Romance Writers & Readers discussion

What up, fellow authors?

I'm in the midst of planning pre-release week events for a book I have coming out later this month, and thought I would tap into the collective genius that is Romance Writers & Readers to see if anyone had ideas or things that have worked for them.

I'd like to do a different sort of promo or sneak peek on my blog/social media for each day leading up to the release. So far I'm thinking of doing an exclusive excerpt, a sneak peek at the table of contents and chapter names, a dream cast, a recipe featured in the book, and...that's all I've got so far.

Has anyone tried something unique or different with book promotion that had good results? Do you have any pre-release promo tips? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!

-Katia

I just released a book on July 30th, and for the first time I tried a paid promo on the day the book released and the day after, and that gave a me a massive boost in my rank and its been the best release I've had so far! I know thats not pre-release and not sure if you want to do paid promos but just thought I'd mention it! Some promo sites require a certain star rating and number of reviews, but some of them if you have a previous book that meets their requirements will do a new release. I used Fussy Librarian and ENT this time.

And also if you're active on Facebook and have time to book them I can definitely recommend doing takeovers. I organised a lot in the couple of weeks leading up to my release and shared that I had a book coming out, I had people who bought my book because of interacting with them during takeovers.

Hope you have a great release!

Oooh, thanks Jane.
So far I found only sites that want free/discounted books as opposed to new release ones.

I'm running my own fb launch event on 26th Aug, if you want to take part? (x2 slots left)
I'm hoping that will attract lots of lovely readers.

If I find anything that works I'll let you know xx

It's encouraging to hear you had such good results with paid promos, Jane. This will be my first release so I'd probably need to wait for the ratings/review to qualify, but I've check out both the services you've mentioned and they seem really great.

I have a release blitz and some takeovers scheduled. I'm also thinking of doing paid facebook ads close to the time of release, but that seems to be a whole other game. Has anyone seen results with those?

Sorry I'm late to the game, Miss Katia!

I've never done a "proper" launch, although the lovely Lady Ember has convinced me to do one for my upcoming release. Okay, she didn't really have to do much convincing. I was very agreeable haha! Anyhoo...

I do a pre-order with my books and have them at $0.99 for that timeframe. Then it goes up to $4.99 (or $2.99 for shorter novellas) afterward. I've personally found that the discount is a good enough incentive to keep my rank pretty decent until the release date.

Re: FB takeovers
Totally agree with Princess Jane. Ember and I did a bunch (like 6-ish?) together when we first put our books up for pre-order and both got a fantastic rank boost from them. Plus, we met some amazingly awesome readers too!

Re: FB ads
I have not tried this yet but I plan to experiment in the next little bit with my pre-order. It'll be more for exposure vs. sales cuz at $0.35 per book, the conversion rate would have to be crazy high and I'd have to sell a TON to possibly break even.

Re: Getting reviews
Sorry I had to delete your comment, Miss Tenza! We have a reviews discussion thread here:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

It's kinda old and I've not read through it again so dunno if there's anything super helpful. Also, we no longer allow links to be posted so if you see any, just ignore em haha!

Hugs,
Ann

EDIT: Just wanted to clarify, no links out of the group. The above link is just another one of our threads. I hope LOL

Hi Katia! Sorry I just saw this thread! Hahaha! Mistress Ann there was only a little arm twisting and threats lol!
Okay so to answer your question I do quite a lot with my releases. I have done a little of everything! Facebook takeovers are awesome and there are some really great blogs out there that do takeovers! Mistress Ann and I had a lot of fun doing our joint takeovers! You meet a lot of readers and gain some exposure. I tend to do release parties I know of a couple of blog pages that will host your release Party for you. You will have to supply the authors that will takeover tho!

Facebook ads are tricky I haven't had a whole lot of success but I have been doing them wrong. Do your research on them first. YouTube is a good resource I haven't tried it right but I plan to try soon for my new release at the end of the month.
I hope this helps and I wasn't just regurgitating everything that everyone else said!

Thanks for all the input everyone! It's been really helpful.

I use a promotion company as well for releases. Depending on how you pick the promo, they do cover reveals, pre-order events, reviews from bloggers in your genre and blog tour for release week. I've definitely had some sales from those.

I've also done some other paid promos for release week and had really good results with those. My ranks were great for that week and stayed pretty consistent for a while after.

Like Mistress Ann, I too do 99c for pre-order. I agree that it helps with rating. In fact, that's what I'm doing right now for the next release I have going in Oct.

I don't do a lot of FB takeovers because of FB name issues. But I think those are changing so I might start to do more now that I can comment with my author name.

I did some FB ads with my last release and definitely had some pre-orders from it. Not a ton and I don't know if you get a ROI from it. I did have a some people follow and like my page from it though so there is something in that.

Hope this helps!!

Update...
My fb event had 70 say they were interested or were attending.
BUT I had about 5 people actively take part :-/
I had promoted the event on fb/Twitter/GR...

I had a paid ad with Love Books Daily; got approx 4 sales from that.
And Red Roses Romance achieved about 5.
These were both pre release though, so no reviews were showing on Amazon yet.
GR ad seemed to do nothing (again).

BargainBooksy is going out Sunday, but I now have a few reviews showing, and that's the biggest of these companies, so fingers crossed.

btw book 1 is FREE on KU, so I have no idea how many downloaded it via that as opposed to the 99c 'normal' ones.
This is actually annoying. I know I won't get paid until people start reading pages, but it would be nice to have an idea how many downloaded.

Just thought I'd share my experience just in case it helps.

xx

Thanks for the additional tips everyone!

I thought I'd share how everything went for me, to help anyone who might be checking this out in the future.

The fun little 'extras' I did on my blog and social media leading up to release were actually quite effective. I wouldn't say they gained me a lot of new readers, but they got the people who were already interested in the book even more excited to read it. I did a 'Which Character Are You?" quiz that people responded especially well to and actually did share themselves, so it's definitely something worth doing!

I also worked with Indies Ink, who helped with promotions leading up to release. If you haven't heard of them, check them out. They help promote authors with cool features (for free!) and are all lovely people. I'd highly recommend them.

I tried two paid facebook ads just to see how they'd do. I only set their limit for two dollars a day and was expecting next to no results, but they both did really well. One was to promote my page, and another was to promote a giveaway.

I'll follow the advice of a few people here with my next book release and also try out some paid promotion sites to see how that goes.

Good luck and happy releases to everyone!

Glad to hear those things worked! That's really great!!

This was very helpful. Thank you all so much for your advice and experiences. I'm about to release a new book hopefully in the next month if everything goes well.