I call it phase one because I consider it to be about one
percent successful, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I launched my first novel, Call
Me Rockstar, about two month’s ago and sold just over 100 copies during
that time. The number was about what I
expected assuming that the sales would be comprised of friends, family and
coworkers. Marketing for the initial
launch was limited to business cards, a small book release party and a couple
of posts on Facebook to my 130 friends.
If I had to guess I would say that one third of the sales were to people
that felt obliged to support it, one third were to people that really wanted to
read it and the final third were to people that wanted to see if there was a
train wreck of a novel jammed in between the glossy front and back covers. What came from the sales were 9 outstanding
reviews. These were not paid reviews
(you know who you are Indie cheaters) and they were not sympathy reviews. They were earnest assessment by people that
read and enjoyed my work. Yeah for me,
but so what - I had still only sold 100 copies.
Once I had a reasonable number of reviews I decided it was
time for a bit of marketing. Being an
engineer at heart I chose not to dive in headfirst. I knew that if I changed too many variables
at once I would never know what was working and what wasn’t. So I started small. I decided to utilize 2 of the 5 free days
afforded to my by the Kindle
Direct Publishing Select program. I
chose to give my book away for free on Kindle on Saturday and Sunday. In retrospect, I probably should have added
Monday to the promotion since it was Columbus Day and there were plenty of
readers that had the day off.
I chose the minimalist approach when it came to getting the
word out that my book was available for free.
There seems to be some disagreement on the topic of free books. Many bloggers seem to think that the more
copies you can give away the better. 20,000
free downloads is a successful campaign.
I, on the other hand, agreed with the minority. If I give away 20,000 copies that’s 20,000
potential paying customers that I just eliminated. As you read on you’ll see why I think that I
may be wrong. So the only promotion I
did before the launch was to post it on Ereader
News Today and Awesome Gang. Both are websites that help promote Indie
authors and both allow same day posts. I
would have posted to other free publicity sites but many require several weeks
notice to get your book advertised. Lesson
learned – plan ahead better! At the end
of day one I had been downloaded 670 times.
I was pretty happy with the results.
Going into Sunday I decided to try to add another variable
to the equation. I signed up for a
Twitter account. I know, save your
keystrokes, I should have done this years ago.
So I, having zero followers, tweeted the following message to
@Kindlestuff, @Kindleebooks, @Bookyrnextread, @DigitalBkToday and @Kindlenews:
Call Me Rockstar http://tinyurl.com/9gznch6
available free today! Enjoy! #freebook #freekindle #bookgiveaway #fiction
#superhero Please RT
When my promotion period ended that night Call
Me Rockstar had been downloaded by 2001 people. It reached #130 in the Free in Kindle Store
and #13 in the Contemporary Fiction category.
I was very happy with the final number of downloads. I would like to have reached the top 100 and
top 10 in my respective categories and will make that more of a focus next
time. I considered following up my
giveaway with some paid advertising but in the interest of keeping my
experiment clean I stopped all marketing when my free promotion ended.
It’s been 10 days. So
what did my free giveaway give to me in return?
5 paid Kindle sales
3 Kindle Borrows
2 New Reviews (one 5 star, one 4 star)
2 Pieces of fan e-mail from people I’ve never met
How does that make me feel?
I have mixed emotions about the results.
First, I wish that I had seen the post promotion sales bump that I hear
other authors talk about. I don’t view
writing as a get rich quick scheme but my author’s ego would feel a greater
sense of validation if my sales numbers grew.
Second, I like the Borrows, as they were the first I’ve seen. Third are the reviews. LOVED the reviews! Earnest reviews are like currency in the
Kindle marketplace. Nothing turns a
potential reader off like a book with no reviews or bad reviews. Finally, I loved the fan mail. It’s nice to know that people I have never
met not only enjoyed my writing but also liked it enough to send me e-mail. It was somewhat exhilarating.
So now it’s back to work.
Trying to do a little marketing and writing when I’m not parenting or
working. My plan is to use my last 3 KDP
Select free days with more aggressive free advertising on the front end
followed a small paid campaign on the back end.
I’ll post the results in a few weeks.
John