# My roll-your-own-mini-Bookbub FREE promo [4 WEEK REPORT]



## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

{Gone}


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## truc (Apr 2, 2015)

Sounds exciting! Can't wait to see your results!


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## FelissaEly (Jan 15, 2017)

I love these types of posts, I find the information fascinating, bookmarked and wishing you luck! (By the way I don't know if I glazed over it but what day is the promo running?)


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

I've been thinking about this too. I'm interested in your results. Good luck!


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## BWFoster78 (Jun 18, 2015)

Pauline,

Best of luck to you! That does sound like fun.

Why no bknights?

Brian


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

FelissaEly said:


> (By the way I don't know if I glazed over it but what day is the promo running?)


It's in the title! Tomorrow, 18th Jan.


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## FelissaEly (Jan 15, 2017)

PaulineMRoss said:


> It's in the title! Tomorrow, 18th Jan.


Oops! Of course I missed it  because it was obvious /facepalm

Thank you


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

BWFoster78 said:


> Why no bknights?


Bknights is an undifferentiated list, no genre categories. It means the also-boughts tend to get swamped with cookery books, paleo-diets and other less than helpful stuff. That can happen with any promo site, but it's less likely where the list is categorised.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

I'm looking forward to your results. Like you, BookBub doesn't acknowledge my existence. In fact, they've gotten tired of rejecting me and didn't bother to answer my last submission. At least you got an ENT. I think they've got me on autoreject. It only takes 15 minutes to get their letter.


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

I love this! Thank you and good luck, Pauline!


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

PaulineMRoss said:


> Bknights is an undifferentiated list, no genre categories. It means the also-boughts tend to get swamped with cookery books, paleo-diets and other less than helpful stuff. That can happen with any promo site, but it's less likely where the list is categorised.


If you're expecting 10000s of downloads from the other sites, I dont think a 5 dollar bknights will affect the also-bought list very much. But of course, your choice.


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## Berries (Feb 5, 2015)

Go girl! Love the "build your own Bookbub" idea! Bookmarked.


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

Best of luck! I always love data posts like this. I used several of the sites you mentioned in my own launch a few days ago. I did use BKnights, though. I'd always avoided it for the reason you stated above, but with so many ads booked spread out over 5 days, I suspected it wouldn't impact my ABs. Thankfully, I was right. With a one day promo, you're probably smart to avoid them. 

Hope you sell a bunch!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

AsianInspiration said:


> If you're expecting 10000s of downloads from the other sites, I dont think a 5 dollar bknights will affect the also-bought list very much. But of course, your choice.


No, it probably wouldn't. When I first started promoting, about two years ago, Bknights was always on my list, but gradually there seemed to be more and more books on the email every day, and results declined too, so I dropped them from my list of regulars.


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## MTM (Aug 9, 2011)

I'm rooting big for you! I'll be doing something similar in the near future. I wish great success for you.


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Pauline Thanks for submitting your book. I can confirm that you are good to go on Awesomegang. Dang confirmation emails are going to be the death of me. I will line up some extra social media love also. If you (or anyone else) ever needs to confirm I am only an email away. vinny(at)Awesomegang.com


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Vinny OHare said:


> Pauline Thanks for submitting your book. I can confirm that you are good to go on Awesomegang. Dang confirmation emails are going to be the death of me. I will line up some extra social media love also. If you (or anyone else) ever needs to confirm I am only an email away. vinny(at)Awesomegang.com


Vinny, I don't think I've ever had a confirmation email from you, but I don't fret about it. I know it'll be fine.  And thank you for the extra social media - you are (as always) a star!


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

I did notice on your submission that your link to amazon wasn't using https I am guessing you are copying and pasting from somewhere you saved on your computer? You may want to update that even though Amazon redirects it. 

The confirmation email should go out as soon as you submit. It seriously causes me sleep time lol.


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## Joynell Schultz (Oct 29, 2016)

Will your book be free during this promo?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Joynell Schultz said:


> Will your book be free during this promo?


Yes - I should have made that clearer in the original post.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Vinny OHare said:


> I did notice on your submission that your link to amazon wasn't using https I am guessing you are copying and pasting from somewhere you saved on your computer? You may want to update that even though Amazon redirects it.


THANK YOU! Never noticed that. Yes, I keep the links in a file for convenience. I'll get those updated.



> The confirmation email should go out as soon as you submit. It seriously causes me sleep time lol.


I don't think I've ever had the confirmation email.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Ooh, good luck! Looking forward to seeing your results.


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## Joseph J Bailey (Jun 28, 2013)

Wishing you much BookBubesque magic!


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## NoLongerPosting (Apr 5, 2014)

Removed due to site owner's change to TOS.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

So the first worry is averted - the book has gone free on time. Phew! Next worry - did I give all those promo sites the right links to the right book Or is it just me that worries about making a complete hash of this stuff?


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## Longtime Lurker (Sep 14, 2016)

Good luck! Hope you manage to get great returns!


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

Good luck today, Pauline!


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## B.A. Spangler (Jan 25, 2012)

Good luck!


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Pauline your link is working just fine here  Take a deep breath and go have a cup of coffee. 

Seriously though. I don't think many authors know that Amazon makes the switch to free books sometimes 2 hours after midnight on the West Coast. We use to have our books go up on the site at midnight and I got so many complaints from readers looking for discounted books. We switched ours to start at 1am Pacific and drip out. Of course now we get a few emails from authors 1 minute after midnight asking why their book isn't up yet.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Vinny OHare said:


> Pauline your link is working just fine here  Take a deep breath and go have a cup of coffee.


LOL! Thank you, Vinny.



> Seriously though. I don't think many authors know that Amazon makes the switch to free books sometimes 2 hours after midnight on the West Coast.


Yeah, I've had one or two in the past that took over an hour to switch. It's nerve-shredding when you have promo hanging on it. This one seems to be working fine, though. I've got over 400 downloads already, and the rank is inside the top 1,000 free.

Thanks for all the good wishes, folks. I'll keep updating through the day.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Zuri Amarcya said:


> Don't worry, it's all fine. I've seen it on a few emails already. Downloaded a copy too as it looks great  Good luck!


Thank you!

Up to 752 downloads already.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

And half an hour later, we're past the first thousand - 1,044 downloads, and rank is #497 free.


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## Adair Hart (Jun 12, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> And half an hour later, we're past the first thousand - 1,044 downloads, and rank is #497 free.


Posting to follow. Good luck for the rest of today!


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## T E Scott Writer (Jul 27, 2016)

Best of luck, I live reading promo threads. I've picked up a copy in the uk store - every little helps.

By the way I see you're in the highlands, I grew up in dingwall!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

T E Scott Writer said:


> Best of luck, I live reading promo threads. I've picked up a copy in the uk store - every little helps.
> By the way I see you're in the highlands, I grew up in dingwall!


Thanks! I only moved up here a few years ago, but I love it up here - yes, even the winters!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

While I was putting a casserole in the oven, downloads shot past the 2K mark - now 2,416, and the rank has walloped up to #53 free.


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

And its only 11am on the Pacific coast. Still have a 1/2 day almost.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Good luck!


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Good luck Pauline! I'm really rooting for you.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Currently at 3,697 downloads and #46 rank in the free list.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

I downloaded the free one and bought one of the others, so you can scratch those off your ad results and add them to your Kboards results.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> I downloaded the free one and bought one of the others, so you can scratch those off your ad results and add them to your Kboards results.


Lol! Thank you!

Currently 3,832 downloads, rank #32 (which is now officially my best ever free rank).


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## Aderyn Wood (Feb 2, 2013)

When I logged on this morning to see how my own book promo was doing I saw that yours had skyrocketed up the charts. This is very interesting, Pauline. Thanks so much for sharing!


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## Aderyn Wood (Feb 2, 2013)

One question I have is (when the day is over and all your results are in) would you consider doing the full 5 day promo next time? Is it cost that made up your mind to stick to one day only?


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## Robert Fluegel (Nov 8, 2012)

Good luck! I hope you get to #1!


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## Cactus Lady (Jun 4, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> Lol! Thank you!
> 
> Currently 3,832 downloads, rank #32 (which is now officially my best ever free rank).


awesome, congratulations! If I didn't already have the book, I would download it too.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Aderyn Wood said:


> One question I have is (when the day is over and all your results are in) would you consider doing the full 5 day promo next time? Is it cost that made up your mind to stick to one day only?


The only reason for loading everything onto one day was to get the 'Bookbub effect' of a single giant spike. It's an experiment, basically, just to see what happens, because I've never had (and probably never will have) a real Bookbub.

I had a 5-day free promo last October and it worked very well. I had one promo site per day (FKBT, OHFB, FreeBooksy, RobinReads and BookBarbarian), got 4,200 downloads over the 5 days, and had a nice tail that lasted for a month or so (both sales and pages read). Not enormous numbers, but a nice bump. That cost $250. So I can recommend the 5-day free promo.


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

PaulineMRoss said:


> So the first worry is averted - the book has gone free on time. Phew! Next worry - did I give all those promo sites the right links to the right book Or is it just me that worries about making a complete hash of this stuff?


I hope you "crush it" Pauline. I love these threads so thanks for starting one.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Now at 4,223 and #31 free rank. Officially my best ever free day, both in number of downloads and rank.  

The bad news is that it doesn't look likely to make the 10K I was hoping for. Maybe 7K, if I'm lucky. Which is still a good tally.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Still climbing at #28. How's it going? I'm in revision hell and this is my entertainment for the day.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

JaclynDolamore said:


> Still climbing at #28. How's it going? I'm in revision hell and this is my entertainment for the day.


I didn't realise I was light relief for the editing breaks! Glad to be of service. 

Currently at 4897. I'm hoping it will inch across the 5000 line before I hit midnight in 10 minutes.

ETA: Made it! 5,028 downloads on the clock, and still some 8 hours or so to go, although numbers will start to tail off soon. At the moment, though, I'm still getting 400 or so downloads per hour. Rank is #28 free. I've also sold 29 copies of The Fire Mages at 99c, and 7 copies of The Second God at $2.99. I'm off to bed, but will report in first thing with final numbers.


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## renamed (Nov 27, 2015)

I just one-clicked. You're at #27 now in Free.

I'm doing a promo starting tomorrow. I'm in the same boat as you--probably won't ever get a BookBub (not enough reviews + exclusive to Amazon). The promos I booked are spread between 4 days though.

Jan 19 booksends/ereaderiq, digitalbooktoday
Jan 20 ebookshabit, freebooksy, ereadernewstoday
Jan 21 bookbarbarian
Jan 22 dailyfreebooks

I also have readcheaply and readfree.ly submitted for 1/19-1/23 (but neither are guaranteed), and freediscountedbooks for all 4 days.

I've checked my KDP promo days over and over to the point of insanity to make sure they're correct. Moment of truth will be tomorrow when I wake up and check to see if it's free. LOL

I hope you get some great reviews out of this as well as tons of purchases as readers move through your other books!!


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

#25 now! And *I* am still revising. =D I also downloaded one myself because I'm taking a bit of a reading break when this is over...


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## Julz (Oct 30, 2014)

Congratulations Pauline!! I think you definitely created your own bookbub!! It's down to #24 as of seven pm Hawaii time. Amazing!!!


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## Berries (Feb 5, 2015)

#24 PST as of 9:21 PM! Well done, girl!!! This has been fun to watch all day.


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## Julz (Oct 30, 2014)

#22!!! I took a screenshot but am awful with these kinds of things and can't get the dang picture to upload  But Congratulations!!!


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Just sent another social media blast. Doubt it will get you above 22 in the store but it can't hurt.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Vinny OHare said:


> Just sent another social media blast. Doubt it will get you above 22 in the store but it can't hurt.


Thanks, Vinny, and thanks everyone who downloaded and rank-watched while I slept. 

Still at #22, which is amazingly cool considering that the top 20 places are usually Bookbub lock-outs. So that makes me second-best of the rest! Total downloads so far: 6764, and still trickling in, and 49 sales of other books in the series.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Kay Camden said:


> I've checked my KDP promo days over and over to the point of insanity to make sure they're correct. Moment of truth will be tomorrow when I wake up and check to see if it's free. LOL


Yeah, it's nervewracking! Good luck with your promo - hope it goes really well for you.


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

Looks like mini-BBs are the way to go. YAY!  I used to be a BB darling but now they hates me.    Ah well, life, and BB, are fickle. 
Congrats, Pauline!


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## Joynell Schultz (Oct 29, 2016)

PaulineMRoss said:


> *The promos:*
> AwesomeGang $10 (not confirmed)
> BookBasset: $7.99 (not confirmed)
> Booksends: $50 + $25 for EReaderIQ
> ...


I'm sure the answer to this is "No," but any idea which of these promo sites were/are the most effective? I'm especially interested if booksends/ereaderIQ, OHFB, Robin Reads, freebooksy are worth it, since they have the highest price tag.


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## PermaStudent (Apr 21, 2015)

Congrats on a successful promo, Pauline! May your tail be long and your conversion rate high.  


Joynell Schultz said:


> I'm sure the answer to this is "No," but any idea which of these promo sites were/are the most effective? I'm especially interested if booksends/ereaderIQ, OHFB, Robin Reads, freebooksy are worth it, since they have the highest price tag.


I did a freebooksy alone not too long ago, and got around 2,500 downloads on the first day. Sell through on the series was worth the price.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Joynell Schultz said:


> I'm sure the answer to this is "No," but any idea which of these promo sites were/are the most effective? I'm especially interested if booksends/ereaderIQ, OHFB, Robin Reads, freebooksy are worth it, since they have the highest price tag.


Not for this promo, no, but here are my recent results where I used a single site per day (over the last 6 months):

R=romance; F=fantasy
FreeBooksy: 3244 R; 2593 R; 1348 F; 972 F; 3081 R; 4015 F; 1492 R; 1355 F
OHFB: 1982 R; 522 F
RobinReads: 1282 F
Booksends (for 99c promo): 54 sales R
BargainBooksy (for 99c promo): 48 sales R

For fantasy, I'd also recommend BookBarbarian. Not sure how much you can tell from the raw numbers. Generally the Regency romances do noticeably better than the fantasies, but the highest FreeBooksy result (4015) was a fantasy - the one with the word 'dragon' in the title.  Also the high OHFB result (1982) came the day after a FreeBooksy, so may have benefitted from the second-day bounce there.

For me, FreeBooksy is always good, RobinReads/BargainBooksy/Booksends are good too, OHFB is getting borderline, especially considering the price.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

*FINAL RESULTS:*

Downloads: 6803
Best free rank: #22
Return paid rank: #9546
Sales of other books in series: 46 
Pages read (all books in series): 8304

*Day after promo:*

Sales of promo'd book: 86
Sales of other books in series: 6
Best paid rank: #2657
Pages read (all books in series): 9093

*Analysis:*

So I didn't make my hoped-for 10K downloads but (almost) 7K is still pretty good. Most likely part of the reason for falling short of expectations was that I hadn't allowed for the possibility of readers getting multiple emails. I'd assumed that if promo site A might bring in 1000 downloads on its own, and promo site B might be good for 500, that A+B on the same day would be good for 1500. But if there's a lot of overlap, that's really not going to work. I got an inkling of that when someone way upthread said they'd seen the book in several emails. Uh oh! But never mind. 7K is still a whole heap of copies to shift, and I had an awesomely fun day watching that green line shoot up. 

Sell-through tends not to be immediate with my fantasy books. It can take a steady reader a week to get through one, so I'm hoping to see a modest rise in sales and pages read over time. I'll report back on that.

Also-boughts and poplist rankings haven't updated yet, but I'll report back on those too, whenever they happen.

Thanks again to everyone who posted good wishes, or downloaded, or rank-watched while I was asleep - much appreciated!


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

The real affect won't show up for a few days. Page reads are going to lag and come in over the next ten days, so you should be able to gauge the full effect of the promo then. Thanks for letting us watch!


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

I need to go back upthread and see what your cost was for the whole promo, but congrats on your success! I think it was a great experiment. I'll also be interested in hearing about the tail if you remember to update us. Great job, Pauline!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Donna White Glaser said:


> I need to go back upthread and see what your cost was for the whole promo, but congrats on your success! I think it was a great experiment. I'll also be interested in hearing about the tail if you remember to update us. Great job, Pauline!


Thanks! It was $474. And, by way of contrast, a Bookbub for this book would have cost $287, with an average of 33,700 downloads for fantasy.  So I paid almost twice as much for a fifth of the downloads. This right here is why people would kill for a Bookbub.


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

Sad, but very true.


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## mmandolin (Oct 16, 2014)

Thanks as always for the info, Pauline!  

I'm curious, what was your reasoning for not extending the free promo into a second day? I usually find you get a large amount of free downloads after a big 1 day free push like this. Do you think you get more subsequent paid sales by having just one huge free day?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

mmandolin said:


> I'm curious, what was your reasoning for not extending the free promo into a second day? I usually find you get a large amount of free downloads after a big 1 day free push like this. Do you think you get more subsequent paid sales by having just one huge free day?


For this particular promo, I was trying to simulate (in a small way!) the massive one-day spike from a Bookbub, so I wasn't much concerned with what happened afterwards. In the past, I've found that having an extra free day but without any paid promo dilutes the effectiveness of the promo overall. Because I was using all my favourite sites on the one day, there was nothing left over to prop up a second day, so I decided to stick with a one-day blast.

On the other hand, 5 free days with promo on every day seems to work very well; I tried that in October and got a nice tail from it.


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## mmandolin (Oct 16, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> In the past, I've found that having an extra free day but without any paid promo dilutes the effectiveness of the promo overall. Because I was using all my favourite sites on the one day, there was nothing left over to prop up a second day, so I decided to stick with a one-day blast.


Interesting. Thanks!


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Congrats! Pauline. You're so brave. I've always thought that it's best for authors to not put too much hope in Bookbub. You're a real inspiration.


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## Nicholas Erik (Sep 22, 2015)

mmandolin said:


> Thanks as always for the info, Pauline!
> 
> I'm curious, what was your reasoning for not extending the free promo into a second day? I usually find you get a large amount of free downloads after a big 1 day free push like this. Do you think you get more subsequent paid sales by having just one huge free day?


Not Pauline, but if you backload all your heavy hitters (or just do a one day spike), the next day, when it goes back to paid, you generally sell a lot of units (as seen by Pauline's 86 sales). This is because people from the previous day's emails click through + borrow via KU/buy, and also because sometimes Amazon doesn't revert you to the paid list super quick (so you get some visibility by being #1 or high in your sub-cat's free list).

So yeah, you definitely get a nice pop but you sacrifice some spillover downloads on Day 2. With nothing scheduled, you're probably looking at 25% - 50% of the previous day's haul. On something like a BookBub, that's pretty substantial (like 5 - 10k+ units), so generally worth leaving it free and for the full 5 days. Otherwise, it depends on your goals. I like the next day spike a lot, because it helps pay for a big free outlay.

Nick


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## mmandolin (Oct 16, 2014)

Nicholas Erik said:


> So yeah, you definitely get a nice pop but you sacrifice some spillover downloads on Day 2. With nothing scheduled, you're probably looking at 25% - 50% of the previous day's haul. On something like a BookBub, that's pretty substantially (like 5 - 10k+ units), so generally worth leaving it free and for the full 5 days. Otherwise, it depends on your goals. I like the next day spike a lot, because it helps pay for a big free outlay.


Thanks Nick!


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

Congratulations, Pauline! I was watching this thread with interest, because I've sort of lined up my own DIY mini-Bookbub for a relaunch I have coming up at the end of this month. I've been flatlining for a while now, and I'm hoping to rejuvenate things. The relaunch is for my most successful title, in advance of a sequel coming out a few weeks later. I might post my own thread for it to show relative newbies results.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

nikkykaye said:


> Congratulations, Pauline! I was watching this thread with interest, because I've sort of lined up my own DIY mini-Bookbub for a relaunch I have coming up at the end of this month. I've been flatlining for a while now, and I'm hoping to rejuvenate things. The relaunch is for my most successful title, in advance of a sequel coming out a few weeks later. I might post my own thread for it to show relative newbies results.


Good luck with it! And yes, absolutely post a thread about it. It's all useful information, and I think detailing exactly what you did and what the results were can encourage people to have a go at something similar, or a variation of their own. And (as I've proved many times in the past!) what doesn't work can be just as informative as what does.


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## jasonbladd (Dec 22, 2015)

what a great stack! I hope you'll share your final results on Indielisters to make them even more visible to authors.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

A further update: the also-boughts have now shifted, so instead of 98 mostly epic fantasy ABs, with a sprinkle of UF, and all my own books right up front, I've now got 90 ABs, only 2 of them my own books. Here's the breakdown:

Fantasy of all incarnations: 33
UF/Paranormal/Witchy stuff: 24
SF/Post-apoc: 11
Thrillers: 10
Romance: 4
Non-fic: 4 (just 1 cookery book!)
Cozies: 2
Western: 1
Kids: 1

Or by percentages:

Fantasy: 36%
UF: 26%
Thrillers: 12%
Other: 26%

I'm not too unhappy with this - I've seen a lot worse! Obviously, the ABs showing on my own book don't have much impact on sales, it's the books that have my book in their ABs that matter, but I don't have any way to get that information. For an older book like this one, I don't think it hurts to mix up the also-boughts from time to time anyway.

The poplists have also updated now, and Fire Mages' Daughter has now jumped from around 200 in its best sub-genre to #8, rubbing shoulders with Jeff Wheeler and Ava Richardson, which won't do it any harm at all.

I'll update again at about the 1 week mark, with news on the tail - if any!


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

I'm hoping to get a BB for my current book about the time I release the sequel the end of Feb., but this looks like a good alternative. Thank you for sharing.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> I'm hoping to get a BB for my current book about the time I release the sequel the end of Feb., but this looks like a good alternative. Thank you for sharing.


Good luck with both BB and the sequel!


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## Nicholas Erik (Sep 22, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> I'm not too unhappy with this - I've seen a lot worse! Obviously, the ABs showing on my own book don't have much impact on sales, it's the books that have my book in their ABs that matter, but I don't have any way to get that information.


yasiv.com will show you this information.

e.g., for the Fire Mage's Daughter: http://www.yasiv.com/#/Search?q=B016SCZJ54&category=All&lang=US

Arrows pointing to your book have it in their also-boughts; arrows pointing away from your book mean that book is in your also-boughts. Kind of a cool visualization tool. It also displays the # of books pointing to yours; in the Fire Mage's Daughters' case, it's 9. I don't know how accurate that is (and whether it's first page only).

ETA: I'm assuming it's Page 1 also-boughts, since I ran one of my books through and I know it appears on Page 2 etc. of a couple books that were released around the same time. But it only displays a score of 1 - which is for the sequel.

Nick


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Nicholas Erik said:


> yasiv.com will show you this information.


Thanks! I've never found yasiv to be particularly helpful, since it usually shows no incoming at all, apart from my own books! Yet I'm sure my books must be on _some_ ABs somewhere. But if it's just Page 1s, that would account for it.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

One week report: some numbers for the promo day plus the 6 days following:

Sales of promo'd book: 109 (previous week 12)
Pages read for promo'd book: 25K (previous week 12K)
Sales of other books in series: 79 (previous week 41)
Pages read for other books in series: 45K (previous week 41K)
Revenue: $715 (previous week $390; assuming page read value of 0.004
ROI to date: $325 (68% of promo cost)

All the books went back to their normal price of $4.99 three days after the promo. The rank of the promo'd book, which peaked at around 2K the day after, then slid to around 12K, stabilised when the poplists changed and the book was ranked in the top ten for all its sub-genres. Since then, it's climbed back to 5K and pages read have climbed, too, peaking at over 8K yesterday (previously 2K was a good day).

As you can see, I've made roughly 68% of my costs back, but I expect to have a positive ROI within the next couple of days. Sell-through hasn't been dramatic, but all these books are long and it takes a while for people to get through one and decide to buy another. I'm really pleased with the way it's gone so far, and even my screwy also-boughts aren't as bad as they could have been.

I'll report again in another week. Maybe the end of the tail will be in sight by then?


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## whatdanwrote (Oct 18, 2012)

Thanks for your reports, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on if there were further sell throughs.

Also, would you stick to all in one day, or spread it out?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

whatdanwrote said:


> Thanks for your reports, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on if there were further sell throughs.
> Also, would you stick to all in one day, or spread it out?


Sell-throughs are definitely ongoing! Also, the page read took a sudden upward jump, so I've made a handy profit this second week post-promo. Full report in a couple of days.

The one day promo certainly achieved what I was aiming for - a Bookbub simulation (albeit much smaller, of course - nothing else quite achieves Bookbub numbers). As to whether a 1-day or 5-day free promo is better - some say that spreading things out tickles the algos better, and for a paid promo there's no doubt that's true. Steady sales, and preferably increasing, works better than a sharp spike. But for free? In my opinion, the objective (other than drawing in new readers, of course) is to rocket the book up the poplists so that it gets more visibility in the search lists, especially the KU lists, and for that, it's the overall number of downloads that matters (since 10 free downloads counts as 1 sale for the poplists). So my view is that it doesn't matter whether the downloads come in a single spike or spreadover several days.

ETA: My 5-day free promo last October had a tail that lasted 6 weeks, and this one is running at a higher level, so I'm optimistic. But only time will tell.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Awesome info. I will probably duplicate this at some point!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

JaclynDolamore said:


> Awesome info. I will probably duplicate this at some point!


It was great fun, so I can recommend it on that basis alone.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Two weeks after the promo and I'm in profit - yay!

This second week has been interesting. Sales of all the books dropped quite a lot, probably since everything was now back to its pre-promo price of $4.99, but pages read shot up, not just for the promo'd book, but for the rest of the series too. Since the books are long (KENP varies from 520 to 1100), this meant I made more in this second week than in week immediately after the promo. The promo'd book is still well-placed in the poplists, so I'm expecting the tail to last at least a month, with luck and a following wind. The also-boughts are still all over the place, but that doesn't seem to be a problem. Details, for the two people still following along: 

*2nd week report *

Sales of promo'd book: 25 (previous week 109)
Pages read for promo'd book: 51K (previous week 25K)
Rank: 5-8K (Author Central rank)
Sales of other books in series: 21 (previous week 79)
Pages read for other books in series: 88K (previous week 45K)
Revenue: $830 (previous week $715; assuming page read value of 0.004
ROI to date: $765 (161% of promo cost)


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Thank you so much for the update! I'm glad the promo produced positive ROI.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

I had hoped to get a BookBub for my first book around the time I release the second the end of this month. Struck out again. May do something like this instead. Thanks for playing guinea pig.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> I had hoped to get a BookBub for my first book around the time I release the second the end of this month. Struck out again. May do something like this instead. Thanks for playing guinea pig.


It's getting harder and harder to get a BookBub, unless you're wide or trad published or a box set. I used to think that if only I got enough reviews... but that's not enough any more. So we have to be a bit creative.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

PaulineMRoss said:


> It's getting harder and harder to get a BookBub, unless you're wide or trad published or a box set. I used to think that if only I got enough reviews... but that's not enough any more. So we have to be a bit creative.


I figured being in the top 2,500, hitting a top-100 main list, 5 top-100 sub-genre lists, and two top-20 sub-genre lists would do it. No dice. "We don't think our subscribers would like your book." Bitter? Not me.

We talk about gatekeepers. BB is probably the biggest one in the indie world.


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## whatdanwrote (Oct 18, 2012)

Thanks for keeping up with this post, it's really helpful. I'm sort of planning the same thing, so ... it will be interesting to see how it goes. I'm glad you made a good return on your investment. I imagine it will continue for a while, too, because it's more readers with eyes on your books.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

whatdanwrote said:


> Thanks for keeping up with this post, it's really helpful. I'm sort of planning the same thing, so ... it will be interesting to see how it goes. I'm glad you made a good return on your investment. I imagine it will continue for a while, too, because it's more readers with eyes on your books.


Yes, the tail is still rolling along. I actually had my best day ever (in terms of revenue) this week outside of a promo or a pre-order hitting, and although that was helped by a new Regency release, the bulk of it was pages read on the fantasies (approx 2-3 times the pre-promo level). ROI is now past the 200% mark, so I can safely declare the experiment a success. 

Good luck with your own promo.


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## KReadnour (Jul 8, 2014)

I haven't been on Kboards for awhile. Glad to see a familiar name still doing well! Awesome results. Congrats!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

3 week update:

The tail continues, with numbers gradually declining, although, bizarrely, sales of the other books in the series are up by quite a margin. Not sure whether that's good sell-through, or a flukey cluster of sales (I sometimes get days where some lovely person has clearly bought the entire series at once).

The promo is well into profit now. The initial cost was $474, and after 3 weeks I've made additional revenue of $1107 over the pre-promo levels, so I've made more than twice what I spent. I'll keep reporting until sales and pages read drop to pre-promo levels, or I have another promo, whichever comes first.

The details for this week, for numbers wonks like me:

Sales of promo'd book: 20 (previous week 25)
Pages read for promo'd book: 45K (previous week 51K)
Rank: 8K-13K and sinking fast!
Sales of other books in series: 35 (previous week 21)
Pages read for other books in series: 82K (previous week 88K)
Revenue: $802 (previous week $830; assuming page read value of 0.004
ROI to date: $1107 (248% of promo cost)


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

This is so heartening to hear! Really happy for you, Pauline!


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

PaulineMRoss said:


> 3 week update:
> 
> The tail continues, with numbers gradually declining, although, bizarrely, sales of the other books in the series are up by quite a margin. Not sure whether that's good sell-through, or a flukey cluster of sales (I sometimes get days where some lovely person has clearly bought the entire series at once).


I had a new release in Dec. that did spectacularly. The biggest surprise, though, was what it did to my old series. A total of $58 the week before the release. Those same books hauled in $2,300 in January and over $500 this week.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> I had a new release in Dec. that did spectacularly. The biggest surprise, though, was what it did to my old series. A total of $58 the week before the release. Those same books hauled in $2,300 in January and over $500 this week.


That's fantastic! I've seen this happen to other people, and it's quite awesome to watch an unloved or moribund series suddenly shoot up the rankings like a spring chicken.


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## amiblackwelder (Mar 19, 2010)

brkingsolver said:
 

> I'm looking forward to your results. Like you, BookBub doesn't acknowledge my existence. In fact, they've gotten tired of rejecting me and didn't bother to answer my last submission. At least you got an ENT. I think they've got me on autoreject. It only takes 15 minutes to get their letter.


Same here.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

A 4-week update, for anyone still following along. And the tail goes on, although, not surprisingly, declining somewhat. The promoted book is dropping almost to pre-promo levels of sales/page reads, even though rank is still not bad, but the rest of the books are still burbling along nicely. The promo is handily into profit now - ROI is over 3 times the promo cost. This is the value of a long backlist, folks - all that juicy sell-through.

Since I have a long gap between releases (those Regencies take time out of my fantasy-writing schedule), I've put the three fire mages books into a box set which will inevitably eat into sales/borrows for those books. Because of this muddying of the waters, I won't post any more updates. But I think I've demonstrated that this kind of promo can be very effective - and profitable!

The numbers for the fourth week:

Sales of promo'd book: 8 (previous week 20)
Pages read for promo'd book: 30K (previous week 45K)
Rank: 13-20K
Sales of other books in series: 35 (previous week 35)
Pages read for other books in series: 86K (previous week 82K)
Revenue: $713 (previous week $802; assuming page read value of 0.004
ROI to date: $1500 (316% of promo cost)


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

I've set up a week of stacked promos for the release of the second book in a series on March 7. We'll see how it goes. As for back list, the tail off my release in December has my back list revenues at an all time high. As for your box set, the 5-book set of my series accounted for 25% of my revenues last year. Don't think of it as cannibalization. One of the things about a set in KU is you get 100% read through.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> I've set up a week of stacked promos for the release of the second book in a series on March 7. We'll see how it goes. As for back list, the tail off my release in December has my back list revenues at an all time high. As for your box set, the 5-book set of my series accounted for 25% of my revenues last year. Don't think of it as cannibalization. One of the things about a set in KU is you get 100% read through.


Yeah, the box set is just another way for people to read those books. I'd love 100% read through at 2100 KENPC. 

Good luck with your stacked promos next month.


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## AllyD (Feb 3, 2017)

Thank you for all the information, that's good to know!


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## Salvador Mercer (Jan 1, 2015)

Love your updates, Pauline. Hope your ROI hits 500%.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Salvador Mercer said:


> Love your updates, Pauline. Hope your ROI hits 500%.


Oh, that would be nice!


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