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New FREE book promo tool for Indie Authors, all because of a Writers' Cafe post

21K views 198 replies 49 participants last post by  Evenstar 
#1 ·
The original idea for this has been percolating and distilling through this post here. http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,214473.0.html for quite a few weeks now.

Essentially it boils down to the idea of cross promoting each other's books on our respective websites. 'I'll promote your books if you'll promote mine' .

Nice idea in principle, and I set out to try and implement it in practice. You can see the results here http://bookpromocoop.com

It's very early days with this, but please feel free to try it out and let me know your thoughts, comments, etc.

[EDIT] This has now been significantly updated, you can even add in your own Amazon affiliate code now.
 
#102 ·
Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:
Will you be able to tell if this is working to increase sales of our books i.e. you will be earning something from affiliate links? (I hope, after all the work you have put in ;D )
So far it's running at about 1000 views per day (That's two books per view, with 200 books in the pool, that's appox. 10 per book per day). There has been around 100 clicks to amazon, but it's probably more as I'm not tracking UK. Two books have sold so far, but I can't tell who they are just yet. Total revenue $0.47 (Not time to give up the day job)

At some point I'll track clicks so you will be able to see how many views/click your books are generating. You can see the number of views beside your book in 'BOOKS' area.
 
#104 ·
archaeoroutes said:
I've found it eye opening how many people use WordPress. I'm still a 'write the code in a text editor and upload it' kind of guy. The widespread availability of things that let people build a website without code is a real shame - a lost skill along with dry stone walling perhaps...
beats GeoCities.
 
#105 ·
archaeoroutes said:
I've found it eye opening how many people use WordPress. I'm still a 'write the code in a text editor and upload it' kind of guy. The widespread availability of things that let people build a website without code is a real shame - a lost skill along with dry stone walling perhaps...
I do occasionally feel this way. Learned HTML way back in 1993, then had to live through the dotcom boom where people could get six figure jobs just by having knowledge of Front Page. Used to drive me nuts.

Even so, I'll also be the first to admit I'm lazy and will happily use a point and click tool if it gives me the flexibility I want. Also, the nice thing about Wordpress is its flexible enough so that knowing how to code allows you that greater degree of freedom to enhance things if needbe.
 
#106 ·
geraldmkilby said:
So the idea is for them to display a small image banner linking to bookpromocoop.com. (Need to come up with some text for this)

This way their books can be promoted and they can contribute by helping to add more sites and books to the over all network.

@R. M. Webb, ALL option coming in a day or two.
Yes! I would be into that. :) Thanks for looking for another option for us WordPress folk.
 
#107 ·
geraldmkilby said:
So far it's running at about 1000 views per day (That's two books per view, with 200 books in the pool, that's appox. 10 per book per day). There has been around 100 clicks to amazon, but it's probably more as I'm not tracking UK. Two books have sold so far, but I can't tell who they are just yet. Total revenue $0.47 (Not time to give up the day job)

At some point I'll track clicks so you will be able to see how many views/click your books are generating. You can see the number of views beside your book in 'BOOKS' area.
Great. Rushes off to check views ;D.

Returns to say that it's interesting to see which books are getting the most views. Hope your $0.47 soon gets a few more noughts after it ;D

ETA - something else to be obsessing about and checking ::)
 
#108 ·
I'll admit to being a dinosaur. I guess it gives me the same feeling when I've climbed a mountain and meet people who've gone up on a train. For me the act of getting there matters. If I was just going up the mountain to work in the cafe at the top I'd be using the train!
I have made sure that html, css and php are kept on the syllabus for Yr7-9 at my school. They are such useful skills. Even if superceded (I switched from perl to php pretty much as soon as it came out) the programming process is the same.
 
#113 ·
TromboneAl said:
Will this work in a wordpress.com site?

I'm trying it with a "Text or HTML" widget, and so far I'm only seeing the HTML code. Still trying ...

No, looks like it won't work with wordpress.com. Guess I'll have to drop out for now.
Not at the moment, but I'm working on a 'workaround', should have it after the weekend. In the meantime your books will still be up on the network.

Will check for spelling. Never my strong point. You should what one of my first draft's looks like. Sometimes even I don't know what I am writing :eek:
 
#115 ·
geraldmkilby said:
Once that's done then I think start spreading the word. Probably after this weekend.
Oops, didn't realize we weren't supposed to share yet. ;D My book-marketing blog doesn't get a lot of traffic, but the post about BookPromoCoop.com currently has the third-highest views.
 
#118 ·
Rick Gualtieri said:
Even so, I'll also be the first to admit I'm lazy and will happily use a point and click tool if it gives me the flexibility I want. Also, the nice thing about Wordpress is its flexible enough so that knowing how to code allows you that greater degree of freedom to enhance things if needbe.
This, about using Wordpress (not .com). I love that so much is built-in or can be added, but if something's not just the way I want it, I can change it.

geraldmkilby said:
So far it's running at about 1000 views per day (That's two books per view, with 200 books in the pool, that's appox. 10 per book per day). There has been around 100 clicks to amazon, but it's probably more as I'm not tracking UK. Two books have sold so far, but I can't tell who they are just yet. Total revenue $0.47 (Not time to give up the day job)

At some point I'll track clicks so you will be able to see how many views/click your books are generating. You can see the number of views beside your book in 'BOOKS' area.
Whoa! 1000 views/day? That's way more than I expected at this early stage. Truly impressed. I guess all of us prawny prawns have some pull when we work together (unless those are all the result of us just trying it out! :D).

Once again, tossing more kudos, thanks, and good karma your way...
 
#119 ·
geraldmkilby said:
No problem, spread the word. BTW, the book banner looks great on your site.
Awesome, thanks! :)
 
#120 ·
Maria Romana said:
Whoa! 1000 views/day? That's way more than I expected at this early stage. Truly impressed. I guess all of us prawny prawns have some pull when we work together (unless those are all the result of us just trying it out!
No, that's real page views per day. So yes, when you add all the sites together it starts to become one really, really... really huge site. The key is to keep it simple, robust and equatable.

BTW, thanks for all the editing. Every little helps ;D
 
#121 ·
Just to make your life easier, here are the typos/missing words on the front of the website. See parts in bold:

* * *

What started out as a post on the Writers Cafe has ended up as a new way for Indie Authors to cross promote each other's books... and it very easy.

Simply join the network and add your books into our library, then copy some code to your website… and that's it.

You are now promoting other Indie Authors on your site and in return they're also promoting your books on their sites.

You can opt in or out at any.

You don't need a minimum number of reviews to add books.

You can filter the books promoted on your site.

It's completely free.

And you can get started here…

* * *
 
#122 ·
geraldmkilby said:
No, that's real page views per day. So yes, when you add all the sites together it starts to become one really, really... really huge site. The key is to keep it simple, robust and equatable.

BTW, thanks for all the editing. Every little helps ;D
Do you think we could persuade Hugh Howey to put it on his website ;D
 
#123 ·
Hiya - Confused by the categories

I would like to showcase books like my own but there is no category? I tried looking for "Coming of Age" (that's the Amazon one), also looked under Young Adult and under Teen, but nothing there. When I checked my own books they were under "Genre Fiction" so I picked that and it is all kinds of books.

I think any category that shows ten different cats like Genre Fiction is going to get a lot in it but is not going to be good for finding books in just one genre?

I also have some paranormal romance, so I chose Paranormal, but then I noticed that there was also Supernatural and Paranormal, and then to confuse me even more there was a separate Supernatural category, and all three seemed to have different books in them? But surely you only need Supernatural and Paranormal and can dispense with the other two and amalgamate them in?

But if you do want to separate more rather than less, then Romance really needs some subcats, in my case it needs Young Adult Romance, Romantic Comedy, Paranormal Romance.

Sorry to be difficult! And thank you for this wonderful website which I would be more than happy to promote everywhere when it is ready to be

Suggestion: Could we choose how many books we display? I'm putting it as a side bar on a page that will be quite long and would be happy to have far more than two books by other authors showing up than just the two that are appearing at present.
 
#124 ·
OK... update time.

Wordpress.com issue resolved: When you enter a wordpress.com url it will now give you an option to display an image banner promoting the service. This takes the visitor to a special landing page which also shows books from your selected categories. I have checked the code on a test site so I know it works.

Vertical Banner: If you look at your 'Site' page it will now give you an option for either horizontal or vertical banners.

Adding more than two books to the banner: You can simply add in the code twice (or however many times you want) on your site. It will display different books for each. You may want to leave the 'Title' blank and you can add your own on your site. See the bookpromocoop.com home page for examples.

Minor change: You don't need to specify the exact URL that the code runs on, just your web address is fine.

@Evenstar. All the books are tagged with category/subcategory but there's not the numbers yet to use this. As soon as the numbers increase I'll get into subcategory filtering. Probably for the big ones first; Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction, etc

Over the weekend (or maybe next week) I will pop an email to all subscribers and remind you all to ensure the code is running on your site. After that, if it's not running, then your books will not be promoted.

Spreading the word: I'll put up a post on my blog & FB and send a few tweets, but that's the full extent of my marketing empire. So it would be good if others could spread the word and get more authors on board.


That's it for the moment. I will add in an FAQ / About Page and do a few tidy ups shortly.


 
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