The Business of Writing by @KimHeadlee: Promoting Your Books Online and #giveaway!

Woman behind veil
(c)2008 Jose Antonio Sánchez Reyes
Dreamstime ID 4932489

Last week on The Maze I introduced the concept of the Promotion Plan for authors of all stripes in the publishing spectrum.

Online promotion is an entire topic in and of itself that I have chosen to address with you this week.

I selected the "Woman behind veil" image for today's post because for many authors, online promotion is a lot like this young lady: we peep out from behind our veils just long enough to interact a little bit with our audiences now and then.

Here are some ways to lower the veil even further:

Blogging. When I first took the plunge to actively expand my social network, everyone said I needed to start a blog. Which I did. And it got very few views, something on the order of maybe a couple dozen a day. To be honest, that was a couple dozen more than I was expecting, since I had (foolishly, I admit) neglected the "care and feeding" of my readership and could host my entire fan base in my living room. To increase blog reach, I took the following steps:

• I joined Facebook and, eventually, Twitter and now share blog posts to those platforms on a regular basis. Some aspects of social media still send me screaming off into the night, but I have embraced its usefulness in spreading the word about my books.
• I set up automatic cross-posting of my blog to my author profiles on About.me, Goodreads, and Amazon, and posts get automatically shared to my Google+ profile by Blogger.
• I started scheduling promo posts for other authors in exchange for their posting of my book spotlights on their blogs.
• I engaged the services of auto-tweeting and auto-retweeting apps, both of which have long since been squashed by the TwitRNazis, but these were instrumental in boosting my Twitter following up over the 5K mark last year. Now I'm over 18K and growing daily, thanks to judicious tweeting and retweeting via Hootsuite. I recently upgraded to its pro version to take advantage of its bulk message scheduling feature.
• I started scheduling virtual book tours, which have spread the word even farther into the blogosphere. Whenever possible, I visit the promo pages and thank the bloggers for hosting (and sometimes reviewing) my books, and I answer other visitors' questions too.
• I began posting a version of my monthly newsletter, The Dawnflier. BTW, if you would like to receive the lovely MailChimp edition, please CLICK HERE, thanks! :)
• I set up contests (usually via Rafflecopter) in conjunction with my blog tours, and I run a monthly contest on my blog (please scroll down for details).
• I joined Triberr (a post-sharing service for bloggers, of which the free service is just fine for my needs) and became a member of 50+ tribes there. Now my potential Twitter reach is over 22M thanks to the sharing of posts by my 1K+ tribemates. This has been the single biggest factor in jumping my blog's page views, the all-time number of which is displayed in the right sidebar (500K+ as of this writing).

Other potentially useful post-sharing software that I haven't used yet includes Roundteam and Tweet Jukebox. If you have used either of these services, or any others, please let me know what you think of them!

And of course there are other social media platforms I haven't mentioned, mainly because I don't keep a presence on them, or I use them strictly for professional rather than promotional reasons (e.g., LinkedIn). I do recommend that you claim your name on those platforms, however, in case you change your mind and decide to participate at a future date.

Content. Whether it's a blog, a Pinterest board, or profiles on Facebook or Twitter or some other platform, when I visit another author's page, I am instantly turned off when the content is exclusively about his or her own books. Think about it, people: it's like tuning to a shopping channel! At least, that's how I imagine it would be like if I actually ever did tune to a shopping channel. :D

Posting news about your books is essential for spreading the word, but balancing that content with other items will keep your readers coming back for more. I achieve balance by:

• Scheduling spotlights of my friends' books on my blog.
• Participating as a book tour host.
• Cross-posting my Pinterest pins to my Twitter account and, on occasion, to my personal Facebook profile.
• Sharing an excerpt each week--along with a writing tip or other non-writing introduction--from my current work-in-progress, Raging Sea.
• Posting an article about the business issues related to writing each week, of which this post is an example.
• Occasionally posting an article on my blog about a non-writing or non-book topic that interests me, such as this post about my having met one of the last living Pearl Harbor survivors in 2014.
• Using my Facebook personal profile mainly to interact with my family and friends. Here I post fun slice-of-life snippets, humor, and links to non-writing articles I enjoy, and I hope others do too!
• Automatically cross-posting my Facebook posts to Twitter. If I want the Facebook post to look as if it originated on Twitter, I keep it less than 140 characters and don't include a link. 
• Using my Facebook fan pages to post research-related articles, as well as updates about my books.
• Sharing other authors' Facebook posts about their books.
• Visiting the Twitter profile of each person who follows me every day. I will perhaps retweet a thing or three, and I follow back as many accounts as possible within the bounds of my conscience. If you discover that I have blocked your account, it means that I found your content utterly objectionable. Among the accounts that I don't block but don't follow back are those that advertise selling followers, those whose content is mildly objectionable and/or is not provided in English, and those wherein the profile and/or cover pics look stalker-y.
  
  BTW, if you're one of these authors out on an ego trip to amass what appears to be a huge fan base by following me, and then unfollowing within a nanosecond of my following you, be aware that I check my Crowdfire numbers daily and will unfollow you. I respectfully advise that you instead get your ego stroking from your book sales and reviews.
• Scheduling my book-related tweets no more frequently than once an hour. If you ever happen to see more frequency than that from me, it's because I'm doing a one-time tweet of a blog tour page or something along those lines.
• Scheduling the sharing of other bloggers' posts that appear in my Triberr stream every day.

What are you doing to achieve balance in your online promotion, and how is it working for you?

*** Special announcement: I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

I'm running a giveaway for an e-copy of The Challenge!
To enter, click HERE.

MailChimp subscribers to The Dawnflier receive exclusive giveaway opportunities.
Subscribe today so you don't miss out!

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing by @KimHeadlee: The Promotion Plan, or “We Don’t Need No—Yes, We Do!”

4th of July fireworks over Seattle
(c)2008 by Andi Szilagyi (Wikimedia Commons).

You've published your fabulous book, and now it's time to promote the dickens out of it, right? 

Wrong!

To achieve maximum sales success—whether you are a traditional, independent, or hybrid published author—you need to formulate your promotion plan in conjunction with your publication plan several months in advance of your anticipated release date.

If the book you wish to promote is under contract with a publisher, then chances are they have developed the foundation of its publication plan for you. If the title you have published with them is so hot (in terms of projected sales) that they feel compelled to alert FedEx of the tonnage of its global shipments, then chances are they are managing the lion's share of your promotion plan too. And, chances are, you are not reading this post. :D

For the rest of you, I offer the following advice, honed over the course of my 16-year "hybrid" (first as traditional, now indie) publishing career.

The ARC. No, this is not a geometry term; it's an acronym for Advance Reader Copy. The ARC may be either digital or printed.

If you're traditionally published, as I was for my first two novels (Dawnflight and Liberty), you may receive a box of ARCs that your publisher printed and expects you to distribute to reviewers and local bookstores. If you need to create a printable ARC of your manuscript, I strongly suggest converting it to PDF first. Either way, printed and digital ARCs need to get into reviewers' hands a minimum of 3 months in advance of the release date if you want reviews to be posted in conjunction with your book's release. But do your homework, and pay attention to the fine print. Some review organizations, such as Publisher's Weekly, require a 6-month lead time.

Note: If you're releasing your book yourself, Publisher's Weekly's site for indie authors, BookLife, will not accept ARCs in any format prior to the release date.

The Media Kit isn't what it used to be. My first media kit, assembled in 1999, was a physical collection that included my publicity photo and bio sheet, book cover flats (publisher slang for the physical cover with marketing information about the book printed on the back), synopsis, press release, and review blurbs. It's still a good idea to carry such a folio with you to personal appearances, especially the high-profile events where you might run into news reporters. But anymore all this information is collected and distributed digitally, along with the book's retail links, excerpts, and social media links pertaining to the book as well as the author.

I recommend keeping a separate media kit for each book, and keep them updated when new reviews, awards, and links become known.

Social Media. This is such a broad topic that I will delve into greater depth at a future date. But for the purposes of your promotion plan, especially if you are a brand-new author who's just landed a contract, start expanding your networks NOW. Don't do what I did and wait until after the book's release to begin that process. Unless you're lucky enough to have a blockbuster on your hands, you'll find it difficult to gain any sort of sales traction that way. For the average author, it takes between one and two years to develop a respectable following on any of the major platforms. This can be accelerated via more personal interaction, but the tradeoff is the time investment—time that could be spent writing your next book.

Blog Tours, Facebook Parties, and the like should be an integral part of your promotion plan whether you are publishing independently or not. Every event, even the ever-popular cover reveals, should be scheduled with either preordering or purchasing your book in mind. If you are releasing your book on Kindle, coordinate the virtual tour or party with either a Countdown or Free Download promotion to maximize interest in your release. If you are soliciting reviews for the event, schedule it at least four months in advance to give reviewers as much time as possible to read your book.

Note: Reviews cannot be posted on Amazon while a book exists in the preorder phase, so if you're trying to line up reviews to be posted right away, back up the actual release to at least a day or two before your event, to give time for your book's product pages to go live worldwide. Bloggers are busy people too, so if they visit your book's product page but cannot post their review, they might not return to do so at a later date.

HOT TIP FOR YOUR AMAZON BOOK LINKS: You can set up free links to all editions of your books that are sold via the Amazon product catalog that automatically click through to Amazon in the reader's home country—and you can specify your Amazon Affiliate ID for each country where you have one—via BookLinker.net. With BookLinker you can also set up a worldwide link to your Amazon author page, and the per-country click statistics are fascinating.

In-person events. These days I sell more print copies in person than via online catalogs, so I make every effort to attend as many of these as my schedule and budget and family's patience allow. If you wish to be placed on the guest list at conventions—many of which come with perks such as free membership and table space for signing & selling books—contact the organizing committee at least six months in advance. If you can provide additional content, such as participating in panels or presenting a workshop, all the better!

Print Media. This aspect doesn't get as much attention in the promotion plan as it used to, but it's still a good idea to keep your local news media outlets in mind. Prepare a page-turner of a press release, keep it short and snappy but make sure to include all your contact information, and submit it to their news desk at least two weeks in advance.

Audio/Visual Media (podcasts, radio, TV). One of my longtime writer-friends produces his own weekly podcast about his books. That's not my thing, but if it happens to be yours, by all means go for it. I have been interviewed during conventions for podcasts, which is a lot of fun. If your budget is big enough to pay for radio and TV advertising, all the more power to you!

Book Trailers. You can do these yourself, such as this one for Dawnflight that I threw together with Windows Movie Maker. Or you can invest in high-quality products that look like you're watching a movie trailer, such as this one for Liberty! (I would gladly share the producer's contact information, but in viewing her site the other day, it appears that she might not be doing them for clients anymore, alas.)

Promotional materials come in all shapes, sizes, and functions: bookmarks, note cards, charms and other book-related jewelry, display banners, tote bags, decks of playing cards, nail files, pens, match boxes, candy bar wrappers, and a jillion other items! But their primary purpose should be to sell your book. The most efficient way to accomplish this is to incorporate your book's QR code (that little square box with the odd design that smart phones with a QR code reader app can interpret) into whatever you design.

If you don't mind someone else making a few pennies off the sale of your books, you can use Relinks.me to generate QR codes that represent the worldwide Amazon links. Or you can create your own worldwide links via Booklinker.net, and then feed the resultant links into a free QR code generator such as QRstuff.com.

Free book promotion sites are a must in your promotion plan, though you do need to follow each site's specific rules for your book's content, number of reviews, and star rating. Last year, I posted information about several sites in this blog post.

Betty Book Freak no longer offers free book promotions, but some sites I've come across since then include:
—Romance Readers Club for romance novels (reports a 6-month lead time for free promotion)
—Romance Lives Forever (RLF) Blog for romance novels (plan on a 3- or 4-month lead time if you need to time a promotion with a specific event)

You do need to read the fine print at each site prior to submitting your titles for consideration. Some sites allow for resubmission of books, or the submission of an additional book in your backlist after a set number of days or months. Since I have my Blogger dashboard active every day, I have developed the habit of creating posts that I never intend to publish as a way to track submissions and results. I just look for the post titles that begin with *** NOT A BLOG POST... and if you ever see one like that on The Maze, you know I've forgotten to reschedule it in time! :D

Contests for published novels are a form of paid advertising that can boost sales because of the bragging rights if your book wins. Plan ahead to pick the contests you wish to enter so that you have enough printed copies on hand if that's one of the entry requirements.

Speaking of contests, I am pleased to announce that my ancient Rome historical romance novel Liberty recently won the Books Go Social 2015 Best Self-Published Work award! To read more about Liberty and what I endured to write it, I invite you to read this interview.

Paid book promotion sites may suit your needs, depending on your budget, though given a choice I will always opt for free promotion and save my money for editing and cover design. Paid book promotion venues include:

• Goodreads
• Book Gorilla
• Betty Book Freak
• The Fussy Librarian
• BookBub 

I have not yet tried advertising on Goodreads. My browser setup (Firefox, with Adguard plugin; both are free downloads, BTW) blocks nearly 100% of all advertising, so I always forget to check into it there! Otherwise, BookBub is my go-to promo site for most of my books that fit their guidelines for length and pricing. To date I've advertised three different novels via BookBub and have more than recouped my investment each time.

Of course you can also pay to boost your posts on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. I tried doing that on Facebook a couple of times, with middling results, so I do not recommend spending your hard-earned advertising money on those venues since they are viewed by the general population, not all of whom are book readers.

If you have any other book-related promo ideas, links, or success stories to share, I would love to hear about them!

*** Special announcement: I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

I'm running a giveaway for an e-copy of The Challenge!
To enter, click HERE.

MailChimp subscribers to The Dawnflier receive exclusive giveaway opportunities.
Subscribe today so you don't miss out!

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow<

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing: Using Hootsuite Pro's bulk message scheduler #ASMSG #MFRWOrg

Please bear with me while I wax technical today on The Maze to offer you tips and tricks for using Hootsuite's bulk message scheduler.

A Chaco Owl, Bodafon Farm Park, Llandudno (Wales)
13 July 2016, (c) by Couiros22
via Wikimedia Commons.

Hootsuite is a software tool that allows you to manage multiple social media accounts across numerous platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and many others.

Since most of my social media marketing occurs via Twitter, I have been using the free version of Hootsuite to manually schedule up to 24 tweets per day, every day, at a rate of about one per hour (my rule, not Hootsuite's, since I don't want to overwhelm my followers with a constant stream of "Buy my book" pleas—and, you're welcome :).

With ten books in print, not counting the translated editions, my collection of reusable tweets now numbers in the hundreds. The chore of cycling through them, month after month, has become more time consuming. When Hootsuite recently offered me the chance for a 60-day trial of Hootsuite Pro—the only means of accessing the bulk message scheduler—I jumped at it.

The bulk message scheduler allows you to upload a comma-separated values (CSV) file that includes up to 350 messages of three components each: the date and time stamp, the message, and the link.


The 350-Message Limit.
As a software engineer, the 350 value seems rather random to me, so if you're wondering why the Hootsuite designers pulled that number out of their ow.ly little backsides, ask them!

The reason that your CSV file can contain "up to 350 messages" is that the maximum number the bulk scheduler will allow you to upload is 350 minus the number of messages already scheduled (either manually or in bulk) in your outgoing list. I believe the fine print also adds up all messages across all platforms, but since I only schedule messages to my Twitter account, I didn't pay close attention to that bit. The scheduler allows you to select the social media platform at time of upload.

The 350-message limit does not apply to any messages that you schedule manually.

My advice: Start small by creating a CSV file that holds a day's or a week's worth of tweets, and work up to larger bulk-scheduling sessions as you become more comfortable with the procedure.


Working with the CSV file.
Hootsuite's recommendation is to NOT use Microsoft Excel, but to work in a simple text editor. The reason is that the Hootsuite bulk message scheduler expects the UTF-8 encoding format and Excel won't allow that option. I cannot speak to the truth of that from experience, since I now use the open-source LibreOffice suite of programs instead of Microsoft Office.

My advice: Download & install LibreOffice, and use LibreCalc to work with your CSV file. LibreCalc WILL permit UTF-8 encoding for CSV files, but you need to remember to "Edit filter settings" each time you export a block of messages for bulk upload in Hootsuite.


CSV Field 1, the Date and Time Stamp.
When you activate the bulk scheduling option, you have the choice to specify date/time stamps in only one of two ways:

mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm
OR

dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm

Note 1: hh for the hour field is based on the 24-hour clock.
For example,  01=1 a.m. and 13=1 p.m.

Note 2: mm for the minutes field must end in 5 or 0.
For example, 00:00 will be accepted (12 midnight) but 00:12 will be rejected (12 minutes past midnight) by the bulk message scheduler.

If your date/time stamp field does not match the expected format, all of your uploads will fail.

My advice: In the master spreadsheet file you use for your messages to schedule, configure the date/time field to display the values in the way Hootsuite expects. For example, the cell might contain the value 09/01/2016 00:00:00, but it will be displayed as 09/01/2016 00:00 (because the seconds field is not recognized by Hootsuite, and including seconds in your date/time stamp will cause your uploaded messages to fail).

Note 3: As with the manual scheduling of messages via Hootsuite, all of your date/time stamps must be at least 15 minutes in the future, counted from the time of upload, or else the upload attempt will fail for any messages not meeting this criterion.

My advice: Play it safe by scheduling all messages at least one day in advance.


CSV Field 2, the Message.
Regardless of the social media platform for which you are using Hootsuite Pro to bulk schedule your messages, the maximum number of characters in this field is tied to Twitter's requirement to reserve 23 characters for a hyperlink, and Hootsuite's requirement to reserve one character for the blank space between the end of the message and the beginning of the link, or 140 – 24 = 116 characters.

Note 4: If you are copying message text from another source (for example, messages you have stored in Hootsuite's Drafts area, or messages from a master spreadsheet), make sure they are not punctuated with commas. This will cause extra columns to form in your exported CSV file (recall that the initials stand for comma-separated values), which will royally screw up your upload attempt.

My advice: I have applied a number of tricks to get around the limitation of not being able to use commas in bulk-scheduled messages, including:

• deleting the commas,
• replacing commas with the ellipses (…) character, and
• rewording the message altogether.

LibreCalc does permit a CSV file to be created using a different separator character, but for simplicity's sake I have not yet tried this option. If I were to try it, I would probably specify a carat (^) or vertical bar (|) since I don't use those in my tweets.

Note 5: Duplicate messages in your CSV file are not allowed. If you're running a campaign that repeats the same message several times per day, those messages must be scheduled manually. This isn't as bad as it seems, however, because the 350-message limit does not apply to the number of manually scheduled messages.

My advice: Bulk-schedule all your unique tweets for your selected time period (week or month or whatever), and then fill in the rest of the slots with manually scheduled messages.

Another "gotcha" I ran into is that within any message that contains a forced line break, that character is stripped out upon converting to CSV format.

My advice: Edit your CSV file to make sure all your messages read as you intended prior to running it through the bulk message scheduler.


CSV Field 3, the Link.
Twitter reserves 23 characters for each hyperlink regardless of its length, so this field contains no character-count limitations. The Hootsuite bulk message scheduler does automatically shorten all links as part of the upload process.

My advice: If you're scheduling multiple messages that include the same link, copy and paste the link field within your CSV file as many times as necessary, make the contents of each date/time stamp cell unique, following the guidelines mentioned above, and just change the message field for each line.


For more information and tips visit: https://help.hootsuite.com/hc/en-us/articles/204585120-Schedule-messages-in-bulk

Note 6: In the above article, it's reported that the inclusion of "Smart" (i.e., curly) quotes in your messages will cause upload failure. I tried it with curly quotation marks as well as apostrophes, and all of those messages scheduled successfully.

My advice: I believe the key lies in correctly applying the UTF-8 encoding to your CSV file. When in doubt, however, use straight quotes and apostrophes.


When you believe you have the CSV file in good order:

• Log in to Hootsuite and navigate to your list of scheduled tweets on the Publisher menu option.
• Verify that however many messages you intend to bulk upload will not put your scheduled messages over the 350 limit. This may be accomplished fairly easily via Hootsuite Pro's option to view a month-by-month summary of scheduled messages.
• Under Content Sources, click on Bulk Message Upload. The Bulk Schedule Updates popup window will appear.
• Click Browse to locate your CSV file, and select it.
• Verify that you have selected the correct date/time stamp format option.
• Select the desired social media account from the drop-down list.
• Click on the SUBMIT button, and hope for the best. :) You will either see a report stating the number of messages scheduled, or a list of failures, in which case you can modify your CSV file accordingly and try again.
• When finished, exit the Bulk Schedule Updates popup window.
• Refresh your list of scheduled tweets to verify that your messages did get scheduled as planned.

Good luck, and happy bulk scheduling!

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow<

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing: Ebook launch pricing strategies #ASMSG #MFRWOrg

Pre-decimal till, Museum of Liverpool.
Photo by Reptonix; free Creative Commons
license via Wikimedia Commons.

Welcome to The Maze's second installment of a three-part series on book pricing. 

For your convenience, if you missed part 1 about print edition pricing, you may view it here.

This week I tackle the trickier concept of e-book launch pricing.

Why is e-book pricing trickier?

Because with the establishment of a vendor account for digital publishing comes the relative ease of controlling your book’s pricing.

There exists a great temptation to set a price and leave it in perpetuity. That’s the easiest approach, but unless you have decided to make your book permafree, in the long run that practice will cause more harm than good for its sales figures.

The launch price of an e-book depends upon a number of factors, including:

• An author’s popularity. The bigger your fan base, the more you can get away with pricing your books higher than your book’s competitors.
• Whether the book is fiction or nonfiction. Like it or not, digital fiction is now being perceived almost as a commodity, with readers demanding to read an author’s blood, sweat, and tears for nothing or next to it. Not so with nonfiction e-books, which can attract a fair number of readers even when priced at $9.99 or more.
• The popularity of your book’s genre or subject matter. In general, books written for more popular genres can enjoy more sales at higher prices, but in a decision between two books by different authors, where both authors are unknown to the customer, she will usually opt for the lower-priced book unless influenced by other factors such as reviews, cover appeal, or synopsis.
• If part of a series, its sequence number. Most authors discount or make permafree the first book in their series after other installments become available. This entices readers to acquire the earlier works for a modest investment, potentially earning the author more fans along the way.

When establishing the price of your book’s digital edition, you need to ask yourself whether you would rather maximize the number of downloads, or maximize your royalties.

Among the major e-book distribution platforms—Nook Press, Kobo, and iTunes, in addition to KDP—Amazon is the only one that forces authors to set a certain price in order to earn its highest royalty payout percentage. For all Kindle e-books, the minimum price to earn 70% royalties is $2.99 and the e-book must be priced no higher than $9.99; otherwise, the author earns only 35%.

If you wish to maximize your Amazon profits, then, you need to price your e-book to fall within the 70% royalty window. At a 70% royalty rate, a $2.99 book will earn the author $2.09 per download. At $0.99 and an enforced royalty rate of 35%, the Kindle edition of your book will earn $0.35 per download. It will take six sales at ninety-nine cents to surpass the royalties earned from one sale of a $2.99 book. If you think your title will perform well when priced at $2.99 or more, then go for it!

But if you’re like most independent authors whose work struggles to bob above the ocean of books available to readers, then you may be better advised to launch your title at $0.99 and hope to attract proportionally more readers at the lower price point.

That’s how I, as a relatively unknown author at the time, was able to get almost two thousand paid downloads of my medieval paranormal romance Snow in July during the first three months following its July 2014 release with no advertising on my part except for two blog tours. Those aren’t astronomical numbers by any stretch of the imagination, but the performance was good enough to keep Snow in July lodged in Amazon’s top twenty for the category of Teen and Young Adult Historical Romance for several weeks running, earning many more downloads by readers who habitually shop off the first page of the category rankings.

The ninety-nine-cent book launch strategy is by no means a proven formula; so many other factors affect buying decisions, including a book's cover, genre, synopsis, keywords, release date, and its author’s popularity. But in today’s climate of digital fiction being perceived as a commodity, it’s not a bad plan to follow.

Breathing new life into an older title is trickier still, and I will tackle that subject next week.

***

I'm running a giveaway for an e-copy of Snow in July!
To enter, click HERE.

MailChimp subscribers to The Dawnflier receive exclusive giveaway opportunities.
Subscribe today so you don't miss out!

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow<

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing: Print book pricing strategies #MFRWOrg #ASMSG

Pre-decimal till, Museum of Liverpool.
Photo by Reptonix; free Creative Commons
license via Wikimedia Commons.

Today on The Maze I begin a three-part series on book pricing. 

Though most independent authors release their books in digital format first, I'm going to start with pricing the print edition because this process is fairly straightforward:

1. Determine the per-copy printing cost. Createspace and IngramSpark offer pricing calculators for this purpose.
2. Determine how many books you will typically order at one time (ten, twenty, one hundred, or somewhere in between).
   Note: Createspace does not offer volume discounts, but IngramSpark begins offering a price break for orders of one hundred copies or more.
3. Multiply the printing cost by the number of copies you expect to order, add the shipping cost, and divide by the number of copies to determine your total cost per copy.
4. Perform research on independently published books that are similar to yours in terms of genre and page count. Don’t expect to be able to compete with books published by major houses such as Simon & Schuster or Harlequin. Their printing and shipping overhead will always be lower than yours because of the sheer volume of copies they print per title.
5. Add a profit margin, but make sure your book’s pricing remains competitive with or even undercuts other books in its class.

Before choosing a low profit margin, consider whether you will wish to discount your copies for personal appearances. I subtract between two and five dollars from each book’s cover price to give my booth’s customers extra incentive to purchase my copies on the day of the event.

Whether you decide to include your book’s price on its back cover depends upon whether you plan to change the price periodically, or distribute it to book stores, gift shops, and other brick-and-mortar markets. It’s more helpful to retailers to provide the price printed on the cover, and it looks more professional since that’s the industry standard practice too.

A special note about hardcover dust jackets: Direct your cover designer to add the price to the inside front flap, which translates to the top left corner of the PDF image. If no price is present in that position, the bookseller could assume that the book was either independently published or that they have been given a book club edition. Neither assumption will help you sell copies to that retail outlet.

Next week: Setting your e-book's launch price.

***

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The Business of Writing: Creating and using QR codes for your book #ASMSG #MFRWOrg

QR code for Amazon product page
of Audiobook edition of
King Arthur's Sister in Washington's Court
by Mark Twain as channeled by
Kim Iverson Headlee.

The best marketing content offers potential customers a way to buy the product straight off the advertisement, and the Quick Response (QR) code is a great way to capture those impulse buys.

What is a QR code?
A QR code (sample pictured, left) is a specialized bar code readable by smart phones. The bar code can contain text, URLs, email addresses, telephone numbers, or any other alphanumeric data.

The smart phone must have a QR reader app installed, and there are several good, free apps available for iPhones, Android devices, and other types of smart phones. My reader of choice is the "QR Droid" app.

A QR code will never expire as long as the associated link remains active.

How do I create a QR code?
Even more plentiful are the web sites that pop up when you perform an Internet search on "free QR code generator". My favorite free QR code generator site is QR Stuff. Here you can enter any URL—for example, your book's worldwide Amazon link created via Booklinker.net or other such service, or the Audible link to its audiobook edition—and the site will display the bar code for you to download and use.

There are some book-specific QR code generator sites, such as Relinks.me, but they are limited to products in the Amazon retail catalog, and they will append their Amazon affiliate ID to your book's URL. If you don't have an Amazon affiliate ID, then using Relinks.me will save you the step of creating a worldwide link prior to requesting its QR code, but you won't be able to set up QR codes for your book's Nook and other e-tailer product pages.

The QR Stuff site offers a subscription service if you want specialty items such as scalable graphics, or if you believe your dynamic (i.e., link-shortened) QR codes will receive more than 1,000 user scans per month. If all you're doing is setting up a static link to, say, your book's Kindle product page, then no limits apply to either the creation or use (scanning) of the free QR codes.

If you want to get fancy, you can embed your own branding graphic, but if you don't want your customers to be subjected to the company's ads, the ad-free version (via visuallead.com) costs a minimum of $6.25/month. I thought I might try embedding my imprint graphic for Pendragon Cove Press but decided that the cool factor wasn't worth the monthly subscription cost, and I had no intention of submitting anyone to the extra advertising.

How do I use a QR code?
The output of sites such as QR Stuff and Relinks.me is either a JPG or PNG file that may be embedded in any other image, email, web site, or publication. I have placed QR codes on promotional postcards and inside teaser booklets, in the backmatter of my free print editions of The Challenge and The Color of Vengeance, and even on designs uploaded to DiscountMugs.com for screening onto tote bags.

In every case, the key is to make sure there is a high contrast between the QR code graphic and its surrounding background; otherwise, the scan will need to be done in the brightest possible lighting conditions or else it might not work.

If you can design it, you can QR code it!

***

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The Business of Writing: Your Book's Media Kit #ASMSG #IARTG #MFRWOrg

Book Media Kit meme c2016 by Kim Headlee.
Photo c2015 by nastia1983, Depositphotos ID 64327933.

Today on The Maze:

Tips for crafting your book's Media Kit! 

What is a media kit?

It's a collection of materials an author assembles to inform journalists and—these days—bloggers and tour hosts about their books for promotional purposes.

When I began my publishing career in 1999, the media kit was a two-pocket folder assembled to exacting specifications.

In the left pocket, front to back, was tucked the author's photo, followed by contact information and bio, and any prior publications and awards.

The right pocket contained the most recent release's cover flat (the marketing tool produced by large traditional publishers consisting of the print book's wrap cover with selling points printed on the back), book information such as genre, series title if applicable, and retail price, tagline and synopsis, press releases, and reviews.

If you plan to attend major conventions or other events where reporters are expected, it's not a bad idea to carry a physical media kit, or even several copies if you're feeling particularly lucky. :)

The age of virtual book tours has prompted the evolution of the media kit to digital form, including the aforementioned author and book information, along with, where available:

• author's (and publisher's, if applicable) website link
• links to YouTube interviews
• book trailers (links as well as embed codes)
• links to award announcements
• lists of social media accounts to follow
• sample chapter
• excerpts
• teaser graphics
• animated book cover GIF files
• static cover graphics
• collections of sample tweets
• links to e-tailer author and product pages

Some authors prefer to assemble one media kit that describes all of their books. If your collection contains more than three books, however, you might be wise to consider establishing a separate media kit for each book or series. This makes it easy to approach bloggers who might be interested in running a spotlight of one of your books on their blog.

If you employ blog-tour companies, more than likely they will send you their media kit format. Ask her or him, as a professional courtesy, whether it's acceptable to substitute the media kit you've already prepared.

A subset of the digital media kit—minus frills such as book trailers, animated covers, teaser graphics, excerpts, and sample chapters—may be sent to potential reviewers along with the book's MOBI (for Kindle) or EPUB (for most other e-reader types) file. Remember to double-check the reviewer's submission guidelines, however, and only send the materials the reviewer requests.

If there is anything you like to include in your book's media kit that I haven't mentioned here, please leave a comment and let us all know!

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The Business of Writing: Better Tweets for Your Books! #MFRWOrg #ASMSG #IARTG

Back in February, I blogged about Twitter marketing for authors in this post. It focuses mainly on how to manage your Twitter account to maximize your network following and grow your list of people who faithfully retweet your posts.

Today I'm diving into the nuts and bolts of creating better tweets for your books. 

If you're just getting started, you can read some solid general tweeting advice (if a bit dated, since Twitter has abandoned its longer-tweet plan, and thank heaven for that mercy) by Teena Thach for the Socedo blog.

For those of you who have been around the Twitter block a time or two, I invite you to consider the following examples.

Tweet Example 1

Wil's Winter: Five years later (Red Summer Book 2) Antoinette Houston (Author) http://ow.ly/1018L9 @1975Okame

Does that tweet induce you to click on the book's link? Maybe, if you're already a fan of the series or are familiar with the author's other work.

Better: aim for a unique, intriguing hook, such as:

Even a small town with a stupid name like Horsenose can have big-city drama.
WIL'S WINTER: 5 Yrs Later by @1975Okame http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00OE9QVG0/systemsupportser

Note that I had to shorten the subtitle and didn't have room for the author's name. I prefer to embed my Twitter handle (@KimHeadlee, and thanks for the follow! :) in my tweets whenever I have room for it so I can track its reach. But then I was fortunate enough to claim a Twitter handle that's recognizable as my name.

The other issue with the tweet in Example 1 is that the shortened link expands to point to the paperback edition of the book, rather than the Kindle edition I coded into my version. That's not a "Twitter sin" per se, but I've learned that most customers will be more likely to impulse-buy the less expensive digital version rather than paying far more to kill a tree.

Note also that I didn't bother to shorten my link. That's because Twitter dedicates 23 characters to a link regardless of its length. If you don't believe me, try it!


Tweet Example 2

A romantic comedy adventure for anyone who likes a good story. @kezzamac
http://ow.ly/1019m3  #beezeebooks

Okay... so we've got a romantic comedy-adventure story. What's the title? Removing the extra space between the link and the hashtag leaves 28 characters in which to give the title. Potential customers need to see an item at least seven times before deciding to buy it. They won't know what to buy if you don't tell them!


Tweet Example 3

INVISIBLE CHILD is about a boy who is hidden and then abandoned by parents @GolondrinaBooks http://amzn.to/1URVEcl

When I see passive voice in a tweet, I wonder whether the book was written that way too. To solve that problem, I would rewrite the tweet as:

What happened to @GolondrinaBooks's INVISIBLE CHILD, who was hidden then abandoned by his parents? http://amzn.to/1URVEcl

Note that I reworded the hook as a question that cannot be answered by either "yes" or "no."

Why? The yes-or-no question is the weakest form of writing because it's the easiest to dismiss. You do not want to give potential readers any excuse to dismiss your books!

Of course you can also incorporate review blurbs and excerpts in your tweets.

In every case, select language designed to engage and entice your readers.

Happy tweeting and marketing!


***

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All this month, you are invited to…

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The Business of Writing: BookBub Lessons Learned #MFRWOrg #ASMSG #IARTG

BookBub meme c2016 by Kim Headlee.
Chalice photo c2010 by Marco Varro Depositphotos ID 8031476.

I've been marketing my books for three years now via several methods—blog tours and hops, Facebook parties and ads, informal author spotlight exchanges, Twitter, and most recently, email promotions, paid as well as free.

Free exposure is always good, of course, even if only one person sees your ad. When you're shelling out your pennies, however, the adage that "marketing is about exposure, not sales" (which is true) is tough leather to chew all the time.

The good news is that if you have a great book that has been professionally edited, features a professional cover, the Moon is in the Seventh House—and there's a big enough spot in your advertising budget—you might be lucky enough to score a BookBub "Featured Deal."

Why do I equate paying hundreds of dollars for a single book advertisement with luck? Because the BookBub promotion is the only marketing tool I've discovered to date wherein sales revenue has exceeded the investment in a timely fashion.

If you have achieved the Holy Grail of book marketing by landing a BookBub spot, these are the steps you need to take to maximize the return on investment for your ad:

• Immediately: Decide on how long you want to keep the deal in place (I recommend no more than 5 days, inspired by the Kindle Unlimited free promo model), and confirm your assigned feature date.
• Immediately: Relay any specific instructions not already conveyed. "Let us know if there’s anything in particular we should be aware of about your listing — for instance, if there are multiple editions of the same book available, or if the cover has recently changed." (source: BookBub Deal Checklist).
• Immediately: If you code your own e-books, begin making sure all embedded product links are up to date for all major platforms (Amazon, Nook, iTunes, etc.), and all available books. If you have several titles, prioritize as follows: the featured book, other titles in the series, then all your other books.
  If you don't code your own e-books, ask whether your formatter person/company will do this for you, whether they can complete the work at least three days prior to your BookBub feature, and how much those updates will cost.
• Immediately: Reschedule any upcoming Kindle Unlimited promotions that might adversely impact sales related to the featured book.You're already paying an arm and both legs to feature one book; let your readers have a shot at any free books either before or after the BookBub promotion, not on the same day. My rule of thumb is to wait three days before running another KU free promo.
• As soon as possible: Set up free and paid advertising with as many other email promoters as will fit within your budget. My favorites in the "paid" category include Books Butterfly (to get the tracking link), Book Barbarian (if the featured book is SciFi or Fantasy), Robin Reads, BookSends, Genre Pulse, BookZio, and Fussy Librarian. You may elect to schedule these promos to kick in a day or more after the BookBub promo to help keep your momentum going. Oftentimes a potential customer will decide to purchase an e-book if it has a decent Amazon rank already.
• 10 days prior: drop prices on Nook, iTunes, Kobo (you can schedule the Kobo promo in advance), Google Play, and Smashwords for the FEATURED BOOK only. Ask your friends to "report lower price" to Amazon so that its regular Kindle price gets marked out in favor of the matched price. This is another marketing trick to help maximize the deal's "wow factor" in the customer's mind.
• 1 day prior: Check the featured book's Amazon product page to see if they have matched the price of Nook, iTunes, Kobo, etc. If not, then manually lower the price.
• Day of: Relax. Don't start checking for sales until noon ET.
  From the BookBub Deal Checklist: "Your deal will go live on our website between 6-9 a.m. PST, and the email will generally be delivered by 10 a.m.-noon PST."
• Evening of: Start checking Amazon category rankings. Log stats and take screen shots when appropriate. Post the exciting bits on Twitter, Facebook, etc. to reel in more customers.
• X days after: Raise prices on all platforms—Amazon, Nook, etc.—again. X = the day after the last day of the deal, decided when the BookBub feature was confirmed.
  From the BookBub Policies page: "If a partner expires a deal early with us more than once, we unfortunately will not be able to continue working with them. Please let us know in advance of the promotion if you need to adjust the end date." Do take that bit of advice seriously; you want to keep drinking from this chalice as often as possible.

For more information:

If you've heard rumors, Carlyn Robertson reveals "BookBub Myths Busted" via BookBub's blog. Most of the "myths" are fairly common sense.

There's an interesting take on BookBub by nonfiction author Mike Alvear via the Huffington Post. Many of the comments are well worth the read too, mine included. :D

The following article includes Bookbub's own advice on how to maximize one's chances of being accepted: http://insights.bookbub.com/how-bookbub-selection-process-works/

And another article from BookBub Insights about categories subscribers sign up for: http://insights.bookbub.com/what-else-are-your-bookbub-readers-reading/
It's all pretty much, "Well, no duh" stuff, actually, but the statistics are interesting if you're into that sort of thing.

British author Mary Smith's relates her success on BookBub with a free (as opposed to 99 cents) promo here: http://jackieweger.com/book-promotions-indie-authors-report-results/

BookBub now offers advertising that's not a "Featured Deal." They offer a great infographic of the difference between ads and featured deals in this blog post. In a nutshell, an ad may describe any book-related content, including audiobooks, print editions, and full-price e-books. Since it's a new program, and authors (including myself) are wait-listed for participation, I'll most likely be blogging about my experiences with BookBub ads at a later date.


My final BookBub lesson to impart to you:

Don't shy from selecting International promotion when submitting your book's deal for review, even though it's less expensive to do so. 

My medieval paranormal novel Snow in July recently was selected only for BookBub's non-US email lists (UK, Canada, Australia, and India). It's considerably less expensive than a US promotion (in my case, $50.00 versus several hundred for a 99-cent book deal), but I still was able to recoup my BookBub investment within the first 24 hours… even though this particular novel is a standalone, and no one has yet (as of two days after the BookBub international feature) bought any of my other novels.

The other advantage to accepting an International-only BookBub promotion is that they waive the 6-month restriction for the title in question, and you may submit it for US promotion consideration again in as little as one month.

Happy Grail hunting and book promoting!

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The Business of Writing: The Book Description #ASMSG #IARTG #MFRWOrg

Golden Gate Bridge,
c2015 by Phil Bird, Depositphotos ID 38718385,
Editorial use only.

Bridge the readers' gap and stimulate your book sales with a tantalizing synopsis! 

Please note I used the word synopsis, not blurb. There are two reasons for this.

1. I think of a "blurb" in terms of a sentence or two that has been excerpted from a larger article, such as a book review.

2. The word itself brings to mind the act of regurgitation. I would much rather not have potential readers associating my book with vomit. :D

There. I feel much better for having gotten that off my chest; thanks.

I used to cringe at the thought of writing a short synopsis for my books—also known in traditional publishing circles as back-cover copy since it's literally included with the other elements on the back of a printed book.

I know I'm not alone; many authors don't feel comfortable distilling 100,000 words down to 300.


I had to get over my reluctance the hard way.

Back in 1997, when my first novel, Dawnflight, was acquired by Sonnet Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint, a fight broke out between my editor and my literary agent, who hated the synopsis the editor wrote on the grounds that it gave away too much of the plot. I could see his point. He wrote his own version, which I wasn't terribly keen on either because it was way too emotionless for a romance imprint. So I waded into the fray and synthesized the two versions, which did satisfy both of them and settled the argument.


The tagline plus three-paragraph structure.

As Aristotle stated millennia ago, everything should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Surprise! This applies to back-cover copy too.

With Dawnflight's first synopsis, I retained the editor's tagline and three-paragraph structure. The tagline formed the beginning. The first two paragraphs—one each to introduce the heroine and hero—comprised the middle. The end was one paragraph describing their mutual conundrum and its stakes. When I rereleased Dawnflight independently in 2013, I beefed up the concluding paragraph to highlight the book's larger scope to attract a larger audience, something for which I did not have room on the back of the original mass-market edition.

Room for the synopsis is not as big of an issue with e-books.

Amazon, for example, gives you 4,000 characters in which to describe your Kindle edition. Some marketing gurus will tell you that it's a great idea to use every last byte of the allotted amount, because whatever you write will factor into users' search results.

In most cases, I concur with this wisdom. The notable exception I make is in regard to my novellas and graphic novels. Since they are much shorter than my full-length novels, I've taken a page out of The Mikado's playbook, and I "let the punishment fit the crime." In other words, I craft the synopsis to reflect the length of the book.

You may feel differently (and if so, please feel free to comment!), but to me it just seems silly to present a book description that's almost as long as the story itself.

There are some more good tips in this article on BooksGoSocial.

However, BooksGoSocial does not cover one key point:

Posing a question in the synopsis is okay, but DO NOT ask a yes-or-no question.

Why?

It causes the reader to supply the answer, and then pass on buying your book.

Sample: "Can John and Marsha overcome their fears and find love in each other's arms?"
Me: "Hm. This is a romance novel, so yes, that had better happen or else there's no point to the book."

Better: "How can John and Marsha overcome their fears and find love in each other's arms?"
Me: "Gee, I don't know. Maybe I ought to read a sample chapter and see if it's worth my time to find out."


Wisdom from a book PR giant.

You don't have to be a "partner" to avail yourself of BookBub's 98 Book Marketing Tips . In case you don't have time to click through—and wade through—all 98, here are the two that pertain to the topic of creating your book's description:

24. Optimize your book description. BookBub’s A/B testing shows that descriptions that include quotes from authors, awards, and language that caters to your audience (e.g. “If you love thrillers, don’t miss this action-packed read!”) have higher engagement rates.

25. Include target keywords on product pages. Narrow down a list of 5-7 keywords your audience typically searches for, then incorporate these words into your description headline, description copy, and keyword sections on each of your retailer product pages.

I used to think that producing an excellent short synopsis was hard, but it just takes practice. I've had many readers tell me they've been drawn in by my book descriptions, so I must be doing something right!

Studying examples from the most compelling books in your chosen genre is key.

And by "most compelling," I don't necessarily mean "best selling" but rather, what compels =you= about the synopsis that entices you to learn more about that book?
 

***

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Last month's copies of Kings got snapped up fast, so don't delay; enter today!

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All this month, you are invited to…

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— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow<

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.

Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing: Paid Email Marketing for Authors #MFRWOrg #ASMSG

Smiling girl with dandelions
c2015 by AndrOleksiienko
Depositphotos ID 74345911.

If you have been following my Marketing for Authors 101 series of posts under the umbrella of The Business of Writing, you know that so far I have written about…

• Dos and don'ts of Twitter marketing,
• Giveaways,
• "99c is the new Free",
• The BookBub "Roller Coaster," and
• Free Email Marketing for authors.

Today I'm here to discuss paid email marketing options, and I have to admit I've been kicking this particular can down the virtual road for more than six months.

Why?

Because until now I wasn't entirely convinced that paid options were worth it.

I'm here to tell you that they are.

Since April 2015, I have been experimenting with paid advertising—Twitter, Facebook, and web site promos in addition to email lists—for most of my books, even my perma-free and limited free offerings. General findings:

• Twitter-only packages are not worth it. Period. It's like dropping leaflets about your book from 100,000 feet above the planet and hoping they will land where readers will find them and act upon them. In reality, most of the leaflets will land in the ocean. And we all know what sorts of readers fish are. :D
  
  
• Same with Facebook-only and website-only packages. Maybe not quite as bad as broadcasting to the Twitterverse, but close. These two options do carry the advantage of having a bit more permanence than Twitter, where your tweets get flushed off users' screens within mere nanoseconds. Though the feed-flushing happens with Facebook too, you do have the option of curating posts to preserve them on your author page.

This left paid email advertising, and for the six months of my experiment (April–October, 2015), I was beginning to believe those weren't worth it either.

In those days, I had yet to realize that marketing is not about landing sales. Marketing is about increasing public awareness about you and your product so that, eventually, customers will gain the confidence to make those purchases.

There are a bunch of paid email services out there, but the ones I've had the best experiences with are:

• Book Barbarian. Science Fiction and Fantasy genres only; this includes paranormal romance, fantasy romance, and so forth. It's primarily an email advertising service, but pricing ($15-$30, depending on book's price) includes a permanent link on their web site, and promotions via Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Their email subscriber list is only 15K, but they are dedicated science fiction and fantasy readers, so the clickthrough rate is much higher. They will waive their "first book of a series only" rule if you want to pay extra to promote the first two books, but in general I have found that paying to promote subsequent books in a series is not worth it. Your best advertising is always the first book itself.
  
  
• Books Butterfly. Paid advertising for permafree, limited free, and $1 or less titles only. Pricing is based around "guaranteed" download numbers, which seems a bit iffy since it's tough to guarantee book sales/downloads. However, this is a great option to use in combination with ENT or BookBub promos because of the link they provide for rank tracking and other statistics. Rank-tracking link for Dawnflight is HERE. Note that the tracking did not start until the day after Dawnflight's BookBub promotion; the novel got as high as #286 of all paid Kindle books on the morning of 3/4/2016. Next time I'll schedule the Books Butterfly promo to run at the same time as the BookBub promo to capture the ranking highwater mark.
  
  
• eBook Soda. Flat fee of $15 regardless of genre or sale price, making it a good value, especially when used in conjunction with other promotions. Limitations: minimum length restrictions (20K for novellas, 50K for novels), rated at least 3.5 with at least 8 reviews unless the book is a new release.
  
  
• Ereader News Today. This site used to be the be-all, end-all of ebook marketing until BookBub dethroned it, but it still packs quite a wallop. IF you can get your book selected for promotion; submissions are juried. Cost varies by genre and book's promotional pricing ($30-$135). Main restrictions are that the book must be at least 125 pages, listed on Amazon, and not promoted on ENT in the past 90 days. More information is given here.
  
  
• Genre Pulse. Your book must be 99 cents or free. The full promo is $40, and they now have genre-specific ($16-$19) promo options. They give coupons to repeat advertisers that are good for the full promo option. The biggest thing I like about Genre Pulse is the campaign link they give you, which allows you to see your clickthrough stats.
  
  
• The Fussy Librarian. Another site where the cost varies by genre ($10-$16 as of this writing), but they don't charge you more if your promo price is higher than 99 cents. They offer a rerun discount coupon, good for 25% off, which is nice if you are running your promotion for a long time. They encourage you to add on genres at half off the regular advertising rate, but I've found that to be not worth it even with the discount. Your book must have at least 10 reviews on Amazon with an average 4.0 rating, unless it's a new release and you have at least one other book in your backlist that has the minimum 10 reviews/4.0 rating. It must be priced at $5.99 or less, and there are no length restrictions.

Paid email services I may try again at some point:

• Betty BookFreak. This used to be a free site; they now charge $12-$15 for placement depending on what type of listing you want (Daily Pick, New Release, or Daily Underdog), rather than by genre. They also have an interesting option I have not seen with any other paid email service: $30 will get you placement on their welcome newsletter to new subscribers for 30 days. You may capitalize on this if your book is free, and if you are willing to commit your title to that long of a promotion period.
  
  
• BookGorilla. It still costs only $50 to feature one 99-cent novel, regardless of its length or genre, which is not bad for an email list that's now more than 350K subscribers. Click HERE to view their spreadsheet of % reach for their subscriber list broken down by genre and subgenre. "Starred" title promotion (first page of their daily email) is a $100 add-on charge, and that's not worth it unless you are promoting a genuine bestseller (87% subscriber reach) or your book falls into one of the most popular genres among subscribers (mysteries enjoy 55% subscriber reach; most romance subgenres are in the mid-30-percent range). A distinct drawback is that their lead time for scheduling promotions is too far out (minimum 6 weeks) to coordinate with a BookBub deal.
  
  
• BookSends, but only if they ever reactivate their partnership with advertising on Pixel of Ink, which is currently still closed to author-submitted advertising. BookSends charges different rates by genre and book's price. Unless you enjoy flushing your money down the crapper, DO NOT pay them an extra $35 to put your Amazon affiliate tag on a free book!! I would not pay an extra $10 for Facebook, or $10-$30 extra for EReaderIQ promotion, either.

If you have a favorite site for paid (or free, for that matter) email advertising of books, please leave a comment and the link so we can all check it out. :)

Happy promoting, whatever options you choose!

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
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— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books. 

Please enter often, and good luck!