In our new occasional series on how ALLi members work together to mutual benefit, here's an interesting case study from author Alison Ripley-Cubitt, describing how fellow ALLi novelist Jane Davis inspired her to spend her $100 marketing budget to best effect. This story was originally shared in our private Facebook group, available exclusive to ALLi members. (Another great reason to join ALLi!)
My $100 Bookbub Promotion
As I recently received an email inviting me to spend $200 on an unproven promotion to 30,000 followers on Instagram and Twitter, I thought I'd tell you how I got better use out of my more modest ($100) marketing budget.
I've just had my best number of downloads from a BookBub promotion, and thanks are due to Jane Davis, who shared her results and tips here.
Jane's advice was to keep the book at the promotion price for as long as possible. In my case that was free and after three weeks, I am just shy of my target of 20,000 downloads.
Because I had a problem with Amazon failing to price match a competitor, in this case, Kobo, I was forced to reschedule my BookBub slot.
Again, it was Jane who suggested I use Draft2Digital to upload to all the other retailers. And I'm so glad I did this as not only is it the most user-friendly of all the retailers, but it delivered over 4,200 of all my downloads.
The biggest hurdle was getting Amazon to price match. When they did agree to price match to free, they refused to do so in India. This may be a policy decision, as many other BookBub clients have had a similar problem with Amazon.
My figures might not sound much to those of you who write commercial fiction, but this amazed me, as it's a political thriller.
And I didn't even advertise in the USA, as despite umpteen approaches, I've never been successful at getting a US BookBub slot. Even if I could, I can't yet justify spending $385 on one marketing promotion.
My promo cost me $105. The real cost was $5, as the rest came from writing income from a publisher.
My intention here was to get more readers (and, I hope, reviews). I didn't see (or expect) sales across my other titles, as I write in different genres.
Before this promotion, I had a total of 50 reviews spread evenly across Amazon in the UK and the USA but none on Kobo.
When I pitched for a slot in the international territories – (Australia, Canada, India and the UK) I told them that my book had characters from all their international territories, including the Indian sub-continent. Whether or not that helped, I don't know, but I got the listing.
OVER TO YOU Have you had a success story specifically due to advice from another ALLi member? Do you have an interesting case study of collaboration to share? We'd love to hear from you!
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How lovely to get a couple of mentions. All I did was post a couple of comments!