Promoting Novellas

It has been months since I’ve written a blog so I thought it might be a good idea to catch you up on everything I’ve been doing. So instead of writing a post on history or my other ponderings :) (Do you see what I did there?) I thought I would share some of my recent experience promoting my novellas.

Now, I don’t enjoy promotion, but I do understand that it’s an essential part of the job. I learned this through the school of hard knocks. Nearly twenty years ago my husband and I had a small business in the Okanagan region of British Columbia, Canada. We had a good product and a great service at a bargain price, but the company didn’t grow as anticipated. Why? We were relying too heavily on word of mouth to promote our business and hadn’t budgeted enough money for sales and marketing.

You can have the best product in the world, but if no one’s ever heard of it, it will not be a success. You need to announce your product and make sure everyone knows about it.

That being said, I still have limited experience and knowledge of promotion and marketing, especially when it comes to books.

A Woman of Honour went on sale for two weeks in February. I had a steep learning curve when it comes to promoting a $0.99 sale, but it was a wonderful experience. And then on 4th March A Woman of Love was released and also went on sale. And once again I was plunged into the marketing aspect of writing.

There are websites that promote book deals and send out emails to their subscribers.

Molly Green has a great list on her site at:

http://www.molly-greene.com/market-a-99-cent-ebook-sale/ 

One thing that became clear at the outset of my sale was that reviews count. The sites with the best results want books that are cheap and have a lot of reviews on Amazon. The minimum requirements vary from site to site and as I’m only promoting novellas, at this stage, my opportunities were very limited.

I’ve heard some of the big names like Bookbud and Booksends are expensive but have excellent results. Neither of these sites accepts novellas so I can’t share any first hand experience.

I have to admit I haven’t poured a lot of money into promotion. Although I believe you should promote your work, I am reluctant to invest too heavily into subscriber advertising. (This is a return on investment thing. There isn't enough profit margin.) I have decided instead to put my promotion dollars into a review book tour with Goddess Fish Promotions. On the grounds that reviews promote sales.

You can find the details on my Appearances and Giveaways page.   

The biggest mistake I made with my $0.99 sale was not staggering my promotion efforts so I can’t tell you what worked and what didn’t. How can I tell if Bargain Booksy or Read Freely helped the sale of my books when they both sent out emails to their subscribers on the same day?


Here are some of the sites that take novellas:

Bargain Booksy – they have paid and free advertising: http://www.bargainbooksy.com/sell-more-books/

Hot Zippy  - this includes Bargain Ebook hunter, Romance Ebooks and Pixelscroll: http://support.hotzippy.net/?page_id=585

http://kindleromancedealsandsteals.com/submit-a-book.php

http://bookgoodies.com/bargain-books/

http://pretty-hot.com/submit-your-book/

http://www.ebooklister.net/submit.php 

Here are some of the Facebook groups I used:


Marketing for Romance writers

https://www.facebook.com/groups/mfrwauthors/

Historical romance addicts

https://www.facebook.com/groups/49528507026/?fref=ts

Ebooks Promo

https://www.facebook.com/groups/eBooksBooksPromo/

Amazon Book club

https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmazonBookClubs/

Korner Konnection

http://www.kornerkonnection.com/index.html?fb=ebookkornerkafe&r=thanks  

Facebook Groups for 99c or Free Ebooks:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/444695995585913/

  
https://www.facebook.com/groups/302805843186844/

          https://www.facebook.com/search/str/ebooks99centsclub/  

What Promotional efforts have worked for you?