Readin’ o’ the Green: the Anatomy of a Free Book Promotion

This post, by Elle Lothlorien, originally appeared on Digital Book World on 3/14/13.

Welcome! This is an informal blog that will chronicle a book promotion for my novel The Frog Prince taking place March 14 and 15, 2013. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to read my blog “THING 3. Prostitute Your Book: The Art and Science of a Becoming a Successful Free Book Pimp on Amazon.” A lot of this will make more sense if you do.

Feel free to post questions, make comments, or just poke around to see if you can find anything useful. I will be reporting numbers and rankings and commenting on the other various aspects of the free promotion as it is ongoing.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

Beginning Saturday, March 16, 2013, I will provide a post-promo analysis to let you know how things look once the book is moved back into the Kindle Paid Store. Let’s get started. First a few entries of backstory…

February 28, 2013: Contacted Bookbub via email:

Can you tell me what availability you have for March for The Frog Prince?

Settled on March 14th ad placement and a promo to run two day through midnight, Friday the 15th.

Filled out and submitted online forms for both Pixel of Ink and eReader News Today, asking if they’d be willing to feature The Frog Prince on March 14th. Received a verification of receipt email from Pixel of Ink:

Thanks for telling us about your upcoming promotion! Please note: Due to the high volume of submissions, we may or may not be able to feature your book during the time it is free.

March 1, 2013: Received Bookbub invoice in the amount of $190 for 190,000 subscribers. Paid it.

March 13 8 PM: Designed logo and tagline for promotion Since it is so close to St. Patrick’s Day and the Frog on the cover is green, I decided to superimpose the frog lying across a shamrock. Named promo “Readin’ o’ the Green.”

Author FB screenshot9:45 PM: Posted first notice of promotion on both personal-ish” Facebook page and official Author Facebook pages. Noticed Author Facebook post immediately going viral (see red circled portion of graphic on the right).

March 14

1:30 AM: Total books downloaded: 2. Whoo-hoo! Going to bed. See you tomorrow!

8:45 AM: Reposted promotion information on Facebook. Received notification from Twitter that BookBub had tweeted about the promotion as well.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on Digital Book World.