Advertising Update

Because I said I would talk more about the weekend's advertising, here goes:

Friday at 10am Central my Kindle Countdown Deal started.  The price went to $.99.  I tweeted.  I facebooked.

crickets

Friday at 1pm Central by ad went live in the Ereader New Today newsletter.

And the sales started racking up.

By midnight, I had reached 197 orders*.  At 10am on Saturday when the price rose to $1.99, I sold another 15 books.  And I had reached #8 on the Amazon hard-boiled mystery list, #10 on the Kindle hard-boiled mystery list, and #24 on the crime thriller list.  I also broke the top 1000 of all books at Amazon.

At the $1.99 price point, I sold 19 books on Saturday and none before the price went up to $2.99 on Sunday.

I sold two books in the late afternoon on Sunday at the $2.99 price point.

I also had people read at least 2800 pages in the KU program or about 5.5 books - which I kind of attribute to people reading the ENT ad, borrowing the book, and reading it.  I don't know if that was actually 6 people reading five and a half books or 11 people reading half the book or 100 people reading a small portion of the book.  I prefer to think the first scenario.

I also sold two Dying Embers yesterday - after not selling any in the prior days of July - so I could count those as residual sales from people snagging AD and looking for other books I've written.  Could just be a coincidence, though. 

I picked up one new Amazon review.  5-stars.  Thanks for that, whoever you are.  I also got an awesome Goodreads review.  You know who you are and you totally rock. 

Since ENT has a policy that they won't take another ad for the same book for 90 days, I can't repeat this experiment for a while.  I know when Wish in One Hand is ready, I will place an ad there for that book, too.  The ad did what I wanted it to - pay for itself, get me some nice sales, and push my book into the rankings so more people might discover it.  That's really all one can ask from advertising, really.

I hope that helps put things in perspective.  And as always, this is my journey.  What happens here might not be indicative of what will happen with your advertising and your books.  You could sell tons more. Or maybe less.  That's your journey.  Write the best book you know how, put together some snazzy cover copy and a good cover, and see what happens for you.

And good luck!  None of this is easy, but it's been worth it for me. Even if watching the sales data has become somewhat addictive.  ;o)

*technically all of my mentions of 'sales' in the above post are really 'orders'.  Some of them still have to clear the buyer's bank before they count in my royalty report, and I didn't feel like parsing all that out before this post went live.  Suffice it to say, most orders turn into sales within a few days, so it all comes out on the good side.