Kindle Forum banner

Getting the free promotion right....How to do it? Can we build a guide?

5K views 37 replies 15 participants last post by  AltMe 
#1 ·
After my second bad bout of ill health for this year, and now being a month behind on the next book, I'm going to need to do some promotion work soon to keep income up. Last time, Freebooksy worked as a stand alone, but this time I'd like to do it properly.

I know this has been said before in many threads, but I still dont get the mechanics of it. So I thought before I need it, and so others can reference it in the future, why dont we collaborate on making a list/guide of the best free book promotion sites, and how to assemble a proper promotion? Once there's enough detail, I'll assemble it in the first post here, and change the title so its a reference and not a question.

So, book 1 in my first series has 5 days it can be free for. Bookbub has already ignored it, so lets leave them out of it.

Which sites do I look at promoting with? In what order? Over which days?

I've seen lists of sites, but there has always been detail missing. Which site do you use as the anchor site, to determine which days the promotion runs over? (Especially when BB is not a factor, being as if you get one of them, they tell you.) What order do you put the sites, in order to get them all across the 5 days selected? Whats the criteria for figuring out which sites go in what order?

Any sites to ignore? Which sites are better for which genre? (Mine is Space Opera).

All information helpful, as I'd like to build a post/guide here where anyone coming along for the first time can see at a glance not only where to go for promotion, but how to go about building the whole thing.

So I know about Freebooksy, and I have an email from them there asking if I want to go again. So do I use them as the one to fit everything else into, or someone else and I fit them to someone harder to get a date for?

Mechanics as well as sites please. (I found freebooksy daunting enough to do alone last time, let alone the huge number of sites I've some people do all at once over a few days.) If someone can give good instructions, I'll quote you here in the first post.

Put this another way - Without BB, how do you go about getting the same sort of response for the same sort of money?

 
See less See more
#28 ·
Thank you for all this wonderful advice and  detailed information.
I've not yet tried to promote my books, which is awful I know.
I didn't really know where to start  as it all seemed incredibly confusing.
Finally I have a plan  thanks to  this thread and your willingness to impart your advice.  Now I've a firm idea about how to go about it and when to sign up with the various sites.
Thank you all for your contributions and thanks especially to TimothyEllis for starting this.
 
#30 ·
V.P. said:
Nick, could you double check this? I'm asking this because I received an email a couple of months ago from Sweet Free Books stating that they were closing up shop on June 30 of this year. When I read that you just booked them, I got excited, because they always did very well for me. However, when I checked their site (http://sweetfreebooks.com/advertise/) I found a message that confirmed they had closed their doors on June 30.
This thread is from a few months back; when I posted that message on June 4, SFB was still live. They have indeed shuttered their doors since. The promo list I linked to at the top has been updated accordingly.

Nick
 
#31 ·
Nicholas Erik said:
This thread is from a few months back; when I posted that message on June 4, SFB was still live. They have indeed shuttered their doors since. The promo list I linked to at the top has been updated accordingly.

Nick
I didn't realize that this thread was started months ago and had only recently been resurrected. My bad. Sorry for the mix-up!
 
#32 ·
AlexaKang said:
.

The Indielister site is all messed up. First it asks me to input my email to access the site. Then it tells me to confirm my email, which I did. Then it takes me to the site again and tells me to log in with a password. Say what? What password? There's no place to register and I was never asked to create a password. I click the "forgot my password" to see what happens, and it asks me to type in my email. I typed in my email ahd it tells me there is no such user, even though I had confirmed my email. The whole exercise was a waste of my time. In fact, I'm wasting more time typing this post now because of it.

I give up. I'm not wasting more time for this site anymore.
Alexa, you might have caught me as I was transitioning to a new website/server. The Indielisters link in my signature should take you to the page with a "join now" link where you can register and gain full access to the site where you can see all the book promo results authors are sharing (you can now download and sort the data, too).

I'm afraid you were taken to the old signup page, and I've been working to have all those links changed or redirected. Sorry for the trouble!
 
#34 ·
V.P. said:
I didn't realize that this thread was started months ago and had only recently been resurrected. My bad. Sorry for the mix-up!
No, my bad. I started it, then went down for the count, and have only just started to rethink all of this.
 
#36 ·
V.P. said:
I was sorry to hear about your health problems, Timothy. I hope you are doing better now?
Not really. I get small periods each day where I function about the level of a cat. Its very frustrating.

I managed to book a Freebooksy last night, but getting anything else to line up with it was beyond me.
 
#37 ·
TimothyEllis said:
Not really. I get small periods each day where I function about the level of a cat. Its very frustrating.

I managed to book a Freebooksy last night, but getting anything else to line up with it was beyond me.
I'm not sure it will work for you, but I've found that drinking mimosas in between booking promo slots helps. Good luck!
 
#38 ·
V.P. said:
I'm not sure it will work for you, but I've found that drinking mimosas in between booking promo slots helps. Good luck!
If mimosas are alcoholic, no that will make things worse. I'm allergic to alcohol.

I did however overdose on Red Bull.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top