Right now I am stacking a promotion. You can’t see it, of course, but it’s happening. I ran a similar promotion in October and wrote a blog about it and about stacking promotions in general. At that time, I promised to return here with my personal experiences with stacked promotions and my results. I thought I would discuss what went right, what went wrong and what you can take away from my experience. Let me warn you; it isn’t always pretty.
Set Goals, Realistic Ones. Oh yeah, and a Budget too.
When I went into my promotion for Besotted, I had three books already published in theBeguiling Bachelor Series that were performing only when I ran a free promotion on Bookfunnel or Instafreebie. My expectations were low that people would start with the final book in the series. Readers could easily read the books out of order; I wrote them with overlapping characters but otherwise as standalone novels
I announced the launch of the final book, Besotted, but I did a price discount on the first three books in the series. Bedazzled was free, 99¢ for Beholden and Bedeviled was $1.99. All regularly sold for $2.99.
My goal was to give away as many copies of Bedazzled as possible and start readers moving through the series, encouraging this movement with the price offer. My second goal was to deliver a long tail result beyond the promotion in two areas – continued eBook sales of all of the series and an dramatic uptick in Kindle Unlimited readership.
The results? I got all of my goals except one, which I should have anticipated. I also hit some unexpected results. The promotion delivered the long tail results I wanted (see chart above) and so did the Kindle Unlimited readership (see chart below) but sales of the series books were disappointing. I gave away over 8000 books but sold less than 1000 of the other three – combined. That is a less than 12% conversion rate, less than one-third of normal.
Expect the Unexpected – good and bad
There were unintended results too. My free book, Bedazzled, shot to number one in it’s genre and the top 100 free books overall. This meant exposure by Amazon and that meant that when the free period ended Bedazzledcontinued to sell. A lot. Plus, it was beyond exciting to see my book place this high in the rankings. I called everyone I knew, sent them screenshots. It was a huge reward for all my hard work.
Still, I gave away a valuable number of books and felt enormous disappointment when the rest of the series didn’t sell well. Expecially since I paid $400 in promotion fees.
Let’ me recap the numbers:
- Giveaway = 8K books retail value at $2400.00
- Sales = $380.00
- Cost = $400.00
- Conversion from book One to Two: 12%
The October royalties were barely enough to cover my costs. That’s right, I ran an October promotion that hardly paid for itself.
Then, in November my promotion started paying dividends. Bedazzled continued to sell. Then Beholden, Bedeviledand Besotted. My conversion rate for buying all four books increased. For every two copies of book one that sold, one copy of book two sold. Sales of book three were 80% of book three and finally book four sales were a whopping 96% of book three.
Best of all, the Kindle Unlimited figures came in. I had earned twice what I had spent on the promotiononce those figures were added to October’s royalties. My best month in the three years I have been publishing books. So now, my revised results looked like this:
- Giveaway: 8K books retail value $2400
- Sales: $796.00
- Cost: $400
- Conversion from book One to Two: 48%
Time is Your Friend
I had forgotten how free book buyers, including myself, operate. We download a book when it is available and being promoted, but we might not read it for days, months or even a year. My planning and thinking has skipped over that lengthy lag time. I was trying to sell book four in a series, using a lead magnet of a book that might not be read by downloaders for a month, a year or more.
You Can’t Fit Ten pounds of…
With the results of my first foray into stacking promotions in October, I did it again this past week. It may be too early to fully understand the results but here is what I did differently, and what happened in the results.
First, I changed my pricing structure. I was announcing the launch of Moonlight & Moet,the second book in my new B&B Billionaire Romance Series. Desire & Dessert, the first book in the series, had previously run in a collection and many of my fans had already read it. Sales during the promotion were dismal. So was the Kindle Unlimited readership. I don’t think it is the series, which is similar to my earlier Beguiling Bachelor series. I think it was the promotion.
You know the old saying about ten pounds and a five pound bag.
For this promotion I did a Kindle Countdown on Desire & Dessert – three days at 99¢, two days at $1.99, then back to full price of $2.99. I announced Moonlight & Moetwith an initial launch price of $1.99, saying this price wouldn’t last but not specifying when a price change might occur.
Then I stacked the promotion using the best performing sites from the first promotion, remembering to increase outreach to get that uptick, learning from last time. It seemed to be working, initially.
On day two, Desire & Dessertshot up to number 32 in the Romance Erotica genre. The promotion was stacked to reach more people each day, hopefully increasing the trajectory of sales despite the price rise on day three. In addition to the paid promoters, I did limited exposure on Facebook groups day one, with increased efforts for those those on days two and three.
I paid less for this promotion, learning from the mistakes I believe I made previous when I promoted and over paid (see last month’s blog).
New lessons learned, New Mistakes Made
I was smarter about increasing reach with my promotions each day, focused on the trajectory of sales upward, learning from a mistake I made the first time. That should have done the trick, even without a free book to offer in this promotion. But I goofed. And the numbers confirmed it.
I timed this promotion using Desire & Dessert as a lead magnet, to coincide with the launch of my new book, Moonlight & Moet. Then I promoted both, which weakened the promotion for each, undermining my stacking efforts. Frankly, if the numbers are any indication, undermining everything.
I still have promotions running this week for Moonlight & Moet, as Desire & Dessertis returning to full price. Sales of my novels are still above average – barely. Royalties this month will cover the cost of the promotion, but they will not do much more – immediately. I am counting on that lagging Unlimited audience to keep the small amount of momentum going and eventually improving on it.
But it was a disappointing showing.
Here are my current lessons and takeaways:
- Set a budget and goals
- You won’t control everything, no matter how hard you try
- Remember that time is your friend
- Stay focused on a single mission
- Stack the promotion for an upward trajectory
- Free generates bigger numbers but less committed readers
- Learn and adjust, practice makes perfect
Gem of the Week
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Interesting article. Thank you very much for sharing your experience!