Update: There's a new list on Indielisters! We've started a database for Author Services Reviews.
-Do you use an amazing cover designer?
-Have you paid for a marketing or promotion service that just wasn't worth it?
-Discovered an online summit with awesome discounts and content?
Share all of your author services experiences with the author community so they can find the best products and value!
"It's like Angie's List for authors"
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Hello Kboarders, Indielisters is helping authors develop a method for their book promotion and author services-picking madness. Browse the lists to find out what works. Then share your results and experiences to help out your fellow authors.
Let's get our experiences out of the trenches and into the light, and all in one spot!
I don't quite understand how your list is different from what Sharon Karaa is doing. She compiled a spreadsheet of many promo sites and included their results. Granted, it's not an average of many different authors, but I found her spreadsheet extremely helpful.
As far as USA Today and NYT best sellers, I think for me it makes me less interested in participating. I'm not in the same league as those authors. What works for them won't help me. In fact, even the results of long time successful indie authors who shared their info here won't necessarily help a newbie. I guess I don't understand how results could be quantified in such a way that they help different segments of authors.
Alexa,
The spreadsheet that Sharon created is a wonderful resource with a wealth of information, including how her own books have performed with the services. What her spreadsheet (and what every other compilation of data I have found) lacks, and what IndieListers provides is actual performance data from many authors.
There are dozens of stats that can be tracked in order to estimate how books will perform, but there is really only one stat that matters--how many downloads/sales actually happened. And in most cases only the author (or publisher) can provide that information. By sharing this with other authors on IndieListers, we will be able to notice trends with different sites.
As far as quantifying results, a simple glance at the Cost/DL column can give you a quick glance as to whether or not a promo was cost effective. For instance, if the cost/DL is more than about 30 cents for a 99 cent promo on Amazon, you can guess that the author with broke even or lost money (based on knowing Amazon's 30% royalty for books below $2.99). If the Cost/DL was less than about 2 dollars for a $2.99 promo on Amaon, you know that the author probably made some money.
As IndieListers grows, we should also be able to break out which promo sites work best for different genres as well.
Joined. Thank you. I think it is a brilliant idea, especially if we can list genres. that would give invaluable info because one site might work for fantasy but not for romance etc.
Joined. Thank you. I think it is a brilliant idea, especially if we can list genres. that would give invaluable info because one site might work for fantasy but not for romance etc.
How about promos that didn't perform as well as you expected?
We're looking for both kinds of results on IndieListers.
Join our growing community of authors helping authors. Browse and share book promotion results on IndieListers.com. Check out the link in my signature line!
We're hoping we can save you time, pain, and money!
I think it's important to keep the information current. How well or poorly a site worked a year ago may not be relevant to how well it works today because sites may change the way they handle things or they may grow their subscriber list. Do you have a way to scrub old data from your list as time passes?
New entries are continuing to arrive on IndieListers. Authors know that the self-publishing world is not winner-take-all. We can all win. Hope you'll join us!
It was a semi-underwhelming promo. I actually broke even because it was 70% KCD + about 1,000 KENP read. Main point was some added exposure. Highest rank was 2,832 and it was #1 in a couple of categories. Now it's sitting in the 15K range.
It was a semi-underwhelming promo. I actually broke even because it was 70% KCD + about 1,000 KENP read. Main point was some added exposure. Highest rank was 2,832 and it was #1 in a couple of categories. Now it's sitting in the 15K range.
There's a new Book Barbarian entry on IndieListers.
By the way, I'm planning on building out the website. Looking to build a team who would be interested in lending their skills and becoming part of the project. Got skillz? Give me a shout!
I don't want to be a jerk, but I understand why you ask indies to subscribe to add their promo results (anti-manipulation), but why are you asking me, who only wants to see the results to subscribe?
Updated to remove the sentence: Are you trying to help writers or harvest emails? as it seems to touched a raw nerve with OP which was not my design. Agree to disagree. Good luck!
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