I’ve just ended my second book marketing promotion. I offered my book T-Fury and Other Stories free from Kindle for 5 days. The free book giveaway has resulted in only 12 downloads.
Why? I see 2 possible reasons. One is that people looked at it, and just didn’t want it because the book sucks. Well, maybe it does; but judging by what I see in other self-published books, I don’t think it’s awful. It may not be Great Literature, but I think it’s at least entertaining and enjoyable. Maybe I’m wrong. I still don’t know.
The other possibility is that the book promotion sites I listed it with didn’t actually promote it, so prospective readers didn’t see it.
I used a (paid) book-marketing tool which streamlined my submission to 30 book promotion sites which claimed to have thousands of prospective readers on their email and Twitter lists. I only received email from one of those sites that showed my book along with all the others offered for that day. This despite the fact that I gave my email address to all the sites. What I got from some of the others were follow-up offers for paid promotional services.
I have come to the conclusion that the free promotional sites are scams. Their purpose is not to help authors market books, but to get email info so they can market their paid services to authors like me.
I have been following marketing and promotion information I gleaned from various blogs and resources. This is the second promotion I have tried. The first one resulted in zero sales, and the promoter was kind enough to refund my money. I don’t mind paying for promotions if they actually work. I’m not really looking for sales as much as readers.
I’m back to square one. So now what?
I guess the question is not how do I sell books, but how do I find prospective readers? I need to go where the readers are and find out how to connect with them.
R. A. Conti 