Most of the authors I meet are desperate to figure out how they can market their books. Today I want to talk about the most successful promotion I’ve ever run.
First, let’s start with the basics. You have to have a good product. If your book in unedited, full of proof reading errors or has an amateurish cover, go to the back of the class. I’m professionalism Nazi.
If we’re ever going to break the stereotype of an indie author publishing their own work because the big publishing houses won’t take them, then we have to produce professional work that matches up well with what the traditional publishers are releasing.
Now to the promotion part. You are sure you have a good product and are ready to unleash it on the world.
I could, and have, writen a whole treatise on emarketing. This is just one piece of a complicated puzzle, but it’s important. You can read the article at http://www.pennwallace.com/emarketing-for-indie-authors.html.
The emphasis of this article is my just completed BookBub promo where I gave away Hacker for Hire for FREE. (Notice that FREE is in all caps. You want to grab you audience’s attention.)
BookBub turned me down in November and December. I was crushed. I depended on them to boost my Christmas sales. Didn’t happen. My November and December sales were pitiful.
I re-submitted Hacker for Hire for January and they accepted it.
Here’s an important note: Before you plan a promo, go to your KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) page, click on “Bookshelf,” and click on the “promote and advertise” button.
This will take you to your promotion page for that book. The first thing you want to check is your book’s status. There are start and end dates for your book’s KDP enrollment. DO NOT ever (and I mean EVER) schedule a promo that runs past your book’s end date.
If you do (and you’ll be sorry), you can only schedule the promo until the end date. Then, when you’ve reached that date, it takes a day for Amazon to re-enroll you in KDP. After you are re-enrolled, you can schedule the free promo for the rest of your dates, but you’ve lost two days in the middle of your promotion.
Drop down the page a little bit and you’ll see “Run a Price Promotion.” Click on the “Run a Free Book Promotion” button. If your book has any eligibility in this time period, you will see it under the “start date” box.
If you have eligibility to run a free promo, go to www.bookbub.com and drop to the bottom of the page and find the “Submit New Deal” under the “Publishers & Authors” list. It’s pretty self explanatory from there.
First, let’s start with the basics. You have to have a good product. If your book in unedited, full of proof reading errors or has an amateurish cover, go to the back of the class. I’m professionalism Nazi.
If we’re ever going to break the stereotype of an indie author publishing their own work because the big publishing houses won’t take them, then we have to produce professional work that matches up well with what the traditional publishers are releasing.
Now to the promotion part. You are sure you have a good product and are ready to unleash it on the world.
I could, and have, writen a whole treatise on emarketing. This is just one piece of a complicated puzzle, but it’s important. You can read the article at http://www.pennwallace.com/emarketing-for-indie-authors.html.
The emphasis of this article is my just completed BookBub promo where I gave away Hacker for Hire for FREE. (Notice that FREE is in all caps. You want to grab you audience’s attention.)
BookBub turned me down in November and December. I was crushed. I depended on them to boost my Christmas sales. Didn’t happen. My November and December sales were pitiful.
I re-submitted Hacker for Hire for January and they accepted it.
Here’s an important note: Before you plan a promo, go to your KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) page, click on “Bookshelf,” and click on the “promote and advertise” button.
This will take you to your promotion page for that book. The first thing you want to check is your book’s status. There are start and end dates for your book’s KDP enrollment. DO NOT ever (and I mean EVER) schedule a promo that runs past your book’s end date.
If you do (and you’ll be sorry), you can only schedule the promo until the end date. Then, when you’ve reached that date, it takes a day for Amazon to re-enroll you in KDP. After you are re-enrolled, you can schedule the free promo for the rest of your dates, but you’ve lost two days in the middle of your promotion.
Drop down the page a little bit and you’ll see “Run a Price Promotion.” Click on the “Run a Free Book Promotion” button. If your book has any eligibility in this time period, you will see it under the “start date” box.
If you have eligibility to run a free promo, go to www.bookbub.com and drop to the bottom of the page and find the “Submit New Deal” under the “Publishers & Authors” list. It’s pretty self explanatory from there.
My promotion started on January 21st. I gave away over 14,000 books that day. For the next couple of days, the give aways dropped to around a thousand books a day. I gave away over 18,000 books for the entire promotion, much less than previous promotions, but my sales figures were the best ever. Go figure.
Okay, I gave away a bunch of books, big deal. What does it all mean?
First of all, more than 18,000 people who never heard of me now have one of my books on their Kindle. Will they read and enjoy it? I hope so, but there’s no guarantee.
The good news? If people like book A they usually buy books B, C and D. Sales for the other three books in the Ted Higuera Series jumped from 29 last month (It was a horrible month for me.) to over 300 this month. That’s a 1000% increase. It cost me $274 to run the ad on BookBub. I made that back on the first day. My book sales revenue for the month was well over $600.
Here’s something else I hadn’t noticed before. KLL (Kindle Lending Library) pages read sky rocketed.
What are KLL pages? Amazon has this lending library, see? Kindle Prime members (and some others) can download books for free. Only books that are signed up for the KDP program are eligible for the KLL. How does the author get paid? We get (at the current rate) ½ a penny a page.
Last month (remember, it was a horrible month for sales) I had about 19,000 pages read which produced around $100 in revenue. As of Janury 20th, I had about 20,000 pages read. Since the promotion, my pages read are well over 100,000 producing an income of over $500.
This is chump change to some authors, but for me, it’s a bonanza.
Okay, I gave away a bunch of books, big deal. What does it all mean?
First of all, more than 18,000 people who never heard of me now have one of my books on their Kindle. Will they read and enjoy it? I hope so, but there’s no guarantee.
The good news? If people like book A they usually buy books B, C and D. Sales for the other three books in the Ted Higuera Series jumped from 29 last month (It was a horrible month for me.) to over 300 this month. That’s a 1000% increase. It cost me $274 to run the ad on BookBub. I made that back on the first day. My book sales revenue for the month was well over $600.
Here’s something else I hadn’t noticed before. KLL (Kindle Lending Library) pages read sky rocketed.
What are KLL pages? Amazon has this lending library, see? Kindle Prime members (and some others) can download books for free. Only books that are signed up for the KDP program are eligible for the KLL. How does the author get paid? We get (at the current rate) ½ a penny a page.
Last month (remember, it was a horrible month for sales) I had about 19,000 pages read which produced around $100 in revenue. As of Janury 20th, I had about 20,000 pages read. Since the promotion, my pages read are well over 100,000 producing an income of over $500.
This is chump change to some authors, but for me, it’s a bonanza.
On days 4 and 5 of the promotion, I decided I needed something to give the give away a little more oomph. I decided to run Facebook ads for those days.
Facebook ads appear on the right hand column of your Facebook page. Facebook has an algorithm that determines who will see each ad. I see different ads than you do. The point is, it is laser targeted to the audience you choose.
Facebook ads are incredibly flexible. You can choose the demographics and tastes of the people who are going to see your ad. I started with a pool of over 300,000,000 people, way too many. There’s no way my book is going to appeal to all of those people and you pay for the ad by the click. Many of those people will click through out of curiosity and decide not to download.
I narrowed down the list to people from 35- to over 65, people who read and like thrillers, etc. I culled the list to about 30,000 people. Then I carpet bombed them with the ad. I ran the ad from noon ‘til 1 am for two days. Only people on my narrowed down list got the ad. I paid $200 for the whole promotion. Almost 50,000 people saw the ad and nearly 800 clicked through to the Amazon page for Hacker for Hire. I assume that most of those 800 downloaded the book because they were interested enough to go to Amazon in the first place.
By the end of the promotion, all of my Ted Higuera books were in Amazon’s top 30,000 paid sales. That’s out of the millions of books on Amazon. The Inside Passage, the prequel to Hacker for Hire, reached #3 in Hispanic literature and #27 in Sea Adventures. Hacker for Hire was #1011 in the Mystery category. Bikini Baristas was #1871 in the Suspense category. The Mexican Connection was #145 in International Mystery and Crime.(Once again, that’s out of the millions of mystery books on Amazon.)
All four of the Ted Higuera books were in the top 15 on the Mexican Writers Facebook page sales list.
As Ted’s Mama says, “A rising tide floats all boats.”
The results? Downloads and sales kicked back up for the last two days of the promotion.
Here’s more good news. After the promotion ended, my sales kept up at a high level. People who read Hacker for Hire for free are finishing the book and buying the prequel and sequels. I’m averaging about $80 a day in book sales and $45 in KLL pages read. That’s a total of about $125 a day. That adds up to about $3650 a month or over $40,000 a year.
Would you like to have those sales? I sure would.
Facebook ads appear on the right hand column of your Facebook page. Facebook has an algorithm that determines who will see each ad. I see different ads than you do. The point is, it is laser targeted to the audience you choose.
Facebook ads are incredibly flexible. You can choose the demographics and tastes of the people who are going to see your ad. I started with a pool of over 300,000,000 people, way too many. There’s no way my book is going to appeal to all of those people and you pay for the ad by the click. Many of those people will click through out of curiosity and decide not to download.
I narrowed down the list to people from 35- to over 65, people who read and like thrillers, etc. I culled the list to about 30,000 people. Then I carpet bombed them with the ad. I ran the ad from noon ‘til 1 am for two days. Only people on my narrowed down list got the ad. I paid $200 for the whole promotion. Almost 50,000 people saw the ad and nearly 800 clicked through to the Amazon page for Hacker for Hire. I assume that most of those 800 downloaded the book because they were interested enough to go to Amazon in the first place.
By the end of the promotion, all of my Ted Higuera books were in Amazon’s top 30,000 paid sales. That’s out of the millions of books on Amazon. The Inside Passage, the prequel to Hacker for Hire, reached #3 in Hispanic literature and #27 in Sea Adventures. Hacker for Hire was #1011 in the Mystery category. Bikini Baristas was #1871 in the Suspense category. The Mexican Connection was #145 in International Mystery and Crime.(Once again, that’s out of the millions of mystery books on Amazon.)
All four of the Ted Higuera books were in the top 15 on the Mexican Writers Facebook page sales list.
As Ted’s Mama says, “A rising tide floats all boats.”
The results? Downloads and sales kicked back up for the last two days of the promotion.
Here’s more good news. After the promotion ended, my sales kept up at a high level. People who read Hacker for Hire for free are finishing the book and buying the prequel and sequels. I’m averaging about $80 a day in book sales and $45 in KLL pages read. That’s a total of about $125 a day. That adds up to about $3650 a month or over $40,000 a year.
Would you like to have those sales? I sure would.
But it doesn’t come easy and it doesn’t come free. I spent $474 on this promotion. My sales increased by $1000 over where they were before the promo. That’s a net profit of over $500 on a five-day promotion.
I ran the promotion over a weekend. Hacker for Hire was free from Thursday through Monday. Give aways and sales were greatest on the first day, but KLL pages read exploded on Saturday and Sunday. I guess people have more time to read on the weekends. On each of those days, I had almost as many pages read as all of last month.
My conclusion: BookBub works. If you can get them to accept your book, you’re home free. If not, there are other, less effective ways to promote you work. Check out my article on emarketing at http://www.pennwallace.com/emarketing-for-indie-authors.html for more ideas.
Whatever you do, don’t give up. Only you can make this work. You need to keep your nose to the grindstone and forge ahead. I’m looking forward to your success.
I ran the promotion over a weekend. Hacker for Hire was free from Thursday through Monday. Give aways and sales were greatest on the first day, but KLL pages read exploded on Saturday and Sunday. I guess people have more time to read on the weekends. On each of those days, I had almost as many pages read as all of last month.
My conclusion: BookBub works. If you can get them to accept your book, you’re home free. If not, there are other, less effective ways to promote you work. Check out my article on emarketing at http://www.pennwallace.com/emarketing-for-indie-authors.html for more ideas.
Whatever you do, don’t give up. Only you can make this work. You need to keep your nose to the grindstone and forge ahead. I’m looking forward to your success.
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