Karen Sandler

Tag: unsuitably perfect

  • Promo Efforts–What Really Works?

    Full Cover-mJust a quick post today. I’m under deadline on the follow-up book to Clean Burn (buy it here), the second in the Janelle Watkins Private Investigation series from Exhibit A. I really need to be working on Janelle’s latest case (tentatively titled Hangtown Fry) instead of the innumerable other tasks I like to use for procrastination purposes.

    But I am a bit preoccupied by the fact that I’ve got an ad running today. This time my new box set, Unsuitably Yours (buy it here), is in BookGorilla’s daily email today, under the category “bestseller.” Just for giggles, I threw in a Facebook “promote post” as well to see if that would improve things even more.

    bn KAREN SANDLER Unsuitably YoursThe Facebook ad was probably a waste of money. Because if you define “effective promotion” as an effort which increases sales, then the Facebook boosts and page promotes are decidedly ineffective. They do work as promised. “Page promotes” boost my likes at about the rate Facebook suggests they will at each price level. And boosted posts always “reach” at least the number (usually more) that Facebook says it will for the number of dollars I spend.

    However, best as I can tell, sales do not increase one whit with Facebook promotions. Those who “like” my page or are “reached” by my boosted post do not actually click through to buy my books.

    Perhaps these efforts are more effective with other products, or with more well-known authors. But for moi, it’s a waste of my shekels.

    Awakening Final cover-s
    Awakening (buy it here)

    Also ineffective is any scheme where my book is featured on a website somewhere. That presupposes a reader is going to go to that website in the first place, always a dicey proposition. Even if they go to that site via an email they’ve subscribed to, if the link in the email goes to a poorly-designed site where the reader has to click yet another link before getting to the buy page, they are unlikely to click and then later buy.

    The cream of the crop for book promotion is BookBub. For those who have never heard of BookBub, it is a daily email that shares with their subscribers bargains on books in the subscribers’ interest areas. It’s fairly exclusive from the author’s perspective–BookBub picks and chooses which books they advertise, and the end result is an email with maybe 4-10 books (dependent on how many categories the subscriber has selected).  There are “buy links” for each book that takes the reader directly to the Kindle/Nook/Apple page. One more click and you own the book. I’ve bought plenty of books through BookBub. I and the other two authors whose books comprise the box set Unsuitably Perfect (buy it here), ran a BookBub ad a few months ago that made that book a huge bestseller. So BookBub works.

    BookGorilla has a similar model as BookBub (a daily email), although it advertises Kindle books only and is much less exclusive. They feature between 12 and 25 books. Good for authors who have been turned down by BookBub, and BookGorilla’s more affordable price makes it a much better deal. But we’ll have to see just how effective a promotion it is–i.e., does it lead to increased sales?

    I’ll update this post later with my results.

    Addendum: My BookGorilla ad ran 10-10-13. My sales did increase that day and overnight, but the increased royalties during the ad period totaled a little less than half of what I paid for the ad. I saw almost no carryover in sales of my other books, and sales of the advertised book seem to have stalled. If I see a significant change over the next couple days, I’ll add another addendum.

  • OnFireFiction, or Creating a Creative Cooperative

    In October 2012, I attended the annual conference of Novelists, Inc, one of the alphabet soup of writer’s groups (SCBWI, SFWA, MWA, and SinC) to which I belong. As I mentioned in this blog post, one of the hottest topics of discussion (and there were plenty of hot topics at that conference) was the concept of what came to be called an author “lifeboat.” The idea was for several authors with similar goals to join together in a mutual aid society of sorts in order to help one another promote. And although there were some fits and starts with the group I joined (because of shifting membership), we now have a vigorous  “lifeboat” of eleven authors:

    Awakening Final cover-sSo who are we? We’re all authors who started out publishing “traditionally” (i.e., in paper by NY publishers). We’re bestselling authors–NYT, USA Today, Waldenbooks. We pretty much know the publishing industry inside and out. And we’ve all branched out into independent publishing.

    Some of us still sell and publish traditionally (including me with my Tankborn trilogy and Janelle Watkins mysteries) as well as publish independently (in my case, I’ve got six indie romances up for sale at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc). Some have made the switch to indie-only and don’t intend to sign another traditional contract. But we all want to increase our success as authors.

    UnsuitablyPerfect_Bundle200As part of our process, we’ve branded our group OnFireFiction, and already have a Twitter and Facebook presence set up, with a website to come. We’ve got a cool tagline (From smoldering to blazing–OnFireFiction) and are developing a logo. We’ve already produced our first joint project: Unsuitably Perfect, a compilation of three full-length romance novels by me, Lisa, and Barbara. We have other compilations planned with other combinations of our member authors, as well as a couple of themed anthologies that will contain new content by all of us.

    How have we coordinated all of this, when only four of us live in the same state, and even those four are at least a couple hours drive from one another? We started with e-mail, then as mentioned in the previous blog post, we used a combination of a face-to-face meeting and Skype to help us get things off the ground. We eventually set up a YahooGroup for better communication, which not only allowed us to discuss issues like our logo, tagline, and brand name, but gave us a place to ask other members for retweets, Facebook posts, blog mentions and the like for special sales and new releases.

    The next question might be why–why work together when we could be considered competitors for the same readers? Well, luckily readers don’t just buy one book, nor do they read only one author. If they read one author they enjoy, they go looking not only for more books by that author, but similar books by other authors. With our compilations and anthologies, we’re hoping that readers will get a taste of what we have to offer and will go looking for more of our books.

    It’s early days yet, so it’s hard to judge how effective our team approach will be in increasing visibility and sales. But I will say one thing–it’s lovely to have all those shoulders to lean on, to have all those brains to pick. As a group, we encompass a whole university’s worth of publishing knowledge. We complement each other’s skills, and if one of us doesn’t know something, another most likely will. I’m much better at tech than marketing, for instance, so I’m glad to be the one to set up a Facebook page in exchange for hand-holding by one of the marketing mavens in OnFireFiction.

    So, what do you think? All for one and one for all? Or is every man (or woman) an island unto themselves? Would you rather promote yourself on your own? Or are you ready to jump into a lifeboat?