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Promoting a free short story?

638 views 13 replies 10 participants last post by  m123xyz 
#1 ·
Has anybody tried running ads/promos for short stories? What kind of results did you get?

I have a prequel to my main series (17k or so) that I'd like to set to free for a few days. Is it even worth it to run ads (Freebooksy, etc) for a work this short?
 
#3 ·
Not sure about promos for shorts. I do know that a lot of authors use shorts connected to their series as incentives for signing up for their newsletter, or for being a beta reader. Generally not a bad idea, IMHO, as shorts are a tough sell. A lot of authors make their series-connected shorts into perma-frees.
 
#5 ·
I haven't tried paid promos, not even the cheapies for my permafree series starter (Codename: Ace) because my testing on free promo stuff and watching results on novels doesn't lead me to believe there'd be decent ROI in it.

The most interesting thing I saw recently was Guy Riessen used Instafreebie pretty effectively with a short. You should be able to find the thread he started about it through Search. It was in the last month or two. I posted in it, so if Search doesn't turn it up you might be able to follow the breadcrumbs to it from my recent posts.
 
#6 ·
J. Tanner said:
I haven't tried paid promos, not even the cheapies for my permafree series starter (Codename: Ace) because my testing on free promo stuff and watching results on novels doesn't lead me to believe there'd be decent ROI in it.

The most interesting thing I saw recently was Guy Riessen used Instafreebie pretty effectively with a short. You should be able to find the thread he started about it through Search. It was in the last month or two. I posted in it, so if Search doesn't turn it up you might be able to follow the breadcrumbs to it from my recent posts.
Thanks. I've plundered Instafreebie w/this one but maybe I'll give it another go come release month of novel 1. :)
 
#7 ·
HI. Reader and writer.
I am a huge fan of using social media to promote my books, My Fb pages/FB groups/Fb friends etc. And/or using Facebook ads to build an email list or sell books.

Success story?  ;)
 
#8 ·
I promoted my short story in early 2015 with decent results. It was just 3k-4k words long, and I made it free for five days and used the sites that would promote books which have no reviews. The cover was pretty bad, the writing unedited and embarrassing.

Results: I got to #1500 of the free lists and #4 and #73 of the category lists. Can't remember how many people downloaded the short.

I'm redoing the story; it's now about 20k words in length, so it's a novella and not a short. I plan to run another promo in a few months' time.

PS I did have the words 'A short story' on the cover and in the title.
 
#9 ·
Instafreebie is helpful with shorts. I also use bknights, genrepulse, and Freebooksy to push this free short: https://www.amazon.com/Sagans-Intelligent-Universe-Archangel-Project-ebook/dp/B01FN30H3I/

(Maybe KND Free Book Highlighter would work as well?)

I'm not really sure what the sell-thru is because it is a standalone and most peeps just jump right into Archangel Down. That said, I have had people say in reviews that they found me through Carl Sagan.

Oh, another option: create a short story anthology with other similar authors. All the advertisers take short story anthologies, even BookBub. Also, if you have twenty authors in an anthology, it will tend to get great organic sales and won't need as much advertising just by virtue of being on peeps backlists.
 
#10 ·
C. Gockel said:
Instafreebie is helpful with shorts. I also use bknights, genrepulse, and Freebooksy to push this free short: https://www.amazon.com/Sagans-Intelligent-Universe-Archangel-Project-ebook/dp/B01FN30H3I/

(Maybe KND Free Book Highlighter would work as well?)

I'm not really sure what the sell-thru is because it is a standalone and most peeps just jump right into Archangel Down. That said, I have had people say in reviews that they found me through Carl Sagan.

Oh, another option: create a short story anthology with other similar authors. All the advertisers take short story anthologies, even BookBub. Also, if you have twenty authors in an anthology, it will tend to get great organic sales and won't need as much advertising just by virtue of being on peeps backlists.
Thanks! I think I'll try bknights et al. as you suggest. Big fan of yours btw! :D
 
#11 ·
I have a permafree short story that I published for the same reason as you, to promote my series. I promoted the short for the first month through the usual free/cheap promo sites, and I also uploaded it to all other platforms (free-ebooks.net actually netted more DL than Smashwords). Now that I don't promote it at all, it still gets random spikes of 100-200 DL, and I guess it's some sites picking it up on their own and including it in their newsletters. I also posted on Goodreads when I released it, in 50 or so groups, inviting people to DL a free short story and get a free copy of Book 1 if they're interested. Plus, Facebook, Google Plus, it's unlimited, what you can do with freebies.
 
#12 ·
I have to say, 17K words isn't particularly short. Depending on which count you use, it's a novelette. I would have thought you could get some decent traction with a work of that length. I have stories that long selling in paperback format, put it that way.
 
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