# Second book launch: 2 week promo 11-23 Jan [FINAL UPDATE: PROMO + 7 WEEKS]



## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

{Gone}


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## Randall Boleyn (Mar 8, 2012)

I am pulling for you, Pauline.  I really appreciate you posting this info. I released a fantasy work in OCT. that mirrored the numbers on your first release and am trying to figure out a plan for my next release.  I'd bet you'll enjoy the next few days. Cheers.


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## Claire Frank (Jul 28, 2014)

This looks great, Pauline. I'll be watching with lots of interest! I hope you kill it!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Thanks, Randall and Claire. I'm glad people are still finding this sort of thread useful - I'm a bit nervous that folks will get fed up with them.

I'm not really expecting to 'kill it' - just set up a sequence of steady sales over a couple of weeks that will, I hope, sustain the book for a while after it goes to full price, and keep it airborne past the 30-day cliff. I know it's more difficult to promote a discounted book, so I'm prepared for any eventuality.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

The first promotion day, and Bknights did OK for me - 22 sales, which for a discounted, not free, book is pretty good. The ranking has tiptoed past the 10,000 mark, and the book shows well on a number of Hot New Releases lists and even on the bestseller list for Romance -> Fantasy.

Today is SciFiFantasyFreak, which is still building its lists, so my expectations are low (but it's free, so that's fine).


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

Good luck! Can't wait to see how this turns out. Also, I really love your covers.


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## charlottehughes (Dec 18, 2014)

Good luck! Can I ask why you started with low price and then went up? I would have thought it might make sense to get the 70% royalty and a higher price during the promotion/blog tour and then discount. Of course I am new to Indie publishing so curious as to which is better


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

CadyVance said:


> Good luck! Can't wait to see how this turns out. Also, I really love your covers.


Thanks! I love my covers, too. I chose Streetlight Graphics to do them as their work always seems to 'pop', somehow.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

charlottehughes said:


> Good luck! Can I ask why you started with low price and then went up? I would have thought it might make sense to get the 70% royalty and a higher price during the promotion/blog tour and then discount. Of course I am new to Indie publishing so curious as to which is better


It's extremely difficult to promote a book that's not discounted (at least) - and free is better. Bknights will shift hundreds of copies of my book if it's free (my first book was downloaded 500 times on its first free day, with only a Bknights promotion). But at a price of $0.99 - only 22 copies. At a higher price point, I'd be lucky to get any sales out of it at all.

What many authors do when they have a new book out is to promote the *previous* book, but sell the new one at full price. That works well for a series, but mine are stand-alones. Also, the new book is a much more marketable commodity - it would actually pass as YA, I expect. So that's the one I want to push. The idea is not to make money from the promotion itself, but to boost it in the rankings so that when it goes up to full price (and that 70% royalty!) sales will continue for a while. And I also hope for some sales of the first book, and borrows, both of which make me more than $0.35 a pop.

Promotion is like any advertising - the objective is to spread the word, and hope for increased sales in other areas. You don't necessarily expect to make money from the promotion itself.


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## DawnLee (Aug 17, 2014)

Following and rooting for you each day, Pauline.  Thank you for sharing your results so that the rest of us can learn something applicable to ourselves.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

DawnLee said:


> Following and rooting for you each day, Pauline.  Thank you for sharing your results so that the rest of us can learn something applicable to ourselves.


You're welcome! I've enjoyed reading other people's promotion posts, and learned a huge amount from them, so I'm happy to be able to pay it forward.

I'm expecting a bit of a lull for the rest of this week.


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2015)

I just bought both your books because I saw the book covers in your posts' signatures.  Don't know when I'll get to them, since I've got about 15 books in my Kindle now that I haven't read yet - but one of those 22 sales yesterday was me


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Delusion of Grandeur said:


> I just bought both your books because I saw the book covers in your posts' signatures. Don't know when I'll get to them, since I've got about 15 books in my Kindle now that I haven't read yet - but one of those 22 sales yesterday was me


Thank you very much! That's very kind.

Only 15 unread books? Well done!


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> Thank you very much! That's very kind.
> 
> Only 15 unread books? Well done!


I bought a bunch during that January 1 Sci Fi sale that somebody here was promoting. Still working on second or third book from that bunch, though I doubt that I will really read all of them to the end. But, at 99 cents, it's hard to go wrong.

I am actually one of those readers who is generally insensitive to prices of books, _as long as I am getting a known quantity_. For example, when Michael Connelly comes out with a new book, I buy it regardless of the price.

But I do see the difficulties new authors face, and the irony of it. My Decaf Venti Raspberry Caramel Macchiato costs me $5.04 daily, which is more than most books go for these days. But it's hard to persuade people to part with their hard-earned $2.99 when there are tons of free/0.99 books out there - in the absence of some reasonable certainty that you're getting a quality product.


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## Claire Frank (Jul 28, 2014)

I'll be interested to see if you get any action from SciFiFantasyFreak. I did a three day new release listing with them and got one sale. To be fair, I expected absolutely nothing, since I didn't discount the book, and the ad was free, so it was just "let's list this and see if anything happens." I'm not doing any big promos/discounting yet. But I'd like to know if you notice a difference with their ad on a discounted book. Hopefully their list is growing!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Claire Frank said:


> I'll be interested to see if you get any action from SciFiFantasyFreak. I did a three day new release listing with them and got one sale. To be fair, I expected absolutely nothing, since I didn't discount the book, and the ad was free, so it was just "let's list this and see if anything happens." I'm not doing any big promos/discounting yet. But I'd like to know if you notice a difference with their ad on a discounted book. Hopefully their list is growing!


I'm interested too! I've not used them before, so it's a bit experimental. And so much depends on genre, price, day of the week, position in the list, all sorts of details that could affect things. I'm not expecting much.

My bottom line, the minimum I'd like to hit each day, is 5 sales. Anything above that is a bonus. If all my promos manage that, I'll be happy (because my first book was essentially flatlining within a week and anything's better than that).


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Only 2 sales yesterday from the SciFiFantasyFreak promotion. :-( And they gave me a good spot, too, second on the list. On the plus side, I've already had a sale this morning, so maybe SciFiFantasyFreak people stay up all night playing WoW and only check their emails after they're done killing things?? And borrows are steady, so maybe this book is more attractive as a borrow? Who knows. 

Today is day 2 with SciFiFantasyFreak, and also AwesomeGang (another one I've never used before, so have no expectations).


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## DawnLee (Aug 17, 2014)

Pauline, Awesomegang did really well for me and Vinny was great to work with as well. 

I can't be sure of precise results, but Tweeting my promo to a few genre-specific and indie hashtags (once each day)generated quite a few retweets for me and I think I got at least a few sales that way each day. I also promoted the book to a few of the FB groups for my genres and those that allow 99-cent promos. I'm sure all of this only netted me a handful of my promo sales, but sometimes that handful makes a difference.

Good luck today.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

DawnLee said:


> I can't be sure of precise results, but Tweeting my promo to a few genre-specific and indie hashtags (once each day)generated quite a few retweets for me and I think I got at least a few sales that way each day.


Oh - why do I never think of Tweeting?? Thanks for that. I'm not big on Facebook, and I have a couple of other places I post to at certain times (most places have rules about self-promotion).


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Hi Pauline I just saw this thread and sent out a bunch of social media post your way


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Yesterday was AwesomeGang, and I had 9 sales, which I'm happy with. Borrows continue to be steady, which I'm also happy with. I do think KU muddies the waters somewhat with promotions of this type. Money-conscious readers might well be looking for bargains as well as being in KU, so when they find a promoted book that's in KU, they'll go for that instead of buying. So sales alone may be a misleading indicator of the effectiveness of a promotion.

Today is day 3 with SciFiFantasyFreak, and day 1 (of 4) with EbookLister. I'm not getting my hopes up too high for this one; I'm way down the list on the website, since they use a formula for placement based on review numbers and ratings. Being a new release, The Fire Mages has few reviews yet. But we'll see.



Vinny OHare said:


> Hi Pauline I just saw this thread and sent out a bunch of social media post your way


Thanks very much!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Yesterday was another damp squib of a day - only 3 sales, and none from the US so the ranking on Amazon.com is nose-diving a little, sustained only by KU borrows. I'm still getting steady numbers of blue blobs on the graph (steadier than the red blobs), so I'm good with that. Borrows pay considerably better than sales at $0.99 anyway.

Today is day 2 of 4 for EbookLister (free) and Flurries Of Words (who haven't confirmed, but I've paid my $8, so I assume I'm in ETA: it's in!). Same again tomorrow, and then the weekend has SweetFreeBooks and EbookSoda. I'm hoping things will pick up a bit then.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2015)

Quick suggestion - I haven't gotten to reading your books yet (though it's definitely on my list of things to do), but on the author's profile on Amazon, in the text on the left, you might want to update that there are two books out now (it only mentions the first book in the text), and maybe add a photo of yourself.  I've always thought that author profiles with photos in them are easier to relate to, in some sense, than ones without.  

And maybe say something about book 3 coming in March/April/May/whatever, assuming it's coming.


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## Chris Fox (Oct 3, 2014)

Thanks for sharing this kind of data, Pauline. It's invaluable to a lot of us.


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## DawnLee (Aug 17, 2014)

You'll get there, Pauline. Meanwhile, we of the Prawn populace are rooting for you.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Chris Fox said:


> Thanks for sharing this kind of data, Pauline. It's invaluable to a lot of us.


I'm glad it's useful. I just hope everyone remembers that I am only one data point, and just because my book did well/meh/badly with promotion site so-and-so, doesn't mean that applies to other genres, authors, days of the week, etc. So apply with caution. Also, I think KU is bound to affect the results, so that needs to be taken into account, too.


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## Julz (Oct 30, 2014)

These are one of my favorite kinds of threads! Thanks so much for sharing  Good luck!!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

So yesterday was another meh day - 4 sales, which is better than none, but not quite what I'd hoped for.

Being a little depressed about that, and since it's a week since release day, I decided to forget about the daily numbers and compare this book with the first book's low-key release back in September. That turned out to be interesting.

- First 2 days (no promotion, just me shouting on blog/social sites/forums, etc): Book 2 pre-orders/sales TWICE book 1.

- Next 5 days (no promo on book 1, promo on book 2): Book 2 sales THREE TIMES book 1.

- As above, but including borrows: Book 2 sales/borrows FIVE TIMES book 1.

For book 1, in September, I had no borrows at all for ages. For book 2, borrows are running almost as high as sales (after the first couple of days).

There seem to be two take-home messages there:

1) That this book is doing better than the previous book (upward trajectory, so good news!).

2) That the promos are clearly having an impact, but the results are showing up in borrows, and not just sales.

And in other good news, I've now clocked up 100 sales this month.   {Depression lifted...}


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2015)

Congrats on getting to 100 sales - I still haven't gotten to reading them, but the covers keep tempting me 

I have a question (for you, and for a lot of other people here).  

A lot of the discussion of promotion/marketing seems to deal with rather modest amounts of money spent on it - $22 here, $15 there.  $200 spent on marketing/promo seems to be a big number.  Now, I understand that if it's a choice between eating at least three times a week, and promoting a book, eating might come first.  But for for people who have a day job and a working spouse to boot - why are the promotional/advertising dollars so tiny?  Separate and aside from whether a particular platform really works or not (e.g., FB advertising), is it because there simply aren't any other platforms to effectively spend money on?  Or because you reach a point of diminishing returns quickly?  

One would think that after you put in the effort of writing a 300-500 page book that you believe in, not finding a few hundred bucks for promoting it seems a bit odd.

And the corollary question - let's say you had $1000, or $2000 to spend on marketing.  Let's say you believe in your series, and that once you get it in front of a lot of people, they will keep coming back. So the business case for it is - theoretically - there.  How would you spend it?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Delusion of Grandeur said:


> A lot of the discussion of promotion/marketing seems to deal with rather modest amounts of money spent on it - $22 here, $15 there. $200 spent on marketing/promo seems to be a big number. Now, I understand that if it's a choice between eating at least three times a week, and promoting a book, eating might come first. But for for people who have a day job and a working spouse to boot - why are the promotional/advertising dollars so tiny?


For this promo, I've chosen to keep the cost down, since this is only my second book and I'm starting from a low base. Even with the low-cost ads I've booked, I need to sell 750 copies of the new book to recover that cost (or fewer if I also shift some full-price copies of the first book, plus some borrows). Ideally, I'd like to cover the cost of the ads, plus earn back some of the investment in the books (cover designs, proofreading, etc) during the promotion period plus the tail. It makes no sense to throw vast amounts of money at it, especially when some of the most effective ad sites are amongst the cheapest.

However, in the autumn, when I will (I hope) have four books out, it will make sense to aim for a bigger promo budget (BookBub would be lovely). There are more expensive promo sites out there. Here's my current list of possibles:

$50: KBoards Book series Spotlight; Book Gorilla (5+ reviews)
$75: One Hundred Free Books (OHFB)
$100: Kindle Nation Daily (KND) $100; FreeBooksy ($100)
$Mega: Bookbub (fantasy: $175 free, $350 for $0.99; no absolute review minimum)

ETA: no idea how effective any of these are (apart from BookBub, obviously).


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## Claire Frank (Jul 28, 2014)

Ooh, look at you with a beautiful new cover in your signature! Exciting!

I think your analysis is great. It's a slow, steady climb and although you may not be squealing over thousands of books sold, you're getting it out there and creating a base to build from. I bet you'll continue to see modest gains with each new release. This is the beauty of this choice of publication path - if the book doesn't sell a ton of copies in the first six weeks, not only are you still in the game, you're just getting started. 

Thanks again for sharing your numbers - I think threads like these are great, even knowing that yes, it's one data point among many and there are a lot of factors involved. But it's helpful nonetheless.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Claire Frank said:


> Ooh, look at you with a beautiful new cover in your signature! Exciting!


Thanks for noticing! I got the finished art work yesterday, and I was so excited I had to share, even though I'm months away from publication. 



> It's a slow, steady climb...


This. Or at least, I hope it's a climb... I'm never going to hit the heights of super-bestsellerdom (awkward genre, not a proper series, not fast enough), but 'steady' is good. My low point with this book, rank-wise, is about where my first book peaked, so it's all good.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Yesterday brought in 5 sales, courtesy of EbookLister (3rd day) and Flurries of Words (2nd day), better than the previous day. I still haven't made it into the EbookLister email, so maybe today.

Today is the final day of EbookLister, plus SweetFreeBooks, another one I've not tried before.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Yesterday was a better day - 11 sales, courtesy of SweetFreeBooks. I know they were responsible, since sales started up shortly after their email arrived. 

I also had the fourth day of EbookLister, and again 'The Fire Mages' didn't get a mention in the email (they take the highest ranked, so that counts me out). It was free, so no complaints, and I always had a few sales, but not many. Maybe it was me - genre, cover, blurb, reviews, whatever. Just not a good match.

Today is EbookSoda, followed by two days of BargainEbookHunter, PixelScroll and Booktastik. Then Wed/Thu/Fri are the three I expect to be bigger hitters: GenrePulse, BargainBooksy and ENT. If ENT fails me, I shall give up writing and take up stamp collecting.

I'm beginning to wonder if I should put the price up to its regular $3.99 the day after the ENT ad. I have a couple of blog tour events over next weekend, but they aren't tied to a specific price, and it seems pointless to keep the promotion price when the promotions have finished. On the other hand, I don't want to con anyone who's late in reading their ENT email. I had a bunch of full-price sales after the last ENT ad, which I had no control over, but this time I get to choose when the price goes up. What does everyone think?


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

Your new cover is gorgeous, I love it! 

Well, I'm very new to this, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but my thoughts are: what if you raise the price of book 2 back up to $3.99 after the promo run but then lower the price of book 1 to 99 cents for the blog tour? You can mention to the hosts that book 1 is at a special discount, which might get some of the blog readers to start the series?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Delusion of Grandeur said:


> Quick suggestion - I haven't gotten to reading your books yet (though it's definitely on my list of things to do), but on the author's profile on Amazon, in the text on the left, you might want to update that there are two books out now (it only mentions the first book in the text), and maybe add a photo of yourself. I've always thought that author profiles with photos in them are easier to relate to, in some sense, than ones without. And maybe say something about book 3 coming in March/April/May/whatever, assuming it's coming.


I've only just noticed this comment - good advice. I'll work on the text. The photo is problematic. I'm the world's least photogenic person, so a photo of me is unlikely to sell any books! I've used the Vermeer painting as my avatar for ever, but it seems a bit odd to put that as an author photo. I couldn't decide what to do, so I left it blank (which is probably the worst answer). Hmm, needs thought.

Yesterday, Ebooksoda gave me 7 sales, which is within my range of acceptable outcomes, so I'm good with that.

Today and tomorrow I have BargainEbookHunter, PixelScroll and Booktastik, and so far have only 1 sale on the board, so it's not looking good. Still well ahead of the first book in sales at this stage, and has more reviews. Sales and borrows so far have covered about half the cost of the promotion (not counting the blog tour). So even if I haven't achieved my rankings objective, it's still a positive result.


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## Guest (Jan 20, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> I've only just noticed this comment - good advice. I'll work on the text. The photo is problematic. I'm the world's least photogenic person, so a photo of me is unlikely to sell any books! I've used the Vermeer painting as my avatar for ever, but it seems a bit odd to put that as an author photo. I couldn't decide what to do, so I left it blank (which is probably the worst answer). Hmm, needs thought.


Well, surely there is a photo somewhere that you can use. I'm thinking - standing on a mountaintop, with a view of the mountains behind you and all around you, gazing into the distance as you contemplate the next twist and turn of the plot in novel #3.

Or - walking on one of those Scottish beaches (the kind where you can tell it's too cold to swim anyway), with no shoes but wearing a sweater to ward off the chill, your cat tagging along merrily, while the viewer can tell from your expression that you are putting together literary ideas for the next book in the series.

That's the ticket.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Delusion of Grandeur said:


> Well, surely there is a photo somewhere that you can use. I'm thinking - standing on a mountaintop, with a view of the mountains behind you and all around you, gazing into the distance as you contemplate the next twist and turn of the plot in novel #3. Or - walking on one of those Scottish beaches (the kind where you can tell it's too cold to swim anyway), with no shoes but wearing a sweater to ward off the chill, your cat tagging along merrily, while the viewer can tell from your expression that you are putting together literary ideas for the next book in the series.


Those are great ideas - thank you! I'll have a rootle through the photos.

Yesterday's sales report: 5, so still in my window but even with a few borrows, it's not giving me much lift in the rankings.

And yet... at this stage with book 1, I was struggling to keep my head above the 100,000 level, and didn't have a single review. Now I'm worried about a 20,000 ranking, and I have 5 reviews already. How one's expectations change.


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## nico (Jan 17, 2013)

Do you have a mailing list?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

nico said:


> Do you have a mailing list?


Yes, the signup box is on every page of the website, and there's a link at the back of each book. Numbers are in the single figures.  It's a work in progress...


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## Marina Finlayson (May 2, 2014)

Thanks for this thread, Pauline. It's great to watch your progress.

I'm impressed you have five reviews already. I hope the good reviews keep coming, that'll make it easier to conquer Bookbub later!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Marina Finlayson said:


> Thanks for this thread, Pauline. It's great to watch your progress.
> I'm impressed you have five reviews already. I hope the good reviews keep coming, that'll make it easier to conquer Bookbub later!


Yes, my ARCs actually worked this time! And they loved the book, which kinda helps, so I had 2 ARCs and a random stranger posting 5* reviews within a couple of days; unexpected, but nice. And a 3* to keep me honest. 

BookBub - well, hmm. I'm not even thinking about that until I get the third book out.

Yesterday was better - 13 sales. I don't know why day 2 with BargainEbookHunter, PixelScroll and Booktastik should have done better than day 1, but so it was. I gained a few sales from a mention on Reddit, but sales were already well up before that.

Today is GenrePulse. They did well for me on a free promotion, but discounted books are a harder sell, so we'll see.


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## Guest (Jan 21, 2015)

Regarding This:

***
why are the promotional/advertising dollars so tiny?  Separate and aside from whether a particular platform really works or not (e.g., FB advertising), is it because there simply aren't any other platforms to effectively spend money on?  Or because you reach a point of diminishing returns quickly?  

One would think that after you put in the effort of writing a 300-500 page book that you believe in, not finding a few hundred bucks for promoting it seems a bit odd.

And the corollary question - let's say you had $1000, or $2000 to spend on marketing.  Let's say you believe in your series, and that once you get it in front of a lot of people, they will keep coming back. So the business case for it is - theoretically - there.  How would you spend it?
***


A few quick thoughts

1) I've noticed that most authors on KBoards like to start small.

2) There is a bit of a focus among authors on Instant ROI i.e. if we spend $100 we should make back $100 during the promotion days itself. I find it quite interesting because I haven't seen it anywhere else (online, tv, etc.).

3) There are very few big sites. Bookbub is the only really big site. So you have Bookbub that can generate thousands of sales for a paid book, then some big sites like ENT that can generate a couple hundred, and then lots of tiny sites.

There's not really any site other than Bookbub where you'd even be able to spend $1,000. And Bookbub hardly ever accepts books. So there's literally no place you could just go to and spend $1,000 today and generate, say, 1,000 to 2,000 sales for your series, over the next week. I've heard Amazon sells slots for $5,000 but those are supposedly completely useless.

There's not really any place that has - Pay X and get Y downloads, and you can keep doing it as much as your budget allows.

People do FB and Google advertising - however, I looked at the click rates there and they are criminally high for Google. For FB I'm not sure if it works. I had tried in the past for websites and it not good - However, there are always people claiming FB works like magic (though they never share any real data).

******

We do some promotion work for authors (through our Author Intel service) and if you don't get Bookbub you literally can't spend your budget (talking about paid book promotions). Recently we did a paid book promotion (at Author Intel) and spent $89 and got around a 100 sales or so. But after that first $89 there was no place to buy that would give even 1 sale per $1. We used BookSends among other services. ENT didn't take us. This time around we have Bookbub so that takes $300. That still leaves us with nowhere to spend the remaining budget.

It's strange.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

ireaderreview said:


> 2) There is a bit of a focus among authors on Instant ROI i.e. if we spend $100 we should make back $100 during the promotion days itself. I find it quite interesting because I haven't seen it anywhere else (online, tv, etc.).


That's because most forms of advertising don't give a measurable instant return. If a supermarket discounts its baked beans, it can measure how many extra cans of baked beans it sells, but there is also a diffuse increase in sales across all other products in the store (hopefully). It's very hard to track, and they rarely have just one item on sale anyway.

With authors, there's a single promoted product and the extra sales are easy to measure: on a normal day, I sell X copies, with this promotion I sold Y copies. (Y-X) * royalty = profit due to promotion. The ROI is easy to work out.

Having said that, authors may calculate their instant ROI, and obviously it's lovely to make an immediate profit, but most beginning authors realise that promotion is also an investment in the long term.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Yesterday was a better day: the tail end of my Reddit post collided with GenrePulse, and brought in 23 sales. Interestingly, 3 of those were in Canada, and for a very short time 'The Fire Mages' crept onto the epic fantasy bestseller list there at #17, just above The Name of the Wind and 4 down from A Game of Thrones (yes, _of course_ I have a screenshot!).

Today is BargainBooksy, my most expensive ad this time out at $40. As I've said before, I don't expect to make back that amount of money (or any ad cost) in a single day. The objective of this whole promotion is to sell steadily over a two week period so that when the promotion ends and the book reverts to full price, sales glide gracefully downwards over time instead of simply plummeting. Any ROI will come in that post-promotion period.

To be honest, for me as a prawn, being able to check my sales graph and find it's _changed_ since the last time I looked - that alone is worth the price of admission. Any actual money made is a bonus (although sales and borrows to date have already covered half the total cost of the promos).

The BargainBooksy email reached me around 3 hours ago, and sales have already lurched upwards. And tomorrow is my _piece de resistance_ ENT, of whom I have high expectations. So I think my two week promo is winding to a positive conclusion.

I'm going to be travelling over the weekend, with spotty wifi connectivity, so I may not be able to update the final numbers before Monday. Hopefully I'll have some screenshots of the sales and borrows by then, for those who enjoy that sort of thing.


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## Guest (Jan 22, 2015)

Looks like things are chugging along steadily there - eyeballing the numbers, it's what, about 150?  and it's only been two weeks. that's pretty good, right?

the covers are totally worth whatever you spent on them


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Delusion of Grandeur said:


> Looks like things are chugging along steadily there - eyeballing the numbers, it's what, about 150? and it's only been two weeks. that's pretty good, right?


For the promo alone, sales are at about 120, including today's (19 and counting). I've also had over 40 borrows and a few sales of the first book. Plus around 60 sales and 10 borrows from the 2 days before the promo started. Yes, for me, it's pretty good. I said at the start I'd be happy with 250 sales from the promo, which I'm not going to make, but it's still good. At this stage with the first book and no promos at all, I'd just crept past 50 sales, and a couple of borrows, after which things went downhill pretty rapidly.



> the covers are totally worth whatever you spent on them


Yes! I love my covers! They're by Glendon Haddix of Streetlight Graphics ($400, if you want to know, which includes the print cover).


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## Claire Frank (Jul 28, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> Yesterday was a better day: the tail end of my Reddit post collided with GenrePulse, and brought in 23 sales. Interestingly, 3 of those were in Canada, and for a very short time 'The Fire Mages' crept onto the epic fantasy bestseller list there at #17, just above The Name of the Wind and 4 down from A Game of Thrones (yes, _of course_ I have a screenshot!).


AHHHHHH! Are you kidding me with that? I'm glad you said screenshot, because as soon as I read that I was like, you best be takin' a screen shot of that action! Intercontinental high five!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Claire Frank said:


> AHHHHHH! Are you kidding me with that? I'm glad you said screenshot, because as soon as I read that I was like, you best be takin' a screen shot of that action! Intercontinental high five!


Yeah, it's very cool.  We prawns have to savour these moments because they don't last. I know that in a few weeks The Fire Mages will be down in the telephone number rankings, and that's OK, but it's such fun for it to have its brief moment in the sun.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

A quick update: yesterday's BargainBooksy promo brought in 38 sales, so a very good day.   And today - ta da! - my final promo is ENT. Hoping to go out with a bang.


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## Claire Frank (Jul 28, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> Yeah, it's very cool.  We prawns have to savour these moments because they don't last. I know that in a few weeks The Fire Mages will be down in the telephone number rankings, and that's OK, but it's such fun for it to have its brief moment in the sun.


Absolutely .

Good luck with ENT today!


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

Sounds like BargainBooksy went well. Can't wait to see how today goes!


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## Guest (Jan 23, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> A quick update: yesterday's BargainBooksy promo brought in 38 sales, so a very good day.  And today - ta da! - my final promo is ENT. Hoping to go out with a bang.


I have a question. why the assumption that, once the promotions are over, sales will tank? why can't they chug along steadily at, say, 5-10 a day for a while?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Delusion of Grandeur said:


> I have a question. why the assumption that, once the promotions are over, sales will tank? why can't they chug along steadily at, say, 5-10 a day for a while?


They can, and probably will - maybe not 5-10, in my case, more like 3-6 or thereabouts. The key words here are 'for a while'. A book is only visible on Amazon if people can find it, somehow. For the first 30 days after release, if a book's selling at all, it will get into the Hot New Releases for its sub-genres, and that makes it visible. After that, it needs to be ranked high enough to get onto the regular popularity and bestseller lists.

For my sub-genres, that means HIGH ranking. The Fire Mages is around 6K as I write this, and it's just crept into the Coming Of Age list. Down to about 14K it registers on the Romance -> Fantasy lists, where it competes with all the werewolves and other shifters. Promotions help, of course, because they put the book under the noses of potential readers, who can link straight to the Amazon page, no trawling through Amazon's lists to find something. So my objective was to promote for 2 weeks to lift the book high enough to scrape into some lists, which would help it stay aloft for a while. But beyond the 30 days - it will be invisible so it's going to sink.

If you're interested in this stuff, I recommend David Gaughran's Let's Get Visible. He goes into the nitty gritty of popularity and bestseller lists, the algorithms and all that good stuff. One thing is clear, though - it's much harder to get traction now than it was even a year or two ago.


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## Marina Finlayson (May 2, 2014)

Dying to know how ENT went. But one of today's sales wasn't from them: I just bought one! 

ENT wouldn't accept me, dammitall. Do you know if they're picky, or did I just ask for a slot that was already full?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Marina Finlayson said:


> Dying to know how ENT went. But one of today's sales wasn't from them: I just bought one!
> 
> ENT wouldn't accept me, dammitall. Do you know if they're picky, or did I just ask for a slot that was already full?


ENT did me proud - 80 sales!  Last I looked, the book was around 2,000 in the US Amazon store. I'm extremely happy with that.

I think you just have to give them plenty of notice. I booked this promo about a month ago.


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## Censored (Oct 31, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> ENT did me proud - 80 sales!  Last I looked, the book was around 2,000 in the US Amazon store. I'm extremely happy with that.
> 
> I think you just have to give them plenty of notice. I booked this promo about a month ago.


Yep. I tried to book a promo with ENT earlier this month with only a week or two notice and was rejected. Immediately resubmitted the book but with a huge window of dates in February and was approved. It'll be the first venue in a promo campaign partly inspired by this one.

That said, I imagine ENT is a little bit pickier than some, since I think the common consensus is that they're the next best thing after BookBub.

Thanks for this thread, Pauline, and may your sales linger well past the 30 day cliff.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

I just checked your rank:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,957 Paid in Kindle Store
#10 in Books > Romance > Fantasy

That's fantastic!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

CadyVance said:


> I just checked your rank:
> 
> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,957 Paid in Kindle Store
> #10 in Books > Romance > Fantasy
> ...


And I can't take any screenshots, dammit!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

FictionFugitive said:


> Thanks for this thread, Pauline, and may your sales linger well past the 30 day cliff.


Thanks, but even if everything craters, it's still been a lot of fun.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> And I can't take any screenshots, dammit!


Here you go.  I didn't get to it in time to get the earlier ranking.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

CadyVance said:


> Here you go.  I didn't get to it in time to get the earlier ranking.


Cool! Thank you so much! It's still at 2,200, so not declining as fast as I'd expected.


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## Marina Finlayson (May 2, 2014)

80 sales is awesome! Well done. You certainly finished on a high note!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Another 30 sales yesterday, the first post-promotion day. No ads, still at the discount price of $0.99 and I'm assuming the ENT fairy-dust is still in effect. Whatever it was, it kept the book from sliding down the rankings too much, and it's still in several bestseller lists.

This morning I put the price up to its regular price, $3.99. Fingers crossed for a graceful and slow glide to earth, rather than an inelegant plummet.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

That's great! How many was that in total? 200ish, right? Sounds like a great launch. Fingers crossed the sales will keep up for awhile.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

CadyVance said:


> That's great! How many was that in total? 200ish, right? Sounds like a great launch. Fingers crossed the sales will keep up for awhile.


Counting on my fingers, around 220 from the promo days, plus 50+ pre-promo and 30 from the first post-promo day... wow, 300!  I've also had a few bonus sales on the first book, and over 60 borrows. I'll post exact numbers when I get back to my computer (I'm travelling with only a tablet at the moment).

It'll be interesting to see how long the momentum lasts. I have a couple of weeks before the book reaches the 30-day cliff, so I'm hoping for steady sales until then (although obviously not 30 a day! Maybe 5 or so). I'll keep this thread updated periodically with post-promo numbers.


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## Nadia Nader (Nov 30, 2012)

I really enjoyed this post. Looks like ENT did great. Hope sales continue doing well for you!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Nadia Nader said:


> I really enjoyed this post. Looks like ENT did great. Hope sales continue doing well for you!


Thank you, Nadia! I'm glad all this info is interesting to you.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

*Some final promotion numbers:*

The Fire Mages (the promoted book) had 252 sales and 48 borrows.
The Plains of Kallanash had 4 sales and 4 borrows.
Including numbers before the promotion, I've had 316 sales and 64 borrows for the month so far. Plus 2 paperback sales!

*Promotion sites:*

Judging promotion sites purely by number of sales on the day, ranked from most effective to least (the usual caveats apply: these results applied to one specific book, one genre, and won't be the same for anyone else; in particular, many sites perform much better with free books than with discounted ones):

ENT ($15)
BargainBooksy ($40)
GenrePulse ($30)
Bknights ($21)
BargainEbookHunter ($15)/PixelScroll ($15)/Booktastik ($5) [combined]
SweetFreeBooks ($5)
AwesomeGang ($10)
EbookSoda ($10)
EbookLister/SciFiFantasyFreak (Free)

What's interesting is that, apart from ENT, which is seriously underpriced, number of sales correlates quite well with price. All of the sites were successful (especially when borrows were taken into account), so I wouldn't hesitate to use any of them again.

*ROI:*

I didn't expect any site (except maybe the underpriced ENT) to cover its costs on one day. This was all about generating steady sales with any payback coming with full=priced sales later. Even so, with borrows included, the cost of all the promotions was just about covered (although not the blog tour, of which more in a moment).

*Blog tour*

This was experimental, so I had no expectations. I have no complaint at all about the organisers, Enchanted Book Tours, who did exactly what they promised: a dozen sites with a promotional post, a dozen more for a cover reveal, and a Twitter party. A couple of sites still haven't posted reviews, but I daresay they will in time. However, I have no way to know if any actual sales resulted from all that. There were no comments and no click-throughs to my blog and no reviews on Amazon (yet). {ETA: My mistake! The newest review on Amazon/Goodreads is in fact from one of the blog tour sites.} So who knows. It was quite a lot of work providing guest blog posts, book extracts, Tweetable snippets, an interview, etc, for no visible effect, so I probably won't attempt that again. I daresay it would work better if I arranged everything myself, but life's too short.

*Conclusions*

My original objective was to produce steady sales over a couple of weeks, to give the book a softer landing when the promotion ends. That didn't exactly work, partly because the cheaper promo sites in the first week did less well than I expected, and partly because I'd forgotten how international Amazon is - so quite a sizeable number of sales went to non-US buyers. That was great, but it kept the US ranking lower than I'd have liked. Then the last few days produced a bigger spike than I'd expected, which wasn't great on the steady sales front.

But this has been a learning exercise. What have I learned? Two weeks is a stupidly long time to run promotions. ENT is awesome (but I already knew that). Borrows peak 2 or 3 days after a sales spike (I'll post a screenshot if I can work out how). Combining cheaper promo sites can work well, but a few big hitters is better. And did I mention that ENT is awesome?

I may do some smaller promotions over the next few months (Countdowns, probably), but I'll keep the paid promos to a minimum. Then, when the next book comes out (in May, hopefully), I might try for the Holy Grail and apply for BookBub.


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## Claire Frank (Jul 28, 2014)

Thanks again for sharing your results!


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## deanna c (May 31, 2014)

I really appreciate the recap -- thank you so much. I hope you make loads of post-promo sales


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Claire and Deanna - thanks! I hope my experience can be of use to some other prawns out there.


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## Guest (Jan 26, 2015)

thanks for sharing Pauline. This was very helpful.

Could you please list what genres you think your book would fit into. I'm just curious to know whether it's a purely one genre book or there's some crossover. thanks.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

ireaderreview said:


> thanks for sharing Pauline. This was very helpful.
> Could you please list what genres you think your book would fit into. I'm just curious to know whether it's a purely one genre book or there's some crossover. thanks.


It's epic fantasy, but with a strong romance element, so there's definitely some crossover.


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## Guest (Jan 27, 2015)

Interesting.

Do you think this genre is heating up? I see more and more books that are Fantasy Romance + Fantasy of some sort. Ones that could slot into both Fantasy + Romance.

I think for the last 4-6 months.

Were these sites promoting you as Fantasy or as Fantasy Romance?


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

I read the whole thread, Pauline. Thank you so much for sharing your numbers, and congratulations on a successful promo event. I'm sure you'll gain tons of new fans from it 

Keep us posted how the next week goes!


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## MacMcAdams (Dec 25, 2014)

Love hearing these type of stats. Thanks for taking the time to share and help.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

ireaderreview said:


> Do you think this genre is heating up? I see more and more books that are Fantasy Romance + Fantasy of some sort. Ones that could slot into both Fantasy + Romance. I think for the last 4-6 months. Were these sites promoting you as Fantasy or as Fantasy Romance?


I think there's a lot of demand for epic fantasy romance, as opposed to paranormal romance (werewolves and so on). When my book briefly appeared on the bestseller list for Romance -> Fantasy, it was surrounded by shifters of one sort or another, the covers featuring men with their shirts off. I felt very out of place.

But a true blend of fantasy and romance (ie not just a romance that happens to involve a shifter, but a secondary world fantasy with romance) is hard to find, and very few authors get a good balance between the romance and fantasy elements. Mine are more fantasy than romance. Kyra Halland is one of the few authors who gets it right. Also Kate Sparkes.

I label the books as fantasy for promotional purposes. I don't want any avid romance readers picking it up and being disappointed because it fails to follow the proper romance conventions (although I always have a HEA or HFN ending).


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Sever, MacMcAdam, thanks very much. I'm glad this has been useful.

OK, I'm going to attempt to post my sales graph so that folks can see how the borrows lag behind (after each sales spike, there's a small borrows spike a few days later); I've never done this before, so let me know if it doesn't work:










I do think KU borrows throw a spanner in the works for anyone tracking sales data in threads like this. By the time a borrow shows up on the sales graph, the reader has read 10% of the book, and that could be hours, days, weeks or even months after the original download. Yet those downloads affected ranking, and during a promotion they count as sales when assessing the effectiveness of a site BUT they are invisible at the point where they happen.

So a promotion may generate X sales and Y KU downloads on the day, but it's impossible to measure Y. It's impossible even to guess. I've just assumed that every promo that generates sales also generates KU downloads, and therefore is more effective than the sales numbers alone show. But it does add an extra difficulty to any discussion about the effectiveness of promotion sites.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

Very helpful. It's a way off now (as book 1 hasn't even released!), but I'm bookmarking this for book 2 promo stuff.


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

I can't believe I didn't see this thread during your promo. Just  popping in to say congrats. Looks like things went well.


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

Eeep! It's early and my coffee has yet to take effect. I hit post too soon. I don't know if you remember my thread from a month ago, but your numbers seem similar to mine for each advertiser. I'd be interested to see the numbers side by side.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

R. M. Webb said:


> Eeep! It's early and my coffee has yet to take effect. I hit post too soon. I don't know if you remember my thread from a month ago, but your numbers seem similar to mine for each advertiser. I'd be interested to see the numbers side by side.


Yes, I remember it. My numbers are all in the first post in this thread, which I updated as I went along, so you can do the comparison if you want. It would be interesting to know the similarities and differences. You could start a new thread, because it would be interesting to a lot of people.


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

PaulineMRoss said:


> Yes, I remember it. My numbers are all in the first post in this thread, which I updated as I went along, so you can do the comparison if you want. It would be interesting to know the similarities and differences. You could start a new thread, because it would be interesting to a lot of people.


The thread exists! http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,207643.0.html

The numbers were interesting side by side. Thank you for letting me use yours.

Also, just to add, I do love your covers.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

R. M. Webb said:


> The thread exists! http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,207643.0.html
> 
> The numbers were interesting side by side. Thank you for letting me use yours.
> 
> Also, just to add, I do love your covers.


Cool! Interesting comparison. I didn't include borrow numbers because I think they're 'offset' - today's borrows most likely result from sales several days ago. Have a look at the sales graph I posted (if it shows up - it works for me!); you can see that the borrows spike a few days after a sales spike (although lower, of course).

Thanks for the compliment on the covers. My designer is awesome (Glendon Haddix of Streetlight Graphics).


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

A quick update: almost a week after the final promo, sales and borrows are still holding up well, even though the book is now $3.99. Ranking is hovering around 7,000. Sales have now comfortably covered the cost of the promotions and blog tour. I'm counting the promotion a big success. 

I still expect things to start sliding before long, but I'm going to enjoy this while it lasts.


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## Claire Frank (Jul 28, 2014)

Excellent results, Pauline! I'm glad to see you're getting a nice after-promo boost. I hope it continues for a while!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Claire Frank said:


> Excellent results, Pauline! I'm glad to see you're getting a nice after-promo boost. I hope it continues for a while!


Thanks! Can't quite believe it at the moment. I'm surprised every time I check the sales graph and find more sales there.


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## Dmotley (Sep 26, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> *Blog tour*
> 
> This was experimental, so I had no expectations. I have no complaint at all about the organisers, Enchanted Book Tours, who did exactly what they promised: a dozen sites with a promotional post, a dozen more for a cover reveal, and a Twitter party. A couple of sites still haven't posted reviews, but I daresay they will in time. However, I have no way to know if any actual sales resulted from all that. There were no comments and no click-throughs to my blog and no reviews on Amazon (yet). {ETA: My mistake! The newest review on Amazon/Goodreads is in fact from one of the blog tour sites.} So who knows. It was quite a lot of work providing guest blog posts, book extracts, Tweetable snippets, an interview, etc, for no visible effect, so I probably won't attempt that again. I daresay it would work better if I arranged everything myself, but life's too short.


Hi Pauline and thanks for sharing your experience. Glad I found this post  I'm about to publish a new romance serial and considering to order a blog tour, but your experience, at least as I can see it, doesn't show any good ROI on a such big investment of both time and money.

I'd like to ask you how you measured effectiveness of the blog tour. How do you know there were no click-throughs? Did you use any tracking link such as bit.ly? Was it possible to put a link to the book sales page to drive visitors directly to Amazon instead of a buffer site (your site)? Do blog tour hosts provide any information on their daily traffic?

If you published a new book, would you consider spending the money you spent on the blog tour differently, for instance on FB ads?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Dmotley said:


> I'd like to ask you how you measured effectiveness of the blog tour. How do you know there were no click-throughs? Did you use any tracking link such as bit.ly? Was it possible to put a link to the book sales page to drive visitors directly to Amazon instead of a buffer site (your site)? Do blog tour hosts provide any information on their daily traffic?
> If you published a new book, would you consider spending the money you spent on the blog tour differently, for instance on FB ads?


There were virtually no click-throughs to my own website from any of the blog tour hosts (I can see that in my own stats). I don't know if anyone clicked through to Amazon, only the blog tour hosts have that information. The blog tour hosts were chosen by the tour organiser, so I don't know what sort of traffic they get. Some of the blogs were not very active (one had no posts since November), and those that were active were mostly posting blog tour material.

I'm not convinced of the value of FB ads. That's another area where some people report great success, and others not so much. For the next launch, I'll probably stick with reliable paid ads again: BookBub (if I get lucky!), ENT, BargainBooksy, GenrePulse, Bknights in particular. At least with that sort of promotion, there's a measureable outcome: increased sales (hopefully).


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

There's now been a full week since the promotion ended, and sales are still holding up.

*Here are the average sales (including borrows, and for both books):*

Pre-promo (3 days): 23 per day
Promo week 1 - free and cheap sites (7 days): 13 per day
Promo week 2 - big hitters (7 days): 30 per day
Post-promo week 1 (7 days): 23 per day

There have also been a smattering of paperback sales, and 2 people bought the paperback and then claimed the ebook for free (under the Matchbook system), which I was dead chuffed about.

Ranking is steady around the 7,000 mark for the promoted book, but sales of the other book have definitely increased, too. A couple of days ago I did some tinkering to the age settings and keywords (inspired by Evenstar and Chris Fox), and that's snuck the promoted book into a couple more bestseller lists, albeit well out of the spotlight. I'll report back if that has any impact.

Lovely as all this is, I'm now seeing big warning signs looming up: _'Danger! 30-day cliff ahead! Prepare to crash-land!'_ So I'm enjoying this while it lasts, but I'm prepared for the inevitable slide.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

Wow, 23 per day is more than I would have expected pre-promo. It sounds like it's continuing to go well. Do you have a release day for book 3?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

CadyVance said:


> Wow, 23 per day is more than I would have expected pre-promo. It sounds like it's continuing to go well. Do you have a release day for book 3?


Tentatively, some time in May, but not an exact date. I don't want to hamper myself with self-imposed deadlines. It'll go out when it's ready.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Two weeks after the promo ended, and sales have dropped a bit (average 16 per day for both books, including borrows, this week). After the first post-promo week, when sales actually climbed, there was an abrupt fall on Sunday 1st - Superbowl Day! Not sure whether that was the reason, or the ENT fairy-dust finally wore off, or (as Cinisajoy suggested elsewhere) the post-Christmas credit card bills came in. Maybe the dragon's tail twitched somewhere in the deeps of the Amazon cavern. Who knows (although others reported similar drops, so not just me). Whatever it was, borrows stayed steady or even increased. Here's the pretty picture:










Ranking has drifted down to around 12,000, but now that both books are at full-price, my royalties are up.

One interesting aspect: in the two weeks since the promo ended, sales of the non-promoted book have been around 2-3 per day. Before the promo, they were around 1-2 per WEEK. So some good sell-through, especially considering these are stand-alone books, with no connection other than being set in the same world.

For comparison: one month after release, my first book had racked up 65 sales/borrows, and was flat-lining (maybe 1 sale/borrow a week). The second book, with promotion, has made 600+ sales/borrows in its first month, and is still going strong. Promotion pays, people, even with a new release that's not part of a series. 

I probably won't update this thread again. I'm now teetering on the edge of the 30-day cliff, so I expect sales and borrows to drift downwards (slowly, I hope!).

Plans for the future: I have my first Countdown scheduled for later this month, on the first book (the one I didn't promote this time). I can also do a free or Countdown promo on the second book in March or April. Then in May/June book 3 comes out, and I'm going for the big one: my first BookBub rejection. 

Good grief, I'm turning into Wayne Stinnett, with constant promotions... oh wait {checks sales numbers} no, NOT turning into Wayne Stinnett...


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

Wow, 600 sales in the first month is a huge increase. That's fantastic.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

CadyVance said:


> Wow, 600 sales in the first month is a huge increase. That's fantastic.


Yeah, it just goes to show what can be done with some modestly priced promotion.


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## Jordan Rivet (Jan 13, 2015)

This is good stuff! Thank you for the update on post-promotion sales.


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## smikeo (Dec 1, 2014)

Awesome results, Pauline! I wasn't planning on doing a countdown before my second book is published, but this thread changed my mind.

Thanks!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

smikeo said:


> Awesome results, Pauline! I wasn't planning on doing a countdown before my second book is published, but this thread changed my mind. Thanks!


I think if you're in Select, it's worth doing a Countdown or free campaign, just to get a bit of exposure, a bit of experimentation (to see what works with your genre) and also for the boost to morale, in seeing the book fly for a short time. It's really cool to see it up there in the rankings, however briefly.

Having said that, I still don't think it's worth spending masses on it until there are some more books on the backlist to benefit.


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## Dmotley (Sep 26, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> There were virtually no click-throughs to my own website from any of the blog tour hosts (I can see that in my own stats). I don't know if anyone clicked through to Amazon, only the blog tour hosts have that information. The blog tour hosts were chosen by the tour organiser, so I don't know what sort of traffic they get. Some of the blogs were not very active (one had no posts since November), and those that were active were mostly posting blog tour material.
> 
> I'm not convinced of the value of FB ads. That's another area where some people report great success, and others not so much. For the next launch, I'll probably stick with reliable paid ads again: BookBub (if I get lucky!), ENT, BargainBooksy, GenrePulse, Bknights in particular. At least with that sort of promotion, there's a measureable outcome: increased sales (hopefully).


Thanks Pauline, you changed my mind. Before, I thought an investment in a great planned blog tour could make my book appear in a New Releases list. Now I don't think so. I'd rather experiment with FB ads in a week.

Thanks again and good luck!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Well, I said I wouldn't update this thread again, but I'm finding the post-promo numbers interesting, so I thought some of you might, too. This past week was the third since the promo ended, and the first past the dreaded 30-day cliff. To my amazement, sales have not plummeted, and although there's a downward trend, it's a slow, graceful slide, rather than a crash-landing. For comparison, the weekly numbers in full (this week in bold):

Pre-promo (3 days): 23 per day
Promo week 1 - free and cheap sites: 13 per day
Promo week 2 - big hitters: 30 per day
Post-promo week 1: 23 per day
Post-promo week 2: 16 per day
*Post-promo week 3: 11 per day*

Ranking for The Fire Mages has dropped to the 20K's, and borrows are now higher than sales (on a typical day, 4 sales, 6 borrows). I'm still seeing sell-through to Kallanash, maybe 1 or 2 sales/borrows per day.

Interestingly, I now have a Countdown for Kallanash starting tomorrow, so I'm curious to see whether the sell-through works the other way, and I start seeing an increase in sales for The Fire Mages. Or a slowing in the decline, maybe.

I hope this is of interest to some of you. If this 'tail' lasts, I might keep the thread updated just as a record.


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## Guest (Feb 15, 2015)

Yes Pauline, this is very interesting.

Why do you think borrows are higher than sales now?

Also - Pre-promo of 3 days. Is that 3 days right after launch? Or something else?

It's not clear to me

1) Why sales were lower in promo week 1.

2) Promo week 2 makes sense.

3) Promo week 3 is very instructive. That's goo.

The long tail for your book suggests that visibility is perhaps the biggest focus area.


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## Gordon Bickerstaff (Mar 3, 2014)

Thanks for showing your promotion strategy & outcomes - valuable for those of us starting out on the promotion trail.
Very best of luck Pauline.
I like the covers btw.


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## Indecisive (Jun 17, 2013)

Thanks for sharing this, Pauline. I wasn't planning to do much promo with my book 2, but now I'm thinking maybe I will do a bit more.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

ireaderreview said:


> Yes Pauline, this is very interesting.
> Why do you think borrows are higher than sales now?


I'd guess because the book is now full-price, so less appealing to buy. Plus visibility is still high in the KU-only lists, even though the book has slipped down the bestseller rankings.



> Also - Pre-promo of 3 days. Is that 3 days right after launch? Or something else?


Yes, the first three days the book was available, before the promos started. That includes pre-orders and sales to online friends, Twitter followers, mailing list subscribers, etc.



> It's not clear to me
> 1) Why sales were lower in promo week 1.


I used the smaller promo sites the first week, many of them free. Bknights was the only one with good sales. You can see which sites I used on which days in the first post of the thread.



> 2) Promo week 2 makes sense.
> 3) Promo week 3 is very instructive. That's goo.
> The long tail for your book suggests that visibility is perhaps the biggest focus area.


I don't have enough experience to interpret it yet. The last promo I did, a 3-day free one, with ENT amongst others, the tail dribbled away to nothing after 2 weeks. I'd expected something like that here. I'm astonished (and very pleased) that it hasn't happened.

You're obviously as fascinated by the numbers as I am, but I don't think much can be read into one promotion campaign. It's only one data point. It's also difficult to interpret the effect of KU on promotions. Clearly a number of people borrow instead of buying, but that doesn't show up in the sales graph at all; it's only when they read to the 10% point that it registers. So borrow numbers are 'disconnected' from sales numbers. If I get a peak of sales, I notice a smaller peak of borrows 2-4 days later. So it's impossible to connect borrows to any particular promo day. That's why, in the first post of the thread, I only posted sales numbers day by day. But for weekly totals, it's safe to include them.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Gordon Bickerstaff said:


> I like the covers btw.


Thanks! Yes, I have a great cover designer.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

ameliasmith said:


> Thanks for sharing this, Pauline. I wasn't planning to do much promo with my book 2, but now I'm thinking maybe I will do a bit more.


I thought it was worth promoting book 2, because it was a stand-alone. Yours is a series, so I'd think that promo on book 1 might be the way to go? But the bottom line is: promotion definitely pays!


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## Guest (Feb 15, 2015)

Here's the thing.

You write: You're obviously as fascinated by the numbers as I am, but I don't think much can be read into one promotion campaign. It's only one data point. It's also difficult to interpret the effect of KU on promotions.

There's very little real data being shared.

I've found perhaps 20-30 similar threads on KBoards. Then a ton of little snippets where someone will say - Site X got me Y results.

So it might seem one data point however, by its sheer scarcity, and by virtue of the fact that it covers THE SAME BOOK for different websites, it's very valuable. thanks again for sharing.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

Glad to see sales are still rolling in! I love that it's slowly declined rather than the sudden drop to nothing. Do you have much planned for the Countdown tomorrow?


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

CadyVance said:


> Glad to see sales are still rolling in! I love that it's slowly declined rather than the sudden drop to nothing. Do you have much planned for the Countdown tomorrow?


Yeah, the graceful glide rather than the crash-landing... That's what I hoped to achieve, but it's always a surprise when it happens as planned. 

The countdown will be a much quieter affair. I've only got 3 ads confirmed. I'm trying not to repeat sites too much, so I'm trying some new ones, but there aren't many I haven't already tried! I've never done a countdown before, so it's experimental. Honestly, all my promos are experimental. I love the way Wayne can say: right, should be at ranking #475 by 17:30, but I just throw stuff out and see what happens. 

I'm really looking forward to seeing whether promoting Kallanash will prop up The Fire Mages again, or whether it will continue its slow slide back to telephone number rankings.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> I've never done a countdown before, so it's experimental. Honestly, all my promos are experimental. I love the way Wayne can say: right, should be at ranking #475 by 17:30, but I just throw stuff out and see what happens.


I love how he does that. What's even more amazing is that he's always right.


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## Claire Frank (Jul 28, 2014)

This is great, Pauline! I love that you're still seeing regular sales on both books. I would guess (and I guess we'll see) that the promo for Kallanash will spill over and boost the numbers for Fire Mages. 

Thanks for the additional update!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Another week goes by, and this one was interesting because Kallanash had its own little Countdown promotion going on. Between the two of them, sales and rankings bumped up nicely. Kallanash had 129 sales and 9 borrows (average 20 per day), and The Fire Mages 26 sales and 42 borrows (average 10 per day, which is much the same as the previous week). So the Kallanash promo hasn't exactly triggered a spate of activity on The Fire Mages, but it's certainly helped to stop any further slide downwards, for the moment.

I've got no more promos planned for at least a month, so I expect both books to fade away quite fast now. I'll keep this thread updated for as long as that takes, though.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

For anyone still reading along, The Fire Mages is STILL burbling along. Every time I have a slow day and think: well, that must be it, it bounces up again. This week was slightly up, after the Kallanash countdown. That promo, however, had no tail at all: Kallanash dropped straight back to pre-promo levels. Both of them are still held afloat by borrows, which outnumber sales about 2:1.


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## fantasy-writer (Dec 12, 2014)

Thank you for sharing all your promo details. It's very helpful.

Best of luck for many more sales. Your books look great.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Ella Summers said:


> Thank you for sharing all your promo details. It's very helpful. Best of luck for many more sales. Your books look great.


Thank you for the kind remarks, and I'm glad this is helpful. So many of these promo threads only detail the promo itself, so you never know what the tail was like, or whether there even was a tail. This one seems to just run and run. I'd love to have more feedback on other people's promos, to get some idea whether this is normal or not.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

OK, I'm going to (at last!) knock this one on the head, even though the tail from the January promo is still going strong, if very slowly declining. The reason being, that with The Fire Mages coming up for Select renewal next month, I'm squeezing in a Countdown promo as from this Saturday. So this promo is done. Hurray!

For completists, here are the *final weekly numbers*, sales + borrows for both books, (also on the first post in the thread) for both promo and tail:

Pre-promo: 23 per day {pre-orders plus 3 days of social}
Jan week 2: 13 per day *Fire Mages Promo * - free and cheap sites
Jan week 3: 30 per day *Fire Mages Promo * - big hitters
Jan week 4: 23 per day
Feb week 1: 16 per day
Feb week 2: 11 per day
Feb week 3: 30 per day {Fire Mages 10/day; Kallanash 20/day via a Countdown *promo*}
Feb week 4: 13 per day
Mar week 1: 11 per day
Mar week 2: 10 per day

Genre is epic fantasy with added romance.

*A note on sell-through*: I didn't expect much sell-through, since the two books, although set in the same world, are completely independent. However, there was some. Here are the average units shifted (sales + borrows) for Kallanash:

Jan week 1: 0.3 per day(before promo)
Jan week 2: 0.4 per day (Fire Mages promo)
Jan week 3: 0.7 per day (Fire Mages promo)
Jan week 4: 1.6 per day
Feb week 1: 2.0 per day
Feb week 2: 1.6 per day
Feb week 3: 20.0 per day (Kallanash promo)
Feb week 4: 4.1 per day
Mar week 1: 3.0 per day
Mar week 2: 3.6 per day

*Conclusions*: Apart from the obvious (promo pays!), I think spreading the launch promo over two weeks paid off. I mostly only used one ad site per day, scheduling the big hitters for later in the campaign, and that led to gradually increasing sales, which helped with the algorithms, and kept the book from sinking like a stone as soon as the promo ended. The second promo also helped to keep things going. Anyway, it all worked better than I expected. Result!   

*ETA: KU* I forgot to mention that KU has been a big influence, and (I suspect) has helped to spin the tail out for longer than I would have expected. Without any promos going on, my KU borrows run at about 3 times the rate of sales. Normal price for both books is $3.99.

For the 2 people still following along, I hope this has been useful.


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## Paul K (Jan 11, 2014)

Good work! Those are some decent results.


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## ufwriter (Jan 12, 2015)

Great final results. The Fire Mages has done really well. I think a combination of a well-scheduled promo, the cover and the genre have helped keep it chugging along. Good luck on Saturday's Countdown.


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## PortableHal (Dec 24, 2010)

I appreciate your willingness to share your numbers. I've somehow missed this thread until now, and I'm glad I had another chance to discover it.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Thanks, folks. And I'm glad some of you are still finding it useful.


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## C. George (Apr 2, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> It's extremely difficult to promote a book that's not discounted (at least) - and free is better. Bknights will shift hundreds of copies of my book if it's free (my first book was downloaded 500 times on its first free day, with only a Bknights promotion). But at a price of $0.99 - only 22 copies. At a higher price point, I'd be lucky to get any sales out of it at all.
> 
> What many authors do when they have a new book out is to promote the *previous* book, but sell the new one at full price. That works well for a series, but mine are stand-alones. Also, the new book is a much more marketable commodity - it would actually pass as YA, I expect. So that's the one I want to push. The idea is not to make money from the promotion itself, but to boost it in the rankings so that when it goes up to full price (and that 70% royalty!) sales will continue for a while. And I also hope for some sales of the first book, and borrows, both of which make me more than $0.35 a pop.
> 
> ...


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## Northern pen (Mar 3, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> For the 2 people still following along, I hope this has been useful.


I think you will find that more than two of us are following this thread. It has been great and very handy to see. Much appreciated


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