Inexpensive Marketing Venues - Revisited July 2016

Hey all!  Here we are again.  There's some new stuff and some updates on the old stuff.  If you're a writer, I hope you find some value in these posts to increase your sales.  If you're a reader, I hope you find value in these posts for places to find new books to read.  YMMV.

New Stuff:

Reading Deals - $15 or free if you're willing to go 'not guaranteed' (as of 7/15/16 they raised the price to $29) paid up front & they reimburse you if they reject your ad.  I paid, they rejected and reimbursed my PayPal account.  It was an ad for Accidental Death (back in June when AD was still 99 cents).  They said they rejected it because my cover wasn't professional enough and then gave me links to cover designers.  I thought that was a little tacky.  The whole thing is kinda weird because I've gotten a lot of compliments on AD's cover,  In fact, when I hand out my bookmarks - the ones that have all the covers on them - people point to AD and tell me they really like that cover.  :shrug:  Different strokes for different folks, I guess.  I may try them again and see what happens with a 'professionally done' cover.

Paranormal and Urban Fantasy Bargains - $5 for one day, $10 for two days - paid upon ad acceptance.  I found them through their Facebook page, which seems current.  I filled out the form 2 days ago and haven't heard back yet.  When I got their email blast this morning, it was empty, so I'm not sure what's going on here.  I guess I'll wait and see if they ever get back to me.  ETA: They got back to me this morning and WIOH has been accepted for a 2-day ad next Monday and Tuesday.  We'll see how it goes.

Updates:

Goodkindles - $19.95 or less - doesn't really care about pricing, but obviously needs to be available for Kindle.  For the $19.95 option, I got my book on their site permanently, a listing in their newsletter, and the option to bump my ad to the top after 30 days.  Everything looks good.  Not sure of the sales gain here.

Update 7/20/16: When I went over there to put in a $19.95 ad, I saw they'd raised their prices to $49.95 for the same ad.  I'm not quite willing to pay that much when I didn't see that many sales from the $19.95 ad.

Robin Reads - $35 - This one was recommended by a hybrid author friend.  Haven't tried them myself, but she spoke highly of them.
Update 5/20/16: I have an ad placed with them for May 29th for Dying Embers. It was $40. They only accept ads for books with multiple reviews and DE is the only book that qualified.
Update 7/20/16:  I tried to place an ad with them for Accidental Death.  They rejected it.

Authors' Billboard - $5 - they accept only .99, free, or new release titles.  You fill out the form and pay before Tuesday and the ad will go in the newsletter for Friday of the following week.  You can submit an ad every thirty days per book.  No data on this one yet.  Seems legit.  Newsletter looks good.
Update 2/8/16: After some bobbles with this the first time, the ad went up for Wish in One Hand, and everything was good.  Didn't see any sales, though.  I'll probably try this with another book when I have one that meets their criteria.
Update 5/20/16:  I have an ad running with them today for Fertile Ground under their New Releases section.  It's just the cover with a link, so I'm not expecting huge things.

Omnimystery News - pricing depends on what you want to do (a month long ad is $49, but there are free options, too) - not really caring what price your book is, but it needs to have a suspense, thriller, or mystery element.  I've done cover reveals and book excerpts here (free) and those seem to do okay.  I've also done the $49 thing and haven't seen much uptick.  Newsletter is link heavy, but informative.
Update 5/20/16: I have a book excerpt coming out with them for Fertile Ground on the 27th.  Fingers crossed.
Update 7/20/16: I saw a few sales from the May ad.  Still worth using, imo.



Kboards - different options for different things (the link goes to their 'bargain book' promo page - $20)  I did the 'book discovery' promotion ($15) twice.  Once for Dying Embers back in February.  Crickets.  And again for Wish in One Hand.  Again with the crickets.  But I have heard Kboards can be an amazing place to advertise.  Not sure why my experiences haven't been amazing.  Maybe you need to be active on the Kboards forum.  Maybe it's not the target market for my books.  :shrug:
Update 7/20/16: I used their 'new release' ad for Fertile Ground back in May.  Crickets.


Ereader News Today - check out their rate sheet. It's dependent on your genre and the cost of your book.  The books have to be discounted in some way, and they're more favorable to free or .99 books.  I did a Suspense ad for Dying Embers and a Mystery ad for Accidental Death.  Both gained me upwards of 100 sales each, so it was worth the cost.  However, ENT is extremely picky about who gets to advertise with them, and it's not always clear exactly what they want.  Dying Embers had more reviews when they accepted the ad than Accidental Death, but AD only had 3 reviews when they accepted it.  However, I can't beg an ad for Wish in One Hand, which has 5 Amazon reviews.  Even after I changed the cover. So who knows?
Update 7/20/16:  They've changed everything up on me.  I stopped by to try and get an ad in for Wish in One Hand again, but they changed how they do things.  They're only accepting books by quarter now and their third quarter is all booked up.  Not sure how this is working. 

Nothing to add:

Facebook paid ads - You set the dollar amount you want to spend, the length the ad runs, and the people it reaches, so your mileage will vary.  This one isn't exactly new, because I've done these before, but since I've never talked about them, I thought I'd put them here.  Frankly, I can't say for sure I've seen any sales from doing this marketing, but it's getting my books in front of hundreds of faces, so that somebody down the road may think 'hey, I've seen her books before' and buy something.  One can hope.

The Fussy Librarian - $10-$16 - books with more than 10 reviews averaging more than 4 stars and costing less than $5.99.  I have an ad set to go live with them on 2/23/16 - for Dying Embers.  I'll update after that.
Update 5/20/16: I tried an ad for DE with them. Crickets.  But my ad wound up under the fold.  I don't think 'suspense' is their target market. Or maybe it's just me.



Freebooksy (Written Word Media) - varies - Looks like they accept Free ($40-$200), under $4.99 ($25-$100), and New Releases ($399-$999).  This one is on my radar, but I haven't tried them yet.
Update 5/20/16: I tried Bargain Booksy. Got a few sales.  Not quite enough to pay for the ad, though, but product awareness is always a good thing.

eBooks Habit - $10 - under $2.99 books.  They do have a 'free' option but without guaranteed placement, so I assume you won't know if or when your ad will go up if you don't pay. Also on my radar, but haven't tried them yet.
Update 5/20/16: Still haven't tried this one yet.

ReadCheaply - Free (for now) - they accept only .99 or free titles.  Fill out the form and they'll let you know which date you'll be on.  (Usually, I get first available within my chosen timeframe.)  You get one ad every thirty days - regardless of titles.  With this one, though, they only take blurbs of less than 300 characters (with spaces), so you might have to tighten that up a bit.  I did this one back in October for Dying Embers' .99 countdown and saw no measurable jump in sales.  I did this again last week for Wish in One Hand and saw a nice little jump.  Newsletter looks good.
Update 2/8/16:  Apparently they have a bobble with their form. I tried to submit for BloodFlow and got the error that I had to wait 4 months.  They have a thing where a single title can only go up once every 4 months, but I never had an ad for BF with them.  I submitted one once, but they rejected it based on the 30 day thing.  Then I submitted one for Accidental Death. The day the ad was supposed to go live, they sent me what I assume was supposed to be a copy of the ad for approval, but the email was blank.  I wrote them, they wrote me telling me it was my browser, I wrote them back after I did all the things they suggested. Long story short, no ad.  And now I have to wait until each of the books drops off their time limit thing.

eBook Deals Daily - $5 for each target (i.e. $5 for Kindle, $5 for Nook, $5 for UK) - only accepts .99 or Free titles.  I haven't tried this one yet, but I've got it on my to-do list.  The newsletter, etc. looks fair.  A lot of links, but not many covers.
Updated 1/5/16:  Ran an ad through them for WIOH.  Not sure if I saw any sales from it, but it looked nice.

Indie Author News - a lot of options so contact them for their rate sheet.  I did this once, but I can't remember which option I chose.  I think I ended up with a sidebar ad and didn't see any sales from it. 

Every Writer's Resource - $10.  Permanent. They say their ads are free, but then you have to wait for a spot and there's no guarantee.  You pay them $10 and they pay attention. Professional looking full page for your book. Not sure what sales this has brought me, but the listing is there forever, so who knows.