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| Dolphin Girl at No.9 in the literary fiction (British & Irish) sub category of the Amazon.com Kindle Store on September 28, 2015 |
To date the book has collected eight reviews across the various Amazon sites, ranging from five-star to one-star. Presented here is a short road map describing what I did to initially promote Dolphin Girl. I hope these details might act as a partial resource guide for others who are looking to expand the audience for their books.
As Dolphin Girl was my first venture into the world of e-books, it took me some time to get going with promotion and marketing. I was learning all the way and soon discovered that a key requirement was to attract some reviews on Amazon.
Readers are less likely to buy a book that has no reviews. Reviews generally add a degree of legitimacy and reassurance about the quality and authenticity of a book. However, getting reviews in the first place presents a Catch-22 situation, because if people are unlikely to purchase a book with no reviews, how are you supposed to sell any copies in the hope of generating a few reviews?
If you are fortunate, one or two reviews might come through friends and acquaintances, which is a good start. Beyond that, the avenue I took was to make Dolphin Girl briefly available for download on the Story Cartel website. This is a great, free resource for authors and readers. An e-book is promoted for 21 days, allowing readers to download it for free. The only request is that the reader leave an honest review in return (on Amazon or Goodreads, etc). The review request is simply that, a request. There is no binding obligation. As a result, you might end up with only a fraction of readers following through with a review.
At the same time I ran a small, targeted ad campaign on Facebook, encouraging readers to check out Dolphin Girl on Story Cartel. This generated further downloads from potential reviewers.
Once I had five reviews on the Amazon.com website I was able to move on to paid promotional slots at a number of websites and newsletters. Most required a minimum of five Amazon reviews before they would consider listing a book in a one-day reduced price promotion. The effectiveness of these services varies, and a book's genre also plays a part in how much interest it attracts. I used a number of sites and ran a few "price pulse" promotions, spreading them across different days rather than in one big hit. By doing so I could monitor the effectiveness of the competing sites more accurately.
Most of these promotional outlets charge a fee, varying from $5 to $50. There are some that are free. The results vary from good to barely noticeable. From my experience the best were ENT & FK Books and Tips, Book Gorilla, and Book Butterfly. Others worth considering are Book Sends (with eReaderIQ) and Genre Pulse.
I should mention the "granddaddy" of these sites is BookBub. It has a colossal reach and charges hundred of dollars for a promo slot - and that's if you are lucky enough to be accepted. The current word among authors is that if you don't have at least 50 decent reviews already, you're probably going to be turned down. What BookBub also has going for it is the virtually guaranteed "positive return on investment" for an author, so the number of books they sell covers the cost of the promotional slot with a chunk of profit on top. Dolphin Girl, alas, was not featured on BookBub.
As a further aside, these sites and newsletters do a roaring trade in promoting free e-books. This was not something I did, but the theory behind making your book free, either for a limited time or permanently, is to generate more interest, more readers and more feedback.
On its promotional spotlight days, when priced at $0.99 or 99p, Dolphin Girl moved higher in both the British & Irish literary fiction and the fantasy/magical realism sub categories of Amazon's Kindle Store. It reached the top 50 in these sub categories on a number of occasions, and briefly peaked at No. 9 in the British & Irish category on September 28.
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| Dolphin Girl peaked in the Amazon.com Kindle Store rankings on September 28, 2015 |
When the book returned to its normal retail price it occasionally picked up residual sales. This was probably due to its higher sales profile during the previous promotional days. As a further benefit, Dolphin Girl is now occasionally included in the "readers of this book also bought..." section that appears below books as they are browsed by customers on Amazon.
Along the way, the book attracted further reviews. Across all Amazon platforms, Dolphin Girl currently has a total of eight reviews, of which five are 5-star, one is 4-star and two are 1-star reviews. Some people loved it, while others found it unengaging.
Whether good, bad or indifferent, reviews are useful feedback and add to a book's credibility in the eyes of potential customers weighing up whether or not to make a purchase.
All-in-all, the experience of promoting my debut e-book novel was rewarding. Although Dolphin Girl is currently not part of a promotional campaign it continues to pick up occasional online sales.
Other authors have noted that being able to promote more than one book, and ideally having four, five or more available, builds greater sales momentum than can be achieved with a single book.
I'm still learning the ropes regarding promoting and marketing an e-book. I hope this summary will assist others embarking on the same journey.
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