Wednesday, September 21, 2016

SENSES NOVELS – BOOK PROMOTIONS FAILS & WINS

This is a very long post. All comments and opinions are my own.

These blog posts are supposed to be about the books, what is in them, what the characters are doing, etc. But to be honest, it’s tough being an author sometimes. While the Senses Novels sell, they do not sell as well as I would like. Therefore, I try to find ways to promote the books within a reasonable budget. But what happens when you don’t come close to recovering the money that you spend on a promotion? And what should you do when you find the one that will help you weather the worst storm? Read on and learn.

I recently did a promotion with a company called Choosy Bookworm. They are a good, reliable company with a steady reputation. The owner, Jay, is a very nice man that I have had several email conversations with over the past couple of years. Jay has two promotion groups that he is over, Choosy Bookworm and Bookhearts.com. I had an entirely free promotion with Bookhearts.com where AURA, the novel that I am currently giving away for free, was downloaded by over 300 people. I was encouraged by this even though I didn’t make any money at it, and decided to try what I considered to be the main site; Choosy Bookworm for a paid promotion for DULCET. Bad, bad, bad, decision.



Please understand that Choosy Bookworm in no way guarantees that you will gain any sales from their promotions. They make that clear in their conditions, and I knew that going in. Still, the sales that I had were so abysmal that I thought that in some way the promotion was working against me! I have had weeks where without a promotion where I have had many times more the sales than I had with the promotion. I know that a lot of things can affect sales; bad covers, poor editing, etc. but all of the reviews for this book have been outstanding, so I find that a little hard to swallow.

A few things that I did notice about my particular promotion were:

·      My promotion was well down the page making my book harder to find.
·      When I looked at the promotion with my iPad, paid advertisements blocked a significant portion of my book’s blurb. I have no idea what another reading device would have seen.
·      For some reason, my book cover did not initially show up. It wasn’t until I went in and looked a second time that it came up with the promotion.

Would a change in any of this had made a difference? I don’t know. I have not and am not asking Jay or Choosy Bookworm for any kind of refund; they did the job they were paid to do. However, since I know that a lot you who read this blog are also authors, I wanted you to be aware that it is possible to have a significant negative experience with this type of promotion and that I cannot endorse Choosy Bookworm for paid promotions.

To be entirely fair, Jay did email me after I told him that I was going to blog about my experience and he offered to reschedule and run my promotion again for free. I reminded him that my intention from the start was to take the book off of the $0.99 promo on September 30. That did not leave any time to re-run the promo. I also asked if, in cases such as this, a second promo has resulted in a better result? I did not receive a response which, to me, is telling in itself. I am sure that others out there have had positive experiences with Choosy Bookworm, mine was a financial disaster.

Believe it or not, there is a site out there that offers a refund if your promotion is not successful. I have had excellent success with this site and its affiliates and highly recommend them. Even though they offer a refund, I have never had to ask for one. *If you are interested in a site that goes above and beyond to help you sell your books, I would suggest that you check out:

This is linked with Books Go Social (look for them on the web and on Facebook) which is run by Laurence O’Bryan out of Ireland. Laurence and I email back and forth regularly, and he is someone that you can depend on. When he tells you that he will give you a full refund if you are not satisfied regardless of the reason, he means it! I can promise you that from here on out, ALL of my promotion budget goes to yourbookpromoter.com and Books Go Social!

So there you have it. My entirely negative experience (Choosy Bookworm), my semi-positive experience (Bookhearts) and my absolutely positive experience (yourbookpromotoer.com/Books Go Social.) For any of you looking to promote your books, think carefully about how and where you want to spend that money. And if you are in the mood for a good read, AURA is still FREE on Amazon.


*I am given no compensation either monetary or by other means in any way by yourbookpromoter.com or Books Go Social for this endorsement.


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