The digital age has revolutionised the way we publish, promote and distribute books. As an author navigating this sometimes rocky terrain, I recently embarked on an experiment to boost my books’ visibility and reach a wider audience.
I used a book promotion tool to discount my book, Baked with Love, to free for a week in March, resulting in more than 1,300 downloads across Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble et al.
Later that month, I landed a BookBub featured deal for Highland Fling, the first in a series of six books. BookBub is the supposed granddaddy of all promotions, and among the most expensive. I paid £217.44 (roughly US$275) for the one-day promotion where they send out an email to a ginormous mailing list with links to where your book is for sale.
Exhilarating
The week of the promotion was exhilarating and nerve-wracking. Once the price dropped to free, I watched in amazement as the download numbers started to climb. The promotion tool did its magic, reaching readers far and wide who were eager to discover new titles without financial commitment.
My book was downloaded 11,151 times on Amazon.
I made the cost of the promotion back within five days with people going onto to buy the other books in the series and by the end of the month I was in profit.
Kobo and Apple
The book is also available on other retailers, and I made more money on those than I ever have done before, with sales particularly promising on Kobo and Apple books.
Since the promotion, I have made £861 on Amazon and just over £520 on the other platforms. The immediate impact of the promotion was clear in the download numbers, but the long-term effects were even more encouraging. In the weeks following the promotion, I noticed a significant uptick in reviews and ratings on various platforms.
Highland Fling went from 275 ratings on Amazon to 624, and happily for me the average rating did not change—a nice constant average of 4.4 out of 5.
Visibility
The experience taught me several valuable lessons about book promotion in the digital age. Firstly, visibility is key. No matter the quality of your work, readers cannot appreciate it if they’re unaware it exists.
Secondly, the power of free should not be underestimated. It’s a strategic tool that, when used wisely, can dramatically expand your reach. While Highland Fling’s price has reverted to normal on most platforms, I’ve kept the first in the series free on Amazon.com, the biggest book market, and the free downloads continue.
My husband always jokes that I need to get my finger out and become a best-selling author. For one heady day, I was a number one best seller on Amazon US and UK for free downloaded books, and number 3 in humour.
Seeing that orange best-seller flag was an enormous boost to the ego, and for that reason alone the answer to the question would I run a promotion like that again, the answer is Hell, yeah…
Emma Baird is an award-winning writer, specialising in romcoms and fiction that focuses on relationships, and a type 1 diabetic. She is also the co-author of The Diabetes Diet, co-written with a doctor. Most importantly, she is the guardian of one very spoiled cat…
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Well done Emma. Thanks for the insight about how book promotion works.
Thank you!
Number one is number one! Congratulations, and thanks so much for laying all this out. I’d love to give this kind of publicity a go, but I don’t think I’m consistent enough across my e-books. I have ten published, but only three are connected as a trilogy. You said you made the first in the series permanently free on Amazon – is that by making it free on one of the other platforms and getting Amazon to price match? I’ve heard of that being done, but not tried it.
Anyway, your success is well-earned and very encouraging!
Hi Damian, thank you. Yes that’s how I did it. It’s a bit of a hassle – every other platform makes it dead easy to make your first book free, hey ho. If I were you, I would only do a promotion for a series. I don’t think it’s worthwhile otherwise. Best wishes, Emma