The Results of My E-book Giveaway Promotion

Since I haven’t blogged in 3 weeks, this is long overdue.  All I can say is my “regular job,” as well as our volunteer work, has kept us busy.

So what happened with the e-book giveaway promotion?  That’s where we left off.  It was a bust for sales; did not sell a single copy from my promotional efforts.  The reason why was simple.  I didn’t promote my promotion, at least not well enough.  I posted to a handful of Facebook groups, as I had not yet even been accepted for membership to the list I found of places to promote.

However, I did improve my ranking by a fair amount.  It was not enough to bring about any sales.  As anal as I can be about details, I didn’t make note of my standings before I started, but I remember the numbers roughly. 

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: ~#360,000 Paid in Kindle Store

    ~#13,000 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal

    ~#38,000 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction

At the height of my giveaway, my stats looked like this.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,812 Free in Kindle Store (Note, this number is in the free category.)

    #181 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal

    #361 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction

And this is where I currently stand.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #198,020 Paid in Kindle Store

    #8135 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal

    #10218 in Books > Romance > Paranormal

    #25481 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction

I gave away 89 copies of Soul Searching, made no money, but raised my overall ranking by over 160,000 places.  Granted I’m still just shy of being in 200,000^th place, but that’s better than 360,000^th.  During the promotion, it was exciting to see my other numbers dip into the low three digits.  But that didn’t last long.  The morning after the promotion (which ended at midnight) the stats looked like this.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #199,602 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

    #8257 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal

    #10611 in Books > Romance > Paranormal

    #25407 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction.

Now keep in mind I didn’t sell any books from the promotion.  Since then, I have sold exactly 3, and have a couple of Kindle Unlimited users.  Even those 3 sales improved my stats.

What’s next?  I will be doing another giveaway, but only after I have done an organized promotion from a carefully crafted list.  The object is to rank high enough in popularity, that you will be as close as possible to the top of the list.  Then the effort becomes self replicating.  People who didn’t see the promos for the giveaway will see it when they go to “Free on Kindle” without scrolling too far.

The list.  Well, that’s coming.  But it has been a rather daunting task.  I’ll tell you why next time.

A quick addition.
When I wrote this just a few minutes ago, my stats were as I described them.  I just looked again and they had changed.  I lost ground.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #212,182 Paid in Kindle Store

    #8511 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal

    #10723 in Books > Romance > Paranormal

    #26828 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction

That one single sale last night affected the numbers THAT much, at least temporarily.  It would seem that small changes in sales can have a surprising effect.

What have I learned about promoting my novel on Kindle?

OK, so what am I learning about promotion.  I’ve learned that it’s not just about giving an e-book away for a couple of days.  Without promotion, the effort will likely fall flat.  It may only generate a few downloads and little or nothing in the way of sales.

I’ve also learned that a lot of people have made a lot of lists on where and how to promote your e-book online.  Some are paid advertisements, others are free.  Some will allow you only to promote when your e-book is free, others will allow you to post when it’s reduced, and others allow free posting of a full priced e-book.

Some web sites require varying lead times, as much as 30 days.  Others request a week, and still others are “day of” only.

I also found a list of “Twitter Influencers”.  Looks like I will have to revive my Twitter account.

Many are Facebook groups.  Virtually all memberships require approval.  After 24 hours, about 50% have been joined as members.  The rest are still “Pending.”  I’m focusing on Facebook first since it’s the social network with which I’m most familiar. 

I might add that I found a great group on Facebook.  Promotion is forbidden, but they have a great group of people.

I’ll work on Twitter next.  That should just be a matter of Following a bunch of users, and hoping that they will follow me back.

Part of my process involves worksheets.  I have consolidated the lists that I found online and I’m in the process of putting them into a table, complete with my own notes.  The goal is to separate the free from the paid, and which I can only use for my free giveaway and those that will let me do general promotion.  If I don’t, any efforts will be haphazard.

Another thing I learned is not to talk about free book giveaways in the Amazon Author forums.  It’s a subject that starts flame wars among users. 

My free giveaway has been set to start at midnight (but I think that’s Pacific time) and End Friday.  I should know how well it worked on Saturday.

Marketing and Promotion on Kindle

Having conquered all of the technical aspects of Kindle, I will now begin tackling the marketing and promotion of my novel.  I’ll also be thinking about my next book to be uploaded entitled The Damsel and the Hermit.  Yeah, not very creative but it’s the best I could come up with and my wife likes it, soooo…  But I digress.  Marketing and Promotion.

My first order of business was to set up my Author Page on Amazon.  It was quick, easy, and fairly painless.

The next order of business will be to help move my novel’s listing by giving it away.  That may seem counter intuitive, but it is said to work.  Amazon places ebooks on their list according to the number of downloads.  It doesn’t matter if those downloads are at full price, reduced price, or free.  The more downloads you have, the higher on the list you appear.  But because of my inherent procrastinatory tendencies, I will put that off for a couple of days just to see if anyone stumbles across my novel all on their own.

Once my curiosity is satisfied, I will be offering my novel Soul Searching for free, and posting it to my Facebook page.

BTW, my Author Page can be found at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B012LA0TE8
Its a little long and unwieldy, but I can change it to something that makes more sense.  But first I have to figure out what that could be.  My name in all of its variations is taken.