ISBNs, Tweets and Freebies, Oh MY!

Hey there. SO I still kinda have a 3-day freebie promo hangover, forgive me if I wander a bit.

What were we gonna talk about first?? Oh yeah, ISBNs, you know those handy little numbers you can look up every book in the universe by? 

Except mine.

And guess what? I don't care. Seriously. You do NOT need this, at least not at first. Is it a good idea once you have built an audience and the like? Sure. Go for it. Otherwise, fuggedbout it.

Unless you want to shell out $125, then you can go here Golden ISBN . But for me, I will be honest, I am not in this as some vanity project, nor can I afford to be spending money on things like ISBNs for a book that may never sell over a couple thousand copies. KDP gives you an ASIN number for free, here's mine for Shivers: 

• ASIN: B00JX8U9KG

And even Goodreads, which swore to me when I created my author page over there, that we will NOT add your book without a valid ISBN, mysteriously did list my book by DAY two of my promo. 

**Oh and a quick aside, make an author page on Goodreads, mine is Here. It's not too fancy, but it's important for people to be able to connect and find out more about you. As I said before you would be surprised at how many people LURK. Also create an Amazon author page if you use KDP and sync up your blog feed per RSS, twitter if you so choose and upload a PIC, for god's sake, too. HERE. Sorry, but shameless self promotion is the name of the game. Do I like it?

Hell NO, it's exhausting and sometimes it feels about as effective as trying to shimmy up a well-greased flag pole. I am a unrepentant introvert and pushing my stuff so shamelessly is exhausting and draining for me--- but does it work? 

YES!

Pretty much.

Let me explain. Every time I tweeted during the promo (and mind you, I do NOT have a lot of followers, only about 200), my downloads took a small upswing. I fb'd as well, at least 3 times a day and had friends and fans amazing enough to share my links, one friend alone got me over 150 views!! I put my promo up on my author page on Goodreads as well, and did a few other sneaky things I will share with you.

First off, you can do research for your self, there are a lot of sites that take self-promotions, for a fee. I think I mentioned I am cheap, so I didn't use any of those sites. I DID promote on WLC's freebie page-WLC. You have to create an account to join, but they are worth some(not a lot, IMO) but SOME time. I also promoted on fb pages:

1  2 3

You have to join the groups and be respectful, please of their rules. 

There are also the tweeting services. You will see them on Twitter if you have joined the madness yet. "TWEETing promos, reach thousands!!"And yada, yada. Do THEY work?

Honestly, probably. At least a little. I know I personally have clicked a few of their promos for authors and even downloaded a time or two from links in their tweets. BUT, as warned previously, if you are going to give someone your $$---shop wisely. The one I like the best is 

@TweetYourBooks

They seem the least obnoxious and the most author and reader-friendly. But I didn't use them for my book. Like I said, me cheapskate. I did everything on my own and didn't pay anyone a dime.

Could I have done more? Absolutely. But I am not that energetic. 

And all in all, I completely exceeded my goals. 

I hear of people who downloaded 3-4000 books in a promo the length of mine and some who don't crack fifty. I was somewhere in the (lower) middle of that, but let me tell you, there is NO greater thrill than seeing your book getting dowloaded all over the world! It was a serious high. I had books downloaded as far away as Japan and Australia and Indonesia and while the UK was heavily my 2nd biggest market, I was also shocked by a strong showing in the German/Austrian/Dutch market.

It was extremely, extremely cool and frightening and exhilarating and exhausting. My highest rankings In Amazon's Free rankings were #23 in paranormal romance/werewolves/shifters and #32 in horror and I did crack the top 1000 over all. 

What does that mean? Well not a whole hell of a lot. The #32 in horror is the best one and even that isn't anything to get hugely excited about(even though I assure you I DID!! lol) But it did give me a goal, I want to crack top ten in a PNR catagory with my next release, a novella coming out in June. (pssttt- it's called PHOENIX RISING)

It may seem stupid to give away so many books, but I assure you it is NOT. If you think you are going to become independently wealthy at this, you are almost certainly fooling yourself. I am doing this because I love to write, I write anyway and I want to polish my craft. Do I want to make money?

Hell YEAH! Do I think I will? Ehhh, maybe, someday. But you have to think LONG term. Build an audience, get your book into the hands of as MANY people as humanly possible!!

Even if half those people NEVER read it. Yep, you heard me right.

Some people are just freebie addicts and their Kindles are full of stuff they never look at again. Some people will read part of it and abandon it. Some will hate it, or it simply won't be their cuppa tea. But some....some of the freebie people WILL like it and they will remember your name....

Build on that. 

Next time in blogger land--- critics, critics everywhere. And you already know I am cheap, but what is the one thing I WOULD actually TOTALLY recommend you spend moolah on? You might be surprised......

Until then---