Tag: Promotion

Beyond KDP Select Pt. 2

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been trying to find a way to duplicate the results I had with KDP Select’s free promo earlier this year. In other words, I’ve been trying to find readers for my self-published novel, My Temporary Life. KDP Select has been very good to me but as an author with only one book, the effectiveness of its free promo has waned.

On Oct. 10th I ran a promotion through ereadernewstoday.com. Ereadernewstoday is one of the two key sites that list free ebooks, and their reach is phenomenal. They have a gazillion subscribers and Facebook followers, so when they announced their Bargain Kindle Books promo, I wanted in. Continue reading “Beyond KDP Select Pt. 2”

Beyond KDP Select

I joined Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select in February, and ran a free promotion. I was one of the lucky ones. It was early, and the magic hadn’t faded yet. Through KDP’s free promotion, I managed to get my book to a whole bunch of readers, over 50,000 of them the first time around. Since then I’ve been trying to re-conjure the same magic with varying degrees of success. In this post I’ll tell you what worked and what didn’t work for me, before and after KDP. These results are based on the fact that I have one book published; authors with a series of books or multiple books have had different results, as reported in Rich Meyer’s excellent post here. Continue reading “Beyond KDP Select”

Hastings and Your Print Books

Author Jacqueline Hopkins

Hastings is a chain of brick and mortar book and entertainment  stores. I have found a way to get my paperback books onto the shelves of my local Hastings store.

If you live in an area where there is a Hastings bookstore (scroll down to the bottom of the website and type in a zip code to find a store near you), you are in luck in getting your print book on their bookshelves. By now you are probably asking how this can be done. Well grab your favorite cuppa java (or what have you), sit in your favorite comfy chair in front of your computer and I will tell you.

I walked into my local Hastings store in Lewiston, Idaho, with six of my paperback books and matching bookmarkers, to see if they would sell them. My philosophy has always been that it never hurts to ask—all anyone can say is yes, no, maybe, heck no, you’ve got to be kidding me or @#% no. Continue reading “Hastings and Your Print Books”

Indie News Beat with Chris James

IU Ace Reporter Chris James

The big publishing story over the last few weeks has undoubtedly been the sock-puppet scandal. First broken by the New York Times, suddenly we were drowning in stories, articles and opinions from it seemed everyone in publishing. But just as suddenly as the elephant in the room was acknowledged, so it disappeared.

The general outrage that a few bad apples in the Indie movement would actually pay for multiple, glowing reviews on Amazon, soon diffused when stories appeared reporting that some mainstream authors were also not averse to puffing their own work, while sticking the knife into their competitors. Likely the mainstream authors will suffer more in the short term, given their higher profile, but all this summer flurry really did was draw more attention to the intense competition on Amazon, and the shortfalls of its rating and review system. Continue reading “Indie News Beat with Chris James”