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How to Promote a KDP Select Freebie to gain sales rank later
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Nice find Sarah. I just published my first ebook and decided to try out KDP select. I would've stayed clear of it, like you, but this is a monthly series, so I'm hoping that this will build an early fan base. Anyways, thanks for posting this!
Thanks very much for the kind words, Sarah! I'd like to add that I keep the list fairly up-to-date, too, since I use it as my go-to list whenever I have a freebie. :)
I noticed that remark on your original blog post :)
That is a great list, Ruth. Thanks for all the work.
You're welcome, Rebecca! I hope it helps. :)
*headdesk*I've been so focused on preparing for Cambria's CHARADE launch party tomorrow, I completely forgot to post on Tuesday that I did a follow blog! Please check out the followup to Ruth's blog right here:
http://webbiegrrl.blogspot.com/2012/05/tuesday-tip-8-tips-for-promoting-your.html
Because Ruth's blog was sooooo comprehensive, instead of duplicating her material, I supplemented it with the focus on generalization, not just using the KDP opportunities.
Enjoy!
-sry
@webbiegrrl
So I think this inspired me. Plus I'm seeing constant, low-level sales of my first book in the first month of release, but I just can't gain traction to get the sales rank. Money is good but the big money won't come unless I get out of the 6-digit sales rank (100k and below)So I'm writing a short story which I plan to enter into KDP Select specifically to be a loss leader. Even after I use up the "free days" (what are those anyway?) I'm going to keep it free if I can, 99c if I have to make it for money. A loss leader is intended to lose money and lead customers to the real sales.
When Minds Collide is going to be just that. I'm specifically stopping everything else and writing this for the explicit purpose of using it as a loss leader to sell Conditioned Response. I don't care if WMC ever "sells" so long as it "hooks" new readers on the series world.
Any tips for someone "before they sign" Ruth? it's always easier to "Do it right the first time" when it actually is the first time :)
-Friday
@phoenicianbooks
Oh, I don't have any brilliant plan! *g* I just keep trying things out, still figuring out what works. I tried a couple of cheap short story collections to create interest in my novel, but I don't think it worked. The stories weren't in the same world however. I have been thinking of offering an Arthurian story for free to spark more interest, but I haven't actually done that yet. So I will be quite interested to hear the results of your experiment!
BTW, Lindsay Buroker offers the first novel of the Empire series free and has had decent success with it.
Yes, I've heard that unrelated stuff does okay but doesn't work quite as well as loss leader A and for-pay novel B having a common "universe" so to speak. Oddly enough I heard this from non-SF/F writers :) Thriller and Romance genres. I'm deliberately writing this short story to "lead" into the novel because I won't have another novel out in this series until next year and I need to bump the sales rank. Somewhow. I read an interesting post over at Jeff Bennington / @TweetTheBook 's blog on how best sellers are made. I'm selling 1-2 books a day. Every day. Non stop. But only 1-2...a slow burn, holding steady at a 100k sales rank. As Jeff notes, that's how best sellers are made (haha) I just don't have time or patience to wait for the numbers to accumulate.
Plus I'm convinced that Amazon deliberately designed their sales rank algorithm to heavily weight those books that "sell" (even for $0.00 as in the ones they sell to PRIME customers) huge amounts in ONE day over those that sell everyday. The one day I sold 7 books my sales rank jumped to 20k or something like that. Still only 20k and it dropped right back down to 60k or some such the next day when I sold 2 copies again. It's nice to have the constant, slow rate of income already, after just its first month, but it's like a dripping faucet. NOT gonna fill anything up anytime soon.
I'll be sure to let you know what happens, Ruth. Be sure to let me know if you think of anything not already in your overfull blog post. Wow you have a lot of links there. Thank you!!
Hey while we're talking Amazon tricks :) anyone know how to influence the "also boughts" lists? Other than using another account (not your author) to buy a specific book you want to get linked to I mean :)
Sarah, The Webbiegrrl Writer wrote: "I saw this on another group (Connecting Readers and Writers) and thought it was such a comprehensive blog post, I just had to share it with anyone here who's actually using the KDP Select program a..."This is a great link - thank you so much for sharing all this wonderful info!
I've been hearing mixed things about KDP Select lately. Initially, many authors were getting big boosts in sales. Now, not so much, because apparently Amazon changed the algorithm so free downloads don't boost your ranking as much. Still, some people are having success. The key seems to be to widely promote it, on all of your networks, and on any of the sites that list free books.Here's a blog post by Russell Blake about timing, promotions, etc. http://russellblake.com/my-kdp-select...
Chris wrote: "I've been hearing mixed things about KDP Select lately. Initially, many authors were getting big boosts in sales. Now, not so much, because apparently Amazon changed the algorithm so free downloads..."Ever the helpful one, Chris! Thank you :) And I happen to be a big fan of Russ on Twitter and his blog so I can attest he'll not only give great advice (which he proves works with his own books) but he'll do it in a way that guaranteed makes you laugh or at least chuckle. I think he's hilarious. Given he writes thrillers, and I write gallows humor, that probably explains why I get his jokes.
-Friday
@phoenicianbooks
http://ruthnestvold.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/promoting-ebooks-with-kdp-select/
I should note that although 90% of the links on this blog post are really focused on free--and only free--Kindle books, you should check some of them for possible promo listings of for-pay books, too. In any case, I think it's a great blog post because she's really been thorough in listing out all of the possible avenues one can explore to promote one's book. PLUS she makes it obvious that you don't just "tweet once and forget it" like so many new authors seem to think. I wish there were a magic tweet button like that!
-sry
@webbiegrrl