Book Loving Kiwis discussion

'Tizzie' by p.d.r. lindsay
'The Effects of Henry's Cage: Elean's Story'

Kindle Countdown Sale

May 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th.
Price reduction from $3.99 to 99 cents or 99pence.
Kindle versions only.

Wow! Stunned and delighted to note that my Kindle sales for May 11th are 106!

Please God another couple of days sales like that!! And then we will be ready for the launch of 'Bittersweet'.

Wow indeed! Very well done. Which advertiser produced that? All the very best for the next few days.

Hello Anna,
I've been studying the art of sales for a while. Learnt a bit, still more to learn!

I put Tizzie in to Amazon Kindle Select and chose their 5 day Countdown promotion
BUT
I also advertised that May 11 -15 promotion in 5 or 6 book sites per day - ones which had good reputations and which send out daily email newsletters as well as promoting the book on the front page of the website and in their historical section.

I have been impressed with some of these sites and what they can do for $10 or $15. Some use Twitter as part of their campaign but not to yell BUY. They have a Twitter site specifically for selling books and they have 40,000 or 50,000 readers who follow those Tweets. I don’t like pushy ones at people in ordinary tweet lines but these are good. Take a look at AskDavid.com They are European but do a super good job of an author’s page and tweets and newsletter and front page promo. Readersintheknow.com also produced a good result.

I also am running a blog, and social media promo, not heavy just mentioning it and also on GR and my daughter’s done a FB thing on her site.

It’s been a lot of work but I know how to do it now and which sites to use again.

Sales up to 120 and pages read in the library up to 951 pages!

So far the count is going up. 1st day 110 sales
Day 2 128 sales.

Wonderful feeling as it is so hard to get a good book noticed and Tizzie has had some considerable competition and critical success.

Phew! All over. 'Tizzie' raised to 78th out the 100 top historical novels at Amazon for a day then it was ranked 80 then 98 and 99 now all gone! But I sold enough to cover my costs and a bit over. Tizzie got a of of attention and I learned what worked and what didn't to create sales.

Shall do it again in October if I have 'Bittersweet' ready for launch.

Excellent news, PDR! To get to 78 in the top 100 historical novels is something to be very proud of.

I've got both my books in KDP Select and I find that works best for me. I'm amazed at your 5 or 6 sites a day. I've also done this but usually don't manage to find the time to get them on as many sites as you do. Authors need to be good marketers too, it seems.

Yes, I definitely find that the promotions lead to more page reads.

The only drawback to Select is that I can't reduce the price for NZ as it is attached to the US .com site and Select dictates the lowest price for .com as US$2.99 or equivalent in NZ. Ho hum, we can't have everything, I suppose.

I hope your promotion produces lots more happy readers. It's so nice to produce work which people enjoy.

My problem is that I write serious historical fiction on the literary side as well. It does not sell anywhere near as well as my romance writing friends do. But as I thought, if I line up those book sites with well written newsletters and hit them all at once over a kindle countdown I should get enough readers willing to take a punt at 99 cents or pence.

The nice thing about the paid sites is that you can book ahead and make sure of your dates.

I don't like Select but use it then get back to Smashwords and other sites which have sold more books for me.

Would like to add, (sorry it's a delighted and amazed skite,) but since the promotion I am selling one or two books a week.

Also the number of pages read per day which was nil before the promo is carrying on at anywhere from 5000 pages a day to today's 346 pages. But it is continuing!

I'm probably in the same boat as you, P.D.R. My second book, fondly known as ODN, was moved at the suggestion of BookBub, from Historical Romance to Historical Fiction. It is definitely a romance but not written in the usual HR style . I am not a fan of formulaic writing, so I agreed with them. The sequel, naturally, is also less of a formulaic HR and more a Historical adventure.

My first published book, Hide in Time, is a time travel romance and sells more. It's also not formulaic.

5,000 pages a day is excellent. I read somewhere that 2,300 page reads per calendar month is average. I'm not sure if that is per book or overall. I should have asked. If I can find the post, I'll ask.

Still I would market your book with the word Romance prominent. Romance sells more than anything else!

You're right, of course, I must keep romance prominent wherever possible, especially as it is, but not a fluffy one.

I checked - 2,300 page reads per calendar month per book is the average. It gives us something to measure ourselves by.

I dislike the Amazon trap and will free my books to Smashwords again even though we will miss out on the price per page. It is not very much money per page anyway. I don't like the Amazon push on the free deal or the countdown deal.

In October we will run a 99cen/99pence deal for a week. I believe that Amazon will have to move our books up the lists if they sell. Doing the promo in May showed me that we can sell books this way and because they are Writer's Choice quality fiction they then go on to sell because they are good reads.

it's all hard work but does help. I was so depressed re sales and the 'what's the use of writing' gloom that I stopped writing novels and went back to my short stories. Now I can see how to sell the books and that they keep on selling if they are good reads then I am happy to bash 'Bittersweet' into shape and get it through the Writer's Choice hoops to publication.

I've just found your post buried in my emails!

So one year later - how's it all going?

Quietly selling. We do a push and sell a lot then it gradually fades to a couple a week, then fortnight then month then it's time for another push! Twice yearly seems to be good.

There's a lot of us in your club (as detailed above).

When Amazon alone is pumping out over 8,000 books a day it is hard to be noticed. We find, at Writer's Choice, that even though our books have won prestigious awards, we still have to yell and push at sales marketing.