Book Marketing Phase 1

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