Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Book Readers

E- Book Promotion Days

Those of us in the independent sector of publishing will no doubt know that marketing a new book is akin to burning pound or dollar notes. You do all the promotion, you blog like mad, network like a social prostitute and throw money on great ideas, and all you get as a reward is one measly sale on Amazon.

But the other great thing you notice is that one measly sale makes a significant difference on your chart rating, promoting your book thousands of places up the scale. Many of us will know with the monolithic world of Amazon, that being at the top of your various genre charts is vital to the Mr and Mrs Bloggs of the world seeing your book and considering a purchase. But whilst you are dwindling in the realms of number 100 or even 1000 in the genre not even the most avid book searching geek is going to delve that far to find you.

This week I have attempted a bit of a promotion and it seemed to work in pushing my kindle book ( A Very English Revolution) to the front page of the Political Thriller chart, and that’s with only minimal additional sales (less than 10 I think). Maybe there is a chance that Bloggs will get his wallet out now.

This morning I thought of a great way for all of us to do something similar to help each other.

My idea is to promote our e-books as a collective. I have chosen e-books rather than paper copies because most of us sell e-books a much lower cost so it makes the exercise more viable than paper, although if it’s successful maybe we can consider paper as well.

Here’s the idea.

We create a list of interested authors who all possess a kindle. I can keep a register of interested parties or publish it somewhere, whatever we choose. Each author agrees a promotion day and the others share this on their blogs and social networks. When that day comes around each of us buy and download the book on the same day, therefore boosting that days sales ranking. If there are enough of us doing it then there is a chance of success.

Success breeds success, so if it works for one person then others will follow and each of us will have more of a chance to make front page heaven. Of course this does require trust in our fellow authors to do the deed, but what can I say? It’s an idea, if it works then we all win. You never know we might be downloading a great book we might otherwise totally bypass.

Interested to know what people think. Please share it around writer sites, as the more people are interested the more we can make this work. People can find me out in the virtual world but otherwise a mail at norristeve@gmail.com will engineer a direct response.

7 members like this

Comment by George Stringfellow on January 7, 2012 at 12:46am: Uummm, excuse my ignorance but how does one check their book ratings on Amazon? Good luck to Matt and Catherine.

Comment by Matt T. Schott on January 7, 2012 at 12:52am: You create your own author's page at author central at Amazon.

Comment by George Stringfellow on January 7, 2012 at 1:39am: OK Matt. That's already been done. I'll look closer at it.

Comment by Amanda Chambers on January 7, 2012 at 1:44am: Catherine's post is scheduled for 10am Eastern (I think it's Eastern. I'm still learning WordPress. It IS scheduled for 10am tomorrow.) The link is http://wp.me/p26mcl-6f.

This is something new for me, so feel free to make suggestions for future posts. I'll be away from a computer until tomorrow evening, but if there are issues, I can change things then.

I'm also on Triberr, so the interview posts will continue to hit new viewers for a couple of days.

Comment by Catherine Green on January 7, 2012 at 1:46am: I am http://twitter.com/#!/SpookyMrsGreen and here is my tweet: #paranormalromance Love Hurts available now http://amzn.com/B005AXVDZS #kindle special offer via @spookymrsgreen #romance #paranormal

Comment by Amanda Chambers on January 7, 2012 at 2:09am: Matt's post is scheduled for 2PM (Again, I'm not certain of the time zone it uses. I guess we'll all find out together.) The link is http://wp.me/p26mcl-6k.

You can subscribe to my blog or just check it to see when the interview posts. www.livinglearninglovinglife.com

Comment by Steve Norris on January 7, 2012 at 11:55am: First purchase done Catherine. Your UK ranking is #36912 for kindle this morning.

2nd one done Matt. Your Uk ranking is #22,630 this morning

Comment by Matt T. Schott on January 7, 2012 at 12:20pm: Lord Skyler and the Earth Defense Force ranking in the U.S. is 517,484. Just purchased Catherene's book.

Comment by Stacy Eaton on January 7, 2012 at 12:39pm: Matt's done - tweeted from Amazon - Shared on Facebook from Amazon - Tweets are scheduled through my account through out the day - and the book was purchased.