown deal:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Just wanted to share my experience in selling funny books for beginning readers.
Normally with some promotion (mostly mentioning my books here and there) I sell 1-3 books a week. The last week I ran a countdown deal KDP promotion with this book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N0VQ7XK
I posted news about the promotions on 27 websites - 25 offered by http://www.ebookbooster.com/, + posting on indiesunlimited, + awesomegang.com
I hoped... I don't know, but at least for something. Okay, I got one sale, but maybe it is still my regular sale from 1-3 per week:)
So, here is my experience - not to be lazy and dig for more targeted promotions. And I have to connected questions:
- do anybody have the experience with promoting books for Kids? All the blogs mentioned here and most of the reader's blogs I find are not interested in kid's books.
- how to get "look inside" option? I terrorized amazon with this question (and following all the instructions on site), but still don't have it for this book (and magically have for other book). Maybe somebody had the same issue?