After Action Report for CIA FALL GUY Free Day on Kindle

ByPhyllis Zimbler Miller

While I have used the free day option of Amazon’s KDP Select several times before, I did some things differently this time and I’d like to share this information.

First, instead of submitting my free day information myself, BookBuzzr.com did this for me. Why? Because my romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY was the guinea pig for BookBuzzr trying out this potential service for authors.

BookBuzzr submitted the free day information to several sites that require submission before the free day as well as submitting to sites that require submission only on the free day itself.

My opinion? It was wonderful that someone else did all this work for me. I really appreciated the efforts of BookBuzzr — especially the emails keeping me informed of what had been done.

While BookBuzzr has not yet decided whether it will offer this service and what the fee will be for the service, I know approximately what the fee would be and I would definitely use BookBuzzr to do this again and pay for it!

And as someone else was doing this heavy lifting for me, I decided to expand my reach even more:

Because CIA FALL GUY had the required number of reviews and rating on Amazon, I was able to pay for a place on the free day listing of Digital Book Today. In fact, I have worked with Anthony Wessel of the site before, and I highly recommend authors consider utilizing an advertising option on this site.

Then I decided I would also buy an ad to run AFTER the free day to help the momentum of the free day outreach. I did this at The Kindle Book Review, which did a very nice display of CIA FALL GUY (see link below).

Assuming I had paid for the BookBuzzr service along with paying for a place on the Digital Book Today list and an ad at The Kindle Book Review, I believe I got a very good return on my investment.

(Important to note: CIA FALL GUY had 18 reviews with an average overall rating of 4.2 out of 5 before the free day began.)

The only elbow grease that I added:

  • Blog post by me run the day before on Free Book Dude
  • Blog post by me run the day of the free day on BookBuzzr
  • Blog post run the day of the free day on my author website about the backstory of CIA FALL GUY
  • Paying $7 to have a promoted post on my Facebook profile account announcing the free day
  • Several tweets on Twitter during the free day — both general tweets about the free day and a few tweets to specific people

In conclusion, I am very pleased with these steps for the February 7th free day of CIA FALL GUY, and I hope this after action report may be useful for other authors.

Click here to see CIA FALL GUY listed on Digital Book Today’s free list.

Click here to see the ad I paid for on The Kindle Book Review.

Click here to read a blog post about the backstory of CIA FALL GUY.

Click here to read the BookBuzzr guest post that ran on the free day.

Click here to read the Free Book Dude guest post that ran the day before the free day.

And click here to see the screenplay for CIA FALL GUY on Amazon Studios.

And I am so pleased with BookBuzzr’s submission efforts for CIA FALL GUY that I am paying for BookBuzzr to submit my next book free day — March 7th in honor of Women’s History Month for my 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist MRS. LIEUTENANT.

Plus click here for the follow-up blog post I wrote about the free day on Kindle for CIA FALL GUY.

P.S. Thanks to Yael K. Miller of MillerMosaicLLC.com for this terrific new book cover for CIA FALL GUY.

© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

8 Comments

    1. There is no way to know which ad produced which numbers; so many variables went into this project. The one thing I can say for certain based on my own experience: It is important to spend some money on advertising in order to increase the free day exposure.

  2. But without any solid numbers I’m a bit skeptical. If you give out some aggregate numbers (current total and previous total), we can compare our numbers.

    1. Owen — I’m not sure what you are skeptical about. Every book is different because there are so many variables to consider, such as how many good reviews before the free day, how many “likes” before the free day, etc.

      I am only saying in this post that these steps I did for this free day seem more effective than steps I have done for other free days.

  3. Hi Phyllis, I’m just wondering how effective $50 ad, for example, for free promo is. Does it translate into real sales (after the promo ends)? If you show us some numbers – before and after – it would be a big help. I know the listing of your book by big sites helps you a great deal. But fixed fee? I don’t know. In the California gold rush, only the tool lenders made money, and I am wondering whether there is any resemblance here . . .

    1. Owen — Interesting comparison regarding tool lenders during the California gold rush.

      CIA FALL GUY is selling many more copies now than before the free day. Is this because of the $40 ad two days after the free day? There is no way of knowing. I personally think it is because of the combination of all the different efforts.

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