Promoting Ebook Sales: Personal Experience

Angkor · Dec 14, 2010

Due to the depature of my first agent and the death of my second agent during a busy part of my life, I resorted to self-publishing my first two novels as a last resort (no time to search for yet another agent). I did this through Lulu Press four years ago. I got excellent cover art and left most of the rest to Lulu, who got me ISBNs and listed my books with Amazon, B&N, etc. I promoted the books via book tours, press releases, etc. I had modest success that nonetheless exceeded my expectations. The high cost of the POD paperbacks was the main hindrance to bigger sales (not to mention the chain brick & mortar stores won't stock POD books).

I then left the books alone to sell on their own in dribs and drabs up until this year when Amazon let authors re-set the base price of their Kindle editions to a low $2.99. My Kindle editions had been listed at $5.99. Once I lowered the price to $2.99, my ebooks begain flying off the digital shelves and sales are accelerating as I write this. First half December Kindle sales are already twice November's. One of my books is now in the top 2 percent of overall Kindle sales.

This spike in Kindle sales also happens to coincide with my decision finally to maintain an active blog (with Blogger.com). Blogger.com provides each blogger detailed and up-to-date statistics on viewers, geography, etc. I've been carefully synchronizing my blog entries with my Facebook, Amazon and Google Books pages, all the while keeping a close eye on the Blogger stats. I see a clear correlation between blog entries, blog viewings and ebook sales.

This is a learning-on-the-job process for me. I wanted to share my experience with others as well as to invite others to offer additional insights based on their own experiences in promoting ebooks.

(BTW, I'm now on agent #3; he's trying to sell book #3 to a traditional publisher. Meanwhile, I'm crashing on book #4).

bmathison · Dec 15, 2010

Thanks for your success story!

I've got a short story in all the major venues -- my publisher, Untreed Reads, is great about hitting all the big ones (as well as anything in between!).

Although they do a lot of the marketing and promotion, I'd like to do everything I can to promote the story, as well as the anthology it's part of.

I've been thinking about resurrecting the blog I abandoned at blogger.com a couple of years ago. I'm getting other short stories and novels ready to hopefully e-publish soon, so the blog might be good for sales.

Hmmmmm.....

Do you post every day? Do you have a theme to your blog?

VoireyLinger · Dec 15, 2010

Congrats on the upswing in sales! it sounds like you have some of the basics covered on promo and they are working.

I'm pubbed through an epublisher and initially left all the promotion to them. The time between contract offer and release was very quick and left me a little lost. I depended on the publisher's market pull to make sales, and it wasn't a bad call. They have a lot of pull in the niche so my first couple months paid out quite comfortably.

After that things slumped off quickly. They had other, newer releases to promote and my book floundered.

I'm now working on getting promotion wound back up in anticipation of the second book in the series using some of what you've mentioned. I'm blogging on a group blog, I'm more active on Facebook and working to build a fan page, I make an effort to be more interactive on Twitter and mix that with promotion and I'm working on getting more traffic to my website.

The results I'm seeing include a steady rise in Facebook fans/friends and Twitter followers, increased website traffic, and new reviews. Between Facebook and my website stats I have a very good idea of who visits my website and how they find me. Free-reads and contests spark a lot of interest and I always get a few people checking me out after a positive review.

By next month I should see some impact on the bottom line.

Angkor · Dec 15, 2010

Do you post every day? Do you have a theme to your blog./QUOTE said:
I follow common advice not to post every day but maybe 2-4 times per week so as not to overload the circuits (it's all the time and creativity I can muster anyway). My theme is foreign affairs, which ties into my fiction, which is political thrillers. http://jameslbruno.blogspot.com/

What I find daunting is all the time and effort an author must put into promotion and marketing. I don't do Twitter, maintain a web page and some other things simply because I need to budget my time and ensure I don't get distracted from writing my latest opus. Unless you're an established superstar, it's really up to you to promote your stuff. E.g., when my books were released in 2006, I put together a list of free press release sites and just shot out a whole bunch of press releases. This got me some media coverage, including over local NPR. I sold most of my books, however, directly to people at book signings and public speaking events. It's a lot of work and left me a little exhausted. That's why I really want a traditional publisher for the book currently with my agent -- hopefully to get at least some outside help.

Promoting Ebook Sales: Personal Experience

Angkor

practical experience, FTW

bmathison

VoireyLinger

Angel Wing Fetish

Angkor

practical experience, FTW