Category Archives: My Book

Free Ebook Promotion, or How I Got Ranked with John Grisham in 4 Days

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I wouldn’t recommend doing the free ebook promotion how I did it.

I was told to plan 30 days in advance – I started planning the night before.

Amazon gives you 5 days to promote your book for free out of 90 days. Most people tell you to only use 2 or 3 at the most your first time. I used 4 days.

One thing I did right – I tracked and didn’t give up until I reached my goal. I got people involved (on Twitter and Facebook), emailed all my closest friends and family and followed (some of) the wisdom of the authors who had previously gone before me.

I didn’t plan it, and I did it by the seat of my pants. I wasn’t even really sure what the point of giving a book away for free would be. Like I said in my initial post about why I was going to try out the promotion, I was afraid it would “devalue” my book (which was silly because it wasn’t selling more than a few a day anyway). What I didn’t mention was my fear that I was giving Amazon too much power. However, before I decided to enroll in KDP Select (Kindle’s monopoly on my book), my Barnes and Noble Nook ebook wasn’t selling at all. So, I figured I would try it out.

Amazon has 3,000+ new titles going for free nearly every day. The competition is tough.

The Night Before: Planning the Free Kindle Promotion

I decided to start the promotion the day before I ran it. Every post I began reading over the next few days giving tips on how to run a free Kindle book promotion suggested planning a month in advance (giving websites at least three weeks notice about posting). For example, the top site “Pixel of Ink” asked to give at least 30 days notice (probably why I never got on their site).

Before the book promotion, I was selling at my peak 3 ebooks/day. I never reached higher than #300,000 on Kindle’s best seller’s list. The night before I launched the book, I was ranked about 1,500,000 in Amazon’s ebooks. Nothing worth noting. That night, I spent 4-5 hours researching how to promote it.

I had two goals:

  1. Reach the top 100 of Kindle Free Books Best Sellers
  2. Break 5 figures in downloads.

I succeeded in both of these goals – I dedicated a LOT of time promoting it. Make sure you have reviews on Amazon before running a Kindle Promotion.

I knew that I needed to get a few of the heavy hitter free ebook blogs on board – ones with 1,000′s and tens of 1,000′s of followers. Every article that I read that night mentioned a few blogs that would help equal success. These are the blogs that the majority of free Kindle seekers go to, and these are the ones who come up first in Google searches. (Novel Publicity published one of the best articles that I found on tips for authors.)

(YOU CAN SKIP THIS PART IF YOU AREN’T AN AUTHOR INTERESTED IN PROMOTIING YOUR EBOOK)

Here’s where I submitted for FREE:

  • Digital Book Today (Scroll to the bottom and see #12 to submit. They request that you have at least 10+ reviews with an average of 4+ stars rating. They posted my novel, but Anthony Wessel wasn’t too happy at my last minute submission – please don’t do what I did!)
  • eReader News Today (I was supposed to submit three days before the promo & in order to be considered, you have to have a high rating in your reviews for them to post it. My mom was the one who noticed it was up – she happens to subscribe to their Facebook page – I was the first book on their listing!)
  • Authors on the Cheap (Facebook page)
  • Freebies4Mom (I haven’t seen this listed on any other book site, but she has nearly 200k fans on Facebook & a LOT of mommy fans. Heather’s site pushed my novel over the 5-digit download mark.)
  • PAID – Kindle Nation Daily (I took $30 out of my Kickstarter money to market my novel for this promotion. It was worth it)

Other random sites that picked me up, but that you might consider submitting to!

Twitter accounts that tweeted about it and will help promote Indie authors:

Obsessively Track ebook Sales

Most articles suggest only promoting your book for 2 out of the 5 days at once. But for me, I was getting more and more momentum every day – I couldn’t give up after 2 days. Perhaps planning would have meant not giving up as many days. But the way I saw it, the more days I was ranking, the more exposure I was getting – to start from ZERO in a few weeks seemed pointless.

At the end of the first day, I was already #57 in the Kindle store’s free Contemporary Fiction, but hadn’t yet ranked anywhere in the entire Kindle store.

The end of the second day, I was getting closer! I was now under the top 200′s of the entire Kindle store, and had climbed to #16 in Contemporary Fiction. Over 3,000 people had downloaded the book so far.

But it wasn’t until the 3rd day (a Friday) that extraordinary stuff started happening. This is when the websites started posting about my book, and downloads were fast and furious.

When I hit #8 in Contemporary Fiction, and saw my name next to THE John Grisham – it was certainly a shock, and made me realize just how many people now had their hands on my novel.

I finally ended the promotion on Saturday night – and with over 11,000 downloads just in the United States (the UK hit didn’t garner nearly as many downloads) and hitting #28 in the entire Kindle Books and #6 in Contemporary Fiction at its peak – I felt like I had set out to accomplish my goals! Now, let’s see what I can do in a day knowing what I know.

The big question was – would I make any money after the promotion was over?

My ranking disappeared for a few hours, and when it reappeared, my novel was certainly higher than it had ever been. It’s now Tuesday and my book has remained around the top 3,000 to 5,000 paid Kindles and I’ve sold more in three days than I had ever sold before in the same time frame.

On a side note, the day after the promo ended – I received my first negative review and a second GREAT review. Unfortunately, the first reviewer didn’t take the time to read the entire book (that’s another blog post altogether – oy, it hurt!), and the second reviewer pleaded with people to FINISH it. YES PLEASE!

What would I do differently in promoting my Kindle?

I would have taken more time to plan, and put more thought into who I would have reached out to.

I would have jacked up the price the day before the promotion (value would have seemed better to those getting the free download).

I would have seeded the community with teasers.

But overall, I’m EXTREMELY happy with how it turned out, and HIGHLY recommend it to other indie authors. Now, it’s time to turn those downloads into a book deal!




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Three Questions: Because a quarter life crisis needs answers (Paperback)

By (author) Meagan Adele Lopez
List Price: $14.99 USD
New From: $10.79 In Stock
Used from: $44.40 In Stock

Why I’m Running a Free Kindle Promotion

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Today starts the first day of my FREE three day ebook promotion. Amazon gives authors the opportunity to run a free promo for 5 days (can be broken up within the month) total within a 30-day period IF you enroll in KDP Select. KDP Select means that you can not sell your ebook on any other platform (i.e. Barnes and Noble’s Nook), but you do get a few perks.

I was a bit hesitant to do this free promotion for a couple of reasons.

  1. I didn’t want to cheapen the book’s value (the ebook is already only $2.99 – you can’t get MUCH cheaper than that)
  2. I would be giving it away for FREE – which means no moolah for me.
  3. I was skeptical.

However, once I started thinking about the Pros…I couldn’t resist.

First of all, I would be getting incredible exposure that I hadn’t gotten before. This is an opportunity to get in front of possibly 1,000′s of people who will hopefully love the book so much that they won’t be able to resist telling their friends about it.

Secondly, I have a few relationships with mommy bloggers who blog about freebies, and can push it out to their community of 10′s of thousands of other mommys.

Thirdly, watching my book sail up the “Downloads” chart is incredibly exciting. While I’ve only ever cracked the top 30,000 Kindle paid downloads. This morning, I’ve already reached the top 1,000 downloads! WAIT!

As I write this and refresh my page, I’m now in the top 700′s and #57 in Contemporary Fiction Downloads. See what I mean?!!!

 

 

Finally, the end goal is publicity, more book sales once the sale ends and hopefully more write-ups.

I’ll keep you updated on how it goes!

Three Questions with Brittany Laughlin: Traveler, Entrepreneur & Trailblazer

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As some of you may know, I wrote a little book called “Three Questions” that is based off a couple getting to know each other through, well, three questions! I’m now doing an interview series based off this concept, but for AWESOME women from all walks of life.

This week, we have Brittany Laughlin who describes herself as someone who wants to do everything. This makes sense since she is one of the most successful female entrepreneurs that Chicago has (although now, sadly, she’s leaving us for New York to work an undisclosed project). She was recently named one of the world’s top ten trailblazing women travelers (right next to Angelina Jolie and Amelia freaking Earhart by Cheapflights.com).

Brittany Laughlin, traveler

She’s been to all 7 continents, 36 countries and hops on a plane nearly every other week, according to Business Insider.  Previously, she co-founded gtrot - a local discovery tool. And, she launched new products at American Express OPEN.

So, yeah, I’m excited to have her answer these three questions.

1. What is the craziest mode of transportation you’ve ever taken, and where were you?

Brittany: I rode a mountain bike with broken breaks, down a mountain in Bariloche. It wasn’t until half-way down until I realized the breaks were broken. Talk about a surprise thrill ride.

2. What is the greatest thing you’ve learned being an entrepreneur?

Brittany: Anything is possible. I’ve gotten to meet people with huge crazy ideas and they’ve taught me that if you have an idea, it’s worth trying. If it fails, you’ll still learn something. It all starts with taking that first step.

3. What question have you always wanted to be asked, and never been? (Seems like a cop-out question, but it’s not. I think this question tells a lot about someone)

Brittany: (Oh, this is a good one, but tricky!) If you could go back in time and change your major in school, what would you study? Mathematics — I loved Calc and Calc-based Physics. I’m curious how much more I could’ve learned. Might be something to check out down the road…

So excited to have had Brittany on here. What question do YOU wish someone asked you, but never has?




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Three Questions: Because a quarter life crisis needs answers (Paperback)

By (author) Meagan Adele Lopez
List Price: $14.99 USD
New From: $10.79 In Stock
Used from: $44.40 In Stock

Professional Review for “Three Questions”

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You set about writing one thing for one audience, and you end up hitting another demographic that you didn’t know would even be interested in what you had to say. Male readers are starting to read my book!

I’m so grateful to have readers who appreciate it – male or female.

Jon-david, local Chicago celeb, hairdresser and fellow author of a series called The Mafia Hairdresser, says it best in his recent AWESOME review of my book at The Local Tourist blog:

I hate Chick-Lit. I’m a dude. I may be gay and a hairdresser, but I’m a guy so I think like a guy: I do not want to over analyze broken relationships nor talk about my feelings let alone read about them.

However, he went on to say:

Meagan Adele Lopez has woven what seems to be two storylines, a philosophy to ask questions of oneself and others for personal growth, and page turning prose into a delightfully relatable story that both women and men of all ages can enjoy. Her writing style seems as straightforward and transparent as the main character seems to be but when you get near the end of the book you irrefutably understand that you never saw what was coming because you thought you knew where you were going.

I’m so touched that my first professional review is a GLIMMERING one! I couldn’t have asked for more praise in this review.

A little bit more of the review to whet your appetite, (and if you want to read the full review, please go to this link “Book Review: Three Questions”):

And my hats off to Meagan Adele Lopez for coercing me to feel like I caught a glimmer of what it was like to actually reason like a woman; as well as be able to show how a man thinks. I related to the men characters and that is why I know men will love Three Question too but damn it if this book won’t get you thinking or relating about how you (dis?)function in your own relationships and career goals.

Thank you so much, Jon-david! I’m so appreciative that you not only took the time to read my novel, but write about it.

Book Trailers – what is the point?

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The first time I saw a book trailer, I knew I had to have one for my own novel. I had never seen one before, but it made me think that this book I was about to read was going to be turned into a film. It intrigued me because I felt like I was one of the lucky few who got to read the book before the movie came out and ruined it.

(The book was “One Day” by David Nicholls. He actually created a total of four “One Day” book trailers, from what I could find. This was before Anne Hathaway was commissioned to play the title role, and from what I hear – the movie did indeed ruin the book.)

Here is one of them:

What the *&%$ is a book trailer?

Good question. A book trailer is essentially the same as a movie trailer. Its an advertisement for the book in a visual form. For me, a book trailer was another way to reach my audience. It was another way to inspire and motivate potential readers to read the book.

It’s not to be confused with an author reading from their book in a video. Book trailers are generally scenes, or splices of scenes acted out from the novel.

I knew that the production value had to be high quality, and that it had to leave a cliff hanger of an ending. If no one wanted to know more, then what would be the point? That same token, if it looked like a cheaply made home video, no one would care to learn more. The hope is that inevitably, if its high quality, people will want to share it with their friends over and over again.

Why spend money on a book trailer?

This all ties back to a few points that I made above, but most importantly – there has to be some kind of ROI (return on investment). I spent $1500 on my book trailer (used from the money that I raised on Kickstarter). I researched how much the big companies were charging compared with the indie companies, and got my number.

To be honest, from the research that I did, no one knows if there is a return on investment for book trailers. Similar to billboard advertisements or TV commercials, there is no solid way to measure why people bought your product or how many took action after seeing an ad. As one of my favorite author bloggers said, “No one knows what the hell sells books.”  In fact, I can’t see any demographic data (besides the country they are from) on the purchases made on my novel. (I wish Amazon would change that).

However, I knew that I wanted a book trailer in my arsenal of marketing weapons – I knew that it was an added component to everything else I was doing (guest blogging, email marketing, social media marketing, book signings, giveaways, PR, etc).

I had a secondary reason for making one as well -I figured it would be a great way to get the eye of a publishing house or agent – all they have to do is click “Play” and watch for two minutes to see if this is a story that intrigued them.

If I were measuring purely on book sales, I can tell you that my book trailer currently has 272 views so far (on the Youtube channel – see below to watch). If every single person who watched the trailer bought my paperback book (not the ebook, since I only charge $2.99 for that), I would have just broken even. Of course, we know that hasn’t happened.

So, I want to ask you – what do you think the point of a book trailer is? Do you see value in having one?

My book trailer is here:

Buy Three Questions, the novel, by clicking