Pay nothing for books from Amazon?? By Mimi Barbour

Does it work to put your book for free on Amazon? Is it a good idea to belong to a group when your book goes free?

This is what happened to me. In March I joined the Indie Book Collective Lucky Days Free Par-tay along with many other authors. One of the requirements to be involved in this promotion was that I had to put my book "My Cheeky Angel" into the Select program on Amazon. In this way I could manage my promotion for those exact days.

IBC is the brainchild of best-selling author Carolyn McCray.  She is brilliant at what she does…and that is to guide the group through all the steps we needed to take in order to have a successful par-tay. She explained these steps in a series of Webinars where she gave us advice on our categories and covers, how to set up our book descriptions on Amazon and the best way to present the inner workings of our book like reviews, advertising our other work, etc. both in the front matter and the back.

Before the par-tay in March started, My Cheeky Angel was ranking around #240,500. Once she explained how to set my categories properly, within a few days the book had dropped to #140,000. I was shocked, and right then I decided I had made a good choice to be involved with this group. As the days drew closer, her committee of hard-working, very dedicated people had all of us busy setting up cross-promotion for the others in the par-tay and social media blurbs for twitter and facebook, etc.

On the big day, we all came free, and the website she'd designed came live. I watched in amazement as the downloads for my book went crazy. It was fantastic. Then the ranking dropped and on my best day I hit #552 in the free books and was #1 in two different categories and #2 in another. I walked around in shock for days…nothing I could do for myself would have ever gotten me these numbers. And I knew it!

*Amazon does allow for the free downloads to affect the ranking once your book is off the free slot, but not on a one to one basis. It's changing all the time, and the last I'd heard (just a supposition mind you) that every 50 free downloads would be the same a one book sold.*

Once the Par-tay ended I waited with bated breath to see what would occur. And I'm happy to say that the book levelled off for quite some time at around the #5,000 mark and then sadly, it began to climb back up. The last I looked, it was approximately #53,000.

But…I'm ecstatic to say that I'm now involved in the next par-tay which is happening in two days. Can't wait to see what ensues with my new release "His Devious Angel" which is the second in the Angels with Attitudes series. The first novella of my Vicarage Bench Series, "She's Me" will be available also.

I'll report back on what happens as far as the numbers go…but right now She's Me is ranking at #117,244 and Devious Angel is sitting at #82,810. If you're interested to track it with me, you can watch each day of the par-tay and see for yourself what a difference it'll make.

p.s. Crossed fingers, good wishes and prayers are all gladly accepted!

Better yet…download the book!

Xo Mimi

Announcing

Spring Fling Free Par-Tay

May 7^th – 9th!

Celebrate the coming of Spring!!!

What can be better than great books at a great price?

How about Dozens of Great books that are FREE!

THREE DAYS ONLY

May 7^th – 9th

Romances from sweet to HOT, Thrillers, Mysteries, Zombies and more!

All FREE at Amazon.com

Fantastic ebooks, many by award-winning and best-selling authors.

Let's Par-Tay!

Welcome to Spring Fling Free Par-Tay,

A party for readers!

Go to our website to see all the great books and sign up to win a FREE Kindle!

www.freepartay.com

 http://freepartay.com 

Marketing with Kathy Rowe!

This is kind of a follow-up article to the one I did a while back. As authors, most of us detest the "M" word. I'm no exception. But, if you play your cards right, marketing opportunities can literally fall in your lap- FREE ones at that!

So, now you're wondering what stupendous things I'm going to tell you. This works very well if you're a prolific author. The reason being, the tactic is to draw folks to you, and your hopefully healthy backcatalog. This is pretty much a no-cost option to getting ebooks in people's hands. And you know what? I didn't think this up. I owe all the credit to one of my Indie author peers. He suggested this to me, simply because it worked for him—so well, he finally got to quit his day job and become a writer full time. How did he do it? He wrote a "free" ebook.

By free, he explained to me that I was to write either a novella or a full length novel. Even better, make it the first book in a series to get readers hooked and wanting more. Once completed, I got beta readers to go over it, and made any corrections. Since I have the know-how, I formatted and did the cover—all for little to no cost. The less money I put into it, the better. It didn't mean I was to cut corners, no, that book had probably 12 editing passes by me. Was it perfect? No! In fact I've had to make corrections and upload new versions. But I did the best I could for the lack of money.

Once you have this free ebook done, now you need to get it up on the internet for the entire world to see. This is where it can get a little tricky. We all know Amazon is the best place to get exposure. BUT, they won't let you put a book up there for free (unless you do the KDP Select with it). So, how do you get Az to price your book for free if you don't want to do Select? It requires a little patience, but in the end, it's worth it.

First: publish the book on Smashwords.com. You can list it there for free. Cool, tell folks about it. SW isn't as well known and the mighty Az, but, they also have a deal with Az that involves price matching. So, once your book is showing up free on SW, go to Az and publish there (just slap a .99 price on it for now) then get your friends, fellow authors, whomever, to log onto Az and use the price matching feature. They will need the link to your book for both sites. It took me just over a month and Az dropped the price to free.

Second: the media blitz. Facebook is a wealth of information, if you know where to look—or like me, just have dumb luck and stumble upon it. I started noticing my "friends" showing links to eReader News Daily and Pixel of Ink. Both are sites that post free Kindle books on a daily basis. I went to the eReader News website, found a contact email, and sent them a very polite email letting them know I had a free ebook on Amazon (and it was totally free, not KDP Select) and gave them the link. They sent me a nice email back and informed me of the day they would post my book (it was a Friday, I think). Up until now, my book had seen good movement in the free sci-fi-adventure category on Az but nothing fantastic. After eReader News posted that link, I could sit and watch my downloads going up by the very minute! I had over 1,000 downloads in ONE DAY!!! I was absolutely amazed! At the peak of the downloading frenzy, my book was #4 on the list. 

Third: don't sit back on your laurels. Yes, I had a "bestseller" on my hands, but that didn't mean I stopped. I did my best to politely post on as many Facebook pages as I could— being mindful not to be spammy about it. I used Twitter and finally figured out how those hashtags worked. By using #free #ebook #Kindle #sci-fi in my tweets, folks searching those words might stumble over my link for the book. It must've worked; I've picked up quite a few new followers on Twitter. Which leads me to:

Fourth: steering them to you! We're all just minnows in this giant sea of publishing. So how do you get someone to find you? Well, simple, tell them! When posting on Facebook or Twitter, don't be afraid to insert your Amazon author's page link. Yes, you're tooting your own horn, but in case you haven't noticed, no one else is there to do it for you. And make sure that page is as compelling as you can get it. Have the best picture you can of yourself, a bio that's interesting, perhaps a bit funny, and engages your audience to want to know more about you and your books. Basically, you're pimping yourself.

Okay, so now you've done all this, what to expect? I have the book posted on SW, Az, and Barnes and Noble—all for free. What I've seen is a gradual increase in my backcatalog sales- especially on Az. I went from making $4/mo in royalties on Az to making $20-30/mo. No, it's not a huge jump, but the good thing is I'm selling a book or two every day from my backcatalog. The free ebook is still getting downloads (it has fallen in the ranking but is still in the top 100) and now folks have hopefully read their free sample and are looking at what else I have to offer; or looking forward to part two. 

Now, what next?  More marketing! What? What? You say? More??!! Yes, this is the easiest of all. When you are formatting your books, don't forget to either put in the front or back matter any links you have: website, Facebook page, Twitter handle, anyway you would want your adoring fans to have access to you. ---A word of caution: DO NOT put your Az author page, or your SW author page—you will run into problems with conflicts of interest between the sellers and they may dump your book. Just use non-company related sites. If the book is part one of a series, don't forget to put: "Watch for Part 2 of ________" so they know there is more to come. And list any of your backcatalog along with your bio at the end, so they know you offer something else to read.

This strategy worked well for me. Will it work for you? You never know until you try. There are so many ways to get your book out there, but for many of us, we can't afford to fork out loads of dough for advertising. So use what's freely available and make it work. Don't be afraid to be creative—we're writers for Pete's sake—we're supposed to be creative!

Until next time, my creatively obsessed friends,

Kathy

Helpful links:

http://ereadernewstoday.com/

http://www.pixelofink.com/

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/ 

 My Az author page: (yes, that photo is just about a year old now)

http://www.amazon.com/K.-Rowe/e/B003H2UCNI/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

And the link to my free ebook:

http://www.amazon.com/Space-Crazy-Dars-Adventures-ebook/dp/B006Q9M6CE/ref=ntt_at_ep_edition_2_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2 

 Here's a few inspirational pictures of the world I live in: these are literally in my backyard.