Mixed–but better–results with second KDP giveaway.
My second Amazon KDP Select giveaway of Battle Axe is winding down after three consecutive days, and I must say, it’s changing my mind about the program. I still don’t know if it will boost my reviews or sales, but the activity has blown away that of my previous giveaway over Easter weekend.Here’s what I did differently:1. Three consecutive days vs. two non-consecutive days (last time I skipped Easter proper).2. Used only these paid sources: Freebooksy.com Thedesertgirl on Fiverr.com bookblast.co Here’s what I did the same: 1. Picked a holiday weekend 2. All the same Facebook and Twitter sources But this time, as of 4:30 on the third day of the promotion, I’m looking at 5700 downloads vs. the meager 710 Read More…
Amazon KDP Select Giveaway Part 1: The numbers are in.
As I gear up for another giveaway for Battle Axe–this time for three consecutive days–I wanted to share the results of my previous giveaway, which was two non-consecutive days over Easter weekend. I spent a lot of time in the preceding months reading blog posts and advice from other KDP participants. I boiled their tips down to a “best of” and that was the extent of my plan. Here’s a rundown of the “marketing” I did to announce the giveaway: The Marketing: 1. Posted on my own Facebook page 2. Sent out periodic tweets from my Twitter account 3. Sent an email blast to relevant people in my address book 4. Created an event on Goodreads and invited my friends 5. Sent a Read More…
Gearing up for Amazon KDP Select Giveaway
When I first published Battle Axe and Ring of Fire simultaneously last year, I enrolled Ring of Fire in Amazon’s KDP Select program on the promise that it offered more exposure via its lending library and ability for Amazon Prime members to download such titles for free. The downside? It’s a 90-day arrangement that makes your digital (not print) title exclusive to Amazon, so I was forbidden to make it available anywhere else. The upside? None, at least that time around. I saw no discernible difference between the purchase/borrow activity of Ring of Fire vs. Battle Axe. The other (and potentially huge) alleged asset of the program is that it offers up to five “giveaway” days where you can offer Read More…
Top Ten Musical “Novelists”
Music figures prominently into both of my humorous suspense novels—in Ring of Fire, one of my main characters is a college student whose iPod is improbably crammed with selections from the Great American Songbook. In Battle Axe, the protagonist leads a weekend swing band. If I had any musical aptitude, I’m sure I would have tried to start my own band at some point in my life. As things went, I’ve had to settle for lyric writing for my best friend (who IS a world-class musician, songwriter, and now ebook cover designer) and simply surrounding myself with good music whenever and wherever possible. In fact, whenever I’ve changed addresses, the stereo is always the last thing packed and the first Read More…
Choose Your Friends Carefully
What I mean by that is, if at all possible, during your formative years, become friends with someone who, a few decades later will offer to design your ebook cover as a personal favor. Make sure this person is someone who displays very little aptitude or passion for graphic design at the time, but through hard work and dedication miraculously transforms into a visionary artist and Photoshopper par excellence. Well, that’s what I did, anyway, and look what it got me. I’m posting a larger cover of my debut novel Ring of Fire here, mainly to give it a place to live so I can send out links. My designer–the multi-talented Mike Sottong–worked with my crude notions of a concept Read More…
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