KDP Select Free Book Promotion - My Results

I was releasing the second Relic Worlds book at Wondercon in March, so the plan was to have book 1 available for free on the same three days of the convention.  This way I could promote the free book at the convention while also having it promoted online.  I was hoping people getting this for free would go on to buy book 2.

To prepare for the KDP free promotion, I purchased advertisements on a bunch of sights.  I have learned that, when it comes to promoting your free days, you get what you pay for.  Every time I’ve tried free sites, or just tried to post to places to get attention, I get nothing.  But when I pay for some sort of promotion on some sight, I get a lot of downloads.  I spent approximately $200 on these promotions, and I promoted in a lot of Facebook groups, as well as my own Facebook and Twitter.  I also gave away a ton of flyers at the convention which gave the site where someone could download book 1 for free.  The final tally was 3,277.  1,859 were on Friday, 1,042 were on Saturday, and 376 were on Sunday.  Like my time at Wondercon, this was pretty much what I had expected, but not what I had hoped for.  I had hoped for between 5 and 10 thousand.  I expected somewhere around 3,000.  Unfortunately, VERY few of those led to sales of book 2, at least during that weekend.  The hope is that, after a bit of time, when some of those 3,000 have read book 1, they’ll go on to read book 2.

I also scheduled advertising to take place directly after the free book sale ended.  So from Monday to Friday I had ads running on Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, (where I had the book trailer running as an ad.)  Something very interesting happened here.  I got very few sales, so it would appear this was a failure.  However, I got a TON more followers on both Facebook and Twitter.  On Facebook I went from about 40 followers to 250.  On Twitter I gained a couple dozen, but a lot more people started retweeting my things and talking about Relic Worlds.  So it was successful in that more people learned about it.  This goes along with what happened at Wondercon, building my following, though in the short term I didn’t sell that much.  I’m hoping that turns into sales later on.  I met someone at Wondercon who makes her living just writing, and she told me this is the way it usually works, so hopefully I’m on the right track.

My plan for the next step is to use my last two free days of day 1 at the same time I do a countdown deal of book 2.  I’ll talk about how that goes later.  In the meantime, here’s a list of the places I promoted the KDP sale:

More Than 2 Weeks Before the Sale

Ereader News Today: http://www.ereadernewstoday.com/

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/home/

Pixel of Ink: http://www.pixelofink.com/

Digital Book Today: http://digitalbooktoday.com/free-book-listing/

2 Weeks Before the Sale

Kindle Nation Daily: http://kindlenationdaily.com/

Kindle Book Promos: http://kindlebookpromos.luckycinda.com/

Freebooksy: http://www.freebooksy.com/editorial-submissions/

Indie Book of the Day: http://indiebookoftheday.com/authors/free-on-kindle-listing/

Free Books Hub: http://www.freebookshub.com/authors/

EBooks Habit: http://ebookshabit.com/about-us/

Awesome Gang: http://awesomegang.com/submit-your-book/

One thing to consider is that I got turned down by Bookbub and Ereader News Today.  Both of those are the most important lists to get on, but they’re the hardest.  I seem to have had my best luck with Freebooksy, but it’s hard to know for certain.

All in all, what I’ve learned is what I began to suspect when I started down this journey, that it’s best to do series, because short term results in independent publishing are typically slim.  Even the 3,000 downloads I got are relatively small.  If that was the only book I was releasing, I would think it’s really said, because only about 1% of those will probably turn into real sales of other people down the road.  But since this is a series, it’s only the first step in a much longer road.

http://www.amazon.com/Relic-Worlds-Lancaster-Secret-Padrone-ebook/dp/B01BHPM4SW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1461127428&sr=8-2&keywords=Relic+Worlds

The Results of My Free Book Promo.

I ran a free book promo on Amazon for my book The Great Heist this weekend.  I did something a little different each day, and got varying results.

Day 1:  Announced on various sites.  I go down a list I found here:  http://www.trainingauthors.com/47-places-to-submit-your-free-kdp-promotion-for-your-kindle-ebook/  I submit to each of the places that still exist.  Some have been replaced, some just don’t exist anymore.  Eventually I’ll have to get a different list, but this one works pretty good right now.  I got 658 downloads.

Day 2:  I did all of my social media outlets, including posting to groups I belong to on Facebook.  I also retweeted some things and tweeted on my own handle.  Basically, I reached out to everyone I could get to throughout the day.  I mostly posted the book trailer, and where they could find the book on Amazon.  The result was 634 downloads.

Day 3:  I did nothing this day, counting primarily on what I had done on previous days.  (Actually, the main thing that happened is I got distracted with other things throughout the day.)  The result was 176 downloads.

Day 4:  I did two paid ads, one in Freebooksy, at: http://freebooksy.com/editorial-submissions and one at Bookgoodies: http://bookgoodies.com/  The result of these:  2,034 downloads.

Day 5:  I’m just reminding people that there’s one last day to download the book for free.  It’s so far had about 600 downloads.  Most of these are probably hold-overs from day 4.

The moral of the story?  You get what you pay for.  The Freebooksy and Bookgoodies ads combined came to $100.  Of course all the books are being given away for free, so I get none of that back at the moment, but hopefully it will get attention for the book.  It was #1 in the organized crime category the entire weekend.  It reached number one in nonfiction on Sunday, and is now number 16, and it is currently number 93 in the free category.  (It was even higher on Sunday, but I’ve forgotten exactly where.)

The next few days will tell.  But the point of this giveaway was mostly to get people to know my writing, and to know one of the characters in it, who is featured in the next book, Two Gun Hart, which comes out next month.  To me, the decision to give a book away is to get attention for something else.  It helps with sales of the book itself in that it shows up on people’s searches as “People who bought this also bought…” and they’ll hopefully talk about it and review it.  But I don’t count on those numbers.  I do count on looking at this book leading to looking at another.

If you would like to pick up The Great Heist while it is still available for free today, or for a low price any other day, you can find it at:

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Heist-Biggest-Robbery-History-ebook/dp/B00G8ULNX4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423519063&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Great+Heist

The American Game Free on Kindle This Weekend

The American Game will be available for free on Kindle this weekend as part of a KDP Select promotion.  It will be available for free on the Kindle from Friday, September 26, until Tuesday, September 30.  It can be found at:

http://www.amazon.com/American-Game-Jeff-McArthur-ebook/dp/B00LJII7GG/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1411618014&sr=8-1&keywords=The+American+Game+Jeff+McArthur

It may seem counter-intuitive to give away one's books for free, but each download counts as a sale, and if there are enough, it can get onto the best sellers list, at least in its category.  This helps with exposure, which leads to even more sales.  So regardless of whether or not you're going to read the book, I hope you'll download it.

Doing a Free Kindle Promotion of The American Game in Two Weeks

The American Game will be free on Kindle for five days beginning on September 26 and running through September 30th.  To prepare for this, I'm alerting several sites, including:

Pixel of Ink

Kindle Nation Daily

Ereader News Today

Digital Book Today

Book Gorilla

I'm also posting it on all my social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google +.  I'll also be telling every Civil War, history, and baseball group I can find.

In the past, I've separated my free days, having 2 early in the 90 days of KDP Select, and 3 near the end.  That way I can learn from the first.  This time I wanted to make sure I got some reviews first, then just had them all at once.  I'm hoping it will build in numbers downloading it as I would like to get it into the hands of as many people as possible.

This is a story I have been more concerned gets out there to the public than on having a huge profit.  While I believe this is a story that will appeal toa  large audience, I spent so much time on it over 20 years that no amount of money can make up for it.  I'd like this to build my reputation, and just to be seen.  I love this story; I always have.  I'll update this page to say how well my efforts are going.

Relic Worlds: Lancaster James & the Search for the Promised World Available for Free on the Kindle

It's that time; time to give away free promo copies of the book on the Kindle to give everyone a look.

I'm always wary of giving away my books for free.  After all, I spent months on them.  This particular Relic Worlds story has been in my mind since 1997.  So I'd rather get something for my efforts; after all, I promised my girlfriend a hammock and a lifetime supply of Bon Bons!

It is a bit frustrating to see mainstream books never having to go through this phase, but it's a necessity for independent books to get noticed.  I've made it a regular practice now to come out on the Kindle first, do the KDP Select program for 90 days to promote it with this free giveaway and other promotions, then do a wide release with other e-readers.

So today (May 29, 2014) to Saturday (May 31, 2014) Relic Worlds: Lancaster James and the Search for the Promised World, will be free on the Kindle at: http://www.amazon.com/Relic-Worlds-Lancaster-Search-Promised-ebook/dp/B00JSW7EBY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401383605&sr=8-1&keywords=Relic+Worlds

Relic Worlds Novel Free Today on Kindle through KDP Select

My latest novel, Relic Worlds: Lancaster James and theSearch for the Promised World, is now available for the Kindle on Amazon.  I had been releasing the series on Drivethru Fiction, and had even done this book as a serial there, releasing each chapter as I finished it.  As such, I was going to have the novel come out on Drivethru and all the other e-readers upon release.

However, I looked over the results of my last two books, Pro Bono and The Great Heist.  I released the former through the free on Kindle program, and even though I gave thousands of copies away for free, I sold thousands more after the promotion.  That book still sells better than any of my others.  Meanwhile, I put The Great Heist through Amazon’s other promotion program, Kindle Countdown Deal, where it is sold for a lower price for a limited time.  I had almost no luck with that, selling only a few copies during the promotion period, and it’s never taken off, despite the fact that the subject matter is even more appealing to the general public than Pro Bono.

Of course, none of the other major e-reader platforms have a good promotion program other than Drivethru, which, unfortunately, is not a site highly trafficked enough to get a huge amount of sales.  So as a result, I’m going exclusively with Amazon to give away those copies for free so hopefully those people will spread the word.

I am doing this promotion in two stages:

First promotion:  I’m making it free for two days over a weekend to give it away to all the fans of Relic Worlds and people who have been following me on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  It’s a bonus to them, and hopefully those people will begin spreading the word in time for the second promotion.

Second promotion:  About a month later, I’m making it free for three days.  I will be promoting this one far more widely.  Those areas include:  Book Bub, Pixel of Ink, Facebook sci fi sites, Google + sci fi sites, Kindle Daily, etc.  This is the one I’ll really be pushing, and trying to get people to purchase.

The intent is to generate interest while there’s still time left in the exclusive Kindle deal.  The reason this is helpful is because it maximizes the book’s exposure in one area, making it more likely to get on their top books list.  If people have multiple readers, they purchase it on Amazon, and that pushes me up the Amazon list higher.  If it was on multiple readers, the book would go more evenly up multiple lists, thus making it so the book never reaches bestseller status on any one site.

Since the other e-reader sites do not have promotions that support independent artists like Amazon does, I chose Amazon Kindle.  Simple as that.  They all bemoan Amazon for having unfair business practices, but they do that while not improving their own services for independent authors like myself; so I don’t feel too sorry for them.