News of KDP Select, Women Military Personnel, and Book Marketing
As some of you may know, I did two days of KDP Select free ebooks on July 24 and July 25 for the thriller CIA FALL GUY and TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK.
Because I wanted to try these free days in the “natural” state, I did not pay for any ads on any of the various sites that offer the opportunity to promote KDP Select free days.
(KDP is an Amazon program in which your ebook has to be exclusive on Amazon for a 90-day period, and during those 90 days you are entitled to five free days in any configuration.)
I did, though, post announcements at various places that I found by consulting a number of sources.
I purposely did a fiction and nonfiction book together because different books appeal to different people. If I were going to do all the effort needed for a KDP Select promotion, I figured it was almost as easy to promote two books as to promote one book.
One surprise: Almost three times as many copies of CIA FALL GUY were downloaded as copies of TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK.
Yes, I know there are more fiction readers than book authors (at least I think this is true), but fiction readers have their own tastes in reading and all authors need to market their books.
Anyway, I am not yet ready to write about my conclusions from this first experiment. Instead, I am almost finished writing a sequel to TOP TIPS, a sequel I would like, in a few weeks, to use free days on KDP Select coupled with the technothriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS.
Instead of conclusions in this blog post, I’d like to share information:
First, here is the link to an article describing the first Navy woman graduate to serve on a submarine. (Yes, it is a bigger sub than Mollie Sanders is on.) Read the article now if this interests you.
On a much sadder note about women in the military, read this article about the increase in homelessness for women vets. This is an issue that the U.S. government needs to confront now rather than years from now.
As I am sharing links, here are links to two new guest blog posts of mine:
“How to Promote Your Book With Social Media” at booksbywomen.org
“CIA Fall Guy by Phyllis Zimbler Miller: Excerpt & Guest Post” at the blog of Laurie Jenkins.
And you might want to take the short history quiz connected to the video I created on the topic “1948 Berlin Airlift Throws a Lifeline to West Germans” on the site rivvid.com.
© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller 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
Good luck with KDP Select. I gave it a shot and although it was successful after my first promotion, the next two promotions weren’t as successful. Many authors report of an algorithm changed that affected sales and Amazon ranking. I wrote about my experiences on my website. I don’t see myself using the program again.
James — Thanks for leaving this comment. Did you try a promotion again with the same book or with a different book? I’m going to try the promotion again with different books next time.
I enrolled two books in the program. I tried it with another book, but Amazon refused because they found an excerpt online (on an old link from my website that I no longer use and completely forgot about). Some authors are having great success, but I don’t want to limit my distribution channels anymore. I’m doing pretty good on B&N.
James — That’s great that you are doing well on B&N. And I know with KDP Select there is the issue of excerpts elsewhere — although I understand that a certain percentage of the book can be excerpted elsewhere.
There are so many variables in whether this program is good for an author’s books, so for now I am going to keep experimenting.
Thanks for leaving this comment.