I haven’t done a lot of book promotion in recent months. The bloom is off the rose, and my mind’s been engaged with other things. But in June my steadily declining book sales finally spurred me to do something, and I put the ebook edition of Edges on sale for $2.99.

(It’ll remain on sale for the next day or two, though that’s not the point of this post. I’m assuming most people who visit this blog already have a copy — and thank you for that! My purpose here is simply to share my experience in case that’s of interest to other writers, and maybe to some readers.)

So, the point of a sale like this is to capture the attention of new readers. After all, it’s less of a gamble to sample a new-to-you writer at $2.99 than at $14.99, right? (Not that I ever price my ebooks that high, though some publishers do.) And if the reader likes the book, maybe they’ll go on to buy the rest of the series…

The challenge, of course, is to get news of the sale in front of those hypothetical new readers — and I’ve gotten very lazy about this. The standard procedure is to take out ads in newsletters like BookBub and its lesser imitators, or purchase Facebook ads. I’ve done all that before, but this time I didn’t buy any advertising. I just announced the sale on Twitter and Mastodon, and in my newsletter, and that was it. Lucky for me, lots of people shared the news (THANK YOU!!). Word of mouth is the best.

So what were the results? The price drop went into effect on June 17, and as of a couple of days ago a total of 226 copies had sold: 75% via Amazon, the rest split among Kobo, Apple, and BN, descending shares in that order.

Is that good? Well, clearly the numbers are not life changing, but I’m not unhappy with the result. For a writer like me with an extensive back list (~19 novels), infrequent publications, and a not-very-active online presence, a little sale like this can forge connections with readers who might otherwise never encounter my work — and who might enjoy it enough that they come back for more. So there it is. A simple little sale format.

Now, back to work on the next in the series…

Posted on: Tuesday, July 4th, 2023 at 12:40 pm
Categories: Writing Life.