Finding My Way - Dallionz's Self-Publishing Thread

Dallionz

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I apologize for not updating in a long while. It's been a crazy couple of months.

I finished edits for SOMEONE TO TRUST and that's set to release May 20th. It was the hardest book I've ever written by far and I'm both excited and relieved it's done.

I have a BookBub ad for FINDING COURAGE on May 4th. It'll be running for free and this is the second time (though it's been over a year since the last). I'm not sure what kind of response I'll get, but desperately need a boost in pages read and sales right now!

I also have a Book of the Day ad scheduled with ENT for May 31st with FINDING FAITH.

Hopefully, between the two ads and a new release, May will help lift sales and pages read.
 

Dallionz

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This month has been insane! So I'll try to do a short recap of what's going on promotion-wise.

I had a free promo for Finding Courage with BookBub on May 5th. Finding Courage had been free on BB once before, though it was over a year ago. This is the third book in the series (out of 5).

Finding Courage ran free May 3rd, 4th, and 5th.

May 3rd:
Book was listed on ebookasaurus, bookscream, and itswritenow
Free Books Downloaded: 899
Other books sold at full price: 10
Pages read for all books: 1,543

May 4th:
Bookbub ad
Free Books Downloaded: 15,273
Other books sold at full price: 76
Pages read for all books: 1,877

May 5th:
Book was listed on ebookdaily
Free Books Downloaded: 3,231
Other books sold at full price: 19
Pages read for all books: 4,717

May 6th - All books now at full price again
23 sold
7,680 pages read

It's been just over two weeks since the promotion. The number of sales have been a little higher than my average before it, but nothing amazing. Pages read have stayed between 9k and 12k since then, which is great.
 

Dallionz

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I have a new release tomorrow! I haven't pushed it much this month because I was out of town and it was just one of those things.

Someone to Trust is the second book in my Life Unexpected series. The first book, Safe in His Arms, game out almost exactly a year ago.

Here's the link if anyone's curious:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZDJBTR/?tag=absowrit-20

Anyway, I have a Facebook party tomorrow to celebrate the release with six guest authors. It should be fun! I do recommend FB parties, though they can be a lot of work to set up. Here's the link to the party if you're curious how one is set up:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1502394349784952/

This is also only the second time I've released a book at full price, instead of doing an introductory price of $0.99. So while I may have fewer pre-orders (compared to my other series, though more than the first book in this series), at least I'm making more per release.

I'll let you know how it all goes at the end of the month!
 

Catherine

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Wow! That's a lot of downloads. :hooray:

Good luck on your release!
 

Dallionz

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I have a $0.99 promotion starting today. Honestly, I've pretty much written off $0.99 promotions as I've found that any advertising I do isn't made up for with sales. BUT my book was accepted for an ENT (Ereader News Today) Book of the Day ad. I understand this is a very good ad and so I went ahead and stacked some others to go with it. So we shall see!

The book is Finding Faith. It was released in February of 2016 and this will only be the second time it's been on sale since then.

It's $0.99 May 30th - June 1st and here's the ad lineup:

May 31st: ENT's BOTD
June 1st: Faithful Reads and BookCave

I'll come back and report on the results in a few days!
 

Dallionz

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This $0.99 promotion is going better than expected. I honestly quit doing them in general because any ads I purchase don't usually sell enough to cover the ad price. In this instance, I got a Book of the Day with ENT and hoped they would result in enough sales to make it worthwhile.

This is for Finding Faith (Love's Compass: Book 4)

Day 1 - May 30th
Copies Sold: 23
Other Books Sold at Full Price: 8
No Ads. I actually bought one with Your New Books and thought it was supposed to be on this day, but never heard back. It ended up running on the 31st. I was a little disappointed because I have no idea if it sold any copies or not. But I likely will not advertise with them again.

Day 2 - May 31st
Copies Sold: 108
Other Books Sold at Full Price: 15
ENT's Book of the Day ad ran as well as the Your New Books. I was very impressed by how nice the ENT ad was and communication was excellent. It renewed my view of ENT in general.

Day 3 - June 1st
Copies Sold: 62
Other Books Sold at Full Price: 3
I ran a Faithful Reads ad as well as a My Book Cave ad.

In Summary:
I needed 170 sales of Finding Faith in order to cover the cost of the ads I ran.
I sold 193 copies plus 26 copies of other books at full price.

I definitely consider this a good $0.99 promo. However, I don't feel I would've sold enough to cover the other ads if it hadn't been for ENT's Book of the Day ad. So I likely will not run future $0.99 promos without a hard-hitting ad like that.
 
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Dallionz

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I've got a big promotion going on this week. This is for my book, Safe In His Arms. This book is free today, tomorrow, and the 14th.

Here's the book if you're interested in it: Safe In His Arms

SIHA was originally published in May of 2016. This is the first time it's ever been free. The second book in the series, Someone To Trust, came out this May.

So here's what I'm doing:

July 12th:
My Book Cave is including my book on their website and will do so through the 14th
ENT (Ereader News Today)
I also sent it out in my newsletter (1900+)
I boosted a post on FB to run 48 hours

July 13th:
BookBub

July 14th:
FreeBooksy
Book Rebel

So I'll come back and report on the number of downloads, pages read, and sales of the second book for each day as well as at the end of the week. This is my highest-costing promotion I've ever done so I'm a little nervous, but hopeful results from BB tomorrow will cover everything else. We shall see!
 
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Dallionz

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Results of July 2017 Promotion:

This promotion was for Safe In His Arms, the first in my Life Unexpected series.
At this point, the book had been released 14 months ago, had never been free before now, and only had one promotion ($0.99) and that was a year ago.
This promotion included having Safe In His Arms free July 12th, 13th, and 14th
The second book in the series, Someone to Trust, released May 2017 and has never been on sale, and remained at full price ($2.99)

My sales and pages read (I'm in KDP Select with all my titles) had really fallen across the board in the last month so I'm relying on this promotion to pick everything back up.

July 12th:
Ads: ENT and My Book Cave (which will run my book through the 14th)
Other Promos: I boosted a post on Facebook, I also tweeted as well as shared it on Instagram
Free Downloads of Safe In His Arms: 4,242
Sales of Someone to Trust: 16
Total Pages Read (all books): 4,242
Results: I broke even on the cost of the ads today

July 13th:
Ads: BookBub
Other Promos: I still have the boosted post on Facebook.
I'm also a member of a group blog and posted there.
I am a guest on a FB party tonight as well where I will post about the freebie.
Free Downloads of Safe In His Arms: 23,294
Sales of Someone to Trust: 57 (and 8 of other books)
Total Pages Read (all books): 8,008
Results: I made most of the money back from the BookBub ad. I didn't expect to with only one other book in the series. I will make the rest of the money back on pages read alone the following day, most likely.

July 14th:
Ads: FreeBooksy and Book Rebel
Other Promos: I still have the boosted post on Facebook.
Free Downloads of Safe In His Arms: 8,874
Sales of Someone to Trust: 42
Total Pages Read (all books): 17,017
Results: I made enough money today to pay for the ads and the rest of what didn't get paid yesterday. In other words, I've now broken even and everything from this point on is profit!
Safe In His Arms hit #4 in Amazon's Top 100 Free books over the course of the three days.

Total Free Downloads of Safe In His Arms: 37,455
Total Sales of Someone to Trust: 115

I'll come back in a week and let you know what the week after looked like!
 
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Catherine

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Thanks for sharing your strategy and results.
 

Svader

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Thank you so much for posting your numbers and letting us know what has worked and what has not. I'm just finishing up edits on my first novel and you'e enforced the fact that I need to get the edits done for the sequel asap once the first is published.
 

Dallionz

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Catherine - You're welcome!

Svader - I'm glad it was helpful! Yes, having more than one in a series is huge when it comes to promotions. At least I've certainly seen that to be the case. I have one standalone and I can get some good downloads/sales on it, but it rarely extends to my other books.
 

Dallionz

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I wanted to come back a week after the big promotion and let you know what the results were. This was the second most successful promotion I've ever done and I'm very happy with these results!!

As a quick recap, Safe In His Arms was the book I had available for free for three days and then returned to full price. Then Someone to Trust is the second book in that series that has remained at full price the entire time. Both books sell for $2.99 each and are in KDP.

The week following the promotion (July 15th - 21st):
Copies of Safe In His Arms Sold: 125
Copies of Someone to Trust Sold: 152
Other Books Sold: 34
Total Pages Read: 189,939

Reviews posted of Safe In His Arms: 46 (went from 41 to 87)

I was shocked by the number of reviews!! They were great and of those reviews, 29 were 5-star, 10 were 4-star, and 3 were 3-star. Yeah, no complaining here. Even the 3-star reviews said the person enjoyed it overall.

The great thing is I had recouped the cost of the ads by the end of the three-day promotion, meaning all of these sales and pages read are gravy. And while overall sales fell some yesterday, the pages read were the second highest so far.

Now, obviously we have no choice whatsoever about when we get a BookBub ad. Goodness knows that's true! lol But I find sales really fall during the summer months and if you're able to get a BookBub ad during the summer, especially for the first in a series, I'd consider that an ace in the hole. I'm writing that down to remind myself of that next year.
 

Dallionz

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Quick update:

Safe In His Arms went from 41 reviews before the promotion a month ago to 131 now. Woot!!!
 

Catherine

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That's fantastic! Good for you.:D
 

Dallionz

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Thanks, Catherine! I've been very happy with this last promotion. Wish they could all be like that. lol
 

Dallionz

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One of my most recent books, Marrying Mandy, is up on Kindle Scout and accepting nominations.

Has anyone here submitted a book to Kindle Scout before? It's definitely be an interesting process! They provide some information about how the book is doing, but I don't have a lot of hard data. I guess I'll find out when it's all said and done. Either Amazon will offer me a contract for it, or they won't. LOL

If you have gone through this process, I'd love to hear about your experience! And if you want to nominate Marrying Mandy, that'd be great, too! :-D

Nominate Marrying Mandy here
 

Dallionz

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My apologies. I was asking it here for those who follow this thread. Then thought I should ask in general instead. I do appreciate the link to the other thread, though. I'll do a search on subjects before posting again.
 

Dallionz

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I haven't updated in quite a while. I apologize for that. Though, I can say not a whole lot has been happening. Sales are HORRIBLE this month compared to the rest of the year. Granted, I have no Christmas books to advertise during the October-December months. My last new release was also in October (6th). It was a boxed set and we had some unexpected issues on release that messed with the whole thing. So yeah, moving on. LOL

Anyway, Marrying Mandy was picked up by Kindle Press and has a release date of January 2nd. Finding Grace, the sixth and last book in my Love's Compass series, is set to release January 3rd. In an attempt to drag my sales and rankings out of the hole they are now in and to hopefully get a jump start on the new year, I've got a nice two-week promotional schedule set up. I thought I'd share that.

Here's a quick bit of info about each book:
Marrying Mandy - Pre-Order set up at $2.99
Finding Grace - Pre-order set up at $0.99 and will remain that price until at least January 10th.
Finding Peace - The first book in the Love's Compass series (Grace is the sixth). There is a mention of both Mandy and Grace in the front and back of the book complete with short blurb, cover, and link to where the pre-order/new release can be purchased. Finding Peace will be free January 1-5th.

Okay, now on to the promotional schedule:

January 1st - Finding Peace (free) on Robin Reads
January 2nd - Marrying Mandy releases
January 3rd - Finding Grace releases
January 4th - Finding Peace (free) on BookBub and Finding Grace on Christian Book Heaven
January 6th - Finding Grace on ENT
January 9th - Finding Grace on Faithful Reads
January 18th - Marrying Mandy on Christian Book Heaven

In the midst of this, I'll have AMS ads running, I'm a guest on 5 different specific blogs, I have a FB party I'm a guest at, and I'm going to set up a blog hop this week that I hope to have others participate in.

I'm really hoping this will give both new releases a big boost going into 2018. My hope is to release the next book in the series (after Marrying Mandy) in March.

I'll definitely come back and update!

ETA: One of my other books, Calming the Storm, got picked up by ENT for their Book of the Day for January 11th. LOL So I'll have that running as well. If this doesn't kick off a good year, I'm not sure what will. LOL
 
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Catherine

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Congrats on getting picked up by Kindle Press. I just read briefly how the Scout program works. I hope it gives you a big boost on release day! I'm curious to find out what impact it has on sales of your other books. Good luck!
 

Dallionz

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Thank you, Catherine! I'm curious as well and don't really know what to expect from release day. Hopefully the fact that it's in the front of my BookBub promo will help some of those sales extend to the KP title as well. I'll definitely update on that part as I go.
 

AgathaChristieFan

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Congratulations on your success! I'm really impressed. It's great that ads are working for your series. Good luck with your new releases. Before you know it, it'll be the beginning of January!