C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

11/27/2022 • 1:57 PM 4

When a book deal takes you by surprise

When you run a promotion, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your paperback prices. Amazon might be giving readers a deal you want to know about. The problem? It’s unpredictable and they won’t tell you they’re doing it, so we’re missing out on promoting the deal to readers.

Here’s the story

I ran a couple of promotions this week.

1. Through Book funnel: For the rest of today, you can pick up my bestseller This Plague of Days, Season One for just 99 cents! A bunch of other books are on offer, as well. Have a look!

2. The other was through Freebooksy. (AFTER Life, Inferno is set to free until the end of the day.)

The first promotion did not trigger an Amazon algo to drop the price of the massive paperback. However, the AFTER Life Omnibus, which at 600+ pages, is normally priced at $24.99, was dropped all the way down to under $7!

What a great deal for Christmas gifts, right? I could have promoted it more had I known, but I only just stumbled upon what Amazon was doing. Note to the uninitiated: This is a very good thing. Readers get an amazing deal, but the author still gets paid royalties based on the regular price!

There’s probably some software out there that can track such unannounced price drops for authors so we can take advantage of these promotional opportunities. I’ve asked my mastermind group. Let me know if you have a workable solution.

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. Check out all my sci-fi, horror, and crime fiction on my author site, AllThatChazz.com.

Filed under: book marketing, publishing, After life, Amazon price drops, book marketing, book promotions, bookfunnel, freebooksy, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, This Plague of Days

11/22/2020 • 9:42 AM 0

Book Promotion Services

FYI: Choosybookworm is holding a draw to give away a book promotion. They value the prize at $249.

Here’s the link to enter the draw.

About book promos (for novices)

I’ve been disappointed by Amazon ads and Facebook ads, but promo sites such as Bargainbooksy and Freebooksy are straightforward with fewer variables to worry about. These sites advertise discounted or free ebooks to their lists.

Paid advertising on Amazon and Facebook has many moving parts and a steep and expensive learning curve. If you’re looking for more book reviews or to promote awareness of the magic that is you, book promotion services are the simpler and easier way forward.

Besides the big promo sites, there are smaller platforms that can accomplish similar aims with less impact. Search for book promotion sites that are genre-specific (e.g. science fiction or romance). These services have fewer subscribers, but are more targeted and less expensive.

Free promotions get more eyes on your book. You might also get a few negative reviews because some free-seekers pick up anything indiscriminately, even if they don’t care for the genre. Don’t let that deter you. A book with zero negative reviews suggests it has yet to be read to a large audience (i.e. beyond its target audience).

Plan ahead for your promotions since dates fill up. I nabbed a Bargainbooksy the other day and received the earliest date available: Dec. 19.

If you get a Bookbub, plan your other promotions around that, so they stack. In other words, small promotions first and cap it off with Bookbub to get the attention of the Amazon algos so they sell your book for you. They want to observe momentum and traction in downloads before their recommendation engines kick in.

If your books are across more platforms outside of Amazon, you have a better shot at getting a Bookbub promotion, but that doesn’t mean you have to go wide to get that opportunity. It is harder, though.

These promotions work best when your aim is to promote the first book in a series. The first taste is free (or discounted). With a decent read-through, readers who otherwise would not have known you exist will discover you and buy the other books.

To promote read-through, give a sample chapter or two of the next book in the series. Make sure those are tasty or you’ll turn them off. Don’t give too much of the next book away. You don’t want them to feel duped that they got a much shorter book than expected. You want to give them a teaser, not engage in book stuffing.

Facebook groups like 20BooksTo50K are useful for a lot of reasons. Before paying for a new book promotion service, I search that group for reviews by other authors. Check up on their customer experience and return on investment to see if that latest book promo offer in your inbox is likely to pan out.

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. I write killer crime thrillers and apocalyptic epics. You’ll find all my books on my author site, AllThatChazz.com. Enjoy your crime. Revel in the apocalypse.

Filed under: book marketing, bargainbooksy, book giveaways, book promos, book promoting, book promotion for newbies, book promotion services, BookBub, choosybookworm, free book promotion, freebooksy, Robert Chazz Chute

10/18/2020 • 1:41 PM 1

My Book Marketing Mistake

The Night Man is Thriller of the Day at Kindle Nation Daily today!

Every author is asked about their mistakes.

In every writer’s forum and podcast, eventually someone will ask veteran writers what they’ve did wrong. The question is posed in different ways. The most common form is, “If you could tell your younger self what to do differently, what would it be?”

Many will say that they should have invested more in editing their first books. Others will say they should have ponied up for better covers, focused on building their mailing lists, written only in series, or listened to their mum and become a forensic accountant instead. I wish I’d spent more time learning book marketing.

I’d worked in traditional publishing and sold millions of dollars worth of books for other people, but that’s a different story about a dying industry. I began Ex Parte Press in 2010. Back then, there weren’t as many marketing avenues to travel. Many authors didn’t really have to work very hard to get eyeballs on their work, though. Our tools were few and dull, but the competition wasn’t as stiff and Amazon’s Gold Rush was on. There weren’t nearly as many courses out there showing authors how to amp up their media presence and ad buys. We were just feeling our way, often writing as many books as we could as fast as we could and flirting with burnout.

Some publishing guru asked recently, “You wouldn’t launch a book with a tweet, would you?” Well, no. Not now. But it used to be that it didn’t take much more than that if the book was good and cover and sales copy were on point.

I admit, I got stuck in some old thinking. I focused more on the editorial content and less on the marketing. My approach was not balanced. It’s a different world in plenty of ways and we all have to adapt. Yesterday, I attended three marketing webinars. To be honest, there wasn’t much there for me to take action on immediately. That’s the way of these things: Three hours in, you’re usually lucky to pick up on a one to three tidbits to use later.

Today’s tidbit:

Focus on what you can do to balance your writing and publishing business. You can’t depend on passive, magical thinking to pull readers’ attention. Book marketing is not osmosis. You have to write and market. Most authors are probably putting too much weight on one side of that scale. If you’re writing for yourself, that’s fine. If you’re writing to be read, the passive approach to too anemic to be healthy.

In that spirit, I’m promoting a suspenseful and surprising novel of which I’m very proud. My killer crime thriller, The Night Man is free to download today and tomorrow. I used Freebooksy, Kindle Nation Daily, Ereader News Today and Instagram to give away thousands of copies to get the attention of Amazon’s algos so they can sell it for me, aggressively, not passively.

Follow this link to see what a Thriller of the Day promo looks like. (And please do give it a click while you’re at it. Thanks!)