As a keen reader I often scout Amazon for free downloads for my Kindle. These offers give me the chance to discover new authors which very probably leads to the purchase of their other titles. Confirming this in a blog post last week was book editors Bubblecow with their post, The Secret of Giving Your Book Away For Free which concludes that by offering a well-written book for free generates good reviews which translate into future sales. I believe this is a method that can work across many business models. After all, how many times do we purchase something because of a seemingly tantalising special offer?
By coincidence, an author friend of mine was planning to offer one of her erotica books for free as an experimental promotion. The book would be available for free for 48 hours only - the 5th and 6th of December 2012. Here is Indigo Moore's experience.
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By coincidence, an author friend of mine was planning to offer one of her erotica books for free as an experimental promotion. The book would be available for free for 48 hours only - the 5th and 6th of December 2012. Here is Indigo Moore's experience.
I had no idea whether offering a free
title on Kindle would work as a promotional tool - after all, people are always
tempted by a freebie, regardless of whether the item is something that they
really want. So I didn't hold out much hope of it translating into a realistic
amount of publicity.
I didn't help myself by forgetting to
prime any of the promotional websites - those pages that advertise upcoming
Kindle freebies. Real life got in the way and it was only when I received a
rather disappointed-sounding email from my publisher bemoaning the lack of
downloads at the beginning of the free
period that I realised what I (hadn't) done. I did then send a slightly panicky
message to the managers of the Free Digital Reads website and they very kindly
put my details out at short notice, but that was the only third party
promotional site that I used.
I decided that the best method at this
point would be use the contacts I've got on Twitter and Facebook. I posted a
link for the promo on my personal accounts as well as the Indigo Moore ones,
asking people to share wherever they felt possible (erotica not necessarily
being as 'shareable' as, say, children's books).
A quick note on promotion vs. anonymity
seems relevant here. Although I write erotica under a pseudonym, I have never
gone out of my way to hide that it's actually 'me' under the pen name. This
makes it much easier for me to push my own stories, as I can use my personal
Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as my author ones. I can also bribe /
bully / cajole my friends and online acquaintances to share my commercial links
through their own networks.
If I was writing anonymously I think it
would have been much harder, as it immediately cuts out many of the potential
media outlets.
Given my rather slapdash methods, I
wasn't expecting great results. However…
My story hit the #1 spot on the UK free
erotica charts within 24 hours. By the end of the free period it was at #9 in
the States. Amazingly, it also got to #28 across all
free Kindle categories in the UK. There are currently 43,138
free titles on that list, which makes my final placing pretty goddamn awesome
by anyone's standards.
But still, I did
wonder whether it would have any impact on 'actual' sales, or whether it'd turn
out to be a flash in the pan (albeit one which now permits me to say 'I made
number one once, you know' to anyone who'll listen).
It's only a day
after the promotion closed, so possibly too soon to tell really. But the other
five (paid) titles that I currently have available on Amazon all took a jump up
the charts in the 24 hours after the promo closed and social interactions (via
Twitter, Facebook and my website) have increased noticeably. I've had
enthusiastic comments (and promises of telling friends about me) from people
I've never met, both here and in the States.
And publicity is
the crux of the matter - the absolute fuel to a writer's commercial survival.
Readers are much more likely to take a punt on one of your paid titles if
they're already familiar with your work and confident that they'll like it.
Content is everything - the more work you put out there, the more likely people
are to find you. I had six titles available before we decided to run a free
promotion - much less than that and it wouldn't be worth doing, as I wouldn't
have enough in my catalogue for people to buy even if they wanted to.
At the end of the
period my story had been downloaded over two and a half thousand times
Maybe I was lucky, maybe people genuinely
like my writing, or maybe I just know a lot of brilliantly active people on
social media - either way, it's been a very positive experience.
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If you want to find out more about Indigo Moore you can delve into these links:
Website : http://indigomoore.com
Facebook : http://www.facebook.
Twitter : https://twitter.com/
Amazon : http://tinyurl.com/
Website : http://indigomoore.com
Facebook : http://www.facebook.
Twitter : https://twitter.com/
Amazon : http://tinyurl.com/