As a Christmas treat for everyone, I’ve decided to lower the price of all my books to $0.99 / £0.99 for three weeks.

I’ve also invested in a strong marketing campaign for One Last Bullet. My budget would only stretch to one book, so while all three are reduced, I’m pushing the latest one with the promotion.

I’ve never done a full-on promotion before for a Paid novel. I’ve run four promotions (including three launch promos) for Free novels in the past, usually lasting a week. I used a standard plan of blasting every website I could that advertises free ebooks and running it with them Monday to Friday. The result was always a decent week of downloads, but not really any sales once the book resumes normal price.

After much research, I’ve learned of, and adopted, a successful strategy used by many indie authors – which, when you look at it, makes a lot of sense. It’s one of those things – you don’t know it until you know it!

So, using a couple of websites (in the cheaper bracket) and a lot of Fiverr gigs I’ve had success with in the past, I’ve put together a three-week campaign for One Last Bullet, in the hope of finding my footing and vying for dominance in the Paid Kindle charts.

I will update this post every 1-2 days with updates on performance – more for a case study for myself for future reference, but also for the interest of readers and authors alike.

My plan is this (the name is a Fiverr gig unless stated):

15th Dec: Flurry of Words [website] (1 day)

16th Dec: FacebookProGig (3 days) and RichardJagger (3 days)

18th Dec: BKnights (7 days)

19th Dec: BookSCREAM [website] (1 day)

22nd Dec: AugustVF7 (1 day)

23rd Dec: Media_By_Design (3 days)

24th Dec: Flurry of Words [website] (1 day)

25th Dec: KindleService (5 days)

26th Dec: Psymon_H (7 days)

29th Dec: Marketing_Ebook (5 days)

30th Dec: AugustVF7 (1 day) and Taranko1 (3 days)

The promotion will run from today (15th December) through ’til 2nd January 2015.

Crucible has already had a strong month, racking up 28 sales in the first two weeks, completely unprompted! I’ve reached the dizzy heights of the 26,000s overall on Amazon, as well as the Top 75 of two Thriller sub-charts, which is an amazing performance for me. I’m hoping with this promotion, and a Twitter/Facebook push for Hunter’s Games, that I can gain some traction in the charts going into the New Year and building up to the launch of Brave New World – Part 1, which I’m hoping to do in April.

Wish me luck!

JPS