In
the past weeks I conducted a bit of an experiment. Periodically I
give away Kindle copies of my books. I think early on I once gave
away thirty-some books over a two-day period; a couple months ago
only three books were given away in a one-day promotion for Bonus
Man.
Three stinkin' books. For
free.
Then
I stumbled into a list of sites that'll promote your freebies for
free. I signed up for eight of them. I also promoted the free dates
on Facebook and two writers' forums, like I always do. One freebie
site sent me an email that they had tweeted my free promo to 42,900
of its followers. Others sent emails and/or flooded my Facebook with
their ads. With all this help I gave away 21 copies of Alice
and Her Grand Bell. Five
days later, using the same marketing plan, I gave away 15 copies of
Bonus
Man.
Unimpressed,
I had another promo a week later, this time I used only
Facebook—ignoring all the freebie sites and the writers' forums—and
gave away 16 copies of No
Happier State. Hardly
worth the effort of dealing with all those freebie sites, though
their ads are still all over my email and Facebook. Thanks. (Maybe
I need to be on Twitter...)
On
a related note, the good people at Cracked Walnut shared a review
site called Emily Reads Everything. Seems
she has a regular feature called “Awesome Indies.” Signed up,
hopefully to get a review. Not sure about the term indie.
It
used to pertain to small, independent presses but lately has been
taken over by self-published authors who don't wanna be called
self-published. As a self-published author I hope I qualify. Seems
like a great site. We'll see how it works out...
