After
several weeks of preparation for the KDP Select free promotion, I was ready for
the event itself. I had activities
scheduled for each day of the event, from July 1-5. Below are the activities and the results on
each day.
July
1: I posted information about the free
book promotion on my own Facebook and Twitter accounts. Since Facebook is looked at primarily by my
friends, I explained on it what the KDP Select program was, and why I was
giving books away for free. To people
who are not in this industry, the entire idea seems odd, so I wanted to explain
how giving books away for free was actually helpful to me. I said also that it would be great if people
could pass this on to anyone they thought might enjoy it. I immediately saw results, with friends
sharing the post and putting their own explanation on it. They downloaded the book, and even downloaded
copies for other people. I had planned
on gifting the book to some people and asking them to gift it to others, but I
didn’t need to because so many people did it already.
I also posted details about the sale
to groups that are relevant to the book.
In this case, that includes baseball and Civil War groups, as well as
some general history groups. I was a
little worried how they would take it, but because I had been actively part of
these groups for the past week, it worked better than anything else I did during
this promotion. A bunch of people liked
it, commented on it, and shared it with their friends. They even thanked me for giving it away for
free rather than getting annoyed that I was promoting on their site.
I also posted on writing and reading
groups I belong to. These are the least
effective as so many authors post on these all the time, but you occasionally
get that writer/reader who’s interested in the graphic if it stands out who
shares it.
Finally, I talked about the sale on
Twitter with specific hashtags, including: #Amazon #eBook #BookBuzzr
#BookGiveaway #BookMarketing #Kindle #KindleBargain #KDP #WLCFreeToday
#FreekKindleReads #free… #Kindle #Freekindle #freebook #FreeKindleBook
#ReadThis #authorshelpingauthors. This
last worked better than expected. I’ve
never been good with Twitter and rarely does anyone respond to anything I post,
but all day I was getting notifications of people retweeting me, favoriting my
posts, and following my Twitter account.
The result of this first day was 166
downloads, #3 in historical fiction, #52 in literature and fiction, and #1,330
overall on Amazon. This was down from
around 13,000.
July
2: My paid promotions kicked in, and the
number of downloads soared. This is the
greatest lesson you could learn from all of this. Pay for the promotions on several sites that
are effective where they tweet about you, post on their website and on their
Facebook page. That’s where you get the
numbers. I immediately saw my numbers
jump before I did anything.
I also went through my social media
and I responded to comments, liked other people’s comments about things
unrelated to my book, (this grabbed their attention without me having to say
anything.) I should mention here that my
profile picture is a picture of my book, so every time I commented or even
liked anything, people saw my book cover without me having to say anything
about my book.
I also wrote a thank you on my own
Facebook and Twitter to those who had helped spread the word about the book,
then I gave the good news about the results, giving them the credit for getting
it there, (and not mentioning the paid promotions.)
The results were #2 in both historic
fiction and literature fiction behind a book called The Widow of Larkspur Inn
in both categories, and #106 overall with a total of 1,471 units downloaded
that day alone. I was achingly close to
achieving one of two very important goals:
#1 in my category, or in the top 100 overall.
July
3: Unfortunately, I was not to reach any
of them. I had peaked already, and the
next day, as the paid promotions faded, my numbers slipped. I still had some promotions to go as I was
sending direct tweets to a list of Twitter handles: @DigitalBkToday @kindleebooks @Kindlestuff @KindleEbooksUK @KindleBookKing @KindleFreeBook @FreeReadFeed
@4FreeKindleBook
One place I saw something that I
might try in the future; someone placed up a meme with information about their
book. More people read memes than text
on posts, so I might try that in the future.
I also found reasons to post information
about the sale again on some of the same groups, and on my own. Typically that reason was to give everyone an
update on how the sale was going, and informing them that it was still going
on. I told them about the results of the
day before, that I was on the cusp of being #1 in two categories, and in the
top 100 overall. I didn’t tell them it
was slipping.
July
4: And it continued to slip, even on
this day which was supposed to be the biggest one of all. It had gone on long enough by this point that
I was having trouble making excuses to talk about it and make it feel
organic. I continued to post on free
book groups on Facebook, which allow you to post once a day, and I gave some
updates on my own profile.
My girlfriend Jamie had a good
suggestion as well that I tried. I found
several posts other people had put up that I believed others would want to
see. I shared it on a page or group of
my own with hashtags that were popular, (especially #4thofjuly) and I also put
the hashtag of my book #americangame. I
also posted a link to the book on my author page with the hashtag
#americangame. That way, when people
were going through #4thofjuly they would come upon one entertaining entry that
also happened to have #americangame. The
hopes was that people would shift onto that track and find the link to the book
itself. I don’t know how well this
worked, as it was in the middle of a lot of other things, and in the middle of
a holiday, but I’ll be trying it again for Relic Worlds.
I
posted on my blogs in multiple locations and put links up to see the
blog. It was discouraging, an exercise in futility. It seemed like
the harder I worked to post about it, finding new and creative ways to make it
look organic, the more it slipped in the ratings. All the while I saw
other people’s postings on Facebook about their fun times at 4th of July parties on a beautiful day
while I was stuck inside trying to give away my book. At last I gave up,
put it all away, and went to a party.
July
5: I did the one thing I had forgotten
to do on either the 3rd or 4th, I posted the book
trailer. This was especially useful in
reenactor sites as I used reenactors to make the trailer. After the link to the trailer was a link to
the book. I tweeted and posted about
this trailer all over the place.
I got some more views on the
trailer, and it no doubt got some final sales, but the promotion had lost its impetus. It closed still at #2 in historic fiction
behind that same Widow of Larkspur, #21 in literary fiction, and #638 overall. I might have regretted not putting the
trailer up sooner, as I had intended, but it wouldn’t have mattered, as I
discovered in going over the results.
First, I had intended to put the
trailer up at some point during the weekend.
Something I discovered with this promotion, and, funny enough, I
happened to see in the news while doing these promotions, is that people tend
to post during the weekend, but rarely read anything. This is especially true on holidays, and even
more common on sunny holidays where everyone is out at grills and pool
parties. According to the news report,
the most effective days for social media are Tuesday and Wednesday
morning. I guess it helps people get
over the hump of the week.
I also discovered that shorter
promotions, 2 to 3 days, are more effective.
The intent is to get your book into the top list in your category and
overall. Though I didn’t reach number 1
or the top 100 overall, I got close to both, and would still have been visible
when the book came out of being free.
Mainstream shoppers would have seen it suddenly appear high on the
rankings in Amazon for sale at $2.99.
Instead, because the free promotion continued to go on, it slipped after
reaching that top spot until it tumbled back down to the 600s. That’s still pretty good, especially compared
to where it had been, but it’s less impressive.
I discovered through this that it’s best to have your book launch to the
top through an efficient and compressed promotion, then pull it out of the
promotion so everyone else can see it.
If it doesn’t work, you still have a couple days left on your KDP Select
free promo days to try again.
What I was surprised to see were the
other books that were in the category lists with me. Both historic fiction and literary fiction
were mostly romance novels. The historic
fiction ones tended to be geared for older women, and the covers had an upper
class woman in fancy clothes standing in a romantic field near an upper class European
home. Often a man was there with his
shirt unbuttoned and muscles rippling underneath. (His face was often unseen.) The covers implied some connection between
the woman and this wealthy, mysterious stranger, and the titles confirmed it. At the end of my run, the book that was in
the number one spot was titled A Daughter’s Inheritance.
The literary fiction ones were the
opposite end of the spectrum. Women wore
ripped clothes, or clothes that were too big as they seemed to be falling off,
and a bad boy with torn blue jeans and no shirt or a tank top, again with
rippling muscles and no face, stood nearby.
Their titles implied what the covers were implying, the women were
winning over the bad boys. The book that
bumped The American Game from number 2 was entitled These Hoes Ain’t Loyal.
I don’t know what to make of this, except
that I’m concerned for the independent book world if these are what hold the
top spots most of the time. Almost all
the rest of the books that shared the top 25 were classics from mainstream
publishers. It’s disheartening both in
regards for independent publishing, and feminism.
There was one other element though that
seemed to put books in the top list; one which I will exploit on my next
attempt. The top books tended to be
parts of series. This meant readers were
following these books, and the author was served in that readers were
downloading an earlier book for free, then purchasing the sequels if they moved
on.
So that’s what I will be doing with Relic
Worlds.
