As promised, here are the results of some promos I ran last week, in case people are considering some of these sites. It’s really important to note, though, that results are highly genre-specific, so sites that didn’t work for me might work great for someone else. This was my first promo week, so for me part of the investment was finding out which ones work for my particular audience.

I’m cross-posting this to the kboards, so my apologies to anyone who sees it twice!

 

Title & Price: Ghost in the Canteen, 99¢

Amazon Categories: Paranormal Fantasy, Paranormal Suspense, Ghost Suspense

Baseline: this book’s starting rank was 410k. Anything more than 3-4 sales in a given day would be a noticeable bump that I’d expect there to be a reason for.

 

Mon 5/4: Awesomegang (free), Choosy Bookworm ($8), 11 sales

Tues 5/5: eBook Hunter ($15), BKnights ($10), 17 sales

Wed 5/6: Pretty Hot (free), eBookLister (free), 1 sale

Thurs 5/7: GenrePulse ($10), 9 sales

Sat 5/9: eReader News Today, 39 sales plus a tail of 10 on Sunday

Total sales: 87; no uptick in sales of book 2

 

Peak ranks:
#6,914 Paid in Kindle Store
#13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Suspense > Ghosts
#33 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Suspense > Paranormal

 

It’s tough to gauge success because what I’d consider the real benefits–sales of book 2, mailing list signups, reviews–can’t really be measured. TBR piles vary too much in size for those kinds of results to come at any predictable intervals, and when they do happen they’re impossible to attribute. For all I know, I might get more sales of book 2 from the 9 people who bought book 1 through GenrePulse than the 49 who bought it through ENT.

But a few conclusions I could draw:

– True to its reputation, ENT was the highest performer by a very large margin, accounting for over half my sales for the week, and the only ad to recoup its cost during the promotion itself.

– Pretty Hot and eBookLister don’t reach my audience.

– I set a largely arbitrary goal of 100 total sales, which I wasn’t able to meet, but this was also my first time with a 4 digit sales rank (which is already gone), so that part was good.

Incidentally, despite the ENT ad linking to every retailer, I didn’t sell a single copy anywhere but Amazon, nor have I ever in the 3+ months since I’ve gone wide. Now that I’ve done roughly equal amounts of time both ways, I need to think about whether I want to stay out of Select or go back in.

Sorru to leave you, but it’s that time again: #RootCanalFriday! (Surely there’s a hashtag for it) I’ve alreadu taken anorsedataive, so my legs are numb and my teeth itch.This is going to be good! Cpme along or the ridel. My fingers are too fat for the kesl  It’s like a Stone Soul Ganny picnic/ Ibete I could find that weirdy-weird ol Hunter tat egveruodoy’s looking fol If I cold olu stad uplTI thinjk I’ll go watch bacteria multiply on formica tabletops. Byuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

bbbbyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeee nopooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww

carpe dentum

y’all                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Buuuuuuuyyyyy

http://www.npr.org/2015/05/02/403596419/an-ohio-couple-would-like-to-forget-a-gronking-to-remember

Let’s start with the shameless self promotion, shall we? It goes so well with my morning tea. Peak of the Devil, the second book in the Lydia Trinket series, is not only available for Kindle, but it’s on sale! All the ghosts, witches, demons, and supernaturally powerful dogs you can handle for just 99¢, but only through Thursday, so don’t wait! This book is moodier and less bloody than the first, more of an old-fashioned haunted suspense kind of tale.

Now, on to a couple of promotion things that we might actually want to discuss. Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts and experiences and favorite promotional strategies.

First of all, did you know that if you sign up for a Bit.ly account (as opposed to just quickly shortening your URL’s on their home page), you can edit the links to customize them? Some of you probably did, but I didn’t. So for example, now I can tweet with the link http://bit.ly/PeakOfTheDevil, and not only have a short link, but a memorable one that has my book title in it too. Very useful for character economy. Here’s a post from Juliet Rich that explains how to do it.

For me (because I’m new at this), deciding how to market book two in a series has been a bit tricky. It seems like a waste of time and sometimes money to use an advertising site to reach an audience made up almost entirely of people who haven’t read book one. So I decided on a two pronged approach: promote book two mostly to my existing readers, friends, and colleagues, and promote the crap out of book one at the same time.

The 99¢ sale I have going on until Thursday isn’t so much designed to attract new readers (although of course I’d love some new readers, too), but to try to reach anyone out there who may have been considering buying the book anyway. First to give them a deal, because my readers rule. But also to give them some incentive to buy it in this first week of release, to get those Amazon algorithm juices flowing. The only promotion I’m doing this week is through the usual channels: my newsletter, blog, and Twitter.

Next week, I’m doing a ton of promotion for book one, to give that a boost as well as funnel some readers into two. One of my categories is pretty small, so getting both books in the top 100 is a reasonable goal. That’s what I’m shooting for, just working on the theory that having two books there makes me twice as visible as having one. Peak of the Devil will be up to full price by then, but Ghost in the Canteen is always 99¢, making it ideal for promotional sites. Here’s the lineup:

• Monday: Awesomegang (free), Choosy Bookworm ($8)
• Tuesday: eBookHunter ($15), BKnights ($10)
• Wednesday: Pretty Hot (free)
• Thursday: Genre Pulse ($10)
• Saturday: eReader News Today (ENT) ($15)

Total spent, $58.50. That’s a pretty big whack to my indie budget, personally. And I don’t expect to make it back, or probably even close to it, especially not on 99¢ sales. I consider it more of an investment in visibility and building readership. Plus these were all sites I wanted to evaluate at some point, and it’s tax deductible.

I’ll keep you guys posted on which sites were effective and which were duds. It’s highly genre dependent, but that information still may be of some use to folks here.

On a tangential note, fretting over one’s sales rank on a day-to-day basis during a release week is pointless and will only serve to stress a girl out. I get sales during the daytime, but my sales rank ignores them and continues to drop throughout the day. Then all the sudden at 8PM my rank will shoot up, and I’ll be in the top 100 for my category… overnight, when nobody is browsing. By the time I wake up in the morning I’m back down to 100k again.

Luckily for me, I’m guaranteed a spot on the HNR lists for two of my categories, because they don’t even go to 100!

Purple Gallinule, Maybe the Most Beautiful Bird On the River

There’s still time to come along on a Meet the Author Eco Tour of the St. Johns River! Doing one more tomorrow, at 1:30 PM, departure from Highbanks Marina in DeBary. If you’re in the area, please join us. We’d love to show you one of Florida’s most beautiful wildlife habitats, and along the way, talk a little bit about Swamp Ghosts, the book I set in the middle of it. But I promise, the river will be the star, in all its glory.

Saturday’s tour was terrific! We saw several alligators, and all the usual suspects…turtles, little blue herons, white ibis, great blue herons, gallinules, at least five manatees, including a baby, and a family of stunningly beautiful barred owls. I think a good time was had by all, but alas, I have no pictures to show you. I was too busy enjoying myself, and I forgot all about them. I’ll try to do better on tomorrow’s tour. So…join us if you can! Meet the good Captain Jeanne Bell and her wildlife photographer husband, Doug Little, and see why their lifestyle inspired me to write Swamp Ghosts. You’ll be glad you came along!

To book the tour, go here: St. Johns River Eco Tours

Look Who’s Waiting to Say Hi!

April is National Poetry Month. I’m celebrating with Writer’s Digest’s Poem a Day Challenge. I’m sharing a few of my favorites. This poem is from the sixth, and the theme is things-not-as-they-appear.

Camouflage

Be wary of figures of speech

they aren’t what they seem

Metaphors lurk

in murky swamps of text

a moss covered log

that with a snap

is revealed as an alligator

Similes are less bold

like a horse with a plastic horn

that knows it isn’t a unicorn

but would like to pretend

otherwise

Beware of figures of speech

they’re keeping an eye on

you