By Chester Campbell
It has been two weeks since my second Greg McKenzie mystery, Designed to Kill, had a three-day freebie book promotion with BookBub. The results are a mixed bag. There were 49,287 free downloads on Amazon. Bill Kirton said he didn't have such large numbers but sold 9,000 books. He's obviously in a different league from me. I've never sold 9,000 books under any circumstance.
I was disappointed with the sales of Designed to Kill, which have only numbered 35, plus six borrows, which pay about the same. But on the whole my books have sold much better than normally. The first and third books have each reached 111sales or borrows, while the fourth and fifth books in the series registered 47 and 30. In all, my ten books totaled 366 sales and 20 borrows. For a relatively unknown micropress author, that's not bad for a month.
Of course, the total result was no bonanza. I paid BookBub $240 for the promotion, which should leave a net return of about $435. If I did that every month for a year, it would be more than $5,000. Not a bad sum for somebody who doesn't depend on book revenue for his bread and butter. As I become better known with the publicity brought by the freebie promotions, hopefully sales will pick up for all my books.
One benefit of the recent BookBub coverage was a noticeable pickup in reviews on Amazon. Designed to Kill had 23 reviews before the promotion. Now it has 43 reviews, including 22 five stars and 12 four stars.
If I keep at it and learn more about the ways of ebook promotion, maybe I'll achieve the success of writers like Jinx Schwartz, author of the Hetta Coffey series. She knows how to do it right. Check out her article on the subject at the Blood Red Pencil blog at this link: http://bit.ly/18Ig8L4.
Visit my website ChesterDCampbell.com
6 comments:
Thanks for the BRP mention, Chester. Polly Iyer also gave us her numbers the next day. I truly think this works best over the long haul, at least from a reader perspective. I can't tell you how many subsequent titles in a series I've purchased because I was introduced to an author through a freebie. I'm not the only reader who has been hooked this way! I do find a very clear book synopsis in the promo newsletters often make or break it for me.
I count on having actual
Chester D. Campbell books on my shelves...:-)
Hey Chester, thanks for the plug:-) Glad you got so many downloads and reviews, and what the heck, every month we turn a profit is (in my mind) a miracle!
I just did another freebie and am getting lots of emails and new reviews (Troubled Sea) so will see what the results are in sales.
Your books should be selling better...they just haven't met you yet!
Congrats to both you, Chester, and Jinx. And thanks for the BookBub plug.
Thanks for the update, Chester. In the end, it does seem as if Bookbub works. And I must apologise for being unclear in my previous comment about having 'sold' 9000 copies of Unsafe Acts - those 'sales' were all freebies. But it did also get 29 real sales. Only 1 review as yet, though.
Thanks for the comments. I'm getting ready to try another freebie with BookBub. I agree with Jinx. Every month we turn a profit is a miracle. Don't you just love miracles?
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