Thank yous, promotions, algorithms, reviews…repeat!

Fellow Scribblers,

So a crazy thing happened this week.  White Dove shot up to #2 in its genre for about 36 hours on Amazon.  I have no idea how many books exist for sale on Amazon in the genre of “historical fiction, war”, but there have to be at least 384 because this is where it now sits, a few days after its spike to momentary fame.

So what does this all mean?  I think, mainly, it means that I owe you all a great big thanks.  Thanks for sharing, thanks for forwarding, thanks for doing some early Christmas shopping, thanks for telling your friends.

Beyond the blip that was White Dove’s shocking rise to the first-page real estate on Amazon, was some novice experimentation with KDP’s promotions, and some simultaneous Twitter and Amazon ads.  One of the first choices an author makes when they publish an eBook is to decide whether or not they want to be KDP exclusive or not.  There are some obvious benefits to committing to use KDP exclusively.  First, they give you a handsome percentage of every sale–70%, whereas if you sell on multiple digital platforms, you only receive a 30% commission for each sale on Amazon.  This allows you to price competitively… but not too competitively.  You also select to sign on in three-month commitments–so you are not forever beholden to your decision.

Because I knew that, as a first-time publisher of an indie novel in a genre that is not currently one of the hot trends, I was going to have a limited audience and because I knew I had little time to manage multiple digital services, I selected to start out using KDP, recognizing some of the limitations.  My goal in publishing this book was not to make a profit but to get White Dove in the hands of as many readers as possible and in turn, get as many reviews as possible so that my second book might have an audience ready to hit “buy now” when it comes out.

One of the perks that KDP offers is allowing one price promotion during each 3-month sign-on period.  For this promotion, I opted to do a 5-day “eBook giveaway” and combined it with some ad experimentation on Twitter and Amazon.  For both platforms, I developed similar ad constructs that linked to my landing page and capped each with a daily budget.  The ads themselves didn’t generate too much interest, but even a little attention resulted in lots of “buy nows” on Amazon–enough to work some magic with Amazon’s algorithms.  And when that happens–sometimes the improbable happens.  Obscure historical fiction novels from unknown indie authors start occupying prime real estate on Amazon’s pages.  Magic.

Even though White Dove’s fame was fleeting, it leaves behind powerful possibilities.  If even a small percentage of the people who clicked “buy now” leave reviews, the one-week campaign becomes a roaring and lasting success.  And thus is the life of the indie author…get books into as many hands as possible, and get as many of those hands as possible to write reviews.  Time will tell how successful this week really was, and if you were one of those who took a chance with the book–take a few moments to leave a review!

Until next time, keep scribbling!