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Another marketing post – yuck!

by Mar 9, 2014Books, Marketing0 comments

Here are my experiences so far:

I initially priced A Warrior’s Path at $5.49. I chose a number I felt was worthy of the work I’d put into the novel, and I factored length of the book into the equation as well. Many indie titles are selling at $2.99-$3.99, but those titles are usually half as long as mine. I thought $6.99 was too much to ask (although there is one indie novel titled Crucible of Souls that is about the same length as A Warrior’s Path that is listed occasionally at $7.99 – a brave choice and it seems to be working out for the author) and $4.99 was too low. Thus, I chose $5.49, which I hope is a reasonable compromise.
As for marketing, I initially purchased a Kirkus review. I think it takes courage to do this because there is no guarantee that the reviewer will like the book (and it costs $495). However, more than anything else I’ve done, I think the Kirkus review has helped sell the book and has paid for itself many times over.
Before launch, I asked over 50 reviewers to read the book and of those who responded, 5 said ‘yes’, but only 2 actually read the book. I won’t go this route again. Too much work for too little return.
The book then launched and landed with a thud, but somewhere in January it took off. I don’t know why it suddenly started selling. Possibly it was because Amazon listed it as a ‘New fantasy to read’ on their blast emails. I wish Kobo and Nook did the same because for every one sale on both those platforms, I’ve had over 100 on Amazon.
I ‘boosted’ a Facebook post about the book, and got lots of ‘likes’, but I didn’t see an increase in sales. Overall, I can’t say that Facebook has helped with sales much, but I’ve heard other authors had greater success.
I’ve also advertised on Goodreads, but that hasn’t been very helpful except to vastly increase the number of people who’ve added the book to their to-read-pile. I also did a Goodreads giveaway, and I included basically the world. Again, that boosted the to-read-pile numbers, but it also cost me an arm-and-a-leg in shipping expenses since one book went to Sweden and another to the UK.
I also started a Twitter account (@DavisAshura) and purchased a marketing plan through Selfpublish Showcase. It only cost $37/year, and they send out blast tweets daily about the book to their >37k followers and those often gets re-tweeted. I don’t know if this is helping, but it didn’t cost me much, and it’s another data point I can use for book 2.
I did a price drop last week for 5 days. The first 3 days, I saw a definite uptick in sales, but the last two days, not so much. I think the moral is to not leave the price low for too long.
The book continues to sell well, although it’s starting to taper off, but that’s life. Can’t stay on top forever. 🙂

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