That was then. This is now.
Today, if you set your book to free and don't promote it, you're lucky to get 100 downloads.
WTF!
The rules of the game have changed. Every time you think you have it figured out, someone goes and changes everything—again.
One of the biggest challenges author’s face today is figuring out which promotion sites are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. It’s not a sure thing that you will break-even—think about that carefully before you decide to drop three or four hundred dollars promoting your new book.
Everyone wants to feature their book on BookBub, but BookBub is expensive, and they're choosy—really-choosy. To get featured on BookBub, you need a lot of high-quality reviews. You need to meet their rigid editorial standards and have an expensive, professional cover design.
Even some of the smaller book promo sites choose which books to promote based on the number of reviews your book has and its star rating. If your book isn't at least four star or better, you better keep looking, because a lot of sites won't feature it.
Too bad, they aren't as exacting when it comes to producing results.
What happens when you spend $25 or $50 and only get fifty downloads or two sales? Shouldn't authors know which sites payoff, and which ones don’t?
Maybe I'm crazy, but when I plunk down my hard-earned cash for a book promo, I expect results.
To put it in sexual terms, I want a happy ending!
I just finished running a five-day KDP Free Promo for my book History Bytes. It got downloaded over 5,000 times, grabbed the number one spot in the history category for three days, and ranked 37 overall in the Kindle free store. Not my best promotion, but not bad.
I shook things up a bit this time.
