YouTube and Amazon: Gain Exposure by Using Both

author email marketing email-1346077_960_720It’s becoming evident that newsletters are a valuable tool for authors to have. Shawn Inmon recently discussed the importance of newsletters, and one of the things he said was, “The reason why is simple: You control how and when you access a mailing list, as opposed to investing everything into working the Amazon or social media algorithms.” That really resonated with me, so I decided it was time for me to take his advice seriously. Continue reading “YouTube and Amazon: Gain Exposure by Using Both”

Amazon Giveaways: Now with Ebooks!

Amazon book giveawayAbout a year ago, Amazon instituted a cool feature that allowed anybody who sold anything on Amazon to set up a giveaway on the product page. Unfortunately for indie authors, digital content wasn’t one of the things you could give away. That meant you could set up a contest for free hard copies of your book, but you couldn’t do it for eBooks.

That’s now changed. Last week, KDP announced eBooks may now be used as prizes in Amazon Giveaways. As usual, the Zon is rolling this out to Amazon.com (US) first. So right now, contestants must be residents of one of the fifty U.S. states or the District of Columbia. The person running the contest must have a valid Amazon.com account and a credit card with room to pay for the prizes to be given away. (Yes, sorry, you need to pay for the prizes upfront.) That would seem to indicate that non-U.S. residents can set up a giveaway, but I’m not 100% sure; in any case, your pool of winners is going to be limited to U.S. residents. Continue reading “Amazon Giveaways: Now with Ebooks!”

Why Use Amazon Giveaways?

Amazon book giveawayI like to try new things in the world of book promotion when they fit my budget, so when Amazon announced they were trying their own giveaways, I thought I’d give it a whirl. And the timing was good. For reasons only Amazon can explain, the price of one of my paperbacks had been drastically reduced in April. Coincidentally, this was the start of baseball season, and the book is a romantic comedy with a baseball sub-theme. So…(give) away we go.

Amazon made it easy. Continue reading “Why Use Amazon Giveaways?”