The results are in! Let’s take a look at my most recent book promotion efforts and analyse what went well and what didn’t. Here we go…

Slight Preamble…

Seeing as this year kind of took a dive in March, some will even argue it ended there. I decided to take what was happening in my stride and carry on. Carrying on might be the single best decision I have made in all of my blogging, writing and general being online endeavours. Trust me, and it was really tough to begin with. The numbers for this blog, my sales and overall results were dwindling for a little while until I dug deep, thought of a few new ways to continue producing content and kablamo, things are looking good, in fact they are real good, I’m talking best ever numbers kind of good.

I do truly feel for the many folks out there who have been stopped in their tracks from what’s currently going on (we don’t dignify these times with a name) but for me and without realizing this whole deal has kind of fallen into my hands with an opportunity that I have seized. For anyone struggling right now who is able to produce some kind of content, I would highly advise you do so, this world has changed and probably won’t be going back to ‘normality’ possibly for a while. More people seem to read my blog these days than my books, which is cool but we’re here to talk about my books…

The planning…

Seeing as I have five of them (books not kids, I hope…), I have content that is readily available right now for people to access. This year I have stuck to my guns in trying to do all I can to promote Darke Blood, the series it’s a part of and the sequel which drops next month. Having that wider back list gives me the options to change things around and promote another work, that work being The Teleporter – a stand alone, novella length comedy book about super heroes with a political edge – it’s current, relevant and relatable. Seeing as Marvel is mainstream these days having a super hero tale is quite handy – and trust me people grab this book when they see it probably more than any others (of mine).

So I decided I wanted to get 2 things out of promoting the Teleporter this time around:

(this is important in book promotion, you need to decide what you want to get out of it, then you can manage expectations/disappointment levels after…)

1.First and foremost I wanted as many people to grab it while it was free for one day.

2. I wanted actual paid sales after the promo date to drive the books chart position upwards and get some new eyes on the product – It will be discounted to 99 cents and this wasn’t just a ploy to turn a profit, what’s a profit in writing?

The booking

So this would involve fighting the promotion battle on 2 fronts but with mainly the same process – book promo sites.

For those who don’t know book promotion sites offer advertisement for a fee, some are free. They have access to big mailing lists and distribution methods to get your work seen. Considering this isn’t my first rodeo, I have compiled a list of trust worthy, reputable sites who can help. Using a bunch of different sites at the same time is quite a useful method.

For this promotion I would split the promo sites between advertising on the one free day and the next few days where it was discounted.

The Teleporter would be free to download on Wednesday 22nd of July and then discounted for 3 days after at 99 cents. 

Here are the sites I used for the 22nd Free Promo:

E Reader News Today – (humor promotion) Cost $40 

Bookrunes – Free Promotion – Cost $40

Indie Book of the Day – Cost Free

Book Goodies – Cost $9

Bookwerm – Cost $5

Book of the Day Dot Org – Free

ebook booster – Cost $20 – placements on up to 15 other sites

Sites I used to promote The Teleporter at 99 cents discount (23rd and 24th) 

Armadillo Ebooks – Cost $25 – both dates

Prettyhot – (Featured listing) – Cost $25 – 23rd only

Discount book man – Cost $10 – 24th only 

Bookbongo – (bookblast) – Cost $20 – 23rd and 24th 

Bookdoggy – Free

The Preparation

So the promo sites were booked and now I needed to prepare my other promo methods. In the past I had explored the option of book banners – a poster that just doesn’t show the cover but acts as a kind of billboard. Seeing as Fiverr offers this kind of thing I got one put together for the Teleporter.

Generally people tend to click on the link more when they see something other than just a book cover. And it didn’t cost much, there are loads of different merchants on Fiverr who do this sort of thing at a very reasonable price.

This time around I would focus more on the days after the free promotion and kept my tweeting and general social media lips sealed until then.

On the discounted days I tweeted to my 3000+ followers and put up a post on my Facebook page to 500 followers and I even put together a blog post on here for my 500 plus following.

The Results…

So how did it go? How much do I hate myself this time? I can honestly say it went rather okay to good, so not that much self hate…

Here are the results for the Free downloads on the 22nd with slight overlap on the 23rd

Overall this was the best ever day for The Telporter in terms of free downloads and the 3rd best of all time in all free promos I have done. Not bad at all.

I didn’t track the chart position that much on the Free day but it was #5 in one of it’s charts. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein was #1 at the time… I very much enjoy it when my book is in the same picture as something so highly regarded! Darke Blood did once go above a Dean Koontz book – my only claim to fame thus far…

And now let’s look at the results for the days after the Free promo when it went to 99 cents…

On the day after the free promo, 20 good folks downloaded the Teleporter while it was discounted. The next day we had 1 download and then on the third and final day we had 4. Someone else downloaded it at full price a few days after that also.

I didn’t properly track chart positions but it did climb higher than usual but got nowhere near single digit positions.

20 downloads in one day for any of my books is a win and this year’s best day of sales and my 2nd best day of all time. The 1st being last July with the same book but boosted by a Bookbub featured deal.

I can probably expect a few new reviews soon.

What went well?

The whole thing went well in my eyes but here are the factors that helped.

1.July, something about this month in the past two years has been really good for book promotion and this blog in general. July 2019 holds the record for most blog views ever and in 2nd place is July 2020 – beach read season I reckon…

2. The day after the Free promotion a fellow blogger and friend of the Hall of Information, Stoner on a Roller Coaster re blogged my post about the promo – this helped massively so thank you! Many more good folks shared and retweeted things on Twitter – so thanks for that also!

3. The Teleporter is an established book and my 2nd most reviewed on Goodreads. It also has a good bunch of international reviews on Amazon. This helps big time.

4. I have a back list. Books sell easier when the author has more than one. People grab a book with hopes they like it and then will explore other titles if they do.

5. Fellow authors looking to give back – those whom I have connected with over the years and especially those who have books I reviewed sometimes feel inclined to return that favor, having one of my books available for free pushes that a little further – not that I expect anyone to buy my book in return for anything but it is very much appreciated.

6. The current state of affairs in this world: People need content, people are getting into reading more, e books are safe and are a low risk form of entertainment. Hence the opportunity arises.

Anything to improve? 

Book promotion is led mainly by the following and voice of an author. If that voice is louder, more people hear. I’m always trying to improve that volume (following) and of course there are few things that could have gone better.

I did try to get a bookbub featured deal but to no success this time. Maybe I could have explored Facebook advertising but I didn’t bother this time around.

All in all this promo run went rather well. I have on final book promo run planned before the release of Darke Awakening in late September. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!