Tag: Promotion Sites

Lessons From My Launch

Hey everybody! I hope you all are having a great week so far. Things are getting a little hectic at my house as both my sister and I are gearing up for the start of school on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to my junior year even though I’m spending it at home. I have a great lineup of classes in the history, Latin, and anthropology departments, and I’m writing my capstone this semester. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to keep it all straight!

My debut book launch was last Monday, and it has been an amazing time so far! I had a great week of promotion and sales and all-around fun with my family and friends to celebrate. I am still so surprised that I am now a published author. I can’t believe that Chasing Fae is out in the world and getting so much great reception from readers! Today, I want to share a little bit about what worked for me during this launch and what the results have been so far as we come around to around the two week mark of my launch.

Results From the First Two Weeks

Let’s start off with some stats. In the last two weeks, I have sold 86 Kindle ebooks and 16 paperbacks so far, excluding the number that I sold as part of my presale campaign to fund the publishing process. I am super satisfied with this progress because with the limited marketing that I have done so far, I feel like this was amazing progress. I also made my way to the top 100 list for YA epic fantasy on August 6th at #100. The listing was only up for a day, but it was such an amazing feeling to see my book alongside all of my favorite authors. I took screenshots of the entire list so I could remember that moment forever.

Here’s What Worked For Me

There are a few specific things that worked well for me during launch week that I want to pass on to you.

  • Bargain Booksy and ReadFreely: I saw a sizeable jump in sales mid-week during the days that I picked my newsletter promotions to be. I had both of these on the same day, so I cannot be 100% sure which one I can attribute to it. But ReadFreely also did an amazing job in tweeting out my promotions constantly for about a week or so. I loved seeing them pop up throughout the day.
  • Having lots of great friends on Twitter and Facebook: Getting involved in the Writing Community on Twitter and Facebook and keeping your family and friends informed about your writing process can really help boost your launch when it’s time. I had tons of people retweeting and sharing my links all day, and it led to a great buzz. Lots of my friends went ahead and ordered on launch day, and throughout the week, I got pictures of people receiving their paperbacks or confirmations of Kindle orders. They really made me smile. Writing can be such a lonely process, so it’s important to make connections with other writers to lift each other up.
  • Virtual Blog Tour: I spent several weeks leading up to my launch securing key guest post, interviews, and excerpt feature slots to promote my book. I got a lot of cross traffic to my website and definitely a few sales. As a new author, this was a way to get my name out to a lot of readers at once and offer insights into myself and my book. I honestly loved it. I hope to do more guest posts and interviews going forward.

What I Wish I Would Have Done

There are also a couple things I would have done differently in my launch that I hope to incorporate in my second book launch.

  • Have a Dedicated Launch Team: I needed to send out more advanced review copies and have a few dedicated people who would talk about my book over the first few days. I was so lucky to have people who shared and posted out of the kindness in their hearts and their friendships with me, but I could definitely use a little more organization next time for my own peace of mind.
  • Promoting My Launch Party Earlier: My Facebook launch party on Wednesday, August 5th was a pretty solid success, despite the technical issues. I would have loved to have promoted that across my other social medias more so that I would have had a bit more engagement on my giveaways in particular.

In Conclusion…

All in all, my book launch has been very successful so far. I hope that as I enter the fall semester of my junior year, I will be able to work out a good balance between marketing, writing book 2, and keeping this website flowing with more posts about the craft of fantasy writing. Wish me luck on that, folks.

Marketing A Fantasy Book: My Current Plan

Hey everyone! Finally getting around to doing a full-length post with all of the launch preparation going on. According to social media, what writers most want to hear about at this particular moment is how to market a fantasy book. This is a super pertinent topic right now as I am setting up my early marketing strategy for Chasing Fae. Today, I’m going to walk through my small budget and which sites and resources I am going to be using as of today to promote my book through its first month out and into the future.

Starting Budget: $100

For my 21st birthday a few days ago, my grandparents gave me $100 in two very nice cards. I decided that I could use that money to set up a few small promotion listings and advertisements to get a solid running start with my debut novel. The most important elements for me in my marketing strategy are to utilize as many free promotion sites and services as I can and spend money in key places to maximize sales (and hopefully reviews!) in the future.

Free Promotion Ideas

All Author – This is a great site that allows authors to have a profile and your books in their directories for free. The free plan includes a basic author page with a listing in the Author Directory, up to 4 books, and a tweet scheduler feature. The pro plan is $59 for six months and includes more features like a premium author page, unlimited book adds, a featured book listing, and more. I opted for the free plan here because I had more worthwhile places to spend my money.

Alternative Reads – I submitted my book for a potential Sunday Spotlight Author feature. I’ll see what happens!

Authorsdb – Authors Database is a great free option for promotion. They have over 20k published listing, and setting up a profile and adding your books is super easy. It looks like it has a fun author community; I’m looking forward to taking part in it.

Book Goodies – I opted for a free listing on Book Goodies that will be up for six months. This is a site that I heard was a good option.

Book Reader Magazine – I submitted a book listing and a free interview to Book Reader Magazine, which I am including in my blog tour this coming week.

Discount Bookman – I added a free book listing to this site.

Fantasy Book Place and Fiction Hideaway – These sites are both affiliates of Book Goodies; one is fiction targeted and one is fantasy targeted. I submitted a free book listing to both sites, which will be up for six months.

Fresh Fiction – I submitted a free book listing to this site.

Humanmade.net – I submitted a regular listing to this site, which includes authors from all over the world.

Pretty-Hot.com – I submitted a free book listing to this site.

Paid Promotion Ideas

Awesome Gang ($10) – I submitted a book listing to Awesome Gang because it looks like a great site with quite a few solid affiliations with other sites. I submitted a free author interview to them as well, so I thought this was a good place to add some extra power to my listing. $10 buys a featured listing which gets me a listing on the front page for 2 days, a guaranteed spot in the newsletter, and a blast out to Facebook and Twitter with 70,000 followers combined.

Bargain Booksy ($25)- Bargain Booksy is one of the more well known promotion sites that I have heard of, so I decided to submit a title for a feature. Each genre has a separate price. I listed my book as a young adult title for $25. That gets me a listing in the daily email to thousands of subscribers as well as a feature front and center on their website.

Book Bongo ($19.99)- I liked the different kinds of marketing options offered at Book Bongo. The more I looked into it, the more I wanted to do a slightly higher priced package. I opted for the Book Blast for $19.99. My book will be permanently featured in two genres on the website and on the front page for up to two weeks during my $0.99 promotion period. I will also get a feature in the weekly mailout, a post on Facebook and Twitter, and inclusion in the weekly advertising campaign on Facebook. I thought this was absolutely worth it, and I’m hoping to see some results from it.

Book of the Day ($9.99) – Book of the Day was another promotion site that offered a lot of marketing outreach for a low price. $9.99 bought me my book on the front page for 2 weeks, the sidebar for 7 days, listings in the newsletter, on Facebook, and on Twitter; and addition to the Category pages and AI System.

eBook Booster ($20)- I found this form through Armadillo eBooks that guaranteed listing my ebook on 15 different promotion sites and social media channels. I browsed their database of options (and there were a lot of options), and I liked what I saw. I thought $20 was worth the breadth of the outreach. I’m looking forward to seeing where the listings end up.

Read Free.ly ($10) – This seems like an awesome site with a lot of opportunities for promotion at every level. For authors on a budget, this is a great spot. $10 buys a platinum level promotion package. This includes a long list of perks: promotion on the homepage for up to 7 days, promotion in the newsletter on a specific date chosen by me, promotions on their social media platforms, and an automatic spot on the shortlist for the site’s Editor’s Choice section.

YA Books Central ($3.99)- This is an essential database for any young adult author to take advantage of, and it has longevity. It’s been around since 1998. For $3.99, I entered my book into the database. This not only gives me access to a ton of readers, but it also opens me up to take advantage of the site’s other offerings in the future.

So this is my plan so far! I have a few other ideas for free listings in the works right now, and I may do an update later if people are interested. For now, there are a little less than 24 hours until launch day, and I have more work to do! Happy writing, everyone!!!