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Karen A. Wyle
Self-Promotion Questions
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When to post about giveaways
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Karen
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May 06, 2012 08:35AM
When you have a temporary free promotion coming up, when do you post about it? A couple of days ahead of time, the day before, the morning of the first day, or some combination?
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Frankly, and I would love to hear a counterpoint, I don't think posting about a freebie is worth the effort. Putting up a tweet or an FB announcement are so commonplace I don't think anyone pays attention.I'm coming from the perspective of KDP select. I believe 'shoppers' just go down the free list and download anything that strikes their fancy and it lives ad infinium on their device.
Others?
I agree with you Ken, although I have only been doing this for a month, I've found that posting about the free offers got me a couple of hundred downloads and no reviews or additional benefits. In addition, I discovered the free lists of the Kindle store, which I had not known about before, and so, judging from my own habits, went down the list exactly as you say.
Although I have been trying really hard to read and review my purchases I'm not sure everyone would do the same
but, having thought about it, I would of course continue to promote a free giveaway, otherwise, what's the point.From my experience, when I promoted on the day of the free giveaway, I got more downloads than when I listed everywhere (amazon forums) the day before. the football might have also had something to with it
You will notice on the Amazon forums, flogging your book is frowned upon in most forums. I participate in several forums here and many of them are 'buy, read, review, blog, free today'. There are so many I just breeze over them. I hate getting the goodreads notifications in my e-mail and there are half a dozen of the same on half a dozen boards ringing the bell for their book.I occasionally put up something on mine but my thought is working with other writers, trading reviews and honestly participating in the forums will pay off better than tweeting twenty hundred times a day. There are others who will tell me I'm wrong and the 'in your face' works. Just not for me.
I downloaded, printed, and bound a work on Createspace about 500 ways to get promote your book. I've been busy writing my next but promise myself I'll try some of the five hundred out.
Writing is easy compared to getting found.
I know! I doubt whether posting in MOA is as effective, but there are many threads there which let you post when you have a free book out.I have started a thread on CreateSpace for trading reviews, but it is hard work. I think many people are too busy to read someone else's work - even if it will lead to a review for them at the end of it.
With two books out, I am currently in danger of spending my whole time social networking and little else.
You could always write a blog about Joe Paterno; you know, make it contemporary.
I have my books on Smashwords, so doing the giveaway works as a coupon. I generate a coupon for whatever percent off and the duration the coupon is good for. I usually do 100% off and 30 days. Then I post about it on the first day, and as the need arises after that.The great part of this is that you haven't made your book a free book, just handed copies to those that use the coupon.
Which is more valuable; a free book? or a 9.99 book that you got for free?
Plus this way you know when it's from someone using your promotion vs. someone that stumbled upon your book by accident.
I have long suspected that there was a "free list" on the Amazon website but I've never been able to find it. Can anyone share a link? I've done giveaways on a book I wrote but I could never figure out how anyone found out about it, other than postings I did myself that probably only reached a few people.
There is indeed Bhakta,Is this the one you mean?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-free-b...
This is a list of the free books in the Kindle store then each category on the left also has a top ten.
A.B. wrote: "There is indeed Bhakta,Is this the one you mean?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-free-b...
This is a list of the free books in t..."
I get a daily report from Amazon for the free kindle books - only one drawback: it's all books - not just your field of interest - but you can usually find ONE you want... and free?! gravy
