Free promos work

[drumwvu]

I've used the free promo on Amazon for 'Shaygan' in the past for five days, and it helped to get more visibility for the work. My recent experiment in this endeavor, 'Hunter Cell' (Amazon.com: Hunter Cell eBook: Joshua Dyer, Christopher Stroud: Kindle Store, now sits in the top 100 in four different international markets. The free promo can work for you if you use it the way it was intended -- as a promtional tool only.

First things first. Has your book been edited and proofed? Do you have a professional cover? Do you have a compelling book blurb that hooks potential readers? If the answer to any of these is 'no' then they need to be addressed first. Once that's done, you can move on to placing your work on the various freebie sites for more visibility. That's the biggest hurdle to get over out of the gate. You may have written the greatest work on the planet, but if no one knows that it exists then it will never matter. I plan to moitor the promo 'sales' of Hunter Cell, and then publish an article on its effect on follow-on sales. We'll see how this current experiment turns out.

 

[BWFoster78]

I've used the free promo on Amazon for 'Shaygan' in the past for five days, and it helped to get more visibility for the work. My recent experiment in this endeavor, 'Hunter Cell' (Amazon.com: Hunter Cell eBook: Joshua Dyer, Christopher Stroud: Kindle Store, now sits in the top 100 in four different international markets. The free promo can work for you if you use it the way it was intended -- as a promtional tool only.

First things first. Has your book been edited and proofed? Do you have a professional cover? Do you have a compelling book blurb that hooks potential readers? If the answer to any of these is 'no' then they need to be addressed first. Once that's done, you can move on to placing your work on the various freebie sites for more visibility. That's the biggest hurdle to get over out of the gate. You may have written the greatest work on the planet, but if no one knows that it exists then it will never matter. I plan to moitor the promo 'sales' of Hunter Cell, and then publish an article on its effect on follow-on sales. We'll see how this current experiment turns out.

Drumwvu,

I'd love to see some hard data like what percentage sales increas you saw.

Thanks.

Brian

 

[drumwvu]

Sure enough. I'm using a two-week regular sales period before and after the promo week to make the comparison. What good is and experiment without data?

 

[BWFoster78]

Cool deal. I look forward to seeing it.

 

[Kevin O. McLaughlin]

I'll be interested in seeing that as well.

For my "STARSHIP" serial, about 40% of my sales were off-Amazon (mostly B&N). That's the highest of any of my work, but most of my stories still sell 10-20% of their copies at retailers other than Amazon. That's a lot of money (and readers!) to leave behind - the cost of KDP Select.

I'm not totally against KDP Select, especially if you're willing to invest in a few good ads to get the tens of thousands of downloads you need to get serious movement on the ebook after it goes off free. But it IS a trade-off, and you need to make the most of those free days, or it won't be worthwhile.

 

[Devor]

I'm not totally against KDP Select, especially if you're willing to invest in a few good ads to get the tens of thousands of downloads you need to get serious movement on the ebook after it goes off free.

Where would you suggest hosting those ads?

 

[Kevin O. McLaughlin]

Any of the big freebie promo sites. There are like a dozen or so of them, each with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. I don't have any ebooks in Select, so I'm not really tracking it much right now - but Joe Konrath just blogged recently about two of them, and you can get info about moreover in the Writer's Cafe of Kindleboards.com.

 

[DMHamilton]

Curious to see how it works out for you to. I've read a couple of blog posts lately that suggest post free-period there is a pretty good bump in figures for normal sales. The target figure for free downloads mentioned was 20,000 though, which I find pretty daunting to achieve! Looking forward to reading your take on it all!

 

[drumwvu]

As promised, the results of the free promo period:

What A Free Promo Can Do For You | A Day In The Life

Individual results may vary. Void where prohibited.

 

[Andrewsouth]

Individual results are not enough to conclusion and recommendations.

 

[Devor]

Your post mentions that sales of your back catalog increased. How large is your back catalog?

One of the reasons I've been loosely opposed to free promos is because "free" risks undermining your legitimacy as a quality author to a potential fan base, but if you have a number of well-reviewed books out, you may have legitimacy to spare and an existing fanbase to jump start the numbers.

So I'm going to echo that it all depends and people should understand that what works for some won't work for others.