Let's See if THIS Works
Well, my book has been available at Amazon.com and Smashwords.com for almost three months now and sales have been disappointing.
However the people that have read it and given feedback have been very positive and seem to genuinely like the book. The only real criticism was because of a few typos and a formatting issue in the earlier edition which have been corrected.
I've been trying to promote it via Facebook and Twitter and recently here at Goodreads and I am now resorting to paid promotions, one of which began yesterday and will run through July 23.
My book is listed as a sale item (regularly $3.99 now just $0.99) at Digital Book Today (http://digitalbooktoday.com/daily-kin...).
It looks cool seeing my book cover on that site featured among several others. It'll be way cooler if sales pick up.
If any readers out there have experience successfully promoting their books elsewhere I'll certainly appreciate any advice you can provide me. At the end of this experiment I'll let you know how well this promotion worked.
However the people that have read it and given feedback have been very positive and seem to genuinely like the book. The only real criticism was because of a few typos and a formatting issue in the earlier edition which have been corrected.
I've been trying to promote it via Facebook and Twitter and recently here at Goodreads and I am now resorting to paid promotions, one of which began yesterday and will run through July 23.
My book is listed as a sale item (regularly $3.99 now just $0.99) at Digital Book Today (http://digitalbooktoday.com/daily-kin...).
It looks cool seeing my book cover on that site featured among several others. It'll be way cooler if sales pick up.
If any readers out there have experience successfully promoting their books elsewhere I'll certainly appreciate any advice you can provide me. At the end of this experiment I'll let you know how well this promotion worked.
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R.
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Jul 11, 2013 02:43PM
You'll find sales will ebb and flow--and I've got *just barely* enough indie publishing experience to say that with authority. If you're just breaking in & working on carving out a name/brand for yourself, you should offer a certain amount if free intros to your work, so folks know your stuff is worth a paid investment. For instance, my team and I (Team Pop Culture) have been releasing short stories every Friday, and the last page of each story is a sort of "hey, here's this author's full length novel & where you can keep up w/news & upcoming projects" etc. even w/that, actual sales are modest, but at this stage you should think of it as cultivating interest. I hope this advice helps! I'm kind of a newbie myself!
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Thanks R. You're advice is very helpful.
Hi Steven! Thanks for the friend request. I have very good experiences with BookBlast.co ; you can run an ad for a 99 cent book for $10 in your category (sci-fi). I made my money back twice using the BB promo, didn't earn a ton, obviously (almost impossible with a 99 cent book :) but it did get my book into the hands of more readers that way. I do think you need at least 5 Amazon reviews to run an ad on BookBlast, though.I would recommend seeking out book bloggers to write about your book. They usually cross-post to Amazon!
And last but not least, summer is a notoriously hard time to sell books, it's called the 'summer slump' in the Kindleboards Writer's Cafe (which you should totally check out, by the way, it's a cool crowd on there :)
Thanks so much Jen. It good to get useful advice. I will check out BookBlast.com.
BTW, If I can provide you with a free copy of my book will you check it out and review it? I only have two reviews so far at Amazon.com.
Thanks,
Steve
Hi Steve!It's Bookblast. CO , not com (I made that mistake the first time, too :)
And I think your book sounds really interesting but I can't commit to reviewing it anytime soon... I'm about to go on a 6-week vacation to the UK and the US, so I won't have a lot of time to publish reviews of stuff I read! There's a group here on Goodreads ( http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/8... ) where you review one indie book on the list and the next author on the list reviews yours (so nobody can accuse you of 'review swapping'!) which works quite well. That will probably be quicker than asking me for a review at this point ;)
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