Using Amazon Perks More Effectively

Okay, so if you sell books exclusively through Amazon, you know you have these perks you can utilize to help boost sales - chiefly, the Kindle Countdown Deals (KCD) and the free book days. 

Once every 90 days, you can choose to discount your books or have them free for up to 7 days.  With the discount, the days have to be in a row.  With the free, you can sprinkle them around.  Every 90 days you can use one or the other, but not both. 

I've used the KCD and the free promotions, but probably not to the best of their abilities.  And I don't always remember to use them every 90 days. 

The sales I had for Project Hermes, Sleeping Ugly, and Blink of an I were built to use up my KCD before my 90 days ran out. It's a use it or lose it kind of thing.  You get a whole 'nother 7 days when your clock resets, but you can never get back the days you didn't use.  So, I figured, why not use them.

Part of my problem was not keeping good track of when my 90 days were for each of my books.  So, yep, built another spreadsheet.  (It's what I do.) 

As you can see, I've got a line for each of the books (sorted by series), with columns full of dates - when my exclusivity starts, when it ends, and the next one and the next one.  I also mark when I've used my perks by putting a solid box around the date I'm currently in.  So I can plan accordingly. 

The other day, Silver accused me of being organized.  I scoffed.  Traditionally, I have been about the least organized person I could think of.  But, I guess, as I got older and had more time on my hands, I did become organized.  Hence the spreadsheets.  :shrug: 

Being organized has helped a lot with this business part of writing.  (Not so much with the writing part of writing.  That's still an unorganized mess.)   I'm probably still not using all the perks to the best of my abilities - say, getting advertising set up in time for it to be effective - but I'm working on it. 

I hope this helps give you some ideas on how to keep track of this stuff.  Use it if it helps and if it's no use to you, thanks for reading all the way down to here anyway.

Do you use the perks?  Any ideas on how to better utilize them?

Stuff and Junk

I last night's writing ended on a plot twist and I have no idea where I'm going next with this.  Which is why I stopped writing last night.  Ah, the joys of flying by the seat of your pants.  I wonder what today's writing session will bring.

This book is currently a hot mess.  Woohoo.

I'm having a flash sale on Friday.  Wish in One Hand and In Deep Wish will both be on sale for 99c/ 99p here and in the UK.  A $3 discount for 24 hours only.  I won't be advertising this because I just thought of it yesterday, but I will be splashing it around FB and Twitter.  Both books were approaching the end of their 90 days with no Countdown Deals, so rather than waste those opportunities, I thought I'd take advantage of them.  We'll see if anything happens.

My sales are sucking hard this month.  I blame lack of advertising.  I really need to do something about that next month.

I went through a period of 'I don't wanna do this anymore' earlier this week.  It lasted a couple hours.  Then I got over it and got back to work.

While I was updating the back matter of In Deep Wish, I found a glaring typo in the last line of the book.  Not sure how I missed it with as many times as I've been over that book, but there it was.  I killed it and the freshly uploaded version no longer has that flaw.  It said 'I've have' instead of 'I'd have'.  I still have to update the paperback version. Blerg.

I wish Amazon would let us do Kindle Countdown Deals for other countries.  I actually had someone in Australia mention this in the comments of one of my posts to a FB group.  I felt really bad that I couldn't give her the discount, too.

The back matter is updated in all but two of my books. Project Hermes and Blink on an I are still on the old back matter.  No a big deal because neither of them are part of a series.  I may be using them as a control for the experiment.  Or I may just be lazy.

Well, time for more coffee.  Got any stuff or junk to talk about this morning?

Marketing Observations and News

Okay, so I did a Kindle Countdown Deal for Dying Embers last week.  I had the book at 99 cents from the 14th through the 17th, sold 14 books (one of which was in Australia where it wasn't on sale).  It reached 95th in the top 100 serial killer suspense ebooks on Thursday and promptly fell back into the hundreds where it stayed.

I paid for an ad at Omnimystery News that ran during the course of the sale, and I had a free ad with the ReadCheaply newsletter on the 14th.  I sold 7 books the first day. One book the second day and 2 books the third day (UK and Australia).

I also attempted to do a Facebook boost thing on the 14th, and was declined because my ad had too much text.  I changed the ad and resubmitted on the 15th, and it was declined again because it had too much text.  I said 'fuck it' on the 16th and tried to boost a post with just my book cover - that one went through.  It was boosted on the 16th and the 17th for a cost of $20.  During that time, I 'reached' 1386 people and 39 'engagements', and sold an additional 4 books which netted me another $2.80.

Additionally, I hit Twitter and FB pretty hard with posts and status updates about the sale.  Not sure if any of that worked, or I just annoyed people.

One unexpected benefit? I received a new 5-star review, which is nice.

I am running a Kindle Countdown Deal for Accidental Death starting this Wednesday.  It will be 99 cents through Saturday - just like Dying Embers' Deal.  I will be doing another Facebook boost (now that I know what works) but maybe for a little more money.  I won't be doing another Omnimystery ad.  Not sure if it was that cost-effective - especially considering my ad was so far down the bar readers had to scroll past the end of the page text to see it.  (I don't know about you, but I don't scroll past page text to look at ads.)  I will be contacting ReadCheaply for another ad there - if it remains free, why not*?

If you know of any sites where I could do an ad that don't require a lead time and a panel of people to approve the ad, let me know. Oh, and that don't cost necessary body parts.  I can't justify pricey ads for low priced books to my CFO - not yet anyway.

Any questions?  Anything to add? 

*Apparently at ReadCheaply, an author can only do one ad every 30 days - even if the books in question are different.  Hmphf.  Well, fark.  Too late to change any of this now.  :shrug: