Paid Book Promotions-What Works and What Doesn’t

Since May 1 when I released First Visions, I’ve done a number of book promotions. This has been really a trial and error process for me as I tracked sales in correlation to each promotion. This is only my personal experience and many indie writers could have very different results.

Virtual Book Tours

I can’t rave enough about doing a blog tour for your book. I had such a great experience during both my tours and they probably offered up the best value as far as paid promotional opportunities. A month long tour through Reading Addiction Virtual Book Tours costs around $100 and includes 20 stops. For a two week tour through Bewitching Book Tours, you’ll pay around $50 and stop at 10 blogs.

Why do a blog tour? Because you’re expanding your readership at each stop on your tour. Tour stops can include an interview, excerpt and guest post. My favorite part of my blog tours is that many of the blogs reviewed First Visions. When you don’t have that many reviews, this can be extremely helpful.

As far as sales, I did see a significant jump. During the tours (which I scheduled back to back for six weeks), I was selling about double the number of copies I had been averaging before the tour started.

Kindle Nation Daily Sponsorship

This promotion is definitely one of the priciest of the ones I tried. However, if you have the budget, I HIGHLY recommend it! The package I purchased included an ebook of the day sponsorship and a free excerpts email blast. The ebook of the day post includes a widget and sample of your book featured on Kindle Nation Daily, Book Gorilla and Book Lending.com. The email blast sends out a 5,000 to 20,000 word excerpt to 30,000 opted in email subscribers. Cost of the package was $300.

On May 31, my email blast was scheduled through Kindle Nation Daily. On the day before my sponsorship, my Amazon.com sales rank was 24,093. The day of my sponsorship, First Visions peaked at 5,364.

For the August 1 ebook of the day sponsorship, my Amazon.com sales rank the day before was 10,246. During the sponsorship, First Visions peaked at 3,550. Sales did well following the sponsorships as well.

Google Ads

I’ve heard authors that like Google ads to market their books, but I’m unsure if I will use it for my next book. The major advantage of Google ads are they are ideal if you’re looking for a low cost marketing opportunity. You can deposit $20 and set a low daily budget to keep your ads running for a few weeks. They also have plenty of promotions for first time users (I had a $100 free credit for my first ads). I earned a significant number of clicks and impressions, but didn’t see a huge jump in book sales. However, if you’re only paying $2.00 a day, selling only one extra copy a day of a $2.99 ebook would make you break even.

Blog Ads

For me, blog ads didn’t have a major effect on my sales. I signed up for a week-long promotion and chose four different book blogs for my ad to appear. The cost was $50 and prices were based on the number of site views each blog averaged daily. To be honest, the ads were pretty expensive and I didn’t see any difference in the number of the copies sold during that week.   

After careful consideration, I decided to enroll First Visions in the KDP Select program for three months. Although I have mixed feelings about the program, it’s hard not to admit how the vast majority of my sales come from Amazon.com. I also feel it would be a good way to introduce readers to the series before my second book comes out in October. My first free day will be August 28. Here’s the link to the Kindle version: First Visions: Second Sight Book One.

End of May Book Reviews-Existence, Predestined and Providence

Busy week! Besides the launch of my blog tour with accompanying contest (get details here) I also had my first Kindle Nation Daily sponsorship today. An excerpt of First Visions was mailed to opted in subscribers. Once the promotions are all said and done, I'll post my thoughts on the pros and cons of each. Here are the books I read this past week and my thoughts on each.

Providence by Jamie McGuire-Although I consider myself a new adult author, something McGuire is also known for being, I couldn’t get into her popular Beautiful Disaster novel. I found Travis way too unlikable and couldn’t get past his extreme assholeness. This made me a little skeptical over whether I’d enjoy Providence. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I get the readers who make the Twilight comparisons, but I think there was much more suspense in this book. The college-age characters were realistically drawn and McGuire didn’t get logged down in complicated mythology about the angels and demons. Jared was a little too tortured for my taste, but I think that’s because I always prefer the underdog love interest who doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting the girl (poor Ryan). I give the book four out of five stars.

Existence by Abbi Glines-This book equally had me on the edge of my seat and infuriated me. I must have really gotten into it though because I stayed up late to finish reading it and started the sequel right away. To start, my major dislikes were the NAMES and the lack of character development. Dank and Pagan? Really? Also, I was surprised over how quickly Dank fell in love with her and risked his existence when they seemed to have very few meaningful interactions at the start of the book. Plus, Pagan’s treatment of Leif seemed kind of crappy until the surprised ending kind of made it tolerable. Despite these couple of things, Dank and Pagan were definitely intriguing characters and there were a lot of twists and turns that made it a real page-turner. Four out of five stars.

Predestined by Abbi Glines-This is one of the rare incidences where I actually like the sequel better than the first book. I really enjoyed the alternating point of views and it was captivating to get inside Dank’s head. I think it made him more likable, especially since at times he comes off as a jealous jerk. The love scenes were great and it was another suspenseful novel. I would give it four and a half stars out of five. The only reason I’m taking away 1/2 a star is because the ending was kind of ho-hum. The conflict was resolved very quickly and the twist at the end was sort of predictable.