Firming Up My Marketing Plan

Narrowing my marketing choices didn't take long, but it did involve study. My primary criteria is obviously price, but also price combined with reach. There is no point wasting money on, for example, a promo site with a thousand newsletter subscribers. If you break down a thousand people by preferred genre, it might leave two people who would actually be interested in my book, and that's being generous. Even BargainBooksy's latest women's fiction newsletter contained all of five books, with a couple being only slightly women's fiction. That means I'll need to cast as wide a net as possible; ideally newsletters that have a six-figure subscriber base.

There are pluses and minuses to social media-only promo sites. Of the three sites I found, BookPings seems to be the most useful. It has 208,000 subscribers and its social media posts include a book banner. The premium package is $49.00 for thirty days. For the same price, Shout My Book only offers 21 days of posts, although it does list a subscriber base of 448,000. The other, GoodKindles, offers very little compared to the others and only has 126,000 subscribers. Its Standard Plus package costs $35.00, and it's non-specific regarding the number of social media posts it will generate. I've seen this one on X, and the posts consist entirely of book title and author ~ not enticing to potential buyers.

Of the three, I will consider BookPings and Shout My Book.

With regard to non-social media sites, I've used BookRaid and had a sprinkling of success. The book's price has to be discounted to $2.99 or less, however, so this option may come later in my process. For a $2.99 book, I would pay sixty cents per click, up to a maximum spend of $60.00. Trust me, I've never come near to paying the max. This site, to me, seems to be more professionally run than some of the other low-priced options. They did send me an embeddable "Best Seller" button to add to my website for two of my books, which was nice, even though I realize that provides them with free advertising. Still, no other site ever did that for me.

I've never tried Crave Books, but it's gotten some positive reviews. Its packages are expensive, though, in light of a subscriber base of around 50,000. There are a lot of packages to choose from, but alas, no women's fiction genre. It also links to a few other sites that can be less expensive, but their reach is relatively small.

There are some free-to-cheap sites, some I've tried before, but I can't vouch for their success. (When I promoted Lies and Love, I garnered a few downloads, but I have no idea which sites prompted them.) If something is free, it doesn't hurt to try it.

My other free option is a single post on LinkedIn. I had one person respond to my original post about my novel (when I was still writing the book), but he could have just been trying to sell me something; I don't read my messages, so I don't know. That is, however, the most engagement I've ever gotten from social media.

So, narrowed down, I'd probably go with BookPings*, Shout My Book**, and later, BookRaid (when I'm ready to discount), plus a smattering of free sites. 

The best known sites are too expensive in relation to bang for the buck. For example, BargainBooksy charges $30.00 for a one-day newsletter ad, and the book needs to be discounted in order to have any chance at all. The king of them all is BookBub, which does allow an author to set a spending limit, but again, the book has to be discounted, and the only time I had a modicum of success was when I offered one of my books for free. However, when I am ready to discount, I'll probably give BookBub another spin. 

I still haven't looked into Facebook ads (I really need to do that), but David Gaughran's video seemed really complicated, and I've only watched about ten minutes of it so far.

I've done my due diligence; weeded out the sites that are prohibitive, searched out number of subscribers. The one thing I've yet to do with regard to the social media-only sites is check out some posts to find out what authors are charging for their books. If I find that I need to discount mine, these places will also go on the back burner. 

I do feel a bit more organized, at least. I know I won't be buying ads willy-nilly.

 

*In checking X, it seems that BookPings only seems to have four books it's pushing, which is a really low number. I wonder why.

**Shout My Book seems to attract a lot of self-help authors. That might mean nothing, but it's an interesting note.