As you may know, book marketing is a regular topic on my blog. I've been guerrilla marketing my books for almost a year now and have tried many strategies. To learn about other tips you can try part 1,  part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5 at each respective link. 


As an indie author I try to stay up on each and every fad in marketing and advertising books. When I first started to hear about Book Bub from J.A. Konrath I was skeptical. Was he getting a cut from mentioning this site? Was it really worth it? Did people really pay $1000 dollars on a site to list a book for free?!! It sound crazy. But, then I heard it from a few more sources (like this one from Joanna Penn) and I decided it was a legitimate strategy, one I knew I had to try. 

The premise of Book Bub is simple and not that different than many of the other free book subscription websites out there. Readers sign up to Book Bub and get notified of free and discounted ebooks. The nice thing about Book Bub is it's organized by category. Their mailing lists are huge (540,000 for Mysteries and 400,000 for Romance) and you can reach a ton of new readers in a very short amount of time. But, the price is a little steep. If your book is free, the price is more reasonable. I paid $40 dollars for a listing on the Teen and Young Adult list. However, if your book is 2.99 and you want to hit the mystery readers, get ready to shell out $1,200. That is a big chunk o' change no matter where you're sitting on a best sellers list. 

For me $40 buckaroos was a safe gable. The Breeders had taken a bit of a slump and I needed a boost since my amazing agent was going to be taking it around to editors at BEA. So, I set up a free promo with Book Bub at the end of May and waited to see. 

On the day of the promotion, the downloads started to roll in. At the last minute I decided to get on Author Marketing Club and try to list my book on several of those sites for free. I do not recommend waiting until the day of the promo to do this. Many sites will be booked up and will not list your book. Luckily, many made room for me on their free lists. I guess having some good reviews already listed under your book can help you get priority placement. 

The results were amazing. As I watched my book climb the free list, my jaw dropped. Soon I was in the top 100 free. Thousands of readers were downloading. By the end of day one I hit number 15 on the free list. The first page! How amazing. By the end of the four day promo I had given away approximately 16,000 books. Um, yeah. 

After the promo I waited to see the residual effects. So far, a week and a half out sales are good. My popularity rating on Amazon is higher. Sales are slightly better. And, now when you type "the breeders" into the general search engine on Amazon my book finally comes up first instead of the very awesome 1990s pop group with the same name. (Go ahead, try it. You'll see.) Overall, I think the $40 was totally worth it. Now, had I paid $1,000 I might have a different opinion. That return on investment would have to be much bigger to justify spending that kind of dough. 

So, what about you? Have you tried Book Bub? How well did it work?

Book Marketing Part Seven - NetGalley

I first met S.K. Falls when her title, The World of Shell and Bone popped up under The Breeders on Amazon. Once I read her book, I knew we were kindred souls. Her new release is here and I'm very excited about it. The premise is one that makes you think, "Gee, I wish I'd thought of that." Today she is she's discussing tough scenes and what they meant to her. Enjoy. 



Which was the hardest scene you wrote in Secret for a Song?

This was an interesting thing to think about because Secret for a Song  was such a challenging novel, on the whole, to write. Picking just one or two scenes was tough!

Don’t get me wrong—it’s the most emotional story I’ve ever written, and it was an amazing experience from start to finish. But still, writing the novel was emotionally exhausting. This was especially because I knew from my research on Munchausen syndrome that there were people out there who had to live it every day.

On top of that I grew really attached to Saylor, and I wanted nothing more than to protect her. But I knew to really do her story justice, I had to put her through the wringer and show what pieces of her were left to come out on the other side.

So, to answer the question, I’d say one of the hardest scenes I wrote was the scene with Saylor and Drew at her family’s cabin. It’s heartbreaking because Saylor knows at that point that she wants to come clean. We get to see her measure and weigh everything she says and everything they do together in a way that she hasn’t before. It was incredibly hard to write, but was also one of the most cherished scenes I’ve written.

Another awfully hard scene to write was Drew falling outside the store when he and Saylor are getting signatures for a petition. The scene was based on research I’d done of Freidrich’s Ataxia and what people experience before they become wheelchair-ridden. You get to experience Drew’s astonishing inner strength, but you also hate that he even has to go through something like that. Again, a really difficult scene that left a big lump in my throat, but I think it was important so the reader could see the kind of man Drew is.

Thanks so much for having me here today, Katie!

Buy links:

Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Goodreads

Bio:

A huge fan of spooky stuff and shoes, I enjoy alternately hitting up the outlet malls and historic graveyards in Charleston, SC where I live and imbibe coffee. My husband and two small children seem not to mind when I hastily scribble novel lines on stray limbs in the absence of notepads.

Since no writer’s biography is complete without mention of her menagerie of animals, you should know I have one dog that doubles as a footstool, a second that functions as a vacuum cleaner, and a cat that ensures I never forget that my hands are, first and foremost, for pouring cat food.

Visit S.K. Falls:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

As you may know, book marketing is a regular topic on my blog. I've been guerrilla marketing my books for almost a year now and have tried many strategies. To learn about other tips you can try parts 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 at each respective link. 

Just when I thought I'd exhausted all avenues of book marketing, I've come across another technique that I've found quite useful. Based on the success of Wool and Susan Kaye Quinn's Mind Jacker Origins short stories, I decided to write a short story or novelette to use as a marketing technique. What follows are the results of my endeavors. 

Around December I decided to write a Breeders novella. The whole premise was to release something that I could put out for free, a sample so to speak of the larger product known as The Breeders. I polled my reading audience as to what character I should explore and surprisingly the crowd voted for Dr. Nessa Vandewater, a lead villain in my story. Writing the novella came so easily from there that it was almost scary. In one month the final product was ready to go. So, from start to end, one month is a super fast turn-over rate for a new piece of fiction. The product was around 34 pages, not quite long enough to call a novella, but hopefully long enough to give reader a taste. I order a snazzy cover and used several writer friends as beta readers. The whole thing cost me about $150 to produce (cheap compared to the 2.5K The Breeders cost me). Then I uploaded it and held my breath. 

At first I sold it for 99 cents. I had a couple hundred downloads in that first month and a half, enough to pay for most of its production costs. Once sales started to slow, I wanted to drop the price to free. Now, this is not as easy as it seems. Amazon won't just let you give items away for free. However, they do price match, so you must offer the title somewhere else for free. I put it up on Smashwords at the free price point and waited for Amazon to notice. And waited. And waited. Finally, I had a few friends report to Amazon that my book was selling for free. That did the trick. Now Nessa was free. I waited to see what that would do. 

In May, over three thousand people downloaded it for free. It has sat in the top ten free sci fi short stories for the entire time it has been listed. I loved seeing it next to Wool on that list. What awesome company to keep. And even though I wasn't making a dime, I knew that having it up was good exposure. 

The main question is does the story help sell The Breeders. I can say a resounding yes. Before the short story was released The Breeders sales were slipping. I had days when I dipped down to the 7000s on Amazon rankings. After the short story went free, I have been ranked in the 5000s ever since, some days even 4000s. People note that they found my series first with Nessa and went on to buy The Breeder after. 

Here's the breakdown stats of the short story.
Cost: $150
Time: One month, start to finish
Outside help: Cover designer, Beta readers
 Would I try this again?: Most definitely. I still have not seen the decline of the boost it has given my novel. I will definitely try this strategy with my next series. For the small cost and time output it is a marketing strategy I would recommend. 


Book Marketing Part Six - Book Bub