Monthly Archives: April 2016

Advertising: money spent, lessons learned.

I’m playing hooky from work today because otherwise I might not make it to the end of the year so that I can work on the first draft of my next book. It’s going to be 85 and sunny today, and I’m on the deck pecking away, but I thought it might be a decent time to recap my first foray into advertising. I’m sure I’ve spent way more than I should have based on my ROI so far, but some things you just can’t learn without trying, so here’s what I’ve done lately on my latest book:

For There’s Always a Catch: Christmas Key Book One, I’ve run the following promos:

  • A BKnights Fiverr ad for $21 (the basic is just $5, but I went with the upgrades to see how that would work out)
  • Another Fiverr ad where the person promised to advertise in something like 80+ Facebook groups for readers. This was $5 (which is the premise of Fiverr, if you’ve never used it. Someone does a job for you for five bucks.)
  • On the same day the Fiverrs ran, one of my best friends, first readers, and all-around favorite people (Jaime!) wrote a post about the book on Facebook. Last year when Holly and I put out Iris together, her FB post gave us the best day ever in terms of downloads, so clearly she has some pull with her friends when she suggests things!
    • TOTALS FOR THOSE DAYS: 18 paid downloads. Since I was running the book at 99 cents, my take-home on those 18 purchases was a whopping $5.50 (give or take.)
  • I ran an Amazon giveaway that cost me $3.21 where people could click for the chance to win one of three copies of the books. The only caveat was that they had to follow my Amazon author page (which means that if I put out an announcement at some point, I’ll have a “fan base” to actually speak to via Amazon).
    • TOTAL FOR THOSE DAYS: I ran the promo for 10 days and gained 244 Amazon followers. I also sold a few books at $2.99 in that window of time, so I probably made $8.00.
  • The book was available for free on Amazon for 2 days (with really no promotion–I just wanted to see what would happen if I made it free for a weekend).
    • TOTALS FOR THOSE DAYS: 267 downloads (but still no reviews from those downloads, which is pretty much what you’re hoping for when you give a book away for free…gotta get those reviews!) Money made those days: $0
  • Another promo I’ve read a lot about is the E.B. Brown Facebook group. That one cost me $15 and is scheduled for May 1st, so I’ll have to wait to see if there’s an uptick in downloads after that.

I’ve also tried a few free/low-cost things on Iris: The American Dream Series Book One and @Robertopancake, but nothing has panned out there that’s worth mentioning (though I did drop $25 for a BargainBooksy ad–which other authors swear by) and I got a total of 3 downloads, so…$6 in the bank. Definitely not a great investment, but worth trying.

So far, my big takeaway is that the little blips on your book sales page happen when your friends are kind enough to rave about and tell other people about your work. I have another friend from high school (Hi, Elaine!) who has done multiple posts about my book and was even kind enough to chat with me on the phone about There’s Always a Catch. That was really awesome. I loved hearing her excitement about the characters and what might happen next…and I even used one of her Facebook posts about the book as the photo for today’s blog. It feels really good to have people supporting my work (special “hi” to other friends and moms of friends who have bought, reviewed, and talked about it!) and it makes me want to keep going when I hear that other people are curious about the next book.

And to that end…I’m off to enjoy my work-free afternoon on the deck–I’ve got some writing to do!

So it’s out…and I’m jittery.

Somehow putting out a book that you write with your young daughter feels fun and not the least bit self-indulgent, but publishing something on your own is mildly terrifying. I just texted one of my BFFs to tell her my new book is out, and she said, “I’d be nervous too…not gonna lie!” But she also swears that it’s a good read, so I’m going to latch onto that as I gnaw the nails off of all ten fingers.

As I’ve said in previous posts, I started working on a book called “There’s Always a Catch” back in 2008 or 2009, and I loved everything about the characters and place so much (it’s set on a fictional island in the Florida Keys called “Christmas Key”) that I’ve taken it out and re-tooled it a number of times over the years. I finally got serious about it last year and re-wrote the whole thing so that it’s less of a standalone romance novel and more of a start to a women’s fiction series, then I sent it off to several people to read and give feedback. I ended up doing a mind-numbing five drafts over the next six months, and just finally finished editing last month.

I’m trying to keep myself busy by thinking more about promotion and advertising than I have in the past, and I’ll have plenty to say about all of that in my next post after I see the results of spending my spring break doing research and placing ads. For now, “There’s Always a Catch” is set at 99 cents on Amazon (it’s available only as an ebook, but you can easily read it on any device by downloading the Kindle app) so that it qualifies for some of the advertisements that I’ve chosen. I’m really hoping the bargain price will drive some sales so that I can (hopefully!) garner some of those golden reviews that all self-published authors live for.

If nothing else, I can honestly say that I’m really enjoying everything about the indie-author process after a full year of learning and working at it, and I’m excited for every new step of this writing adventure!