For book/ebook authors, publishers, & self-publishers

What's Working for You?

I'd like to start a new forum where people can talk about what's working for you right now in marketing your book.

I think this will help other authors to prioritize their activities if they can find out what's working for other people. This would be especially valuable to new authors.

I've share the hottest tool that I'm using right now. And that's Twitter. As you will note on the main page of this Book Marketing Network website, both my http://www.bookmarket.com website and this network have been rising in Alexa ranks (and visits) because of my use of Twitter.

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michael Spelling on October 22, 2014 at 2:22am

#hashtags are very useful especially getting into searches in social media like FB, Twitter and G+.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Joleene Naylor on November 19, 2014 at 12:09pm

Thanks to KDP select everyone is doing free days for their books now. To combat having to be exclusive, lots of authors are putting one of their novels on perma-free (usually the first in the series) by letting amazon price match after they've set it free on smashwords, etc. I've been against this for a long time because people who download free rarely turn into buyers (from everyone i have talked to the average seems to be between 5 and 10% - some authors have better luck and some worse - that download the freebie and go on to buy the next book(s)) but I have finally given up and and have set my novel Shades of Gray as a freebie. And what have I learned? Just setting your book to free doesn't do anything. Okay, truthfully I already knew that because I have three perma free books whose downloads have slowly declined over the years as more and more books have gone free (they have been averaging around 20 downloads a month lately, in fact), so I have submitted the freebie listing to some sites, and I got super lucky and some picked it up all on their own. Anyway, thought I'd share my data so far:

Nov 13, 2014

posted blog which posted to FB (both pages) and twitter.

At some point it posted on ereaderperks - http://www.ereaderperks.com/handpicked-kindle-kobo-nook-freebies-fo...

it's also listed on http://www.ereaderiq.com/

http://www.freereadfeed.com/ at noon

http://ireaderreview.com/2014/11/13/103-free-kindle-books-for-thur-...

also on http://blog.romancefreebooks.com/2014/11/13/free-kindle-romance-boo...

SOLD - 20 FREE - 769

Nov 14

I posted links on twitter and pintrest

At some point it appeared on weberbooks.com - http://www.weberbooks.com/kindle/2014/11/14/free-kindle-book-editor...

Appeared on a pinterest board at some point - http://www.pinterest.com/sstogner1/ebook-freebies-and-deals-check-p...

Peaked at number #5 in the paranormal romance free category & #207 Free in Kindle Store

SOLD – 16 FREE - 756

Nov 15

It was still #5 in the paranormal romance free category

featured on eBook Daily as young adult (eek!!) http://ebookdaily.com/free-kindle-ebooks/2014-11-15/B002RHP5D6

SOLD 24 Free - 420

Nov 16

At this point it was still #6 in the paranormal romance free category

Otherwise no real advertising I know of

SOLD – 16 FEE – 244

Nov 17

No real advertising

SOLD- 6 FREE – 192

Nov 18

No real advertising

SOLD - 3 FREE -128

So what did I learn? The more place it posts, the more downloads you get (knew that), and so far my % is a lot lower than 10% ;) But it's unlikely that people have had time to read the books, so I imagine any purchases were either compulsive shoppers who grabbed them because they are also reduced (for .99 each) or people who had part of the series but not all (I have had some messages from people saying they did this) so... it's too early to tell if this is going to be worth it or not, but I figure the 2318 people who downloaded Shades of Gray for free weren't going to pay for it anyway, so I am not really out anything, and I've made 47$ in royalties, which the last couple of months I most certainly have not been doing with virtually no web presence and zero advertising. Now I just need to suck it up and pay for a few good advertising spots....

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by 4-LAN on April 17, 2015 at 10:25pm

Wow Joleene,

Your reality check is quite sobering. I will try not to get my hopes up too high for my launch. I am glad you are selling books, but I would hope that it would be more for all the freebies you give away. At least with that many downloads, there should be many people out there that are becoming familiar with your work. I'm sure that they will be hooked after reading Shades of Gray :-)

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Alice DiNizo on March 25, 2015 at 3:09am

Quite true!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by 4-LAN on March 3, 2015 at 8:25pm


4-LAN, a customer just told us your review was helpful to them while shopping on Amazon.

Highway to the Stars: The Beginning

I enjoyed both of the stories so much and found...

February 28, 2015

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by 4-LAN on March 5, 2015 at 6:56pm

As far as book reviewing goes, I tend to get more views on my review blog when I post on a regular basis. I am hoping to be able to stick to one book per week. Hope you guys can stop by and post a comment on this week's edition of What I Am Reading

http://thebookmarketingnetwork.com/profiles/blogs/what-i-am-reading-23