Local or global promotion?

The story so far… I tried putting one of my books on the Kindle free list. 115 copies were downloaded, and quite a few readers were reading ‘pages’ during the four days of the promotion and shortly afterwards. No way of knowing whether there will be a longer term impact on sales.

Last week I tried another of KDP’s suggested strategies, where the price gradually increases over four days – I think. Seemed complicated, but I gave it a go with another of my books and kept my eye on the ‘promotion’ results. Nothing. Nada. Nichts. Not a single download, at any of the ‘staged’ prices, and no impact on the ‘pages read’ numbers. I deliberately didn’t do a lot of Tweeting etc about the ‘promotion’ as I wanted to see whether price alone was the reason for people choosing to download.

The conclusion of these two deeply unscientific investigations is that you can guarantee a high level of interest in your ebook only if you give it away, for free. I find that pretty depressing.

In the past week I’ve experienced another form of ‘promotion’, which started small and then stepped up. Much of my readership is based in Cumbria, where all my books are set. Many of my readers are pre-digital, and the limit of their internet engagement will probably be Facebook, reading but not posting. There’s an FB page run by a a group in my local town and I use it to check dates, events, things for sale. I posted that my new book would be out on June 6th and a few details about it, and the post was shared quite widely. One of the people who saw it was obviously a local reporter looking for a story, and he rang me and asked a few more questions. The exchange took about five minutes and I thought no more about it.

The following day, this was the front page of the North West Evening Mail, based in Barrow-in-Furness and read all over South West Cumbria. There was a fuller article on an inside page, with quotes from my website and more information. It doesn’t raise my international profile, but the people who read this will get their signed paperback copy and pay the full price on the cover. Maybe thinking small and local is the way to go.

Do book ‘promotions’ work?

Well, I put ‘A Good Liar’ on the Kindle free ebook list last week and 115 copies were downloaded over the five days of the offer. At the same time the number of (KENP) pages being read of both ‘A Good Liar’ and ‘Forgiven’, which is the next book in the series, both went up markedly. There may or may not be a connection. This week I’ve tried another Kindle promotion strategy, putting ‘Forgiven’ into the process where the price progresses from low back to the ‘normal’ of around £4 over four days. No noticeable increase in downloads as yet, but I admit I’ve been too busy to do anything about telling anyone about the promotion. At least there’s some income from this strategy, but it doesn’t look particularly effective so far.

More news on that next week. In the meantime, I’ve sent the new book ‘Burning Secrets’ to the printers and can do no more with it until the delivery arrives on May 31st. I know I should be more proactive about promotion, but I need a break after the struggle to get all the production stages completed on time and make all the necessary decisions. And I had a big birthday party to organise and then enjoy – which I did, very much. Loads of people came from away, and it was great to have a steady flow of visitors on the following morning, so we could catch up properly.

I could have put flyers about my new book on the tables at my party, and made a little speech about it, and had a draw for a free copy, but I just didn’t want to to do that. This was an important personal occasion, and the books are about what I do, not who I am. Does that make sense?

Hitting the big 70 puts things in perspective, and running around pushing people to buy my books isn’t top of my priorities. There are many readers, especially in Cumbria, who enjoy the books and say so, and have been anticipating the new one for some time. I’ll do the usual round of meetings, talks, festivals and radio, and hope that will draw some new readers in too. The ebook and Amazon sales will be picked up by my US distributors Fahrenheit Press and its charismatic MD Chris McVeigh,who knows the book selling business far better than I do. I could do with a similar ‘champion’ here in the UK – someone who loves my work and knows how to promote it – and does so for love, not money. Maybe that’s unrealistic, and lazy!