Recently, we ran some articles about the decline of effectiveness of book promotion sites and we posted some performance statistics of some of those sites. These articles caused somewhat of a stir in the publishing community. Well done, minions!
One of our readers asked if we shouldn’t update our fabulous page of Book Promotion Sites to include a link to Bob Hammond’s article, but our fearless leader didn’t think that would be fair based on the experience of just one author. So here’s your chance, peoples! Let us know how YOU did with these sites by taking the survey below. You will remain anonymous, so there will be no chance of backlash for reporting less than stellar results.
- Fill out the survey once for each site you used. If you ran multiple promotions with the same site, you are welcome to fill out the survey more than once for that site.
- Only include your experiences within the past year so we can gauge what’s going on in recent history.
- Please share this everywhere writers hang out (Facebook groups, forums, social media) so we can get a lot of data and make this survey really meaningful.
- No login or credentials are needed. We’re awesome that way, aren’t we?
- To take the survey more than once, when you are done and receive the “thank you” confirmation message after submitting, just refresh the page and a new survey will come up.
- You have until February 29, 2016, and it takes less than two minutes to do, so let’s make this happen! (And a special thanks to BigAl for crafting this fine survey!)
Thank you so much for attempting to gather this data. I would be very interested in the results as I have spent a lot of money using sites on an experimental basis. I just filled out one survey and would be happy to take the time to fill out 20 more as I’ve used these services at least that many times in 2015. However, you are making it pretty hard to do that. How do I get back to fill out another survey? Back all the way out and start over from the email? I’d like to give my fellow writers the benefit of the dollars I’ve wasted and what has worked fairly well. None of the sites worked as well as they did in 2014 and I’m pretty sure most authors would say the same thing. Please help us to give you multiple surveys. Thank you again!
Hi Linda! Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I’ll add it to the bulleted points – to take the survey more than once, when you’re finished and have submitted the survey, just refresh the page and a new survey will come up. Keep on doing that as many times as you’d like! You can share this link https://indiesunlimited.com/2016/01/28/book-promotion-site-survey-for-authors/ and that will be the one that can be refreshed. Thank you for helping us get the word out!
Like every other author, I am also waiting the final results of the survey. Some authors privately suggested me recently that I should not spend money on paid ads for my books. It looks an outdated methodology. The market people, specially in the organization of Amazon, have to devise some new ways.
Hi,
I love that you’re doing this! Myself I’ve started providing my ROI and a full spreadsheet of sites to authors which includes all data on ALEXA rankings, social media followers, etc. I will happily provide you with all of the data you’ve requested for every promotion I’ve ever ran however I really can’t put all of this into this form as it would take a lifetime. If you email me at sharon.karaa @ hotmail.co.uk I will happily provide this as a spreadsheet, if that works for you.
We will be in touch, Sharon! Thank you for the offer. 🙂
Thank you for this. And yes, you are awesome. I guess we (I) don’t say that often enough!
You’re very welcome! Thanks for giving us the idea! 🙂
Thanks for doing this, this is a much needed resource for the community. Can you add Freebooksy to the list? You already have Bargain Booksy and most authors use both sites but to different ends. Freebooksy drives free downloads while Bargain Booksy drives book sales. Thank you!
Hey Ricci, thank you for your suggestion, but we’re trying to focus on sites that drive sales with this survey. Freebies are an entirely different animal as authors may be more concerned with effective frequency and not necessarily making peripheral sales.
Got it! Then having only Bargain Booky makes perfect sense. Thanks for the clarification 🙂
No worries! Thanks for speaking up, and for taking the survey 🙂
Just put my data in; it’ll be very interesting to see how it all pans out.
This survey is a real service to indies. Most of the promo sites for ebooks have raised their rates–many of them double–and aren’t delivering results. A similar survey was attempted on kboards Writers’ Cafe (in a different format). It had to be taken off when it was compromised, which happened almost immediately. The survey was on an open spread sheet, and anyone who was registered on the forum could participate, including the owners of promo sites, most of whom follow the forum closely. I am concerned about this survey because no log in or credentials are needed.
I hope you will keep the results of this survey concealed so no one has access to it until you are ready to release the data. Also, I think it is important that the participants in the survey are vetted so that no one can give results more than once, and that the individuals participating are not owners of promo sites, who have a vested interest in their sites showing positive results.
I hope you will post the results of your survey, so that those of us who’ve never tried any promotions might have an idea of which ones do and don’t work. The closest I have come to using a promotion was to do either a Kindle Countdown, or a Free Day for the Kindle editions of my books (with very limited success).
We definitely will be publishing the results, Joe. Thanks for your comment. 🙂
This is a much needed survey. Coming from an author new to this marketing game, I’m already amazed and dismayed over the cost of getting the word out on my books. If these sites don’t deliver sales like they used to do, I’d like to know what does. So thank you! I must say, though, I’m getting mighty discouraged.
You’re welcome, Carole, and trust me, you’re not alone in that frustration.