Book and book sales are complex, but it’s possible to achieve promotions using free giveaways to achieve ebook and print book sales. It may be hard to get this information freely revealed in one place. Therefore, I’m revealing all and giving actual statistics within a set of articles.
I tried out a giveaway in Nov and learned from the encounter with one ebook to ensure that successful methods could be put on a second giveaway. The e-book went viral on Amazon. Com in the UK. There have been downloads every second even though we did nothing to write this article.
In response to some queries, I should make it clear that I avoid counting this as ‘viral’ because we gave aside a lot of ebooks. It went viral because we did not need to do anything, and the downloading was continuous. As expert publishers, we can’t nag individuals to take a free e-book to support us – individuals who may let the freebie languish on their e-reader or pc. We need a meaningful freebie that we promote as expertly and discreetly as we would likely any other book launch. We will need to let people decide for themselves whether or not they want the reserve.
Even if you aren’t thinking of some giveaway, many of these tips enable you to get a ‘paid for’ reserve high in the Amazon search rankings, and getting high in the rankings is the key for you to going viral because probable readers and buyers get your book quickly any time browsing their favorite makes. I’ll cover the subject of ‘paid for’ books’ in another write-up, and you need a much lower variety of daily downloads to succeed using paid books (which remains hard to sustain).
To help publishers and authors do the same thing, I will clarify the methods used. But first, I will answer a question other publishers have inquired me throughout the giveaways. They want to know if giveaways devalue all publications because people might start to anticipate ebooks to be free.
The solution we have found is that the opposite is true. During and after the actual giveaways, we sell many more ebooks and print publications. This lasted throughout Dec after the experiment with our very first novel giveaway.
December is a slow month for little publishers in the UK as purchasers tend to get the books. Leading publishers are putting massive promotional budgets into the Christmas market, and bookshops return a lot of textbooks to publishers to clear the shelves typically for these bestselling textbooks. They won’t accept any brand-new books until January.
Similar to other small publishers, we present special festive offers to draw in people to buy direct via the website, but the giveaway must have been a much bigger help when compared with these traditional promotions. There was one of our best months until now for both print textbooks and ebooks, and I know the giveaway helped with this kind of. So my conclusion is that a giveaway doesn’t devalue print books and results in more sales.
The guide given away also helps get the author’s name very widely known and can reach an international market in case the promotion is done well, and this also leads to more of their various other books being sold. After the free item, the distributed book continued to sell, while reviews started to go online later. With the second reserve, the sales after the free item were high enough to keep the author of this article on the front page from the ‘paid book’ rankings intended for Thrillers, so the book remains selling itself.
We have likewise decided that it works to lower ebook prices since this leads to more guide sales and far more print book sales, in your experience. The royalty for the traditionally published author when using an ebook at a low price is relatively nearby the royalty of a paperback (where the royalty is 10% of the cover price due to each of our higher production costs), which works out well for experts. Even at our decreased ebook price of about £1. 50, the author gets some royalty of about 50p while Amazon and other costs go on a third, and the rest is usually divided 50/50 between the publisher and publisher under the words of our contract.
So, what techniques are for getting a guide to go viral on Amazon online? First, it has to be an excellent reserve, as people won’t assist with a giveaway. I believe people know they can have confidence in certain publishers to be generating good books, so you need to build that reputation, and so they trust authors who have honest reviews from magazines and recognized authors on the front include if that’s possible. These honest reviews can be taken from reviews, and in addition, it helps if there are good testimonials and ratings on Amazon. Com page, so do optimize which page by encouraging testimonials, ‘Likes,’ and star rankings.
So the first tip is not to give away poor-quality publications to promote your other books. If a book is fantastic, people downloading it will also get other books by the same author, or the same submitting company, especially if there’s one more book in the same sequence. They are also buying more electronic books from across our checklist as they like this one. Don’t hand out anything less than your best creation. It’s your showcase for the world. If a book has been out in paperback (or as a possible ebook) for more than a year, it is worth a giveaway because it has had time to prove alone. I have seen publishers and authors launch a new publication with a giveaway, but this may not be our approach.
We discovered from the first giveaway it’s far vital to set a low selling price for the ebook so that as soon as the giveaway, it will revert to the price, and this will help maintain it high in the ‘paid’ Kindle buy amazon rankings, as people who have merely missed the giveaway it’s still tempted if the price is not too high. The Amazon hosts update slowly so that any book can stay loaded with the free Kindle search positions for about a day, even if meager price.
We also trained on the importance of being in the suitable different types. Amazon allows two different Kindle books, and we put this book with Crime and Thrillers. We have now learned that you can fit a book in a subcategory and in all the higher different types.
There are thrillers in Action in addition to Adventure, and it’s easier to purchase a ranking in the Adventure subcategories, so if you have this e-book, you might want to consider it a move into the rankings. The same applies to other genres and different types – research into guides like yours can indicate how successful authors and publishers get high rankings. Which types are they in? You can find this specifically if they are high in the rankings. Their different categories will probably be listed on their book web pages, just below the detailed information about the book (publisher, ISBN, etc.). If they aren’t offering enough to get into the search positions, you won’t be able to see their particular categories.
You can change the types during a giveaway, and it’s well worth doing this if you need to, as you must get into the top 30 ranking for a category. All of our first giveaway novels became high in Literary Fiction, while the second got high in the Detective series. Some categories are easier to get high in, and it’s worth picking out an easy-to-get-into category to support increasing the downloads by often making the book highly visible to opportunity seekers searching for books in their treasured genre.
Thrillers are a complicated category to succeed in – it took a little time for 400 downloads a day in Britain alone to get Joe to the top 10. But you can also aim for any subcategory in some genres and move up. Fifty daily downloads could get you a top 10 rank in the lower subcategories. (20 downloads a day can preserve a ranking once the publication reverts to ‘paid’ status). Research has shown the top about three bestselling genres are Criminal offenses (48%), followed by sci-fi and literary fiction (both in the lower 20% bracket). Romance and erotica furthermore sell well but , amazingly for some, are lower than the other genres. We only necessary 50 downloads in a day to stay in the top 15 for Fictional Fiction, so it was considerably harder with Crime in addition to Thrillers than with other sorte, even though you would have a larger likely target market.
Sorry if this looks complicated. It makes sense if you find yourself setting up your Kindle e-book. When choosing a category, you are given a list of possibilities. When you choose fiction, non-fiction, etcetera, you are given all the subcategories. Click on them to find the subcategories of subcategories. When prospective leads look for books on The amazon online marketplace, they search for fiction/nonfiction and then are offered subcategories. The amazon online marketplace has one of the best strategies for helping buyers search for guides in their favorite genres.
The next thing we took was to have a Zynga event for the launch with the giveaway (and we, in addition, had a Facebook affair for the final day), having links to the book with Amazon sites and a remembrance that people don’t need a The amazon kindle. They can download the no-cost Kindle reading app from Amazon. It’s also essential to let people know they have to use The amazon online marketplace site for their land, or many get perplexed that they can’t see the give if they click on a link to the wrong site. You ought to build a giant Facebook set for an event to help purchase a giveaway, and you should be patient as many people want their hands and fingers to be held. The sharper your messages, the better the pick-up rate of the special offer will be, and the fewer desires for help you will get.
We all then sent a message to be able to nearly 500 members of the Written Word social network and also noticed about a couple of 000 writers and publication lovers in the virtual associated with Second Life. People in Second Life are very encouraging and interested in new systems, including the latest experiments together with ebooks, and the two blog writers who helped by talking about the giveaway were the two from there. So it can help to be engaged in various social networks for freelance writers to build more of a following or perhaps a contacts list.
For the next giveaway, we added Goodreads to the social networks for freelance writers and readers we applied. If you join several organizations on Goodreads you will find that every group has one discussion board to allow author/publisher promotions, and you may put news of a free item in those. It made a difference in our second moment when downloads began to slow down. At that point, the guide was nearly in the top rated 100 ranking for all textbooks on Kindle but not rather.
You can also Google websites that let you list free Kindle keyboards or touch books, and you will find several of the good ones stated. Some of these sites will encourage your giveaway but look closely at these people, as some want you to notify them a month ahead of time.
You can also list your freebie in a daily thread within the Kindle forums for your nation’s Amazon website. Such people put all the unique gifts in the same thread every day, and this does additionally help keep the thread becoming bumped into first place within the forum as new articles are added.
By placing the notices on Goodreads and getting some support through two bloggers in the UK and the US, we managed to get our book into the top one hundred ranking for all Kindle textbooks on Amazon UK. As soon as the book was in this top-rated 100, the downloads did start to roll in every second, at which I think we can say the idea went viral.
Another technique that helped us ended up being that the giveaway was on the Hot UK Deals website. We didn’t list this kind of ourselves: somebody found to consent to and listed it there, and I was told over it. It’s essential not to use this website to self-promote in any way that isn’t permitted, and the website lets members list discounted prices they find, and others may rate the deal as very hot or cold. The site abounds with beautiful freebies and discount rates, so it’s trendy, and our book took off as a ‘hot’ deal due to member voting. I’m sure this has helped since the offer stayed on the ‘Hot’ page for about a week. Ultimately thousands of views. I for this offer in every way I can (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) while being careful because self-promotion can lead to the provider being taken down, so you need to ensure not to cross that collection.
When you post news of your books on Goodreads and other forums, it’s worth keeping track of how many views your posts obtain. Some groups on Goodreads are larger and more lively than others. The main answer we get is from a diverse and viral website – Kindle keyboard or touch Boards – but if you rely on them, be sure to employ their Book Bazaar online community, as self-promotion isn’t authorized anywhere else. The Mobile States forum is also good, but it’s vital only to post precisely where author self-promotions are authorized, as the admins of these websites rapidly remove men and women otherwise.
You do need to be able to put time and effort into the primary promotion so that a reserve can go viral, and I get it’s best to have a 5-day free item, the maximum Amazon allows in the season. This gives enough time to increase the rankings, and as several books are on shorter gifts, they will vanish from above anyone. Of course, you must preserve a high number of downloads every day to maintain your position. Groups on LinkedIn provide an extra area where you can participate in discussions about ebooks and your giveaway or even promotion.
The more of these methods you can use the first time, the more chance you have of having a high ranking and heading viral, so the book begins to do the work itself. From the lot to do on your own, careful planning and others invested in doing various tasks might help. But for most of us, it is a go-it-alone process or even an author-and-publisher process.
Writers can help by building a good e-mail circular list, which can function even for authors who aren’t good at being self-promotional. Your email list can be essential, especially if you are a writer, as you can encourage friends and family to aid you. Sharing the actual giveaway on their Facebook walls, tweeting about it, or talking about it on a blog, can make a significant contribution.
Viewing the book getting greater did get people enthusiastic about helping. Sometimes, being granted a book encourages reducing weight and enjoying the fun of this challenging task and the thrill as a reserve moves up to the top hundred. People who have received the free item can feel a commitment to you to help the book have great results if you rally them to your side.
One final hint I would give is that experts need to ask people to assist with a blog or a talk on Facebook and Bebo, and so on, and I do the similar on their behalf. We do have to not nag and spam men and women, so I don’t push any individual. But it seems to support given unless you ask. You need to be invited to take ebooks, buy books, and help with a blog. Although you may ask, you’re unlikely to obtain more than a few shares, retweets, and just a few websites. But they can make that big difference and push your way up into a ranking that helps go viral.
Read also: 5 Reasons Why Link Swapping Is usually Killing Your Website