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PAID PROMO – Beware – Try it Once – GoTo – Bingo
otherwise known as don’t believe everything you read in a promo site
They bill themselves as a ‘rising’ alternative to BookBub. NOTHING but nothing comes close to BookBub. The next best thing to them is ENT (ereadernewstoday) but that’s where things stop.
When it comes to comparisons, http://www.genrepulse.com/ promo site doesn’t even peek over the horizon. It’s cheap – that’s the only good thing to say about it. However, when you have to stretch your promo dollars, even $16 – $18 (US) is a good bite from your budget; they cover themselves by stating that their promo is, hey, exposure that delivers results way down the line…take that with a grain of salt.
TRY IT ONCE, but be realistic of what you can get out of it. They don’t mention that your book needs reviews. Different genres have different price. ‘Romance’ is the most expensive @ $19. ‘Children’s Books and Graphic Novels’ are $16. The range is not huge. $16 – $19. It won’t be great sales. It won’t even be decent sales. It’ll be a trickle and then nothing.
PERSONAL RESULTS: on the day of the promo (February/Monday) there were 5 downloads (paid) of the promoted novel and 11downloads of my ‘free’ book
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otherwise known as nice and friendly don’t do much for promo
The promo is cheap, at $10 per book but this site is geared mostly to books offered free. I doubt many readers subscribe to this site and those that do expect to get free books. They do have a feature for bargain books or promo books at special price but once again I suspect that 0.99 is the threshold price that any of their members would even glance at…if there are any glances that go through this site on a regular basis. They don’t mention anywhere that your book needs reviews.
TRY IT ONCE, but be prepared to see zero results if you promoted a bargain book, and maybe a trickle of downloads of your free book.
PERSONAL RESULTS: on the day of the promo (February/Wednesday) there was 1 paid download of the promoted book, and 8 downloads of my free book.
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http://ereadernewstoday.com/ eReaderNewsToday
otherwise known as absolutely get it if you can – time/repeat/restricted use as well
ENT is very expensive. $60 & $150 per Book-of-the-Day and your book has to be heavily discounted (they like to see 0.99 or at most $1.99 as your price) or not more than $3.99 but at that price, you pay a steep price in advertisement. They don’t have any other ‘promo packages’ option. Book-of-the-Day is all there is. Depending on book’s price, you pay $60 if it’s priced at $2.99 or less and $150 for book that’s higher priced but they really don’t like to see books priced @ $3.99.
ENT is highly selective. You can keep submitting your book to them for months without success. They have a 90-day period of no-repeat submissions. They do like to see a few reviews for your book but I submitted my new release that to this day still has no reviews, and they took it. I suspect I ‘got in’ because there was a cancellation and this is where ‘luck’ came in and my new release was picked from what they had in the queue. They don’t ‘insist’ on reviews but do mention that it would help your book’s promotion if it had some reviews and with 3.5-star or higher rating.
Advice: Don’t be discouraged. Keep submitting to them. Make sure you HAVE the $60 required to pay for the promo (or $150, depending on the price of your book) because they really, really expect to be paid minutes after they accept your book for promotion. If you blink or worse—hesitate—you will lose your spot.
BINGO, but be prepared to keep submitting to them over and over. If you score ONE promotion a year with ENT you are doing well. If you score TWO in a single year, you are a fortune’s child.
PERSONAL RESULTS: on the day of the promo (February/Friday) there was a big spike in my sales – 31 downloads of paid promoted book and 12 downloads of my free book. ENT promo carried into the next day (Saturday) where I saw 7 downloads of the promoted book. The next day, (Sunday) there was only 1 download of the paid promoted book.
SUMMARY & OBSERVATION
Sundays are the least desirable days for paid promotion. Temptation is great to go for that inexpensive paid promo ($10 and under) but don’t expect results. And I mean just that-no results. It might make you feel better so it’s a psychological pick-up that every writer needs, but that little voice that’s telling you that it’s a waste of money…is probably right.
Did the 31+7+1 downloads pay for the $60 that I paid for the Book-of-the-Day promo with http://ereadernewstoday.com/ ? NO
Did the 5 downloads pay for the $18 that I paid to http://www.genrepulse.com/ ? NO
Did the single (1) download pay for $10 guaranteed spot at http://itswritenow.com/ ? NO
I have a long way to go before I start making a decent living in this field. So long in fact that I often consider just giving up. Should I? NO
AXIOMATIC TRUTH: Any paid promo site that mentions a need for reviews means Amazon reviews and nowhere else. They don’t care about Goodreads reviews, or B&N reviews or any other source of reviews. They only want to know about Amazon reviews. Could it be they heard how easy it is to get a Goodreads account and then go trolling through the books, clicking on one or two stars of books you’ve never even heard of, just for the fun of it. Same category as keying a total stranger’s car at the subway parking lot. Go figure.
Next blog, three more paid promo sites coming up for review.
