Finding My Way - Dallionz's Self-Publishing Thread

Thank you, M.H. Lee! I've heard the same thing. I have a few author friends in the same genre that have good results with them. But it's still hard putting out that kind of money ahead of time and not really knowing what's going to happen. Haha! But it's going to be an exciting weekend!

This is the weekend for my Bookbub ad! It comes out tomorrow and I'm so excited! Finding Peace went free today and so far, 698 people have downloaded it. I really hope this leads to sales of the other books in the series.

I'll report back about the ad, though my understanding is that you don't really know how effective the ad is until a week or so afterwards - that's when people pick up the other books at their regular prices. So we shall see!

I'll give a complete report on the BookBub ad after one week has passed. But the ad itself yesterday far surpassed my expectations!!!

I ran the BookBub ad under Christian Fiction as a free book.

Yesterday, Finding Peace his #3 in all Free Kindle Books

Free Downloads of Finding Peace: 29,283
Sales of Finding Hope at full price: 81
Sales of Calming the Storm at full price: 3
Pre-Order sales of Finding Courage at $0.99: 110

And I woke up to 2 5-star reviews of Finding Peace and it's still #3 in all of Free Kindle Books

Today is the last day it's free. I don't expect the kind of numbers I saw yesterday, but the pages read is through the roof for me - over 10,000 pages read at 7 a.m.

If you've hesitated running a BookBub ad, don't. It's well worth it!!!

I was just $10 shy of breaking even on the ad the day of the ad, and my understanding is that the real payoff is in the week or two following the ad when people come back to purchase your full-price books as well as the pages read. So we shall see!

It's funny, I've been nervous to try and get an ad with them, now I'm wondering how long I have to wait in order to submit Calming the Storm for a potential ad. LOL

I'll come back tomorrow and post the results of my three-day free promo for Finding Peace. But I wanted to share my experience with the different places I submitted my free book to and the responses. I've got a list now and will submit future free book promos to them again.

I submitted Finding Peace for all three days to a total of 20 places (at no charge) at least 2 weeks before the promotion itself. Here are the ones that picked it up:


August 22nd: No paid ads, only word of mouth plus being picked up by the places below and I had 2,368 free downloads for the day along with 11 books bought at full price. That alone made it worthwhile taking the time to post the sale info to those sites!
ebookasaurus
IgniteYourBook
Digital Book Today
eBookHabit
ebooklister


August 23rd:
ItsWriteNow
Faithful Reads - I advertise with them regularly and it was nice of them to include the free promo at no cost. They are great to work with and this made me a long-term customer.


August 24th:
Christian Kindle News - They actually did a beautiful feature with a specifically-designed image and everything! I will probably look into advertising with them in the future because of it.


Two other places picked the book up even though I didn't submit to them:
moreforlessonline.com
HundredZeros.com


And four places tweeted about it that I hadn't contacted at all:
Romance eBook Deals
Free ebooks Daily
Romance Novel Giveaway
Kindle Deals

I wanted to share the results of my 3-day free promotion of Finding Peace. It is the 1st book in my series, with the second book called Finding Hope and the third book, Finding Courage, available for pre-order. I also have a standalone, Calming the Storm.


I had Finding Peace free August 22-August 24 with a BookBub ad on August 23rd.


In the 10 days before the ad, here are some stats:
I'd sold 19 copies of all three books total
I'd had 2 pre-orders of my next book
I'd had 24,467 pages read total


Sale Day 1 - August 22
No paid advertisements, but I submitted the free book to 20 places and 5 picked it up on this day.


Free Downloads: 2,368
Finding Hope Sold: 10
Calming the Storm Sold: 1
Pre-Orders Sold (set for $0.99): 13
Pages Read: 278 (all time low)


___


Sale Day 2 - August 23
I had my BookBub ad plus 3 other places I had submitted it to picked it up


Free Downloads: 29,283
Finding Hope Sold: 81
Calming the Storm Sold: 3
Pre-Orders Sold: 95
Pages Read: 3,907 (second highest ever)


___


Sale Day 3 - August 24
No paid ads, but 2 places I'd submitted it to picked it up plus another and I'm sure residual from BookBub


Free Downloads: 7,574
Finding Hope Sold: 40
Calming the Storm Sold: 8
Pre-Orders Sold: 43
Pages Read: 18,485 (!!!)


___


3 Sale Days Together:


Free Downloads: 39,225
Finding Hope Sold: 131
Calming the Storm Sold: 12
Pre-Orders Sold: 151
Pages Read: 22,670


___


I have also gained 5 reviews for Finding Peace so far, 4 of them are 5-star and 1 is a 4-star.


I've also had 22 new subscribers to my newsletter (and I give away a copy of Calming the Storm to each new subscriber).


So far today, I've already sold 16 books total and I've had 9,450 pages read. And the picture I'm attaching shows how my books look in the rankings.


I can't wait to see how things go over the next couple of weeks! :-D

I've heard BookBub can be a game changer. At least for this week after the ad, that's certainly been true! It's been a fantastic week!

Aside from sales and pages read, two of the biggest surprises for me:

Finding Peace went from 22 to 46 reviews
My newsletter subscribers increased from 27 to 108

I have no ads at all in the month of September so it'll be interesting to see how things progress through the month!

Here's my one-month report since having a Book Bub ad for Finding Peace.

Quick recap: Finding Peace was free August 22 - 24, then went back to full price. All other books were full price and that included Finding Hope, the second in the series, and Calming the Storm, a standalone. I also had Finding Courage, the third in a series, set up for pre-order at $0.99.

From August 22 - September 22:

Free copies of Finding Peace given away: 39,342

Finding Peace sold at full price: 445
Finding Hope sold at full price: 588
Calming the Storm sold at full price: 65
Finding Courage pre-orders at $0.99: 602

Total pages read between all books: 741,161

To say I'm happy with the results would be an understatement! Even now, I'm selling an average of 10 books a day at full price and getting between 10,000-15,000 pages read.

I'm hoping to try for another BookBub ad in January or February once the last of my series is either available for pre-order or is out.

Thank you, M.H. Lee

I have a couple of promotional ads in October and then probably nothing until January or so. I'll be curious to see how long the sales continue!

I'm happy to! I know it helps me to read about the experience of others!

My next book, Finding Courage, releases October 1st. Here's what I've done to promote the book so far:

Cover and synopsis release
Stories about the dog I wrote into the book (written after a dog we had until he passed away a couple of years ago)

Now, last release, I also did character interviews. I've decided not to do that.

I've been reading about how releases are actually more effective if you don't work hard to build it up. Your readers get so used to hearing about the book that it's not "new" when it finally releases.

So with my next book, Finding Faith, I'm not going to share anything more than mentioning that I'm writing it. Then, when I've got edits just about done, I'll share the cover when I announce that it's available for pre-order. And there will be no more than 4 weeks that it'll be available for pre-order (and I'm hoping to aim for 2 weeks). We'll see if that helps!

Thank you!!

Today's the day! Finding Courage is available and I could hardly sleep last night. lol

I ended up with a total of 739 pre-orders. I'm THRILLED with that! So far, only 700 of those sales are showing up on my KDP report. I'm not sure if they trickle in as the pre-orders are received or how that works. Before this, the highest number of pre-orders I've had were 28 so it's not much for comparison.

Today, I have an ad on My Book BFF

A blog post and review was also posted on Author Franky A. Brown's website

Thank you so much!

I did check and they aren't showing there, either. Someone suggested that, when you pre-order a book, you don't get charged until it's released. Maybe 30 of those people didn't have the correct payment method set up or something like that? It'll be hard to know how many sales from today might still be from those pre-orders.

I submitted Finding Hope (the second book in my series) to BookBub and was shocked to hear that they had accepted it! It's scheduled to run October 29th for a free promotion. I can't wait to see how things go.

Finding Peace (the first book in the series) ran August 23rd. After nearly 2 months, the rankings are still really good! So I'm excited to see how Finding Hope fares.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,716 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

• #28​
  in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Literature & Fiction > Romance > Mystery & Suspense
• #30​
  in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Religious & Inspirational Fiction > Christian > Romance > Mystery & Suspense
• #80​
  in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Religious & Inspirational Fiction > Christian > Romance > Contemporary

Finding Hope is free today, tomorrow, and Friday. My BookBub ad runs tomorrow. I'm excited to see how the second book in a series does. I don't anticipate quite the same numbers as I got for the first in the series. I did submit the free promo to all of the places that picked up Finding Peace to see if they did so again today. I'll definitely check back and post three-day results and then again at one month.

On a side note, did you all see that The Midlist has changed what they do? No more free submissions for $0.99 sales. :-(

Thanks, M.H. Lee!

I think it's too bad that indie listings will no longer be welcome on The Midlist.

Yesterday (October 28th) was day 1 of my 3-day free promotion for Finding Hope.

The free book was picked up by:
ebookasaurus
ebooklister.net

Finding Hope - Free downloads: 1,485
Finding Peace - Sales at full price ($2.99): 8
Finding Courage - Sales at full price ($2.99): 14
Calming the Storm - Sales at full price ($2.99): 3
Pages Read: 10,238

I'm very happy with the results from BookBub today. I assumed the numbers would be less for the second book in a series and they are - but not by a whole lot. On the flip side, the number of books I'm selling at full price is shocking me. I'm at 251 so far.

Part of me just wants to stay up until midnight to see the final results, but my eyes are telling me that's not going to happen. I look forward to checking those results in the morning, though!

Thanks to some thunderstorms keeping my poor son up, I'm up early (or is it late). So I thought I would go ahead and update on the second day of the promotion.

October 29, 2015 - Day 2 of the free promotion for Finding Hope
BookBub - I could not find any other place that picked it up for today

Finding Hope - Free downloads: 24,006
Finding Peace - Sales at full price ($2.99): 160
Finding Courage - Sales at full price ($2.99): 113
Calming the Storm - Sales at full price ($2.99): 3
Pages Read: 8,661

So the amount downloaded was less than it was for Finding Peace, which I expected. But this as much higher than I had set myself up for. And the number of other books sold completely shocked me!

Now last time, the pages ready started rising most the third and fourth days after the BookBub promotion, so I anticipate that number going up starting today and continuing to rise. They stayed significantly higher from that promotion on so it'll be interesting if this increases it semi-permanently again or not.