by Ben Zackheim | Sep 20, 2012 | Book Promotion, Viral Juice |
Promote wisely (i.e. without Facebook Chat)
There are a lot of ways to use Facebook to promote yourself. Set up a product page for your book, run some polls, post some cool photos, arrange an event, interact with your fans. But Facebook Chat is an awful way to reach out. First of all, it’s unreliable. Secondly, few people use it on their computer to chat in real-time (though mobile is picking up speed). Most people (who know better) set themselves to invisible which means all chats are sent to the Message box. That may be fine for a quick ping. But if you catch someone online and try to chat up your new book with them they probably won’t appreciate it. The ambiance of Facebook is still one of arms-length. Even if you spend a lot of time on it, and feel fulfilled by it, most people use it to interact, but with some distance. Chat is too immediate for Facebook. I expect it will become even less prominent on their website as time goes on.
by Ben Zackheim | Sep 12, 2012 | Book Promotion, Viral Juice |
Google Ads are awesome. They genuinely generate traffic, which is what we all want, right? But beware! Google likes to send out free ad credits to new sites. You must enter your cc information when you sign up. It’s easy to turn on a few campaigns with those credits and then forget that you will be charged for everything over and beyond the freebie. So put it in your calendar. Pause your ad campaign!
by Ben Zackheim | Sep 11, 2012 | Writing |
I’m a huge fan of Google’s products. I like their search. I like their email. I even like Google+, even though I use it as often as I use my treadmill, which is to say, “whenever all other possible activities have been exhausted.”
But one big disappointment, especially for a lot of writers, has been Google Drive. Many writers eagerly waited for the cloud service to launch once we started leaning heavily on Google Docs (for writing) or Google Play (for “writing music”). Wouldn’t it be great to see everything I worked on and listened to in one place?
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by Ben Zackheim | Sep 5, 2012 | Book Promotion, Viral Juice |
Years ago I did a comic strip titled The Block. It was a wonderful part of my creative life and I realize I miss it. I’ll be posting this new strip, Viral Juice, as often as possible. What’s “Viral Juice” mean? Well, I can tell you that it will lambaste our obsession with using social media for self promotion. For more than that simple summary, tune in next week to find out!
by Ben Zackheim | Aug 28, 2012 | Book Promotion, Shirley Link & The Safe Case, Writing |
I dream of Shirley Link over Piccadilly Square!
My mother was in my head, as usual.
She’s old-school and doesn’t take to this whole new digitalized twitty world and virtual socialized friendship thingy. She also doesn’t know what to make of independent authors partnering with Amazon. She just knows she doesn’t like it. She advised against relying on Amazon for my new book, Shirley Link & The Safe Case. She’s an accomplished author so I tend to favor her opinions. But after years in the online games business, and jumping spastically around the brushfire of free/.99 cent apps, I know where this ebook inferno is going.
Still, she’s my mom! So against every old bone in my body I opted into Amazon’s KDP program when I self-published Shirley. What’s KDP? It’s a lot of things to a lot of people. In a nutshell, KDP asks for exclusive distribution of your book for 90 days, which seems a little excessive to me. 30 days would be cool – but 90? In return, you can opt into the Kindle lending library, which lets you collect funds from a bucket of cash for the author community every month. I have yet to see if that will yield much dough, but will update one way or another when I find out.
The other benefit of the KDP program is the ability to give away your book for any 5 days of your choosing (within that 90 day exclusive window). Big deal, right?
Yeah, it is, actually. It’s the biggest deal Amazon offers authors.
On Shirley’s free day I saw 3000 downloads and would have seen at least double that if I’d kept it going for two days. Yes, they were free but somehow I still made .02 per copy. I’m not sure why that is, but when I find out, again, I’ll update here.
The sales the day after were disappointing, with only 17 sold. Some writers report a conversion rate of 10% within two days. I’ve seen examples of a book giving away 8000 copies over two days and then selling 800 copies within two days of the sale. Shirley converted at .04%
As I get more experience with self-publishing I’ll determine the reason for the dismal sales rate post-promo.
On the upside, wow. One day, 3000 downloads.
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