Tag Archives: book promotion

eBookSoda Promotion. Worth Your Money?

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Image taken from website

Marketing your book feels harder than actually writing the silly thing, and we’re all looking for inexpensive but effective ways to promote our books. I tried eBookSoda last week, hoping to promote His Frozen Heart because of the holiday season. Amazon is turning my ads down now because of their “suggestive pose” and I’m not going to swap out covers just to appease the Zon. I have to keep reader expectations in mind, and them showing a little skin clues readers in this is going to be a steamy read. Amazon tightening up their creative guidelines has more than just me in a pinch, and we’re all searching for ways to replace the ad platform.

Anyway, so while listening to a podcast, the interviewee, Sara Rosett, reminded me of the promotional site and I recalled they weren’t that expensive. For $29.00 you can buy a spot in their reader newsletter and get your book in front of new readers. Similar to eReader News Today, or Free- and BargainBooksy, this is a one-time fee for a one-time promotion.

Maybe in the case of promotions the saying, “You get what you pay for,” is accurate. eBookSoda didn’t do much for me.

Besides lack of sales, the biggest problem I had is they didn’t proofread my ad. This is totally my fault and take responsibility. I should have been more careful with my ad when I created it, but they didn’t proofread it, either, and this is the ad that showed up in the newsletter:

I know the title of the book is my fault–I’ve done this in the past, especially when typing quickly creating ads in the Amazon Ads platform. But I was saddened to see that they didn’t fix it when creating the newsletter. This is a good lesson to proof your own work, but if you expect eBookSoda to also proofread for you, don’t count on it.

As far as sales go, I only sold three books on the day it came out, and nothing afterward. Usually I get a good bump in KU reads when I do a promo, but I didn’t get that either.

You can see from the photos that on the day of the promo, I made $1.28, and the next day $1.41. I didn’t get a bump in KU reads, and those royalties are from a book set at $.99. Overall, for the month of November, I’ve made $12.33 for the first in my series, which definitely is not something to brag about. I don’t have any Amazon ads going right now, mainly because the ones I’ve submitted have been rejected by the AMS team. I was hoping turning to paid promos instead of ads would bolster sales, but it did not.

One of the few pros to the promo site is that there were only two other books with mine in the newsletter sent out that day. When you purchase a FreeBooksy or BargainBooksy through Written Word Media, your book is grouped with several, and it’s up to your book cover and ad copy to really hook a reader into clicking because there is much more to choose from.

I don’t know if eBookSoda’s claims are true–that they can reach 26,000 readers–but I didn’t go for the extras you can pay for with your promo: Twitter and Facebook. They ask if your cover is explicit to not choose the Facebook promo option, and I didn’t because I assumed they wouldn’t like my cover and didn’t want to give eBookSoda a hard time. Possibly if I had been able to choose the Twitter and Facebook ad-ons ($9.00/each) I could have had a more successful promo, or I could have spent another $18.00 on nothing.

At any rate, I won’t be trying eBookSoda again, and I will save my dollars for other promo sites even if they may be a little more expensive.

As for my Amazon ads, I’m up $30.00 total for the month, but I have paused a few of my ads because they are spending more than they are making. Mostly I’ve been writing my next book, and for now I’m going to give up on pushing these books for the holiday season. Since I’m veering off in a new direction, I’m not sure how much time and money I want to invest in my 3rd person past novels anyway. I’m getting really bummed out Amazon is giving me a hard time with my covers, and I’m thinking about going wide with them and just kind of letting them go. I’m not giving up on them, exactly, but I may have found everyone in KU I’m going to find and perhaps wide now would be a better fit. I do remember I had some kind of weird anxiety with my books on other platforms, and I’m not sure what brought that on but it’s worth remembering. There’s something comforting about having all my books just in one place, but having all your eggs in one basket can also be anxiety-inducing for others.

There’s no one answer, unfortunately, and I don’t have a clear path for what I want to do in 2021.

When I try another promo site, I will let you know! Until then, have a wonderful conclusion to 2020, and I will talk to you again soon!

Until next time!

Monday’s Author Musings and Catch Up.

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I don’t have a lot to say at the moment. I’ve been writing my first person present books, and I’m 34k into the 5th book out of 6. I’m happy things are moving along and my alpha reader says that so far they are engaging and stuff keeps happening even if I feel some parts are a bit laggy in places. So, that’s good news! It’s going to be quite the task to edit them but because of consistency issues, I’ll do them all once book 6 is done and I take a bit of a breather. When I don’t feel like writing I’m looking through stock photos of couples I like. The covers will be a process, and you can’t start something like that too soon.

I’m happy that Canva has introduced some text effects and that will add some additional choices when making covers. It will be fun to play around with new combinations.

My Amazon ads are still doing well. I think the promo I did with Freebooksy is still working. I’m up almost a hundred dollars after ad expenses for the month, and it’s only the ninth. It would be really cool if I could make that and not spend, but paying for marketing is always going to be a necessary evil.

Not too many readers are leaving reviews on Amazon though, and I’m scared to look at Goodreads. People can be a little nastier there, and I just don’t need that kind of negativity. Being a writer and putting yourself out there is already hard enough. No need to torture yourself when you don’t have to.

If you want some more information about marketing, Jane Friedman is hosting a webinar this week, on Wednesday, August 12th. If you can’t watch it live, you can watch the replay. She always has such good information and you should give her blog a follow too. If you want information about the marketing webinar and her other online classes, click here.

I suppose that’s all I have for now. I’ve been writing a lot, working, and it feels like I’m always doing laundry. It’s been hotter than hell in MN this summer, and dealing with the heat, despite our air conditioning being fixed has been a real drain. And this week we’re supposed to find out what my daughter will be doing with her school year. She starts 9th grade next month! I can’t believe how time flies.

I hope you all are doing well, and looking forward to fall. The cooler weather will be welcome! Have a great week everyone!

My Freebooksy Promo Results for His Frozen Heart (A Rocky Point Wedding Book 1)

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I did a Freebooksy on July 17 for the first book in my series to try to jumpstart some sales. Here are the results:

First I spent a little more time with the ad:

I really wanted to make sure that readers knew what they were getting. It’s a holiday romance, so it takes place in the winter. It’s got kind of a Beauty and the Beast type theme, and I wanted to bring that home because not every reader likes that kind of trope. Damaged heroes, yes, but damaged on the outside, not so much. Plus I wanted to highlight that it’s first in a series that’s complete because indies have burned too many readers with series that aren’t done or won’t be finished for many years. Readers are smart enough to know not to get invested. I’ve seen Chris Fox do this too, in his ad copy on Amazon. Plus it’s a great way to let readers know there is more than one book available.

I didn’t care so much about the ranking since potential read-through of the other books is more important. But I think I did okay in the free list in Small Town Romance:

Eleven was as high as I got, but I did go up to number 2 in Holiday Romance:

So that was fine. I don’t think it means much, to be honest–I kind of feel like anyone can give away a book. Especially if you’re paying to do it.

So the promo ran on July 17th, and the first day of the promo I gave away 3,866. I always give away the book the next day in case someone opens their email late and by chance looks to see if the book is still available. On July 18th I gave away 915. I did give away some on the 19th probably because of a time zone thing: 51. So in all total my promo gave away 4,832.

The first couple of days didn’t earn me any read-through, and that’s to be expected because a lot of people download a book but don’t/can’t read it right away. Twelve days later, I am getting some read-through and I’ve made back what spent on the promo.

Here are the stats for each book in the series this month. And if anyone wants to know, more than half of my royalties come from KU page reads.

It thrills me I’m getting read-through. I was so full of doubt when the first few reviews of book one came in and they were bad. Now, hopefully with Amazon ads I can have long tail off this promo. And if the people reading the whole series would review, that would be fantastic too. I need a few good ones to wipe out the negative ones on Amazon and Goodreads.

So all in all, I had a positive experience with Freebooksy this time around. If I could give you advice it would be this:

  • Make your ad copy in the Freebooksy newsletter count. I tried to add as much information as I could so the reader knew exactly what they were getting.
  • You’ll get more bang for your buck if you’re promoting a series. If you’re not, at least fix your back matter and offer links to other books so if your reader likes your book they have something else they can immediately read when they’re done. Don’t make them hunt–make it easy to read your books. All my books in the series link to the next. That did mean going in and adding the buy-link after publishing the next book, but the extra effort is very much worth it.
  • Make sure you have a good cover that conveys your genre.
  • Make sure the blurb is well-written.
  • Make sure if you’re promoting a first in series, that all your books look like they belong together.

Obviously, I haven’t made what I could have if those 4,000+ giveaways had been sales. And I’m not really sure what’s going on with more books. The books I’m writing now are different from these, and I think I”m going to be publishing them under a pen name. Does that mean my next book is going to be in 3rd person past? Or do I want to write in first person present? If I’m going to keep promoting these, then I should eventually have something new readers can move on to. On the other hand, if I have to fight like a trout upstream for sales, then I need to stop beating my head against a brick wall. Writing first person present is fun, and if I can find a foothold writing that, I would be content to let my 3rd person past stuff rest for a while.

Lots of choices!

Tell me, have you done a pomo lately? Let me know!

My First Wide Freebooksy. How Did It Do?

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As business owners, we have to find ways to tell readers about our books.

Probably the worst thing an author has to do after finishing a book is marketing. You thought I was going to say editing, didn’t you? Actually editing and marketing are kind of a draw. They are both expensive, time consuming, and they both want to make you poke your eyes out.

But you have do both, and as I am tenacious, I tried another Freebooksy, but this time my book was wide.

You can read about how my last Freebooksy did for Don’t Run Away while it was in KU. That one was nice since I managed to get quite a few KU page reads out of it. Because my books aren’t in KU anymore, I had to depend on read through to the other books in the trilogy to make money, and in preparation for that, I bumped the other two books down  to .99 to encourage people to buy them.

I did the Freebooksy ad on June 14, and I’m typing this ten days later.

This is the ad and how it looked in the newsletter:

don't run away freebooksy promo june 14

Your ad will only do as well as your cover and copy, and Freebooksy gives you limited space for your description. It’s hard to nail it, but I’ve been reading copywriting books to try to get better at it. This probably still didn’t hit the mark, but it sounds better than previous attempts.

On the day of the promo, I only reached number 5 in the free bookstore on Amazon under Sports Romance, and with the other ad, I reached number one. That’s probably due to the fact that borrows weren’t counted into the ranking this time.

don't run away free booksy promo2 6-14

This is as high as it got, and that’s fine. Free doesn’t mean a whole lot. It’s the paid store we’re shooting for, but we’ll take what we can get for now.

So here are the numbers from the day the promo went out to today June 24th, when I’m writing this:

Amazon

Free books (Don’t Run Away): 2,276

That’s not terrible. Hopefully some of those will turn into reviews because I think lack of reviews are really hurting my books and sales right now. I have no social proof these books are good. I may need to seek out some romance bloggers who will give a couple of my newer books a fair review.

Books sold:

Chasing You: 34

Running Scared: 27

On Amazon I sold 61 books. At 70% royalty that’s only $42 give or take. My Freebooksy cost $100.00. So I didn’t make my money back on Amazon, at least, not yet. I could still see some sales that will at least help me break even.

But I do have my books other places. How well did I do there?

Kobo

Free books (Don’t Run Away): 125

Chasing You: 1

Running Scared: 1

kobo freebooksy results

This is for Don’t Run Away. I’m assuming they count June 13th with my June 14th results because other parts of the world are ahead of us. This is all the way up to the 24th, but you can see there was a sharp drop to no sales after the 18th. Kobo readers forgot about my book quickly, and I guess I managed to give away a few more after the promo day because readers went to check to see if the book was still free and it was, so they downloaded it.

kobo freebooksy results2

Pretty much 0 read through to the others, but that might change if and when people get around to actually reading Don’t Run Away. It’s a well-known fact that people download free books and sometimes never get around to reading them.

It is kind of cool though that I’m starting to sell books around the world:

kobo freebooksy results3

Cultivating a world-wide readership is the goal when you go wide. Maybe this is the start of something good.

Apple Books and Nook

Now, we can’t forget about the other two big players, Nook and Apple Books.

How did I do there?

I don’t have a hang of looking at the Draft2Digital graphs yet, so this is sales for all platforms so far:

draft to digital free booksy report

Free book (Don’t Run Away): 1,029

Chasing You: 30

Running Scared: 13

That is all sales channels. I can break it down:

draft to digital free booksy report2

On Apple Books I’ve made $22.17 and Nook I’ve made $1.77. You can probably do a little deducing and figure out that most of my sales and giveaways were on Apple Books, which may not be surprising considering the state that Barnes and Noble is in right now.

Anyway, if we add up all sales I’ve made across all the platforms you get this: $66.83.  Is that terrible? I guess not. It didn’t pay for my promo, but when you buy ads or promos you have to look at the bigger picture. You have to think about cost versus investment in your business. Plus, I may make it back. As readers hopefully read through book one, I would hope they would want to read the others, and go on to my standalones, too.

I have made one mistake though, and that is not putting the links of the other books into the back matter of my books. When they finish reading book one, they have to hunt for book two, and book three, when they finish. I don’t like begging, and I keep my front and back matter clean of calls to action. This probably hurts me because if someone wants to read the next one right away, why am I keeping them from having the link?

Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s because I’m lazy. It doesn’t make sense to have all the buy links in the back of the book. If you’re reading on a Kobo device, you’re going to want the Kobo link, not the links to Nook and Apple Books. I’ve heard that Amazon won’t even let you publish books with other links in the back, that they’ll make you remove any links that don’t go to an Amazon buy page. That is a lot of work every time. I don’t know how to rectify that though without actually taking the time to make up a different file for every platform. I like having clean back matter, but I’m pretty sure it’s hurting my sales, too.

Am I happy with the Freebooksy results? I think I am, for now. Marketing is an ongoing thing, and until you can grow a readership who naturally look for your next book, you have to constantly remind readers your books are out there.

When I have this new series done, I’ll have another free book to play around with, and that will be fun.

The most annoying thing with being wide is having to have the prices match on all platforms. So when I do a .99 cent sale, I have to change the price of that book everywhere and wait for the price change to click in before I can advertise. That’s especially important when you’re doing a paid promo. Your readers are going to expect it to be the price you promised them. Right now I haven’t tried to put a different book on sale and try to grab sales that way.

I miss being only on Amazon for that reason. It was super easy to utilize your free days they give you and to plan your promos accordingly.

On the other hand, you want readers who will buy your books at full price. So, teaching them your books will be free or cheap forever isn’t going to be the way to make money. Because of this I’ll bump up my other two books in the trilogy back to a higher price at the end of the month. They may not be worth the 4.99 my standalones are, since they are older and probably not as well-written as my newest books. But I don’t think I want to keep them at .99 forever. That’s only 1.98 for three books, and I’m worth more than that.

As I always say, that’s something you have to think about for your books and your business.

Have you done any promos lately? Let me know how they’ve turned out!

My books are wide! Check them out at your favorite retailer!

Don’t Run Away: books2read.com/dont-run-away
Chasing You: books2read.com/Chasing-You
Running Scared: books2read.com/running-scared

Wherever He Goes: books2read.com/whereverhegoes1
All of Nothing: books2read.com/allofnothing1
The Years Between Us: books2read.com/the-years-between-us

Try the Tower City Romance Trilogy Today!

My Promotion for All of Nothing with Freebooksy

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It’s rather counterproductive to pay to give your book away. But Freebooksy isn’t the only place you can do it. There are numerous places to promote a free book, but I like Freebooksy because they seem to have the most reach. 

What can you hope for when you do a promo for a free book?

  1. It will drive traffic to your other books. This makes a backlist key.
  2. That someone will actually read it and post a review.
  3. It will boost your KU reads if you’re in Kindle Unlimited.

I guess that’s it. Mainly, you’re hoping for reviews and that people will like you enough to pay for your other books. Sometimes you get a bump in KU reads, but you definitely don’t have to spend what Freebooksy charges you for that. 

I ran a different Freebooksy ad a few months ago for Don’t Run Away, and you can read about here. Anyway, this ad did better in downloads, but we’ll see how it does over all, since Don’t Run Away is the first in a trilogy, and I got some decent read-through for that book with the ad. It came later, as some people take a bit to read a book or two or three, but after a few months, I was pleased with the results.

Anyway, so I also put my book free for the next day, in case there was anyone who maybe opened their email late and went to see if maybe the book was still free. I gave away 5,351 books on the real free day, the day the promo ran, and 867 books the next day, for a total of 6,218. (Too bad those weren’t sales.) I’m hoping that some of those will turn into reviews, but I may not know that for several months. Here is the graph of the downloads and what I got in KU reads from the date of the promo, until today, 11/17:

As you can see, there was a pretty big bump in KU reads for All of Nothing, but the promo did nothing to help with sales after the promo was over. That’s just for the one title though. Do we see a bump in sales for all my titles? Did the promo increase my visibility at all?  Let’s look:

Nope. But that’s okay. You have to start small, and for an indie, I don’t have many books out, anyway.

Everyone wants to know how much cash that equals out to, and let’s just say, I spent $100 on that promo, and I’ve only made a little over half back. I might, in the long run, but for right now, 8 days after my promo, that’s a no. 

Here’s what my promo looked like in the newsletter.  I was pleased I was at the top:

I love my cover; I loved the blurb I had to abbreviate from the longer one I have on Amazon. I’m really proud of this book, and I think it showcases how far my writing has come since I released 1700. 

If you downloaded All of Nothing, thank you! If you downloaded it but haven’t read it yet, I would love to know your thoughts when you do! And if you’ve read it, I would really appreciate the review, like this lovely one I got on Amazon:

We’re not supposed to respond to reviews, so reader, if you happen across this blog post, thanks for taking the time to review! I appreciate it. 

Would I consider the promo a success? That depends on what your version of success is. Giving away 6,000 books made good for my ranking:

But as we all know, free doesn’t mean too much. But all in all, I’m happy with the promo. I do want to try a Goodreads giveaway at some point, and they cost as much (or as little) as the Freebooksy ad. Maybe I’ll try it with my next book. But I have to pace myself since I won’t be publishing anything for a while as I write my Bridesmaid Quartet. I’m going to rapid release those, and I won’t be publishing them until all four books are done.

I would recommend doing a Freebooksy ad. So far I’ve liked the results of mine.

Until next time!