by | November 3, 2015 · 2:04 pm
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Bargain Booksy ain’t no bargain

Happy Melbourne Cup Day! And if you’re anywhere else in the world – sorry for rubbing in that here we have a public holiday in honor of a horse race. Only in Australia can everything stop in the middle of the week, so that everyone can get wasted and bet on horses without taking a sickie. Not only that – this year Australian government introduced another public holiday – Grand Final Day, so that everyone can get wasted and watch football without…you get the idea.

I’m however, completely sober. I’m actually at work, trying to put finishing touches on a presentation, which is proving extremely hard. Not only that my heart is no longer in systems, data, and risk management – I’m really disappointed with the results of the latest promo and just can’t get excited about presenting to a room full of senior bureaucrats.

As you may recall, I’m going through my Most Super-Duper, Exhaustive, Comprehensive, and Current Listing of Free and Paid Book Advertising Websites and Ideas. This past weekend I’ve run just one promo, to test how well Bargain Booksy performs on its own. This is because previously I’ve made a mistake to run two promos on the same day and can’t be perfectly sure whether eReader News Today was responsible for the 63 sales, or if some of it was due to Awesome Gang.

I had big, delicious hopes for this promo – after all Free Booksy and Bargain Booksy seem to be very popular and have a great reputation. They got crushed, big time. How many sales did I get?

12.

Yep, that’s all. Not only that, two of them appear to be due to social media marketing, so the grand total made from the promo is about $3. I’ve paid $25, so I’m $22 in the hole. Not that it’s a lot of money, but I guess my expectations were not met, and it seems that all the unhappiness in the whole entire world stems from crushed expectations.

Anywho, I’m not giving up – still huge hopes for the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend, with multiple promos over four days. I guess this latest experiment did exactly what I’d set out to do – separate the “worth it” promo sites from “nah” ones. I have to say that the audience may have been wrong – I chose the YA sub-group. I may still try Romance/Chicklit one, at a separate date, to really test this service. It’s $70, though –  more than Book Gorilla.

So there you go – Bargain Booksy for now goes to the “nah” pile. Of course, the results may have been different with a different novel or even on a different day – I don’t yet know if a major weekend is a good or a bad idea. I’m here to share my very personal experience – you get to make your own decision. Now I have to go work on this presentation. Anyone knows how to make risk mitigation “sexy”?

 

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32 responses to “Bargain Booksy ain’t no bargain”

  1. toutparmoi
    November 3, 2015 at 2:16 pm

    Risks are always sexy. Senior bureaucrats? Sorry, can’t say the same.

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  2. Amy Reese
    November 3, 2015 at 2:50 pm

    Maybe another sub-group will have different results! Thanks for sharing all your info. How about lots of glitter with your presentation! What would Isa do? Ha ha.

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    • Ana Spoke
      November 3, 2015 at 2:54 pm

      Thank you, Amy 🙂 I will eventually get what I need – a short list of promo sites that work really well with my novel, and I will schedule ongoing promos with those throughout the year. That’s why I’m doing this, I just have to keep saying it to myself…

      And OMG, I have so Isa-ed this presentation already! Had to Google some ideas, bought a Prezi template (best $5 ever), and plan to start with a quick suck-up intro…fingers crossed I get my salary doubled!

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  3. readersandmore
    November 3, 2015 at 2:51 pm

    I hope you’ll have better luck! You deserve way more sales then that! Good luck 🙂

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  4. olivia barrington
    November 3, 2015 at 4:13 pm

    You poor girl no wonder you write comedy AND want to write all of the time… I would too if that was my job. I never liked being a desk jockey or office person. I worked scrubbing in surgery, delivering babies and teaching at a college. I hate repetition so no factory job, either. I hated statistics when I went to college for some reason. Boring! I taught Surgical Technology when I was teaching. Best job ever, teaching. And bringing a new life into the world. Nothing like seeing a baby being born. Always brings a tear to my eye and and puts a song in my heart. Did a lot of other jobs putting myself through college that’s how I found out what I did and didn’t like to do. Now I want to change course and write among other things. When you get the paper copy, just a thought, if you could do some kind of a talk show on TV or radio and give copies away to the audience or listeners.Then just ask them to buy a copy for a friend. That’s what they do around here when promoting a new book. The new authors also make a tour of libraries and have a Q&A with patrons. Word of mouth is some of the best advertisement. I think YA might be to young or not into comedy over here. Zombies and the Apocalypse are still big with the YA crowd here where I live.You’ll hit on the site combo and dates for promoting your book. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Thanksgiving to be the big one. I love that your government gives you new holidays to celebrate. Ours as you know is a little uptight and would never give us a new holiday let alone one for getting drunk and having fun! Oh, well I’ll make up my own holiday. Good luck with your presentation (snooze fest w/ old men).

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    • Ana Spoke
      November 3, 2015 at 4:31 pm

      Thank you Olivia! Wow, delivering babies! That’s amazing…I used to teach, too, which I loved except for giving grades. I will give Bargain Booksy one more go with the $70 chicklit audience, worth the research. Once the paper copy is ready, I will try local bookstores and such, hopefully my acting experience will come in handy to just do it and not stress over what they’d think of an unknown author showing up with her wares.

      Thank you for the good wishes – it’s a conference, so they will be pre-snoozed. Maybe I will end up as a highlight of the show – believe it or not, I can make dry subjects (relatively) interesting 🙂

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      • olivia barrington
        November 4, 2015 at 3:48 am

        Teaching is the best job except for the grades. What did you teach? You’ll be fine at the bookstores and such. Just be yourself and your book will sell itself because your personality shines through in your blog and with your life experience should be a breeze for you. You have a gift for the dry subjects, I don’t. When I not teaching to students I tend to nerd out and go scientific on people which causes them to go glassy eyed and swear their phones just vibrated. The old geezers will definitely remember your presentation, wit and intelligence. Have fun!

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      • Ana Spoke
        November 4, 2015 at 12:06 pm

        Awww, thank you Olivia 🙂 I used to teach landscape architecture and horticulture at uni, to students who were just a few years younger than me…terrifying 🙂

        I do tend to nerd out on people, mostly when conversation touches on “why’d he do that?” and instead of bitching, I come up with behavioral psychology answers. Not that popular 🙂

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  5. Kristina Van Hoose
    November 3, 2015 at 4:23 pm

    That is a bummer. However the 63 was with two sites, so it might be better to think of it as if you got 31 from each and one extra from social media instead of 63 from just one or the other.

    22 in the hole isn’t good, but hopefully you will earn it back and then some with the next one.

    Have you thought of writing a short story about Isa and releasing it for free in order to get your name out there more? I know I always look at the free titles. Of course I’m only subscribed to bookbub so that’s how I find them.

    I was trying to remember how I even found you.

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  6. glasscitybooks
    November 3, 2015 at 5:08 pm

    Grand Final Day is not Australia wide, only in the state of Victoria. Many thanks for the continuing updates on the book promotions, interesting 🙂

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  7. Shana Gorian
    November 3, 2015 at 5:09 pm

    Those are good numbers all in all actually, especially since this is your first book, right? It all takes time. And a LOT of patience. Just keep plugging away. And give Bargain Booksy another shot another time. I’ve had decent luck with them at times. They are an “above-the-fold” provider, if you’ve heard the term. So many different factors, like even Halloween this weekend, could have affected readers’ interest in particular types of books. (ie. does your book feature a werewolf?) Keep at it!

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  8. Allie P.
    November 4, 2015 at 2:15 am

    There is also the chance that timing was off to. Oh promotional marketing, how fickle a beast you are…

    Smart thinking on your gov’s part. I’ve been lobbying my management for years that the day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday in the States as well. The productivity loss is staggering.

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    • Ana Spoke
      November 4, 2015 at 7:04 am

      I bet you could get Australian government to make Super Bowl a holiday 🙂 thank you again, much appreciate the support – feeling a lot better today. Will do some research or maybe a test of whether weekend or weekday is better for a promo.

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  9. twinwillowsfarm
    November 4, 2015 at 6:25 am

    Where we live, we even close the schools for opening day of deer season. Hey, everyone has their priorities!

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  10. lucie
    November 5, 2015 at 6:49 am

    Give it strappy black shoes and a gun holster! I completely understand your position. I’m currently trying to make life insurance not about death.

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  11. Tee
    November 15, 2017 at 11:56 pm

    I got 3 sales from barigan booksy and paid $25 for my YA novel. Now I can’t speak for everyone, but I didn’t go into self-publishing with the intent to make a bunch of money, so I don’t look at 3 sales as a loss. I look at it as 3 people who will be reading my book, and hopefully love it, which may get 3 more people to buy, and so on..

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