A rather big announcement today. I’m about ready to implement a new marketing plan.
For those who don’t know, my main series of books are published exclusively on Amazon. They are not available anywhere else, as they are enrolled in KDP Select. Exclusive publishing is one of the requirements for this, but one perk is that I can run free book promotions Each three month cycle, I can have five days where one of my books is free. (e-book format, of course)
My plan is to have one of my books be free each Friday. Currently, I only have two books published in the main series, so if my cursory math is correct, I will run out of free book days before the next cycle. However, if I publish one more book, then that extra free day will allow me to cycle through the books each Friday without ever having a Friday missing a free book being available.
So, that is what I will be doing going forward. Free Book Friday.
Originally, I was planning on heavily promoting my books through things like the Minds boostfeed and paying out tokens or Steem to those who download my book and leave a review. These would be more short promotions rather than a scheduled thing. But the problem I found is that Amazon forbids paying in any way for reviews. The only thing you can do is give a free or discounted book to someone. So, that is my hope. People will get a free copy and leave a review.
Feel free to let me know what you think of this, or if you see any problems with my plan. My biggest concern is that something will prevent me from making my book free for a single day over a period longer than a month, but I have yet to find any definite obstacles to this. Oh, and if you happen to be another independent author, feel free to steal this idea if it sounds good to you. I think everyone would love more free books.
Oh, and one last thing I forgot to mention… I double checked the terms for something called author copies. These are just versions of my book that I can order at printing cost rather than retail as shown on Amazon, not earning royalties but also, notably, being allowed to sell them myself. So, if I ever get around to opening a Patreon(or equivalent crowdfunding platform), I could add a reward tier where you get a signed copy of my book. It would need to be high enough to cover the author copy plus shipping cost, but that shouldn’t be that large of an amount. Just an idea, as always let me know what you think.
Here is the lineup for this week:
- Tuesday: Nothing
- Wednesday: Metastasis Part 22
- Thursday: V-D016
- Friday: Free Book Friday – Gatekeepers, Book 1