I used a two part strategy to promote The Lady is
Blue – FREE June 3-5th followed by 99c June 6-10th
Buy Links:
International: http://authl.it/B00K1N951Q?d
The Lady is Blue is Book 1 of my science fiction romance series, Atrapako on Eden.
This series has only two books at present. Dragons of Vkani is Book 2 and was set at 99c to encourage sales during the promotion of FREE Book 1.
Sites for FREE Promotion (June 3-5th)
Patty’s Promo www.pattyjansen.com/promo June 4-5th
http://bookloversheaven.com/author-information-form/ tried for 3rd or 5th
Bestebooksfree
ReadersGazette.com
Sites for 99c Promotion (June 6-10th)
http://www.peoplereads.com/list-your-ebook (>10 reviews) tried
eBooksHabit.com June 8th
bookscream.com for 9th
readingdeals.com
readfreely
Bookbrag 3-7th
Caveat: I do not know if the book appeared on several of these sites. I used free options in all cases.
Amazon Rankings
Best Free (June 5th)
Best Paid (June 6th)
·
#260 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Alien Invasion
Brutally Honest Results of Promotion
Total of 704 free copies.
Book 1: 13
sold by June 14th (most at 99c)
Book 2: 4 sold by June 14th (all at 99c special price)
Also about 6000 KU reads.
Total income ~$30
Not spectacular, but the promotion kickstarted the book sales for about a week after it was free and the KU reads continued for a couple of weeks.
Patty Jansen's promo of Science Fiction & Fantasy eBooks works well, with cross-promotion by contributing authors (100-150!).
My Conclusions:
The two-part promotion of Free eBook followed by 99c sale helps bring in sales.
Apparently I need to run promotions about every two weeks for my books. As far as I can tell, sales are worse than a year ago, presumably due to the large volume of competing books.
Having books in a series helps in the sense that you need only promote Book 1, or else you can run Book 2 free and Book 1 at 99c.
Also, I need to publish more books. New releases are good for sales.
It's a tough business! One thing that's hard is getting good data--knowing which 99/Free site produced the greatest ROI. One wants to maximize the effect of a promotion, so you sign up for multiple venues, but then you don't which ones worked and which ones didn't. Also, I've found that 99 cent deals and free promotions are completely different animals. A site that will produces good ROI for a free book, will have little effect on a 99 center.
ReplyDeleteI agree, and the sites change too. Several sites that used to have free options now want payment and the costs are increasing without better results.
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