# Promo Thread: Resurrecting a dead book from the grave - Final Results



## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

We published _The Witching Elm_ in December. Total earnings are... well I'm not really good with accounting but I'm gonna guess $1500. Almost breaking even.

And now we're publishing book 2.

*The good news:* I feel good about our covers, and we've got a lot of great reviews. It helped to cultivate relationships with bloggers, develop an ARC list using giveaways, and to use goodreads review groups.

*The bad:* 
-Our mailing list is small.
-We're in tough categories. 
-Without ads, we sell about.. 0 books per day.

So the big question is:
_With Halloween is drawing near, can we reanimate this corpse of a book?_

The goal: promote book one and get some lasting traction on the series.

The starting point:

*Witching Elm Starting Sales Rank: *137,000

*Witch's Feast (book 2) Starting Sales Rank: *41,000 (after release day)

*The lineup*​
10/11: Email to US mailing list: 
*Sales: * 13
*Pages Read: * 95
*Sales Rank: * #23,626

10/12: Booksbutterfly $20 (28 sales to break even)
*Sales: * 15
*Pages Read: * 150
*Sales Rank: * #8,492

10/13: Robin Reads $15 + (Booksbutterfly day 2)  (21 sales to break even) 
*Sales: * 64
*Pages Read: * 866
*Sales Rank: * #3,836

10/14: Bargain Booksy $40 (57 sales to break even)
*Sales: * 53*
*Pages Read: * 1537
*Sales Rank: * #3,040

*these seem like they're still coming in. For simplicity I'll cut them off at this morning but I think bargain booksy is making its money back.

10/15: Pixel of Ink $50 + Booksends; email UK mailing list, put book 2 on sale for one day. (71 sales to break even) 
*Sales: * 154 for book one, 42 for book 2
*Pages Read: * 280
*Sales Rank: * #1,046

10/16: I Love Vampire Novels $75 (107 sales to break even) 
*Sales: * 67 for book one, 10 for book 2
*Pages Read: * 1102
*Sales Rank: * #1,046

10/17: ENT $20 + Bettybookfreak $8 (40 sales to break even)
*Sales: * 60 for book one, 4 for book 2
*Pages Read: * 1687
*Sales Rank: * #1,308

*Predictions *: Robin Reads and ENT will be awesome. POI could be great. Books butterfly and Bargain Booksy will be solid. And I'm not sure about ILVN given the price.








*Best rank: 848*

_Totals:_486 books sold
Book one: 426 sales 
Book two:56 sales

Ending rank: #1,308

*Conclusions: * POI was by far the best! ENT and Robin reads put in a good show. ILVN went well but was expensive.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Best of luck! Which one is it buried under?


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

It's buried under the Salem witch judge to the right there.


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## smikeo (Dec 1, 2014)

Good luck! looks like a great lineup!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Looks like a really great line-up! Good luck!


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Wishing you a successful promotion! Can't wait to see the results.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Day 1 of books butterfly - 15 sales.

Solid, like I thought! But I'm expecting Robin Reads to be better.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Robin Reads is as good as everyone says. There were continued sales from Booksbutterfly this morning, and then since the 12:30 when the RR numbers started coming in, there have been nearly 10 sales per hour.


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## Chris Fox (Oct 3, 2014)

I'm watching with interest. I love your covers, and your subject matter. I can't wait for audio!


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Thanks dude! 

Oh yeah, audio. I should start thinking about that.


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## MMacLeod (Sep 21, 2015)

Well, hey, you just got at least one sale by posting about the book here. Sleepy Hollow and Harry Potter? Sold!


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Thanks Nicole! 

Today is going really well, so I'm excited. 40 sales total (for both books) and the night is still young.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Robin Reads was awesome. 64 sales yesterday. 

Also we were listed on Pixelscroll, though I don't remember applying to them.


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## Ross Harrison (May 5, 2012)

Have you discounted them from and to, if at all? (Amazon.com doesn't always show me the correct prices since I should be using .co.uk). I'm having serious trouble getting actual sales for my book, despite a good free promotion recently, so I'd be very interested to see if this is a viable strategy for me to ste...imitate.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Book one was discounted from 3.99 to $0.99 as part of a US and UK countdown deal. 

What sites did you use to promote it Ross?


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## Ross Harrison (May 5, 2012)

I only used BKNights. I did it once without discounting the book, which was stupid of me. It went so badly that they refunded me. So I then did a couple of free days and did the promotion again, which got me 836 downloads and then...1 sale a day later. It's particularly frustrating because at one point I was up to 80+ sales a month with my first book at full price, and then I made the fatal mistake - I left it to its own devices. Nothing I've done since for any of my books have got me back to that point 

In short, I'd definitely use BKNights again if I do a free promotion, but free promotions don't seem to have any real benefit these days.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

I recommend trying some of these 99c promos to see what happens. I've had modest results from BKNights but not like Robin Reads + books butterfly was yesterday. And ENT is obviously recommended!


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## Ross Harrison (May 5, 2012)

CN_Crawford said:


> I recommend trying some of these 99c promos to see what happens. I've had modest results from BKNights but not like Robin Reads + books butterfly was yesterday. And ENT is obviously recommended!


Yes, BKNights told me they're seeing less and less success with non-free books of any kind, even 99c ones. I think people are getting too used to free books. I will try a 99c/99p promotion at some point when I've got back some of the money I've spent out recently.

Have you tried any Facebook ads for your books? I've tried a couple - one to get visibility for my author page and one to try to get sales for my thriller. The first reached about 36,000 people but got me something like 3 page likes. The second got 85 engagements but not a single sale. Some people seem to have some success with them though.


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## North Star Plotting (Jul 11, 2015)

Great results so far, will be watching the remainder with interest! Thanks for sharing


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Ross Harrison said:


> Yes, BKNights told me they're seeing less and less success with non-free books of any kind, even 99c ones. I think people are getting too used to free books. I will try a 99c/99p promotion at some point when I've got back some of the money I've spent out recently.
> 
> Have you tried any Facebook ads for your books? I've tried a couple - one to get visibility for my author page and one to try to get sales for my thriller. The first reached about 36,000 people but got me something like 3 page likes. The second got 85 engagements but not a single sale. Some people seem to have some success with them though.


Yes we've used Facebook, with mixed results. It helps to have a book that is similar to another book with a huge fanbase. In my case, targeting Mortal Instruments has worked well. I don't know if this guy is a Kboards guy, but I think he's done very well with targeting Twilight fans http://www.amazon.com/They-Who-Fell-Kevin-Kneupper-ebook/dp/B00LHAN0U4

More recently, we've been using FB ads to build a mailing list. Lead Gen is working well for that. Are you in Mark Dawson's group?


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## Steve Vernon (Feb 18, 2011)

I'm watching this closely. I've got two older horror novels that I am putting out in a similar promotional campaign in another week or so. It's good to see that it is working for you.


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## Talbot (Jul 14, 2015)

Gorgeous graveyard!


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## Ross Harrison (May 5, 2012)

CN_Crawford said:


> Yes we've used Facebook, with mixed results. It helps to have a book that is similar to another book with a huge fanbase. In my case, targeting Mortal Instruments has worked well. I don't know if this guy is a Kboards guy, but I think he's done very well with targeting Twilight fans http://www.amazon.com/They-Who-Fell-Kevin-Kneupper-ebook/dp/B00LHAN0U4
> 
> More recently, we've been using FB ads to build a mailing list. Lead Gen is working well for that. Are you in Mark Dawson's group?


Yes, for mine I shamelessly targeted fans of Blade Runner and the Jack Reacher books.

No, I'm not.


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## Awasin (Aug 7, 2015)

Why didn't you put Witch's Feast into the Witches & Wizards category?  Witching Elm is at #2 there and Witch's Feast would be #4 in HNR.


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## TheBehrg (Sep 18, 2015)

While I've tried a few promo sites, I've never done them back to back like you have in your line-up. Making me rethink the potential for marketing ... thanks for sharing and hope it continues to go well!


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Awasin said:


> Why didn't you put Witch's Feast into the Witches & Wizards category? Witching Elm is at #2 there and Witch's Feast would be #4 in HNR.


OK with categories, does it matter if they're in Books vs. Kindles? Witches & Wizards is in "books" only.

I'm honestly never sure what to do about categories. I've worked it out so the books are in a number of categories, but they're hard to rank in.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Ross Harrison said:


> No, I'm not.


It's worth joining to see what's working for everyone, I think.


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## Awasin (Aug 7, 2015)

CN_Crawford said:


> OK with categories, does it matter if they're in Books vs. Kindles? Witches & Wizards is in "books" only.


In your case the simple answer, I would think, is no, it doesn't matter. Your books fit the Witches & Wizards category, and the fact that you can rank highly in it is a plus. Note that even books available only in ebook form are ranked in Books categories.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

It seems I'll need to get the paperback up and running first, because KDP responded:

"We can add categories to your Kindle book, as long as the categories already exist in the Kindle Store. The category path which you requested is only available for physical books. I am sorry that we are unable to add a book category to your Kindle books."


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## Ross Harrison (May 5, 2012)

CN_Crawford said:


> It seems I'll need to get the paperback up and running first, because KDP responded:
> 
> "We can add categories to your Kindle book, as long as the categories already exist in the Kindle Store. The category path which you requested is only available for physical books. I am sorry that we are unable to add a book category to your Kindle books."


Did you give them the path starting with 'Books' rather than 'Kindle Store > Books'?


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## Eva Chase (Aug 8, 2015)

I was told by KDP support that even with a paperback, they _cannot_ add a book to "Books" categories--those are solely propagated by the system's analysis of the book's metadata (or something like that). I've attempted it twice, too. (I wasn't 100% sure I understood their response when I only had the ebook up, but they wouldn't do it after I had the paperback available either.)


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Ross Harrison said:


> Did you give them the path starting with 'Books' rather than 'Kindle Store > Books'?


There is no kindle version of "witches & Wizards", only a books version. The categories are pretty confusing and nonsensical.

Eva that is really weird! Because the only way I got into Witches & Wizards for book one was through an email. Though I do I have those words in the keywords, too.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Bargain booksy is working pretty well! 24 sales so far. 

I'm lumping sales from both books together, since I was selling 0 books before the promo. But it's mostly the promo books selling.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

53 Books yesterday and we got an orange flag!










Bargain booksy sales are still coming in, so I'd say that promo made it's money back. Not as good as Robin Reads because it was twice as much money, but still worth it.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Congrats! That's wonderful!


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## Eva Chase (Aug 8, 2015)

CN_Crawford said:


> Eva that is really weird! Because the only way I got into Witches & Wizards for book one was through an email. Though I do I have those words in the keywords, too.


How odd! How long ago was that? Because for me it was just in the last couple months, and I've seen someone else mention getting a similar response recently. Maybe they'd changed how things work? Did you ask through KDP or Author Central?

Congrats on getting that #1 spot!


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Eva Chase said:


> How odd! How long ago was that? Because for me it was just in the last couple months, and I've seen someone else mention getting a similar response recently. Maybe they'd changed how things work? Did you ask through KDP or Author Central?
> 
> Congrats on getting that #1 spot!


I asked through KDP, and it was in January or February.


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## R. M. Webb (Jul 24, 2014)

Watching with interest and hope for a complete resuscitation. You know I love your covers!


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

I'm confused. We've sold 43 books so far today (for both books), and I don't think the POI email has gone out yet.

This morning we emailed our mailing list that both books were on sale. I would be excited if our mailing list is working that well! 

Or possibly left over sales from Bargain Booksy?

Certainly not complaining!


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Doing great, CN! Hope it snowballs from here!


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Yesterday ended up being incredible. We put book 2 on sale (for the mailing list) and got 196 sales (between both books).
42 for Witch's Feast
154 for Witching Elm

And I know it will be short lived, for for a little while we have one of those author ranks


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

HOORAY FOR AUTHOR RANK!  Nice!!!!

<3


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

Congratz, C and N! Inspiring stuff   And ... dat author rank *drool*


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Woo hoo!


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

Congrats! Your book is N1 in Witches & Wizards!
I like the cover and wanted to buy it but on my end appeared 7.19 (the dreaded VAT and I live in EU). Anyway, well deserved success and thanks for the awesome data!


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Thanks! Yeah I didn't realize until we did the countdown that it's only US and UK.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

67 sales for book one yesterday, and 10 for book 2. Best rank after POI was 848!


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

The Promo week is over--actually sooner than expected because I didn't expect it to go back to full price until tonight! Good thing there are no promos scheduled for today.

*Final tally: *
486 books sold
Book one: 426 sales 
Book two:56 sales

Ending rank: 1300
Best rank: 848

I'm really happy with this. Now let's see how it does at full price!


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## TrishaGrace (May 28, 2014)

Wow! Congrats on the good results! Did you split the promo dates of different sites to track the number of sales you get from each website? That's a pretty awesome idea. 

I usually buy all my ads and promos over a two-day promo in order to get the multiplier effect when it enters certain bestselling list, especially the top 100 free. But then I won't know which are the sites that work and which don't!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Thanks for the running tally. One thing I wonder when someone does stacked promos like this is how to tell exactly which promo caused the sales. I know that I might not open an email today, but read it a day or two later and click on a book that interests me. 

You did a lot better than I did with ILVN, as we discussed, but definitely not worth the price in comparison to the others.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

The idea of getting data on each site definitely appealed to me. 

Usually you want the highest selling date to be at the end, so the book finishes with a bang in the ranks. But I wonder if having the big sales burst in the middle was actually helpful because it gave me visibility for a longer time, meaning the also-boughts are more likely to be relevant and helpful. I would prefer that the also-boughts are high-selling books in the same categories as opposed to also-bought from promo emails only.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> Thanks for the running tally. One thing I wonder when someone does stacked promos like this is how to tell exactly which promo caused the sales. I know that I might not open an email today, but read it a day or two later and click on a book that interests me.
> 
> You did a lot better than I did with ILVN, as we discussed, but definitely not worth the price in comparison to the others.


Yeah definitely for a lot of them there were follow through sales the next day. I think for Bargain Booksy in particular. So these are sort of fuzzy numbers.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Great results, CN! The sell-through looks great.


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## Ronald McIsaac (Feb 14, 2013)

Great thread, CN! You're taking the bull by the horns. I didn't do any promotion for Joule a couple a years back, and I didn't sell a damn book. I ended up unpublishing the book and writing another. I mined some ideas from it, though. Where was this thread two years ago? Congrats!


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

I'm glad it's helpful to people!

Right now it seems like there is no tail, but from what I've been told, sales often drip drastically immediately after the discount ends, and then pop back up again with pages read after a few days.


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## Lisa Blackwood (Feb 1, 2015)

Very, very nice! congrats.


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

Wow - your book is now rocking up the charts at full price! very well done and I think the Witches and Wizard category did well to you.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Well that's a little mysterious because there was only one sale today. But it might be phantom borrows, I guess!


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

CN_Crawford said:


> Well that's a little mysterious because there was only one sale today. But it might be phantom borrows, I guess!


Sorry to hear that. On my end I saw #1,390 Paid in Kindle Store


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Since we're talking about the effectiveness of promos, I thought I'd update. 

The boost from these promos is actually kind of sticking! Witching Elm was ranked at 5000 this morning a week after the promos ended. Sales have been modest but steady, and page reads are increasing every day. 

I'm going to try supplementing these sales with FB ads. 

So it's still early but it looks like it's got some traction!


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## Salvador Mercer (Jan 1, 2015)

Very nice!  Long live your tail!


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

I would like to ask which ad slot did you purchase from Books Butterfly? Their cheapest ad for 99 cents books is 50$ - 50 sales.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Antara Man said:


> I would like t ask which ad slot did you purchase from Books Butterfly? Their cheapeast ad for 99 cents books is 50$ - 50 sales.


In my notes the price of the Books Butterfly promo is list as $20. I think it almost broke even.


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## Salvador Mercer (Jan 1, 2015)

You have to go to PAID results then open the genre you want. Here is a link for it, open/click on the Fantasy genre and you will see the $15 slots.

http://www.booksbutterfly.com/order/results/?price=paid


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

Salvador Mercer said:


> You have to go to PAID results then open the genre you want. Here is a link for it, open/click on the Fantasy genre and you will see the $15 slots.
> 
> http://www.booksbutterfly.com/order/results/?price=paid


Thanks Salvador for the link but on the submit page again appeared only 75% new release, 50% guarantee and 75$ guaranteed ad slot. Anyway, I submitted for the 50% guarantee release. My book is new but I already have 9 reviews, the half of which are verified. 
By the way, Book Barbarians are awesome - in my opinion they outperform even ENT but yesterday when I tried booking them for this month, I saw that the earliest available day is December 4th (a day before patty's promo). The same applies to eReader Cafe - the earliest slots are for 5/6 of December. It seems these two months will be crazy and the competition - fierce!


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## Jane Killick (Aug 29, 2014)

Antara Man said:


> I would like t ask which ad slot did you purchase from Books Butterfly? Their cheapeast ad for 99 cents books is 50$ - 50 sales.


When I did a Books Butterfly, I applied for the 50 guaranteed sales slot and Vinny came back and said he thought he could sell 25-30 books and offered me a slot for $30 (I think those are the figures). I don't know what the results were because ENT came back and offered me a slot on the same day, so I sold really well on that day. Just don't know which percentage was for which promo site. I've applied for a slot since, but have not had a response. Not sure what's going on, I can only assume they're busy.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Antara Man said:


> Thanks Salvador for the link but on the submit page again appeared only 75% new release, 50% guarantee and 75$ guaranteed ad slot. Anyway, I submitted for the 50% guarantee release. My book is new but I already have 9 reviews, the half of which are verified.
> By the way, Book Barbarians are awesome - in my opinion they outperform even ENT but yesterday when I tried booking them for this month, I saw that the earliest available day is December 4th (a day before patty's promo). The same applies to eReader Cafe - the earliest slots are for 5/6 of December. It seems these two months will be crazy and the competition - fierce!


I applied for the Dec. 4 slot but haven't heard back. Drive me nuts when sites don't respond.


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> I applied for the Dec. 4 slot but haven't heard back. Drive me nuts when sites don't respond.


yes - me too! I am constantly checking my email.


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## Salvador Mercer (Jan 1, 2015)

Jane Killick said:


> When I did a Books Butterfly, I applied for the 50 guaranteed sales slot and Vinny came back and said he thought he could sell 25-30 books and offered me a slot for $30 (I think those are the figures). I don't know what the results were because ENT came back and offered me a slot on the same day, so I sold really well on that day. Just don't know which percentage was for which promo site. I've applied for a slot since, but have not had a response. Not sure what's going on, I can only assume they're busy.


Vinny is from Awesomegang and Abhi is from Booksbutterfly. Also, the genre does matter for Booksbutterfly, Sci-Fi and Fantasy are cheaper ones as they have smaller lists. Romance, Thriller, etc. cost more due to larger lists.


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

Book Barbarian are awesome! They sent me an invoice yesterday for December 4th. I am still awaiting from Robin reads, Booksends, ENT and Free Kindle Books&Tips. I guess, most will answer me in the following days since I submitted in Friday in the afternoon.
What are you thoughts about OHFB? 75$ seem steep and i guess they perform like the Midlist (before, now it's Bookperk) - averaging 50-60-70 sales.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

For the curious: quick update on the tail of our promo from a month ago.

The promo ended on the 17th of October and a month later we're seeing ~ 2-4 sales a day and ~ 1000-1500 pages read. It's not a huge number, but it's about twice what we'd been seeing previously. We've also been running a $5 Facebook ad for this entire time which is almost certainly helping to prop things up.


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## Salvador Mercer (Jan 1, 2015)

Very nice, thanks for sharing!  Do you have more plans to promo, or a promo schedule, say once every 90 days etc.?


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

yeah - nice picture. Those 1000 - 1500 pages are they for all your titles or for one only?
As far as I remember, you wrote in the Self-Publishing FB group tat your ad has dried up adn you had to stop it. Did you tweak that ad?


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