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!
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?
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!
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.
Amazon is on the prowl in India
Amazon just announced that it’s expanding into India.
May I be melodramatic?
Huge.
I’ve been selling my Young Adult series, Shirley Link, on Amazon for a few months with great success. I crafted it for a young, international audience, so I’m particularly excited by this news.
It will be offering the Kindle at all Croma stores stores for 6,999 INR. But the BIG news for indie Amazon KDP authors is that they can sell in India now, too.
India is the second largest English-speaking population in the world. That means my potential audience just grew by tens of millions overnight. Remember, they don’t need to buy Kindles to enjoy my books. Now that it’s available there they can read it on many other devices as well.
I’ll be thinking on the ramifications of this move for the rest of the week. I plan on capitalizing asap. If I find any leads on the best methods of promoting there, I’ll post here.
Book promotion is an imprecise science, which is why I’m delighted to have actually succeeded at something! I had great success with my free promotional day on Amazon. 3000 people downloaded Shirley Link & The Safe Case and the book shot to #1 in Kids Mystery ebooks, and #113 in all free ebooks. The key to success appears to be simple.
Get the word out.
Who’d have thunk it, huh?
To that end, you have a friend in websites that promote free ebooks. It’s the perfect relationship — your free ebook is their content! They don’t succeed unless they have your book listed.
Author Marketing Club is a site that includes a single page where you can submit your free book for promotion on a number of great destinations around the Web.
While using the submission page above may be the easiest way to go, it may also send you to dead or unresponsive sites.
Below, I’ve broken down which sites I submitted to that are still around (I’ll update often):
Good luck! Please let us know if you’d like to add a site that did well by you.