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 Catherine Green on February 1, 2012 at 12:50pm: I just bought the book.

Matt, your review of Love Hurts made me chuckle, thank you! I haven't read your book yet, because I got a bit distracted (obsessed) with Lancelot and am now reading Sarah's sequel, sorry!

Comment by Matt T. Schott on February 1, 2012 at 1:02pm: My wife told me to sell a lot of books so we can go to England and visit the Redcliffe Pack. No problem, I understand we all have a lot of books to read now.

Comment by Catherine Green on February 1, 2012 at 1:23pm: Really? Cool! Well if you ever do make it over here, you need to visit a town called Looe in Cornwall. That is where most of my inspiration came from, along with Polperro and Fowey.

Comment by Amanda Chambers on February 1, 2012 at 5:43pm: C.A.'s interview is up. http://wp.me/p26mcl-9g

Comment by Steve Norris on February 1, 2012 at 8:21pm: Purchased - Well done Everyone!

Comment by Cheyene M. Lopez on March 22, 2013 at 5:02pm: Hello, I am an author. I am Cheyene Montana Lopez. I publish with Createspace.com Amazon.com and PublishAmerica.com Check out some of my books on Amazon and you can check out this book with createspace which I have also as a magazine with HPMagCloud.com Diabetes Now Magazine
Authored by Cheyene Montana Lopez and the link CreateSpace eStore: https://www.createspace.com/4171859

Comment by Cheyene M. Lopez on March 22, 2013 at 5:07pm: This is the link to my e-book with Amazon Kindle for my Diabetes Now Magazine by Cheyene M. Lopez http://www.amazon.com/Diabetes-Now-Magazine-ebook/dp/B00BFSZNWG/ref...

Comment by Patricia A. Lopez on March 22, 2013 at 5:15pm: Hello I am author Patricia A. Lopez. Please check out my Children's book Queen Zesta for which I wrote and Illustrated at Amazon Kindle on this link http://www.amazon.com/Queen-Zesta-ebook/dp/B00ASCWAFI/ref=sr_1_cc_1...