This time I was better prepared. When I ran the first free promo on Born of Water, it was an experiment. Even though I’m serious about being a writer and crafting a great story, I’m willing to admit I don’t know everything and sometimes the best way to learn is trial and error. Of course, I try to remember my motto: if it isn’t life or death or a solution to world peace, it isn’t that serious! In other words, I endeavor to maintain a sense of humor. 🙂
I was very pleased with the results of the first back to back five day free promo for Born of Water. But even by the end, I was wondering what I could have done differently. Saving a few days for a promo later was my first thought, so I was really happy to renew my KDP and get another five days of free promotion in my ‘bank’ account.
It took me some time to set up a new promo. I’ve changed the cover to the novel and done some editing as well as learning a lot more about the hot-linked TOC and NCX file. With all that in place, it took some creative brain storming to find a date for the promo. Looking at the calendar in early June, I realized the summer solstice was coming up. The opening day for the novel is the summer solstice – what better day for a free promo?
Date decided, I wanted to really make this promotion something big. I’ve been following Bruce Blake‘s blog. His success of nearly 10,000 downloads as well as hitting #1 in both of his genres and #23 in the Free Kindle store not only inspired me, it raised my personal bar. Following his trail of breadcrumbs, I sent out notices to the 16 websites Bruce used to list his book (On Unfaithful Wings)’s free promo. I decided not to employee the tweeting service that Bruce used for his last promotion, figuring I’d see how it went with just the listing services. There is always next time or the next book, after all!
I heard back from Bargain eBook Hunter, Digital Ink Spot, Free eBooks Daily and Free Kindle Dude. All agreed to list Born of Water on the 20th. Free Kindle Dude even sent the following info:
“We would eventually like to expand to genre specific lists, but need a lot more support to get there. The help of authors is key in that support, and we really appreciate all of it. We are also always on the lookout for authors and publishers looking to do a giveaway. We run monthly giveaways, with multiple giveaways each month. These are both digital and print books, as well as merchandise and collectibles. We also have reviewers that review free books, so please let us know about any future promotions as early as possible and we can get you a review as well.”
How is that for a promotion deal? I put a notice of the promo up on No Map Nomads the day before and shared that via Facebook. On the day of, I saw the listings on the sites. What I didn’t expect was that those sites would also tweet Born of Water as a free promo! I spent the day retweeting and tweeting, as well as dropping a few Facebook updates.
I also recently joined the Guild of Dreams. My first introduction post was on the 21st in which I mentioned the promo. I definitely think the Guild’s post helped, but what really was awesome and helped the most was that the other 10 members Liked and tweeted the free promo too. Thanks guys!!
So, the results of this promo? Well, Bruce still has me beat! 🙂 That may have been my decision not to use the tweeting service, or could have been the decision to run the promo on a Wednesday and Thursday. But I did leave my first promo in the dust!
The best ranking I achieved on Amazon happened early Thursday morning: #111 in the Free Kindle Store, #2 in Epic Fantasy, and #5 in Action & Adventure. After that it was a slow slide back up. I had really hoped to break into the top 100 for the Free Store, but didn’t quite make it . . . this time! Still, I earned those rankings with only a total of 2404 downloads! That was 2347 in the US, 49 in the UK, 7 from German, and one loan download in France (thanks!). That is more than double my first promo. I even got a new review as a result over the weekend and had a small handful of paid sales too.
Like the first free promo, I can’t complain. My goal is to increase awareness of my work and hopefully demand. Considering the new review asked about the possibility of a sequel, I’d call this promo a success!