curtisbausse

Where should you advertise your book?

There isn’t yet a reblog button on this site, so I’ve just copied the first two paragraphs along with a link to the full article. A good report by Andrew Updegrove on the options open to you if you want to advertise your book.

Over the last ten years, literally hundreds of services have sprung up that send daily newsletters featuring discount and free ebooks to subscribers. The king of them all is BookBub, with millions of subscribers. Unfortunately, unless you’ve written a real best seller, it’s almost impossible to get them to accept your book (and if they do, it will set you back as much as $1000 for that one-shot ad). The good news is that out of all the rest, there is a very small handful of services that can help you sell lots of books. The key is to figure out which they are, and what type of promo to run. Read on, and I’ll share what I’ve learned through running hundreds of ads over the past two years with scores of these services.

In order to find out which sites can produce, whenever I tried a new service, I ran it alone at a time I wasn’t doing any other significant promotion. And two cautions before I go into the results: first, each of my books is a thriller. Your results may vary if you are in another genre. And second, it’s a dynamic marketplace, with many services rising and falling in effectiveness all the time.

The results and discussion can be found at:

http://andrew-updegrove.com/how-to-actually-sell-books-through-advertising/

Posted by:

curtisbausse

Author of mystery books: the Magali Rousseau series, dark psycholgical thrillers and whodunits, and the Sophie Kiesser series, lighter, almost cozy. Currently living in Provence after two years in Mayotte, a small French island in the Indian Ocean.

7 responses to “Where should you advertise your book?”

Ocean Bream

October 9, 2017

This is enticing, I look forward to reading it. Thank you for sharing!

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GD Deckard

October 10, 2017

A well meaning article. I have two questions.

1. “A free sale with over 1000 downloads should pay back several times”
What?!

2. “My last ad, one week ago, ran on Freebooksy, plus ENT, BookCave, Choosy Bookworm and Fussy Librarians new free newsletter yielded 4,350 downloads, bringing it up to #4 in Suspense and #6 in thrillers, as well as #1 in several sub categories. The total cost was $160, and has already paid off, plus yielding two 5 star reviews already.”
What was the ROI?

My take-away conclusion is that giving away thousands of free books is no way to pay the rent.

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1. atthysgage
  
  October 10, 2017
  
  No, it’s no way to pay the rent, but if the actual sales and KU reads AFTER the promotion (and promotions do tend to result in sales after the promo) exceed the cost of the promotion, then you are actually making money. And you might be creating future readers, spreading your name around, and getting some reviews. My personal experience with this kind of thing has usually resulted in a net loss, but a small one. I actually do think its worth doing, but—unless you’re very lucky—it’s not going to pay for itself in a big way.
  
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mimispeike

October 10, 2017

1. Valuable, a good place to start.
2. I agree with GD’s point number one. In the long run?
3. Long run, yes. I plan to give my novella away, to court sales for book one. So I won’t have any profits to cite any time soon.
4. My initial spot to fish for readers is medium.com – I am joining a sort of pre-full Partner program, that pays a royalty for the number of claps (likes) you get over a threshold number (per piece). I have a few followers there already, and all new posts get their moment in the sun, exposure on the front page.

I have read an estimate that something like two-thirds of the posted stories earn royalties, and that the average pay-out per month is around sixty-five dollars. Factoring in the big winners (a few earn a thousand a month, I read), a lowball earner may get, what – five dollars? I’d take it, while I shoot for better. I am setting up a separate bank account dedicated to Medium and, eventually (hopefully) to Amazon profits. This I will be able to report on fairly soon.

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victoracquista

October 10, 2017

I’ve used Freebooksy and Fussy Librarian, but I have never made back my investment $$. I thought the blog info was interesting, but the information does not result in my having a different strategy..

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1. mimispeike
  
  October 11, 2017
  
  Victor, I say first get your name known, by displaying a unique voice and an interesting point of view. Then mention your books.
  
  Post a first chapter, then a second. Lead them down the primrose path. Every new post gets exposure on the front page for a brief time. From there it has a longer shelf life in your network – your registered interests. And every time a reader comments on your post – bam! – it jumps back to the front page. Neat!
  
  Maybe it’s a dud for our purposes (sales), but medium.com has a huge number of members. You will be read by some portion of them. Before I pay for ads, I’ll try this route.
  
  That’s my strategy.
  
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curtisbausse

October 11, 2017

I was interested in the post because I’m reaching the point where I’ll need to decide on it soon. I’ll give it a go, but where and at what cost? To be determined.

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