[A past poster]

We are all looking for sites on which we can promote our books and expect a solid ROI, either for paid books or for follow through on free books. I am puzzled by the fact that many of the promo sites link only to Amazon. I am not in Select. My books are sold on a number of platforms. In December I canceled a promo with FKBT, where I'd had promos in the past. I wanted my book to be widely available. That month I sold well over 500 books on B & N alone. Writers like Rosalind, who have taken their books out of Select, have been growing solid sales with other vendors. Unless you're locked in to Select, it doesn't make sense to ignore Apple, Kobo, B &N, etc. when you're promoting your books.

BookBub and ENT are the best sites for successful promos, and they include multiple vendors in their ads. They understand the market. Why don't other promo sites see this opportunity?

 

[C. Gockel]

I think Amazon's affiliate program is the easiest to set up, and it's links are the easiest to append to the end of any URL. I think that is the biggest reason.

VigLink is pretty easy to set up, and I use it for all other retailers. ( https://www.viglink.com/?vgref=994749 ) but it's much more confusing--there's a long URL to string before your URL that is turned into a variable.

An Amazon affiliate URL looks like this: http://www.amazon.com?tag=kbpst-20 (That's Kboards Tag)
This is what a Viglink URL looks like:
http://redirect.viglink.com?key=3443805671d0eb581ecce2573f67ca75&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com

Scary, yes? It's not hard to automate if you have a script for it, but I'm not sure the little sites are as sophisticated.
(I love FussyLibrarian, but their emails aren't even mobile friendly yet. That should be easy.)

That said, here are other sites I use for other retailers: ENT, ReadCheaply, FussyLibrarian, ManyBooks.net, FreeBooksy, ILoveVampireNovels, ebookbutterfly, eBookHounds, BettyBookFreak (name?), DiscountBookDaily ... there are more, but those are the ones I know off the top of my head.

 

[Jan Hurst-Nicholson]

Here's a useful list with a graph

http://www.readersintheknow.com/list-of-book-promo-sites?refcode=2ZLFNYRR

 

[Guest]

Marian

How the market evolved is that

First: B&N was heavily promoting 1 million free books (public domain books) and beginning to take market share.
It also had success with Nook Color.

Second: Amazon countered by offering free books from both public domain and indie authors. It included free books in its associate account. So, any site that offered free books, and then those readers went on to buy other stuff, made money from associate income.

Basically, there was an entire generation of sites in 2010, 2011, 2012 that made their money entirely through mentioning free books and then readers going to Amazon for free books and buying something else. Apart from Kindle Nation Daily there was no site that had proper author targeted promotions.

Third: Amazon got enough market share and dialled back on free books. So it made some rules in Feb 2013 (such as 80% ratio of free books at most, no more than 20,000 a month of free book downloads). These rules de-emphasized free books. Amazon tried to replace free with $1.

* At that point, you had a ton of sites that were only making money from Amazon, not via authors. So all of them didn't care about other stores.

Now, you still have 2 sets of sites

1) Sites that make money primarily from amazon associate program. There's no motivation for them to feature other stores because other store affiliate programs aren't lucrative (they don't sell a truckload of different items like Amazon does - so little chance of someone buying a TV and making you $50).

2) Sites that make money from author promotions. These feature multiple stores if they can manage to handle the extra work.

Some sites make money from both sources.

However, a large large majority of the medium sized sites are Amazon only. Precisely because of the Associate program.

I suspect that sites that are starting now, after Amazon's new associate rules, will focus more on all stores. However, for them there's a huge chasm they have to leap.

Until they get to around 40,000 to 50,000 size impact isn't much. So money from authors is very little. So they need to depend on associate income. Amazon income is way higher than Apple or B&N because Amazon sells everything.

******

One other thing is that it's very time consuming to handle multiple stores. So, if you have to pick one you'll pick Amazon since it's the largest.

******

The opportunity you mention is there. However, time and resources are limited quantities and Amazon associates program is an easy way to start making money even from a small list.

 

[A past poster]

That said, here are other sites I use for other retailers: ENT, ReadCheaply, FussyLibrarian, ManyBooks.net, FreeBooksy, ILoveVampireNovels, ebookbutterfly, eBookHounds, BettyBookFreak (name?), DiscountBookDaily ... there are more, but those are the ones I know off the top of my head.

Thank you for the list and the explanation. Read Cheaply has worked for my books, but The Fussy Librarian hasn't. It could be my genre--literary fiction--which isn't easy. But I've had terrific promos with Bknights. There are no easy answers.

 

[A past poster]

Marian

How the market evolved is that

First: B&N was heavily promoting 1 million free books (public domain books) and beginning to take market share.
It also had success with Nook Color.

Second: Amazon countered by offering free books from both public domain and indie authors. It included free books in its associate account. So, any site that offered free books, and then those readers went on to buy other stuff, made money from associate income.

Basically, there was an entire generation of sites in 2010, 2011, 2012 that made their money entirely through mentioning free books and then readers going to Amazon for free books and buying something else. Apart from Kindle Nation Daily there was no site that had proper author targeted promotions.

Third: Amazon got enough market share and dialled back on free books. So it made some rules in Feb 2013 (such as 80% ratio of free books at most, no more than 20,000 a month of free book downloads). These rules de-emphasized free books. Amazon tried to replace free with $1.

* At that point, you had a ton of sites that were only making money from Amazon, not via authors. So all of them didn't care about other stores.

Now, you still have 2 sets of sites

1) Sites that make money primarily from amazon associate program. There's no motivation for them to feature other stores because other store affiliate programs aren't lucrative (they don't sell a truckload of different items like Amazon does - so little chance of someone buying a TV and making you $50).

2) Sites that make money from author promotions. These feature multiple stores if they can manage to handle the extra work.

Some sites make money from both sources.

However, a large large majority of the medium sized sites are Amazon only. Precisely because of the Associate program.

I suspect that sites that are starting now, after Amazon's new associate rules, will focus more on all stores. However, for them there's a huge chasm they have to leap.

Until they get to around 40,000 to 50,000 size impact isn't much. So money from authors is very little. So they need to depend on associate income. Amazon income is way higher than Apple or B&N because Amazon sells everything.

******

One other thing is that it's very time consuming to handle multiple stores. So, if you have to pick one you'll pick Amazon since it's the largest.

******

The opportunity you mention is there. However, time and resources are limited quantities and Amazon associates program is an easy way to start making money even from a small list.

Great explanation! Thank you.

 

[eBookBetty]

Thank you for the list and the explanation. Read Cheaply has worked for my books, but The Fussy Librarian hasn't. It could be my genre--literary fiction--which isn't easy. But I've had terrific promos with Bknights. There are no easy answers.

Marian-- saw this comment and wanted to comment back.

You're right, literary fiction IS a tough one. It is one of the lowest subscriber bases on our list (at BettyBookFreak), which is a little silly because it is the genre that some of the greatest books in the world are categorized as.

The problem is that most casual readers don't even KNOW what literary fiction is. My favorite question I've had from a subscriber on this topic is, "Literary fiction- is that, like, Shakespeare and stuff?"

What I would suggest to those of you who write literary fiction is (when advertising on a site like ours or Bookbub or... name one ) to choose another genre to list as your 'main', using literary fiction as your subgenre. Even on the sites that don't offer a subgenre as part of the way the listing is set up, for the sake of finding a deeper pool of readers to advertise to, choose 'Women's Fiction', 'Suspense', or 'Thriller', or whichever one your book could fit into.

You all know your work, and I'm sure (as is with most writers) you could probably attach a half dozen genres to every book you've written. As long as you aren't completely fabricating a genre for your book (and any ad site worth their salt will do their homework to find out for sure), choose the one that has the highest subscriber count. (usually mystery, thriller, or romance)

 

[WrittenWordMediaTeam]

We link to other platforms on Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy and always have

 

[Mark E. Cooper]

We link to other platforms on Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy and always have

And Freebooksy always get me a really good number of downloads. I am sure promoting the other stores (plus my permafrees there) is the reason my numbers are growing in the wider world. I'm not as reliant upon Amazon now, and it feels good. Amz is 55% now, and I like it.

 

[A past poster]

Marian-- saw this comment and wanted to comment back.

You're right, literary fiction IS a tough one. It is one of the lowest subscriber bases on our list (at BettyBookFreak), which is a little silly because it is the genre that some of the greatest books in the world are categorized as.

The problem is that most casual readers don't even KNOW what literary fiction is. My favorite question I've had from a subscriber on this topic is, "Literary fiction- is that, like, Shakespeare and stuff?"

What I would suggest to those of you who write literary fiction is (when advertising on a site like ours or Bookbub or... name one ) to choose another genre to list as your 'main', using literary fiction as your subgenre. Even on the sites that don't offer a subgenre as part of the way the listing is set up, for the sake of finding a deeper pool of readers to advertise to, choose 'Women's Fiction', 'Suspense', or 'Thriller', or whichever one your book could fit into.

You all know your work, and I'm sure (as is with most writers) you could probably attach a half dozen genres to every book you've written. As long as you aren't completely fabricating a genre for your book (and any ad site worth their salt will do their homework to find out for sure), choose the one that has the highest subscriber count. (usually mystery, thriller, or romance)

Thanks for your comments. I've been choosing Women's Fiction. I learned the hard way NOT to choose Romance. You get beaten up if you don't have a HEA ending!