Tag Archives: promotion

by | January 10, 2016 · 4:50 am

Review of December’s marketing blitz –

I finally got a chance to update  The Most Super-Duper, Exhaustive, Comprehensive, and Current Listing of Free and Paid Book Advertising Websites and Ideas with the results of December’s online marketing blitz. As announced in the last update, the December’s blitz/full-on war plan was as follows:

  • 5 December – second chance for Bargain Booksy. They were nice enough to give me $25 credit for the disappointing YA audience promo, so I’m trying the chicklit audience. Cost – $70 (minus the $25 credit).
  • 5-6 December – applied to Read Cheaply. Not sure if this will work, as they want a limited-time offer and Shizzle, Inc has been on sale for many weeks.
  • 7-8 December – Read Free. Cost: free!
  • 9 December – Free Kindle Books and Tips. Cost – $25.
  • 11 December – Reading Deals. Cost: free!
  • 12 December – BookHearts. Cost – $5.
  • 14 December – eBook Lister. Cost – $25.
  • 15 December – BookSends. Cost – $30.
  • 17 December – Digital Book Today (Deal of the Day). Cost – $30.

Since the picture is worth a thousand words, here are the results at a glance:

Screenshot (39)

And now, my opinions, in hopefully under a thousand words:

  1. Bargain Booksy. Once again, a disappointing 15 copies sold, although there was a big jump in pages read the next day. AMAZINGLY, though – after I’d contacted them again, they’ve refunded BOTH of my purchases. So only a net gain to me, although I kinda have a feeling I may not be welcome to advertise with them again…will try again in a while, when I have a sequel and advertise the first installment for free.
  2. Read Cheaply – I will have to test them again, as it appears I did not make it on the list – can’t find the confirmation email. proof you have to write everything down as it happens!
  3. Read Free – several copies sold! Hey, it was free, so they go onto my “good list”.
  4. Free Kindle Books and Tips – 18 sales on the day and 6 sales the day after. Not terribly impressive at the cost of $25, but I might try them again.
  5. Reading Deals – did not happen as I wanted to add links to other platforms, they’d asked me to reapply, and then did not have a slot. To be tested again.
  6. BookHearts – did not impress me, with 6 sales on the day at a cost of $5. I’m giving them another chance in January, to test if December was a bad month for eBooks.
  7. eBook Lister – I have contacted them to complain that the $25 payment only got me 3 sales. Not sure what happened, good thing I’m writing this update, because the issue slipped under the radar for me. Will update as to their response.
  8. BookSends – 22 sales on the day, but not enough at the cost of $30. Might give them another chance.
  9. Digital Book Today (Deal of the Day) – pathetic 8 copies sold at a cost of $30. has anyone had a good result with them? I had high hopes for this one. I have emailed them and they responded promptly, refunding $15, but claiming that my 40-60 sales per day with eReader News were probably because of other promos I had at the same time. Nope – I’m a researcher, so I know how to control factors (when I remember to do that…).

Here is what’s planned for January (so far, I will update this post as I make further plans, and as usual – will tweet live scores on @spokeana):

  1. 9 January – another chance for BookHearts, a subsidiary of Choosy Bookworm. Guaranteed feature, cost (on sale): $5. Not confirmed yet, although the payment has been made – they confirm on Fridays only. UPDATE: only 2 sales, a complete disappointment. After two emails it did turn out that they did not feature me on 9 January after all.
  2. 14 January – BKnights via Fiverr: only $5, mixed reviews.
  3. 16 January – Choosy Bookworm. Guaranteed feature, cost (on sale): $19. I tried to book it, but once I got to the paypal checkout, it reverted to $25. I’ve emailed them and was advised to “donate” $19, which I did. They confirmed the spot several days later.
  4. 18 January – BookHearts listed me in place of the earlier booking. I got only 5 sales.
  5. 19 January – I screwed up and did 2 giveaways. I will need to re-run and re-test Buck Books – the link is to their policies, but to apply to advertise you actually need to contact Jennifer directly on jennaputt@gmail.com. Claim to have 42,000 subscribers. Cost – $12. I also did eReader News Today again, at $30. Total sales were 44 on the day, plus about 2,000 pages read in the next few days.
  6. Read Cheaply – TBD.
  7. Reading Deals – TBD.
  8. Read Free – TBD.
  9. 31 January – Betty Book Freak. Cost: $12.
  10. 2 February – eBook Soda. Cost: $15.
  11. Kindle Nation Daily – sold out! Scheduled on 12 April.

In related news, the above graph makes me wish desperately to return to KU – I miss those pages! I will probably do this by the end of the month, so if you want to get Shizzle, Inc on Kobo, please do that now!

Looking forward to your comments and experiences. If you want to suggest an advertising site I have not yet tried, please do so!

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by | December 11, 2015 · 2:36 am

Goodreads Giveaway! Win one of five paperback copies of Shizzle, Inc!

Have you noticed a new button on my sidebar? Right there, at the top?  Click on it, or enter here for your chance to win a free paperback copy of my book! I’m only announcing this giveaway now because there have been too many other exciting going-ons, what with a bestselling author stopping by, and Shizzle, Inc being available on every platform imaginable…

The giveaway has been live for less than 15 hours at the time of this writing, and already 131 people have requested it!

Goodreads giveaway

Wait, it’s now 135! Blink, and it’s 137! And over 80 of them have added it to their “to read” shelf! How exciting!

Truth is, I’ve been excited about this giveaway for months, after reading various author’s testimonials on how effective they are to promote new books. So I can’t believe that I’ve posted it without doing all that much research or even reading the giveaway guidelines. (I know! So out of character!)

Better later than never, so I’ve done some research now and have learned this:

  1. There are claims that it doesn’t matter how many books you give away, you would get the same result with 1 or 10. I’m going to experiment with this – already got a spreadsheet going…
  2. Supposedly it is better to give away autographed books, rather than just free copies, even if you’re a nobody. This will be tested in future experiments. For now I have just done copies, which I will order and ship directly from Smashwords – doesn’t make sense to ship them from US to Australia and then back…
  3. Open giveaways to all countries. For now I’ve just done US, GB, and Canada – as it will be cheaper and easier to just order a book and have it shipped to the winner directly. Next one will be open to all, I promise!
  4. You may be able to create a special image for the giveaway. I don’t know how to upload it, from memory (which is not very good), it automatically takes the image of your paperback cover. But I will try next time.
  5. Schedule them ahead of time! It takes several days for Goodreads to review and approve your ad.
  6. Make your ad exciting – add quotes, awards, whatever. Add a link to a newsletter sign up, your website, etc. Market all the ways you can hook them up on your blog, series, whatever.
  7. Best one! Schedule the giveaway BEFORE the paperback release! Create the buzz for the launch day! I will schedule the next one as soon as I have the first draft and cover ready.
  8. Longer is better – mine will be for just over three weeks, but you could do it for three months, or even longer – there will be bigger numbers of people requesting, which will make your book look very appealing indeed. I’ve looked at the “top requested” giveaways, and they all run for three months or so.
  9. You can only do it in the six months after the paperback release…I only saw it on a blog, and can’t find any reference to this rule on Goodreads. In fact, Goodreads state that you can give away “new copies of an older book”, whatever that means.

If you have any other tried and true (and recent!) advice – please share! I’m gonna go check the stats…oh, look, 141 requests!

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by | December 10, 2015 · 2:44 am

Good-bye Kindle Select, hello all other platforms! Wait…no! Take me back! Maybe?

Shizzle, Inc has been enrolled in Kindle Select almost since the day it was published on 4 September. My 90-day commitment is up and I have not renewed, thinking that I’m no longer interested in Countdown Deals or Free Days, since Shizzle, Inc is now pretty much permanently at $0.99.

I immediately published with a variety with other platforms – Shizzle, Inc is now available on:

I was so excited! Yet another sales graph to obsess over…too bad (thank God!) it’s just one more – on Smashwords. Oh, and look, five people have downloaded free 20% samples! Oh, and look, I can set up coupons, which will let me do sales or giveaways!

Awesome, right?

That’s what I thought until I’d noticed that there was no longer a “get it free with Kindle Unlimited” button under the title. After some Googling and face-palming, I realized what I seriously should have known by now – that Kindle Unlimited is the main bait to keep authors exclusively with Amazon Kindle, not the promo options.

If you’d asked me what I thought about KU and KENP a month ago, I would have probably said “eh”. However, thanks to the recent promo blasts, the KENP graph (below) looks like the world’s awesomest mountain chain. In fact, I’ve made about $22 in the last couple of weeks just from people reading their “free” copies:

Sales on 9 Dec

That’s equivalent to about 63 copies sold for $0.99! And at the very least 18 copies read (assuming about 240 pages per copy – I never get the “normalized” part of KENP). I don’t (yet) care about the royalties – I want as many copies sold as possible, so I would need to sell about 2 copies per day from other sources…wait, that’s not so bad, right? So, was it a good idea to part with KU?

After a bit more over-analyzing and face-palming, I’d calmed down and decided to give the other platforms a go – maybe a month? Maybe two? Advertise and see what kind of numbers I get, do some more calculations, then regroup and decide if I go back to Kindle Select.

So if you hate Amazon, but are interested in finding out what it might be like to work for the seventh richest man in the Southeastern United States – get Shizzle, Inc now from any of the sources above! I’m prone to changing my mind…

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by | December 3, 2015 · 2:14 am

Marketing blitz reveal – so how did Robin Read, Indie Book Promo, and Book Gorilla perform?

Hi, everybody!

Hope your Thanksgiving was great – I didn’t get any turkey down here, in Australia, but Shizzle, Inc did get to #9 on Amazon’s Satire Bestseller list! Not quite the #1 that I was hoping for, but hey! Single digits!

I couldn’t be happier. Not everything went according to the plan, but a negative result is also a result, as scientists say, and you get to benefit from all my experiences, whether good or bad.

To remind you, I was testing three companies over three days, and the results are as follows:

  1. Robin Reads – 26 November. Cost: $25. Sales on the day: 19
  2. Indie Book Promo – 27 November. Cost: $25. Sales on the day: 3.
  3. Book Gorilla – 28 November.Cost: $50. Sales on the day: 46.

These numbers are quite disappointing, especially when the previous $25 promo with eReader news resulted in 63 sales and covered the cost. It could be that it’s not a good idea to advertise over a major holiday, especially the Black Friday. I might give RR and BG another try, although I’m completely disappointed in Indie Book Promo – I have contacted them and they promised to send me some stats, although their attitude was that they are a different model to an email blast, and that’s just that. Well, I have not seen any evidence that they’ve made a dent on the day or today, so I will take an email blast with results that I can see any day. In the future, I will not bother with any website banner advertisements, seems that a targeted email is the only way to get people to notice.

Back to the numbers. In order to recoup my $100 investment, I should have sold at least 286 copies, so the 68 total sales mean a loss of $76.20. It’s actually a little better than that, because alongside the sales, there’s been a major spike in KENP pages read:

Sales on 1 Dec

So far it looks like the promo resulted in at least 1,561 extra pages (and hopefully more in the near future!). At roughly half-cent per page, this amounts to another $7.80 or so, so the total loss is currently at $68.40. Hopefully it will continue to reduce as people keep on reading. And if it’s one of you – please, please post a review! I’m up to 18, but it takes 25 reviews to advertise with some of the marketing sites I want to try.

In addition to the three mailouts, I’ve used the blitz as an excuse to continuously report on the sales rank and sales numbers. That resulted in crazy Twitter activity – here are my “impressions” for the week:

Twitter impressions

Even better – I have gained almost two thousand followers over this past week! The snowball effect is clearly happening, just not so much in sales 🙂

I have put the price back to $2.99 and have applied to advertise with Book Bub, but they’ve turned down my $140, which is a pity – rumor has it that authors normally at least make their money back. This means I’m about to put the price back to $0.99 and blast Twitter with the announcements 🙂

Speaking of all the marketing sites I want to try, have a look at the The Most Super-Duper, Exhaustive, Comprehensive, and Current Listing of Free and Paid Book Advertising Websites and Ideas, which has been updated with even more sites. I have not given up on paid advertising – you are free to draw whatever conclusions you want from my data, but I see it as investing in my brand. The upcoming blitz/full-on war is as follows:

  • 5 December – second chance for Bargain Booksy. They were nice enough to give me $25 credit for the disappointing YA audience promo, so I’m trying the chicklit audience. Cost – $70 (minus the $25 credit).
  • 5-6 December – applied to Read Cheaply. Not sure if this will work, as they want a limited-time offer and Shizzle, Inc has been on sale for many weeks.
  • 7-8 December – Read Free. Cost: free!
  • 9 December – Free Kindle Books and Tips. Cost – $25.
  • 11 December – Reading Deals. Cost: free!
  • 12 December – BookHearts. Cost – $5.
  • 14 December – eBook Lister. Cost – $25.
  • 15 December – BookSends. Cost – $30.
  • 17 December – Digital Book Today (Deal of the Day). Cost – $30.

Let’s see what that does! Ka-boom!

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by | November 30, 2015 · 11:04 am

Ana Spoke to interview bestselling author Matthew FitzSimmons!

Have you ever wanted to ask a celebrity author a question? Like, I dunno, maybe the author of Short Drop – the #1 bestseller OVERALL on Kindle Store? Do you wonder how his debut novel hit big time in the oversaturated fiction market?

Well, believe it or not – you can! Unexpectedly, Matthew stumbled across our heated discussions over the reviews of his yet to be released book – which turned out to be available via Kindle First. Matthew was kind enough to post several comments and so we already know that he was picked up by Amazon’s own publishing house through an agent, and that indeed Short Drop was available via Kindle First during the entire November and that’s how it now has 1,352 reviews. Short Drop will be released to the general public on 1 December and is set to make waves, with a sequel already in the works.

That in itself was pretty amazing – I’m personally blown away that he is engaging with readers directly and not via a publicist. I was so encouraged, that I boldly asked if he would be interested in an interview on my blog. You, know, all casual and the like. Whatevs.

He replied and said he would be “delighted” to do an interview! This is when I thought of you – my dear readers and followers – you, who keep pushing my site traffic to record numbers almost every day. Without you, who would’ve noticed this blog? Certainly not a bestselling author! So it’s only fair that you get to interview him, in a way.

So here’s the plan: post your questions in the comments below, I will collate them until midnight on Tuesday, try to combine any repetitive/similar ones, and will come up with a list of 6-8 or so. I’ll get the ball rolling with these:

  1. What is the one most surprising thing you’ve learned about the traditional publishing industry?
  2. What marketing strategies are in place for Short Drop, once it goes live?
  3. Is it hard to concentrate on writing the sequel with so much going on at the moment?

Post away! You have about 24 hours to come up with a perfect question! Don’t miss this opportunity!

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by | November 30, 2015 · 2:14 am

Matthew FitzSimmons himself stops by to explain the mystery of Short Drop reviews!

It was late last week when I posted Riddle me this! – a question about how it could be possible for a book to have a ton of reviews before its release. The book in question was Short Drop by Matthew FitzSimmons, an overall #1 on Kindle, with 1,388 reviews at the writing of this post, and the release date of 1 December.

I was not the only one confused – the post generated quite a discussion and a number of hypothesis, but it was a consensus that the reviews were a result of the book getting picked up as Kindle First. Is this the first time you’ve heard of Kindle First? Well, that makes two of us.

Screenshot (26)

Visit Kindle First website to learn more. Just don’t get too excited if you, like me, are in Australia – for some reason it’s not available down under.

My post generated so much discussion, that I’d decided to post an update – Mystery solved, explaining how it was possible and asking if anyone knew how to get onto the program (which is probably impossible for self-published newbies). Imagine my surprise when I was scrolling through my Twitter notifications and a familiar name caught my attention:

Screenshot (27)

Whaaat? I jumped over to the blog, and there was the comment, waiting for approval:

Screenshot (28)

I have replied, of course, and had the balls to ask how he got to this point – and he replied! For reals:

Screenshot (29)

So there you go folks – a mystery solved, new lesson learned, and another proof that you should never, ever give up on your dreams. I’m off to do some writing. I hope you do the same.

 

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by | November 29, 2015 · 7:32 am

Mystery solved (I think) and a quick update on the marketing blitz

Hi, everyone,

Shizzle, Inc got up to #34 on Amazon’s Satire Bestseller list! If you are not following the live tweeting of my biggest marketing campaign to date, here is a quick recap:

  1. Robin Reads started strong, but was a disappointment at 19 sales, at a cost of $25.
  2. Indie Book Promo was a complete dud, at maybe 1 sale (I had 3 total, but 2 were from my constant tweeting about it).
  3. Book Gorilla is currently on fire!

Screenshot (25)

I will post a complete report on Monday. Wish me luck!

Now, I’d like to venture an explanation for the mystery surrounding the 1,200+ verified purchase reviews on a book yet to be released – as previously mentioned in Riddle me this!

First of all, I’d like to thank the following detectives:

  1. Nancy Glynn of Nancy Glynn – thank you for sharing the loophole allowing reviews on a yet-to-be-published book by “tricking” CreateSpace.
  2. Isabella Belucci of Isabella Belucci – thank you for sharing your experience reviewing and ARC (Advanced Review Copy) for another author.
  3. Mykl Walsh of Secret Agent Man – thank you for scouring the Internet for clues!
  4. Tim Vicary of Tim Vicary – thank you for checking the suspect’s Goodreads profile 🙂
  5. Prospero of Prospero’s Island – thank you for digging up an interview with the mention of Kindle First!

I did some research myself – and it all seemed to point to Kindle First. For example, all 1,200+ reviews have been posted during November, in line with Kindle First offering the book a month before its release on 1 December. For those not familiar with Kindle First – it is an offer of free or discounted bestsellers (I think just four of them a month), chosen by Amazon’s editors. I have searched madly for any clues on how to get on the list, but it seems to be either a secret or an impossible feat, even though most traditional publishers are currently not supporting it.

Any detectives want to take on this new mystery??

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by | November 26, 2015 · 10:52 am

Riddle me this!

Hi, everyone,

Another day, another browse through the Amazon’s Top 100 – and I’ve noticed something I can’t explain. Can someone with more experience and insight explain this phenomena?

How can a book that is yet to be released have 1,200 positive reviews? From verified purchases? Have a look at Short Drop by Matthew FitzSimmons.

Ok, I understand the need to create pre-release buzz and actually plan on doing the same with the sequel to Shizzle, Inc – but how could there be reviews? I’d like to believe they are not fake…if so, how does one go about getting reviews on Amazon before the release day?

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by | November 26, 2015 · 2:25 am

Tomorrow! Tomorrow! The marketing blitz starts tomorrow!

I can’t believe it’s only a day away!

To remind you, I will run three promos on three consecutive days between 26-28 November. There was going to be a fourth, but I’d messed up and did not follow up on it. Proof that you have to have a plan and write things down.

Speaking of plans, I just heard an awesome quote along the lines of “The difference between confidence and arrogance is a plan.” So let me lay out my plan on getting Shizzle, Inc to #1 in Amazon’s Satire Bestseller List this weekend:

  1. 26 November. We start with Robin Reads targeted mail-out. Cost: $25.
  2. 27 November. There might be some sales generated by Robin Reads, hopefully supported by Indie Book promo. Cost: $25.
  3. 28 November – we finish off with a biggie – a proven performer, Book Gorilla. Cost: $50.

I am so excited about it that I will be posting live sales charts throughout the weekend on twitter. So, if you are interested, and are not yet following me – follow @spokeana on Twitter now! You don’t want to miss the races!

This is the current sales chart:

 

Sales on 25 Nov

 

And here are the current rankings:

 

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #314,319 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Let’s see what happens tomorrow!

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by | November 19, 2015 · 4:12 pm

No, thank you, I will do my own marketing research

Why is book marketing so hard? There are many reasons why – too many books being published, authors giving away books for free, social media noise, you name it. I won’t go into all of them, but I do want to dissect one:

Bad advice.

Again, this could be interpreted in a variety ways – and I would not claim to know what is good and what is bad. Things that have worked for someone with a romance novel may not work for an author of horror. Things change all the time, so for example it’s known fact now that if you give your book away for free and climb to the top of Top 100 Free Bestseller list on Amazon, once you switch to Paid, your rankings will fall dismally, because you have sold exactly zero paid copies during your free promotion days. Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, this post has been a winner already!

There’s lots of other advice I find questionable, such as:

  1. “Just write a good book and it will find an audience.” When? When I’m dead?
  2. “Set your price high and don’t budge.” I did that. Readers did not budge, either.
  3. “Grow your social media presence.” I did that, too – 30K + followers resulted in just a handful of sales.

So far I’ve been able to prove that one sure way to increase exposure is with paid marketing. I hope to test the theory that writing a series is a way to success very soon. Meanwhile, I would advise everyone to do their own research. Test me on my assumptions – please! And certainly, check that if you are taking advice from someone else, that they know what they are doing.

This brings me to the controversial part of this particular post. I have been following a number of author blogs, and was especially impressed by an author who has published a number of fiction books as well as a number of self-help books on the writing business. I was about to buy one, on how to market your book, when I’d decided to have a look at how the fiction books by the same author were performing, specifically the overall Amazon rankings. The answer?

150K-plus to 7-million-plus.

I was in shock. This author wrote not one, but several series of fiction books, with awesome flashy covers, lots of reviews, you name it. I would imagine a book ranking at 7 million on Amazon has not sold a copy in what, months? Years? How could someone with such dismal fiction sales record sell a book on book marketing? Oh, and what was the ranking of the marketing book?

Top 100 in it’s category.

I’m not going to reveal who it was, as I’m afraid to get eaten alive, so let me just leave you with this message: once again, do your own research, find your own way, and if some bad advice is not working for you, be brave and throw it away.

 

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