Tags
Autumn Birt, BKnights, book marketing, book promos, book promoters, free promos, My Book Cave, newsletter
My author friend Autumn Birt recently shared her results with promoting a free book on various smaller promo site. Specifically, she wanted to test her hypothesis that by submitting two different free books (one fantasy and one thriller) on several free advertising sites every day for 30 days, by the end of the period she would see a greater number of downloads compared to the previous 30 day period, when she was doing no promo whatsoever.
So, what happened?
Amazingly enough, the hypothesis was proven wrong! When she compared the two months, there was little improvement:
Image by Autumn Birt
In fact, as she points out, if you look at total downloads from the control month versus the 30 days of free promo… well, can you tell which bar is for which month?
Image by Autumn Birt
What went wrong?
I have to admit, her findings took me aback. There seems to be little to be gained from spending the extra time submitting to all these free promoters. Also, as Autumn points out, she doesn’t even know if any of those sites actually used her submission. Most have no communication after submission. So there really is no easy way to know if her books were featured. And some of these sites were cluttered with advertising, and make no promise to get in touch with you but still want your email… you really have to ask yourself, why do they want it? In fact, she knows for a fact that at least one of those websites sold her email right away. Because as well as unsubscribing to about 20 newsletters, she’s been getting some crazy offers for an assortment of items she never signed up to receive – including an igloo cooler!
Some good news
The good news is that she did find (shortly after the experiment was over) one site which was free, communicated the date the book would be featured, looked great, acted 100% above board, and resulted in 198 downloads… what is it? My Book Cave. You can take a look at how the various promos she tried worked out here:
Image by Autumn Birt
For more information on her experiment and methodology, be sure to check out Autumn’s full post on her blog.
Nicholas C. Rossis 
Reblogged this on Don Massenzio's Blog and commented:
Here is an interesting post from Nicholas Rossis’ blog on the results of a free promotion from Autumn Birts
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Very interesting
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I hope you find it useful 🙂
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Interesting, Nicholas. I’ve considered using free promotion sites myself, but now I think I’ll not bother, except perhaps looking into My Book Cav. Thanks for the post.
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Thanks! I’m glad you’ve already found it useful 🙂
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Reblogged this on Kim's Author Support Blog.
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Reblogged this on Story Empire and commented:
Interesting marketing results shared by Autumn Birt…
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Reblogged this on The Write Stuff and commented:
Some interesting info here, not the least of which is a link to My Book Cave. Thanks for sharing this, Nicholas!
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I’ll check My Book Cave. I’ve done only punctual ones and have not seen much change. On the other hand, sometimes I see a peak and I have no idea what’s it due to. What seems to ensure more downloads is sharing in many sales venues… thanks very much.
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Thanks for sharing your experience, Olga 🙂
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