So The Rage has been available on Amazon now for just over two months and it’s been a mixed bag. The feedback so far has been very positive – six out of six five star reviews (update – now 10 out of 10) including some from people I don’t know. I’ve sold over sixty copies in hardback and about a quarter of that in Kindle format but things have stalled a bit at the moment.
I need to promote! KDP Select offers the option of five days of free promotion during each three month period. You might wonder how giving a book away for free can improve sales but the idea is that you promote your book on free book sites and get the numbers of downloads and reviews up. Once you pass a certain critical mass, Amazon starts promoting your book when readers are looking at details of other books in the same genre or at least that’s the idea.
There are numerous lists on the Internet of free book sites but I came across a website called fiverr where there are people who will promote your free book at the top 25 free book sites for $5. It would take me several hours to enter details on all the sites so it seems like money well spent.
The promotion runs from February 13th to 17th so I will see how it goes. If you can’t wait until then I urge you to get a copy at a very reasonable £1.99 on the Amazon Kindle store!
Ross Greenwood
Hi Richard,
We seem to be at similar points with our books. I was wondering how your 5 day giveaway went on Amazon using the fiverr site? How many downloads did you get?
I couldnt tell from amazon whether you can do the timed discount promotion and the free giveaway or just one of them.
Thanks
PS I randomly found your book when looking for something else and was taken by the cover (and the freeness!).
rtburke
Hi Ross,
It’s always good to hear from other authors. To be honest this was my first promotion so I haven’t experimented with the timed discount yet. I plan to post an article about my experiences with fiverr but on the whole I wouldn’t bother (the numbers were as good on the days when the book was not being actively promoted). Over the course of the five day give away there were around 2000 downloads but the vast majority were from the UK. Next time I will do the promotion myself and limit the days.
All the best,
Richard
Ross Greenwood
Hi
Thanks for replying. FYI I found out if you have done the free book discount you can’t do the timed discount until the next 3 month rolling period. I was thinking that even though you say he was ineffectual he may have got you those 500 downloads on the first day which I think is pretty good, and then you would have hit near the top slot in one of your kindle categories on the free charts. So that meant for the following four days you would have featured on a lot more peoples radars. My main concern with free giveaways is people have not paid anything so will probably give the book less chance and risk a poor review! I did see you shot up the kindle charts though after so something must have worked!
rtburke
Thanks for the information Ross. It’s surprising where some of the downloads come from; I was trying to find out where the book had been promoted by the chap on fiverr by googling the title and found that somebody had mentioned it on hotukdeals.com (http://www.hotukdeals.com/freebies/thriller-horror-rage-kindle-edition-free-download-amazon-2394788). Maybe he read about it on Facebook where I know it was promoted.
I might try a free day with no promotion just to see if it does anything for downloads. However I think next time I would do it myself starting with the list provided at http://kindlepreneur.com/list-sites-promote-free-amazon-books/
Best wishes,
Richard
Ross Greenwood
Hi Richard,
So what was the upshot of 2000 giveaways. Did you get a trickle of sales after? I gave away 155 on a one day which was a little disappointing I guess and had five sales the next day and then very little. I have just paid for some facebook advertising so will let you know how that go’s.
rtburke
Hi Ross,
My experiences were similar to your – a few after the end of the free promotion and then a steady trickle after that. I have noticed that the KENP pages seem to have gone up recently – this may be because I added the book to a second category (I vaguely remember reading somewhere that you should always use your 2 categories) but that may be a coincidence.
I would be interested to hear how your Facebook advertising goes. I am thinking of doing a single free day which I plan to promote on various free sites then follow up by dropping the price to 99p/$0.99 (and promote on some of the low cost sites) and see how that goes.
I also received my first low review a couple of days ago – as Andy Weir said, you can’t please everybody so you just have to ignore them – and he’s done alright for himself.
This self-publishing business is hard!
Regards,
Richard
Ross Greenwood
Hi
You can email me direct if you don’t want me cluttering up your page, otherwise I’ll carry on!
Nasty, i just looked. i had one on goodreads but they didnt comment so i dont think it pulled through to amazon. It is hard to get reviews. people have taken time to email to say they liked it but wont do it on amazon! 1 star is nasty. I bet it was one of your free downloads who didnt get very far and as it was free, had no interest in putting any effort in.
In a way the facebook thing is working as i have had 5 ebook sales a day since i started it. At one point today i was # 1 amazon best seller in #book – humour – lawyers and criminals. Which was brilliant. Although i think there are only a couple of hundred in that category and it was lucky i was at home as i was only number one for about 45 minutes! (i took a screen print) I was about #9800 which is the highest i have been. Scarily to get inside the top 1000 i think you need minimum 100 per day and maybe as high as 300! It also looks like all the publishers are knocking their stuff out for 99p, which makes it hard for the indie to get a look in!
However it is costing me approximately £1 a sale, which is what i make at £1.99!