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Book Promotion Results: April 2023 Part 2

Lee Hall Leave a comment

And so my quest to promote books continues and this one promises to include a new book promotion site, hitting the $100 royalty milestone and an impressive near two week book sales streak. Welcome to Part 2 of my book promotion results for April 2023 which will dive in to the details of another book promo run which happened the weekend after my last.

This post first premiered via Patreon where you can find all of my exclusive and best marketing guides, audio coaching and even some fiction. Check it out here.

Let us dive in!

Aiming for Paid Sales

For this promotion, my aim was simple, paid sales and some of which were discounted for my guide book Consistent Creative Content. My aim after that first objective was to push CCC up the Amazon charts and even consider trying to get it to best seller within its chart – something I have come close to before with this book and this kind of thing requires a specific strategy.

Running this promo as a price reduction with some advertising should drive paid sales and considering the genre (non-fiction) I was expecting good things. From experience, a good non-fiction book will sell nearly 5 times more than any fictional book, this ratio is pretty much bang on for me so there was a little expectation here.

CCC has been priced at $3.99 in digital for the best part of this year and has rarely been changed hopefully making this discount lucrative.

A Specific Strategy

So for this promo, things were a little different from last time. Using a free book to make sales for a wider series was out and instead I’d be aiming for all paid sales. This meant my chances of breaking even or perhaps making a profit were increased as well as seeing my guide book climb up the Amazon paid charts. Generally the higher price a book is, the more it will move after someone purchases a copy so my specific strategy for this promo was to discount my book and advertise it at that price and then gradually put up the price over a few days. With sales slowing down after th

e initial discount promo, the price increase should offset and hopefully help the book remain high in the chart or even go higher.

This specific strategy of gradually increasing the price after a discounted promo is how I managed to get my super hero comedy The Teleporter to best seller back in 2021.

The Results

On the 14th and 15th of April 2023 my guide book Consistent Creative Content was discounted in digital at 99 cents. Here the results.

As you can see sales peaked on day 2 of the promo with then a further 7 sales on the 16th and then 2 of the 17th as the price was gradually raised. I even made a single paperback sale in Australia.

In terms of chart position and seeing as most of the sales came from the US, CCC jumped from 1000’s in the Amazon US Writing Skill Reference chart to number 3. Even a week after the promo it managed to stay in the 200’s which should help with some visibility.

Overall, with these numbers and the chart position, I’m happy although best seller would have been nice. Now let us overlay this sales with the promo from part 1.

With the free promo numbers included, 700+ books were shifted which for me is great month. Now let us look at paid sales.

A few years ago this would have been a personal best number for paid sales in a month and even now its a top 3 of all time for me. A huge factor for success here is having multiple titles available meaning you can do more in terms of promotion. Back List is King!

Advertisers

Let us look at who I advertised with for this 99 cents promo:

Robin Reads – Day 1

E Reader News Today – Day 2

Goodkindles.net – a newer book promo site that I advertised with for both days of the promo.

Financials

Probably the big question here is how much money did I make from both promos. Considering I paid for advertising with both, this is an important point.

My total advertising spend for both book promos: $263

This may sound like a lot of money and to me it is but in order to make serious progress you sometimes have to spend seriously. Now let us take a look at the financials.

First of all, money I have made before the promo in the months of January, February and March of 2023:

KENP page reads has been a big factor here. Having all of my fiction enrolled in Kindle Unlimited has helped big-time.

And let us look at how much money has been made in the month of April so far:

So the profit total for this year is: $273

This means my costs for this promo have been covered with a $10 profit, so the drinks are on me… Or shall I say the drink is on me but this is still good progress. To run book promos that can basically pay for themselves is fantastic progress and it is not the money which matters the most. Finding new readers, future readers and reviews long after the promo is what that money goes towards.

Concluding Thoughts

It has taken me some years to progress towards this point, but now I shall take a rest from paying for any kind of advertising and hopefully allow the royalty pot to fill up again. With the downloads from promo 1 there will be hopefully a flurry of KENP page reads.

There are several factors for success here with both promos, from having a certain number of ratings for my books to pricing and even timing. All of these factors weigh heavily on the success of a book and that also includes social media presence. I’ve run many promos over the years at a loss but I will happily admit, they get better over time and it is never too late for a book or a promo to be a success.

Thank you for reading.

You’ll find a stack of similar promo scenarios like this one in my author, blogger and social media guide book Consistent Creative Content.

Free Marketing Resources

Lee Hall Leave a comment

They say that everyone has a price and mine is free this month over on Patreon because everything I have released in March is available for all!

From my newly updated list of Book Promotion Websites to a free Twitter Audio Coaching Session all about my ten years spent on the platform – there are some cool and hopefully useful marketing resources for anyone looking to grow online as a creative. For the authors in the room I have also just released a new basic guide about selling books online.

These free marketing resources are just a taste of what is available to Rock Star and Royal Rock Star Patrons if you sign up and I have a stack of content coming. From more Twitter Coaching Sessions to my experience with getting book reviews and much more. Sign up now to get all my best stuff first.

You shall find those free resources below…

A List of Book Promotion Sites – my newest list of places I have successfully advertised with in the past year. Click on the graphic above or alternatively click here.

This beginner’s guide to selling books online goes back to basics and lays out how I sell books regularly so you can too! Click here or on the graphic above.

For the 23rd Twitter Coaching Session I talk about my 10 years spent on the platform. This series consists of literally hours of me laying out how to find success on the platform. If you sign up, you can access the whole series and find something that will help you grow also! Here’s the link.

For my 24th Coaching Session I have opened the floor for any questions anyone might have about Twitter or the wider subject of social media marketing. Drop me a line and I’ll happily answer your question in-depth for the next coaching session!

Of course for anyone who does sign up to my Patreon will receive rewards such as regular Twitter shout-outs and even a free digital copy of my guide book Consistent Creative Content. Thanks for dropping by!

Twitter Coaching Sessions 1 to 20 – Out Now!

Lee Hall Leave a comment

Are you looking to get more out of Twitter?

During my decade spent on the platform I’ve learned a huge amount of highly valuable skills to turn my Twitter into a hive of followers, book sales and overall success as a creative online. Whether you are looking to grow or even make money from your content or perhaps you are just unsure where to start, my 20 Twitter coaching sessions will teach you how as I lay everything out to find success on the platform. These exclusive audio sessions cover a wide range of subjects such as:

Creating the best possible profile;

What to tweet about for sucess;

Selling and promoting books on Twitter;

Earning the trust of your followers;

Reaching a Million impressions and so much more.

These unique audio sessions will light the path for anyone at any level of experience on Twitter to better results through methods that work. Sign up here today and carve your own path to Twitter success!

Five Ways to Get more Book Reviews

Lee Hall

Let’s face it. Finding reviews for our books is hard. The struggle is something that unites many of us who have published works out there and I’m semi obsessed with finding solutions to sometimes difficult things so here are five ways to get more book reviews.

This post first featured over on Patreon where the real party is happening. Sign up to see articles like this first as well as a huge array of other cool resources.

Selling in Quantity

This may sound obvious to some but the more units you sell, the higher chance someone will read and then review. Now there are many inputs to this concept but quantity really is the key to finding more reviews. Just how do you move books in huge quantities?

From my own experience running a free promo or a price reduction will certainly help. My best influx of reviews have come from big-time free promos where digital downloads were in the thousands.

Mentioning your work regularly across social media will also help. I do anything and everything (within reason) on my social media platforms to regularly sell books through presence and the occasional mention and if you really want to sell books, then you’ll eventually figure out a way.

Running my most recent numbers has pointed towards a review for every 100 sales I get. So maybe quantity is the key…

High End Advertising

This brings us nicely to finding some help to tell the world about your book. Paid advertising is pretty easy to find these days online but the very cream of the crop in advertising should lead you to readers who review. Premiere book promotion sites like BookBub boast to have readers who review and so this is a great place to target readers.

Having successfully clinched three BookBub Featured deals over the years, these were the very best value in terms of sales and then reviews. You can find my list of book promotion sites here.

Shouting About it

If there is one thing I can guarantee, it is every week without fail that I mention on Twitter how important reviews are for authors. Important because they help us in so many ways from finding new readers to potentially shaping our future work. The more we shout about it, the more many readers will realise and I will happily admit before being published, reviewing books wasn’t at the top of my priority so reminding readers will help the greater good.

Approach Book Bloggers

There are plenty of bookish bloggers out there looking for their next read and much like me I quite enjoy being approached by authors looking for reviews. If you offer a free digital copy in exchange for a an honest review and as long as your approach them nicely, someone will eventually say yes.

Consider joining a Review Platform

As a tenured book blogger I have my own profile over on Reedsy Discovery which is an awesome review platform that does its best to place books into the hands of reviewers from indie or self published authors. Some of these platforms have a joining fee but they will also put in the effort to pair your book with the best possible reviewer candidate.

And so that’s five ways to get more book reviews. If you have any other methods then do please drop a comment below. Thanks for reading and for more awesome resources, check out my Patreon

Further Reading:

A Talk About Book Reviews

How I landed my 3rd BookBub Featured Deal

A guide to selling books on social media

Books not selling? A troubleshooter guide

The Five Elements of Tweeting Success

Lee Hall

Welcome to a reflective anniversary post celebrating my first year on Patreon. In that time I have churned out a bunch of fiction and guides mainly aimed at helping fellow creatives get better results on Twitter. In my many audio coaching sessions, I often refer to the 5 elements of Tweeting success and so here they are, in detail and this post is free for all so everyone can get a taste of what type of content you can access for just a few dollars a month.

Grab your multi pass and if you get that late 90’s sci-fi reference you have my appreciation but either way follow my words.

So during my many years of tweeting into the void, I have found that void eventually answered back when my tweets aimed to do one, or several of these 5 things:

As long as you aim to inspire, inform, entertain, give value or incentive then you will eventually see good results. So what do I mean by each?

Read the rest here

Self-Help Book Rec’s

Lee Hall

If in doubt there’s probably a self-help book out there for it and so this post is dedicated to some of the self-help books I highly recommend. From writing craft to the finer details of marketing to even changing the way we think, let us dive in.

‘Self-Printed: The Sane Person’s Guide to Self-Publishing’ By Catherine Ryan Howard

If there was one book that paved the way for this blog’s very existence, it would be this guide by Catherine Ryan Howard who has since gone on to have massive success with her writing – I’m talking six figure publishing deal kind of success, and my journey was inspired by Self-Printed which is a guide for both authors and bloggers. The writing style is fun and its a great insight into what it takes to self publish.

‘On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft’ – Stephen King

Say what you like about probably the greatest American story-teller of a generation and seemingly it appears to be the fashion to not like him in some circles but Stephen King has put together a fantastic guide that is both craft and practical based. I’d say that anyone who is looking to get more from their writing should invest in this one, its not even that long for a King book, so win win.

Break Them All!!: A Modern Era Awakening! by DRTao

Keeping to the theme of shorter guides, ‘Break Them All’ refers to unlocking the potential of your own mind by overcoming things such as ego and ambition in a positive sense to be a better person. Easy to read and also intelligent, this different but great guide is well worth a look.

‘Lazy Creativity: The Art of Owning Your Creativity’ by Kyle Bernier

I discovered this guide via Reedsy Discovery and ‘Lazy Creativity’ kind of normalises the fact that its okay to be lazy in your creative endeavours. Its detailed and covers many different types of creativity from the view of an artist who is also therapist. It certainly opened my eyes.

‘Amazon Keywords for Books: How to Use Keywords for Better Discovery on Amazon’ by Dale L. Roberts

Another Reedsy Discovery find and it’s an incredible eye opening resource for those published via Amazon – most reading this are and this book focuses on the power of Amazon’s search bar/key word optimization. This is just the tip of a big iceberg that deep dives into how the world’s biggest book retailer functions. Highly recommended.

‘The Art & Business of Writing: A Practical Guide to the Writing Life’ by Chris Jones

Chris Jones lays out his tenured journey in the writing industry while generously passing on his wisdom in an easy-to-read guide full of resources that will either help or reassure the modern writer or both. Many other guides suffer from over informing or throwing way too much at once to the reader but here we get a fine balance between just the right amount of information and a tone that is friendly and consistent.

And so that wraps up my self-help book rec’s. Thank you for reading!

Book Promotion Results – April 2022

Lee Hall

And so I’m back to share my most recent book promotion results. Those who do follow me on Twitter might have seen my efforts last weekend and so I am here to share my results with a hope it may help a fellow author.

Brief Intro

For those who don’t know me, my name is Lee Hall, I’m an indie/self published author of seven books from the UK. I’m a huge believer in helping and supporting other creatives in the community and the majority of my success has come from building trust with others. I also never give up and my dream for the world to read my words is getting closer by the day. Using mostly social media, I regularly sell books around the world but every now and then I’ll give those books a little extra help by way of some paid advertising.

Some Basics

So what do I mean by book promotion? Well to me, book promotion is a large umbrella of variety that covers many different methods to sell books. As an indie and someone who began this journey at zero much like many of you, I have determined that sometimes, selling books is really hard but not impossible. Its all about visibility and making people aware of your work.

There are a plethora of ways to increase your visibility and the majority of mine comes from Twitter where I have over 25,000 followers – something I spent a long time working at growing. From this, I normally manage to get sales roughly every other day which is awesome but every now and then I like to give my books a bigger push.

My Aim

From the seven books I have published, four of them are a part of the Occult Order of the Following Series which is horror/thriller in genre. My next release is going to be the fifth and final book in the series and so my aim for this book promotion was to increase my sales for theses titles.

How?/Methods

So how was I going to promote these 4 books? By way of some paid advertising. Over the years I have used many different book promotion sites which are basically websites that offer a range of advertising for a fee while some are free. Many of these sites have access to large mailing lists which can help get those books in front of newer eyes. This method normally focuses on selling digital books and my e book sales have always been stronger than paperback.

Basic Tips:

Generally, the more books you have available, the more cool things you can do to try and sell them.

Free is good for visibility: For those who do have a series like me, pricing Book 1 for free in digital format and then discounting the others to 99 cents or equivalent will help sales. Book 1 will most likely attract readers who then will hopefully check out the series. Those with e books enrolled in KDP select will be given a number of optional days each period to price your book for free.

Create a Series Page: Amazon allow you to create a separate page for your series which also helps for visibility. Having this link to share helps direct readers to your work. Here’s mine.

Time and Urgency: Running a promotion for just a short time really helps create a sense of urgency – Amazon allow five days for a book to be free but one or two is perfect.

Invest with Money: I’ve said this before but if you want serious results, sometimes you have to spend money for that.

Spread across Platforms: When I run any promo, normally I create a post on here where my 900+ followers will see. I also do some stuff on Instagram and of course Twitter. This cross platform spread helps get the word out.

Book Banners: Book Banners work quite well for a nice visual that can be shared across social media. Combined with a professionally designed cover, they help. I created this banner myself and there are plenty of decent online Photoshop sites out there along with licence free image sites like Pixabay.

Who did I advertise with?

For this promo which I ran for just one day on Saturday April 9th 2022, I advertised with Free Booksy and their awesome series feature which allowed me to link the rest of the books in my Order of the Following Series beginning with Open Evening (Book 1) which was free.

Stacking Promotions: Normally during any promotional run I will advertise with multiple sites, this is known as stacking, but for this promo I used just Free Booksy. They offer a range of advertising services and not just for series.

This was the first time I had used just a single advertiser. And so, on with the results!

Results

There are two main ways in which I look at the results. Firstly the free downloads of Book 1 Open Evening:

Just 3 downloads shy of 300 for a single day with just a handful over spilling the next day was a fantastic result. With 6 different territories taking part and considering this was a promo with a single advertiser, I am happy. But, did the free promo entice any paid sales for the rest of the books in the series?

The answer is yes! And I haven’t seen that many paid sales in a single day for quite some time and because I have never ran a series promo with just a single advertiser, this is a personal best!

The most popular title seemed to be Book 4 Darke Awakening which had a rather quiet release back in 2020 and proves my theory that it is never too late for a book to find sales!

Now the best indicator of a good book promotion run isn’t the day of the run but what happens after. And a good book promo run will continue to bring in results for some time after. Seeing as this run was only a few days ago, here are some more results:

After a very dry spell in terms of KENP page reads, they finally sparked to life. All of my fiction is on Kindle Unlimited and so that extra visibility has boosted page reads!

It might be unrelated but the day after the promo, my super hero comedy The Teleporter hit 180 Amazon ratings! So perhaps this promo even brought in other books in my bibliography.

Factors for Success

With nearly 400 digital copies of my works finding readers, let us look at why this promo run was a success:

All of my works have professionally designed covers which is a must for that first visual impression. Check out Design For Writers – they do some fantastic work and have done all of my covers;

Some reviews help and every one of the books in the Order of the Following Series have at least 5;

I have a series page on Amazon which means all of the books in the series are in one place;

The price reduction across the series pretty much guaranteed a few readers looking for a bargain to grab them and because this was a one day only deal, the urgency probably motivated that;

I invested money in the promotion and sometimes you have pay serious money to get serious results;

My social media game was on point. Not only did I put out a post on here but during the day I was active on Twitter and made sure my audience knew about the promo.

Final Thought

I do hope this post has helped in some capacity because marketing and selling books is an uphill struggle for most of us. These methods seem to help but there is always something else to do be done. You can only do what you know at the time. My advice would be to take your time and try and few things at once. It is never too late for a book to find readers and my first book Open Evening which was released in 2016 is proof of that!

Thanks for reading!

Here’s a short list of resources that will hopefully help with your book promo efforts:

A list of Book Promo Sites

Book Selling Troubleshooter

Free Book Promo Guide

You can also find a whole host of book marketing and social media advice in my guide book Consistent Creative Content which can be found on Amazon!

Relaunching Patreon

Lee Hall

I’m bringing back my Patreon. Those who have been around since last year might remember that I took the plunge into starting one and now I’m ready to return to it. My initial vision to start a Patreon was simply an experiment and now with everything I have learned, I’m diving back in.

So just what am I offering on Patreon and what is Patreon? Good questions and simply Patreon is a subscription based platform where creatives can earn an income for their work. There will always be those who roll their eyes or turn their noses up at the concept of creatives making money and I’m not doing it for that but simply because my guides have value – you won’t be able to find what I have on offer anywhere else. I used my Patreon to release author/social media guides and a little fiction, some of it was free to read while others are behind an affordable pay wall of just over £1/$1. That content is still available including a whole book.

Time constraints and the fact my social media following was a lot less back then kind of forced me to re-think and put together a brand new strategy for how my Patreon would offer the very best in guides for fellow indie authors at an exclusive level. Now my Patreon will feature guides and specific coaching based content that will be found nowhere else. Very soon I am going to release a series of audio based guides that will provide detailed coaching on Twitter for creatives – a subject I know a lot about. From selling books/content regularly to reaching more followers, I’ve learned a bunch which I will exclusively pass on to Patrons. Those who do sign up will get regular shout-outs on my Twitter in front of 27,000+ followers and will also have access to all future content on Patreon.

I don’t see this as a cash grab as my subscription fee is very affordable but I do see my work as valuable to those who need it. I’ve spent many years working to this point and above all, I am incredibly excited to help fellow authors and creatives.

Right now I am working on updating my Patreon page, but here’s the link if you wanted to take a look. You can read some guides and the entire novel ‘Last Outlaw’ a book that I will probably publish next year.

You can expect to hear more soon!

Top 5 Guides of 2021

Lee Hall 1 Comment

Writing guides that help fellow authors, bloggers and social media-ers has become a vital pillar of my content in recent times. There’s a reason why this here blog is followed by over 900 good souls. Helping others also feels good and then seeing them succeed via some of my advice is even better. This post is dedicated to the top 5 guides I have put together this year, most of which are centered around book promotion, selling and social media.

5. Let’s talk about… why your book isn’t selling…

Viewed an impressive 400+ times this year, this post is dedicated to helping authors find all kinds of ideas to sell their books before and after publication. You can read the whole thing here.

4. How I landed another deal with Bookbub

Those who have been around a while will know that this year a major turning point came for me in the form of a BookBub Featured Deal for my super hero comedy novella ‘The Teleporter’. 10,000+ people downloaded it in a single day. Shortly before the promo run I put together this detailed guide on how I got the featured deal. And for those asking, a BookBub featured deal really is worthwhile.

3. Book Promotion Results: April 2021

April 2021 serves as a record holder for so many things. It was my first $100 royalty month, it was also the month where my highest amount of paid sales happened in a single day. This guide highlights how I did it.

2. 10 ways to sell a book without dropping the link on social media…

This one always gets a lot of attention and you might have seen me sharing the link for it on Twitter rather ironically. Link dropping is a rather interesting subject on Twitter and this guide shares how to sell books without dropping a link. With a viewership of over 500 its one of my best performing posts of the year and probably will be for some time. You can read it here.

1. A Concise List of Book Promotion Sites

Any my most viewed guide of 2021 is a list that many authors including myself use as reference, hence the fact it will probably be evergreen. I update it regularly too and book promo sites are a wonderful way of advertising your books. Check it out here.

And if you are looking for more guidance on authoring, blogging and social media-ing I have a guide book which is coming to paperback in the next few weeks.You can find more information here.

Thanks for reading and stay safe!

Let’s talk about… The Struggle for Reviews

Lee Hall Leave a comment

And we thought selling our books to people who would actually pay money was hard. If that was the big victory then getting them to leave a review after is a whole different challenge so let’s talk about that struggle.

This post is partly inspired by a message I received over on Twitter from a fellow author struggling to get more reviews for their work. Of course, like all authors who approach me in need I did my best to provide some advice that is both practical and thought based.

I’m going to break down in detail the whole deal of that struggle to get reviews with a little overview, some story telling, some solutions and even tips on how to get more.

Initial Overview

I’ll admit now that there are no real quick fixes, like anything in writing, my advice is subjective but let’s all agree first and foremost that finding reviews is really really difficult. Over the years and through much struggle I’ve concluded that the reason why it is so difficult is because the average reader never thinks to leave a review. Back when I used to read Crichton or King novels way before being published, never once did it cross my mind that they needed my review and they probably didn’t on an individual level.

But now, we stand in a shiny new era of publishing and this new-ish social media self published indie generation have only really just emerged in the past few years (a decade at best), that is of course only a slice of the author pie as I would like to acknowledge anyone else published through traditional or smaller presses. Our struggle is the same, but only recently has it become so apparent because a lot more folks are self publishing and the spotlight from social media makes everything way more heightened.

Readers just not thinking to leave reviews is both logical and hopefully reassuring to you and that’s what this post is designed to be, an objective viewpoint to hopefully reassure and help. So, how do we deal with this struggle for reviews. We’ll get to the logical/practical soon but first comes the story which aims to reassure…

Read the rest here