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 Amanda Chambers on January 17, 2012 at 2:32am: Sarah's post will be live at 10am EST tomorrow. http://wp.me/p26mcl-7g

Comment by Steve Norris on January 17, 2012 at 8:53am: First in the bag this morning :)

Comment by Sarah Luddington on January 17, 2012 at 10:01am: Delaying today isn't going to help... So, here is the link for the US and UK kindle editions for Lancelot and the Wolf - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lancelot-Wolf-Knights-Camelot-ebook/dp/B005... This is for the .co.uk site

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/B0058W0AMI/ref=sib_dp_kd#reader-link This is for the .com site

Thanks all for your support today.

Comment by Sarah Luddington on January 17, 2012 at 10:13am: Just been reminded by Amanda that Lancelot isn't your average novel...

Quick warning - it's sexually explicit in places and contains scenes of a sexual nature between men... Now I sound like the BBC...

Comment by Matt T. Schott on January 17, 2012 at 12:57pm: I hate to ask a dumb question but it comes with the blond hair. I'm about to buy Sarah's book but I can't figure out who's other book we are buying today.

Comment by Sarah Luddington on January 17, 2012 at 1:03pm: Hi Matt,

I don't think there is one. But maybe Steve can put us right later?

Thanks for the tweeting by the way. I'm being a malteser about it all - blonde on the inside, brunette on the out...! (just realised you guys in the states won't know what that is - hmmm - it's chocolate)

Comment by Matt T. Schott on January 17, 2012 at 1:07pm: I just brought Lancelot and the Wolf. I finished "Love Hurts" and will be putting up an amazon review latter today. I loved it. Catherine I hope you write a sequel because it will cost to much to fly to England and find Redcliffe and track down these characters.

Comment by Steve Norris on January 17, 2012 at 1:09pm: Matt there is no other book today. It was supposed to be Jeannie but given she hasn't come back to us to confirm anything, I've had to leave her out.