By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I thought I’d give an update on both the
audiobook platform that I started doing this spring and the promo efforts that I’ve
made for the past few months. Maybe it
can give some of you ideas for expanding your content’s reach or for marketing
it.
ACX—Still
steady income for the $0 I put into the process. Readers are requesting that more books go to
audio (several readers wrote that they’re losing their eyesight and can only
“read” via audio). I hate admitting that I don’t have the audio rights for the
traditionally published books and that I find it less-likely that my publisher
will put them on audiobook.
This time, as soon as the latest of my
self-published books was published, I immediately put the book up for audition
on ACX. Now I’m already at the point of
reviewing the finished audio. It’s moved
things through a bit faster. Thanks to Lia Frederick for narrating.
Free
books. I believe that the single, most effective thing I do to move
books is to keep one of them free. I
keep one of my titles free at all times by listing it as free on Smashwords and
allowing Amazon to price-match it. I
consider it advertising and it’s the only form of real reader-focused promo
that I do…except for Goodreads giveaways, which I’ll mention next. I do think, however, that this is probably a better practice for writers who have several or more books out.
I’ve found that the freebie also seems to
result in sales for my trad-published titles, even though they’re higher-priced
than my self-pubbed books. My royalty
checks have been higher as my self-pubbed sales have grown…even for the books
I’ve written under a pen name. I think
that Amazon does a good job putting my other books in front of the
readers. I don’t think that Barnes &
Noble does nearly as good of a job in cross-promoting my other titles.
I’ve noticed that although free promos
always work well to keep my other books visible, they do especially well if the freebie is one that has
lots of reviews. It’s almost as if the
readers are looking at the number of reviews and not the reviews themselves—one
of the books that was recently free has 236 reviews. But its giveaway was not quite as successful
as a freebie for another of my titles that has 446 reviews, even though I think
the one with fewer reviews probably has more favorable
reviews.
So…what does this mean? I’m wondering if it means that readers can be
influenced by sheer numbers—an “everyone is reading it” mentality. Even subconsciously.
Goodreads.
On that same thread (trying to get reviews), I received a box of ARCs (Advance
Reader Copies) a few weeks ago for the book that’s coming out in December. I was a little surprised to get them, since I
don’t always get them except for the first book in a series. My editor’s assistant asked me how many ARCs
I wanted. The idea these days is to get
as many reviews on the upcoming release as possible. I think, before online retailing became such
a huge thing, that ARCs usually went out to various print reviewers…then
bloggers, when blogging reviewers became popular. Now it seems to be readers. I asked the
assistant for 18 ARCs for a Goodreads giveaway.
I’ve noticed that giving away ARCs on
Goodreads sometimes makes traditionally-published authors a little
nervous. This is because sometimes
signed ARCs end up being sold online on eBay…even before the release. I’ve heard writers talking about it. It’s against the Goodreads rules, but
pirating, etc., has never seemed to hurt me or my sales.
The giveaway for the December book had a
good response…Goodreads reported that 1310 people entered it and I had 16
winners, keeping two of the ARCs in case one got lost in the mail or some other
problem. I’ve found that a good approach
seems to be to send a message to the winners –you can click on their link when
Goodreads sends you the list of winners.
You congratulate them, tell them when you’ll send the books out (I hear
that you can get one-stars on Goodreads for not being prompt), and possibly
even give them your other contact info so that they can email you or Facebook
you, or whatever. It makes you a bit
more human, more friendly—instead of just a calculated giveaway. I don’t ask for reviews when I send my note,
but several readers wrote me back this time (a few on my email instead of using
Goodreads) and said that they were excited to have won and planned to write
reviews.
As I’ve mentioned before, I personally
don’t find Goodreads a particularly warm and fuzzy environment for writers, so
I just pop in, do my giveaway thing, and pop out again. You don’t have to hang out there to do giveaways…you
can tweak your settings so that Goodreads notifies you via email when they’ve
picked the winners. You do have to have a physical book for a giveaway
there…they don’t give away ebooks. But
your books don’t have to be traditionally published to be entered,
either—CreateSpace or Lightning Source works fine.
So, that’s about it for how things are
going for audio and promotion—and what works for now. Being flexible is good in this business…what
works one month may not work the next.
We should just be prepared to change course.
What have you found that’s worked
promo-wise lately? Any thoughts about
Goodreads giveaways? Anyone doing ACX?