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 Steve Norris on January 17, 2012 at 7:31pm: I don't think it's the followers or at least some of them, I've had ten messages today. I think it is an automated message via breached passwords. It's not the followers fault. Should just message them and get them to change their password. If they don't then feel free to unfollow

Comment by Sarah Luddington on January 17, 2012 at 8:44pm: Well, the latest figure for the UK is #27 in Historical Fiction.

I think we might be on to something here. Thank you to everyone who helped today.

Comment by Catherine Green on January 18, 2012 at 6:01pm

I am so sorry Sarah, I completely lost track of my days and never looked at the calendar! I have just bought your book, I know it's horrendously late, but the ranking is still looking good. Hopefully I haven't messed up the promotion too much, and I will post links across my sites. Can't believe I forgot. I reckon there's some blonde in me too!

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #19,953 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #54 in Kindle Store > Books > Fiction > Fantasy > Historical

Comment by Catherine Green on January 18, 2012 at 6:03pm: Matt, I am glad you enjoyed Love Hurts. Yes I am currently editing the sequel and planning to have it published by June. It will become a series, just as soon as I can get it written!

Once again everyone, I am so sorry for being forgetful, I won't do that again. Oh, and I will write reviews for everyone's books once I've read them.

Comment by Steve Norris on January 18, 2012 at 11:48pm

Looking good tonight Sarah

Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #11,499 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #24 in Kindle Store > Books > Fiction > Fantasy > Historical

Comment by Sarah Luddington on January 19, 2012 at 2:45pm: Sorry, didn't catch up with this until today - Catherine - no problem, I almost forgot it was happening to! Thanks for helping when you did, came as a nice surprise.

Steve, thanks for posting the figures, I'm guessing everyone kept track of their own numbers. Maybe I can have yours and Catherine's figures at some point and do some number crunching with the sales figures. It'll have to wait until the end of the month, but should be interesting. I've more than one person interested in the the next scheme.

Comment by Steve Norris on January 19, 2012 at 9:00pm

Thanks Sarah. My profile on author central gives me some clues but hard to get exact numbers.

Have to say that I have still been getting sales even in the last few days, so something is happening.

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #23,779 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

#46 in Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Political
#56 in Kindle Store > Books > Fiction > Political
#81 in Books > Fiction > Political

Comment by Steve Norris on January 21, 2012 at 11:25am: How are we all?

Are we ready for Stacy's day tomorrow?

Comment by Amanda Chambers on January 21, 2012 at 2:35pm: I don't think I have your interview, yet, Stacy.

Sarah's interview is getting a lot of traffic because of Triberr. The problem is that because of my move to WordPress on December 31, none of the other interviews were pulled into Triberr, so they didn't get the same exposure. I use Feedburner, so the feed was the same, so I didn't think about the switch being a problem. I 've been trying to figure out a good way to deal with it. Still haven't found one. I may post the individual links and ask my Triberr peeps to RT. They know what happened. Actually, thinking more, I'll probably do that. I do have a Popular Posts widget, so the more people who see a post, the more future visitors are likely to see it.