Blog Post: What’s the deal?

[From Our Blog]

New blog post by Jake E – discussions in this thread, please
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My experience with deal sites.

This one is for the writers.

Last week, I ran a promotion for my novel The Trouble with Prophecies. I slashed the price down to 0.99 for the week in an attempt to get sales going.

For context, the last time I ran a promotion I made the book free and ‘sold’ 120 copies.

This time, I only managed 94, but it would have been significantly less had I not utilised deal sites.

For those not in the know, deal sites are websites that will email your book promotion out to their email lists for a modest fee. You must book in advance, so you must get your ducks in a row before you attempt it.

I used six deal sites with the aim of advertising my promotion on each day of the week and two on the first day.

Here is my experience.

I chose sites that had been recommended to me by David Gaughran. A book marketing guru of some repute. If you want to know more about him, follow this link; Writer Blog • Book Marketing Advice • Free Resources • David Gaughran

I recommend his free course: Starting from Zero, very highly.

The sites I chose:

• ENT($45-$75)
• RobinReads($40-$85)
• Fussy Librarian($7.50-$22)
• BargainBooksy($20-$90)
• EreaderIQ($5-$20)
• Book Barbarian(SF/F – $40-$60)

Firstly, only five of the six sites accepted my submission. ENT declined to run my promotion, so Tuesday I had to do my best to promote my book myself on X and Facebook (It did not go very well).

For the other days, Robin Reads and Ereader IQ ran on Monday, Fussy Librarian ran on Wednesday, BargainBooksy Thursday, and finally, Book Barbarian rounded out the week on Friday.

On Monday, with two sites running my promo, I sold 18 copies – not bad, but I had hoped for a few more than that.

On Tuesday, I sold 3 copies.

Wednesday, I sold a measly 10 copies through the Fussy Librarian. Turns out, they were a bit too fussy for me.

Thursday saw a huge spike in sales. 20 unts sold through BargainBooksy, and Friday was a bigger spike again with 30 copies sold through Book Barbarian.

I also had 885 Kindle Unlimited pages read in that time.

For those of you keeping score, I spent around $215 – which equates to around £168 – on these promotions. I knew going in that I wouldn’t make that money back; that wasn’t the point. The point was to get eyes on the book and drum up some reviews. In that respect, it was a partial success (Still waiting on reviews, it takes a while to read a book after all).

I have also learned that BargainBooksy and Book Barbarian are the ones to go for. I had the most sales from them, so I will be using them again in the future once my next book is finished.

The Fussy Librarian did not perform well at all for the price. Also, Robin Reads disappointed, considering it cost twice what Bargain Booksy cost and managed less despite being run at the same time as Ereader IQ.

Now, I could be misinterpreting the data. People who received the email from Robin Reads on Monday may have waited till Friday to buy the book and thus the data would be skewed, but I don’t think so. Usually, when I receive an email like that, I buy books when I see it, or forget about it entirely; but that’s just me.

Also, Friday might just be a better day for sales and had I run Book Barbarian on Tuesday and Robin Reads on Friday, I may have seen the result the other way – who knows?

Anywho, I hope this information is helpful for any writers that stumble upon it. I’ll report more findings in a few months when I can run promotions again.

J
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By @Jake E
Get the discussion going – post your thoughts & comments in the thread below…

 

[Claire G]

This is really useful, thanks Jake! You've inspired me xx

 

[LJ Beck]

This is really useful, thanks Jake! You've scared the shit out of me.

 

[James Charles]

If you're in this for the money, or a livin' forget it! I do have a small eBook publisher who does a lot for me, but I have only sold about 1k books since my first release in 2015; moslty eBooks, obviously. If you want to see your book in bookstores, you must get a tradtional deal becasue the BIG FIVE and their imprints control the access to book sellers.

 

[Jake E]

This is really useful, thanks Jake! You've scared the shit out of me.

It's not as scary as you think.
As long as you manage expectations, it's a doddle.

If you're in this for the money, or a livin' forget it!

I have one book out. I'm not going to make any money with just one book in circulation. I expect to make more once I have a few books out. If readers like one they'll likely buy others. One sale becomes multiple as long as you keep the marketing going. (Can you hear the optimism? lol)

If you want to see your book in bookstores, you must get a tradtional deal becasue the BIG FIVE and their imprints control the access to book sellers.

Yes. This is true, but I think Trad-publishers are more likely to take on an author with a proven track record and fans already. So, a goal for the future.

 

[RK Wallis]

Having been through all the marketing and advertising, not promotions though, that was really interesting @Jake E. I'm very cynical. Sounds to me like these websites are just there to make a living off the starving authors out there. Makes me quite mad, so they didn't get a dime from me. But my experience taught me, nothing will sell books better than word of mouth and that's a fickle beast. All we can do is write the best book we can and cross our fingers. I hope the promotions find you that one reader who sparks word of mouth for you

 

[TimRees]

Thank you @Jake E , this is really helpful. I'll be going down this road in August or early Sept. When I last did a free promotion or 0.99p promo, there were many site that listed for free. I'm going back 8 or 9 years, but then I achieved thousands of downloads in a couple of days. Then I didn't have a series prepared so the reader didn't have a second and third book to buy at £2.99 if they liked the story.

Going by your Blog post, things have changed...

 

[Jake E]

Thank you @Jake E , this is really helpful. I'll be going down this road in August or early Sept. When I last did a free promotion or 0.99p promo, there were many site that listed for free. I'm going back 8 or 9 years, but then I achieved thousands of downloads in a couple of days. Then I didn't have a series prepared so the reader didn't have a second and third book to buy at £2.99 if they liked the story.

Going by your Blog post, things have changed...

Yes. All the sites that I researched charged a fee of some kind to use.

I should also mention that all of the sites listed in my blog are American (.com) sites. I couldn't find any for the UK.

So if anyone in the colony knows of any British deal sites, I'd be grateful