A word of thanks - and bit about free promotions!

I promise you will not see another book tweet of mine for at least 10 years!!! Well, maybe not that long... but ....

Before I begin with free promo stuff and words of thanks, I just wrote this to a friend in an email, and I think it sums the whole Amazon visibility/free promotion thing up!


Imagine the biggest library you know, and your one book at the bottom of one of the back shelves. It's only been taken out by a few people, and unless they recommend it to others you have to wait for someone else to chance upon it, which they may not do for days or weeks at a time. The free promotion is like having it picked out by the library assistants and having it put on the 'recommended reads' shelf, for a couple of days!!!


As many of my Twitter followers will have observed (serious yawn!!), I put my book Full Circle on free promotion this weekend just gone.  It wasn't wildly successful; I partly have myself to blame for that because, for all that I advise other people to do so (!!) I didn't prepare for it properly.  I didn't submit it to any of the sites that advertise free Kindle books because... I couldn't be bothered.  So for that, I paid the price, I guess!!  Also, I chose not to do any promotion with the sites on which you have to pay to be featured.  Gone are the days of 17K downloads and getting to number #1 in free downloads just by tweeting (with the resultant fabulous after-sales) as I did eighteen months ago; now, you need to do more, alas.  


Nowadays I think people only download a free book if they think they might really want to read it, not like when I first did a free promotion and seeing a book for free was such a novelty that everyone downloaded it anyway!  Thus, I also have to accept that this particular book perhaps does not have the wide appeal of some others, including some of my own (even though its reviews are outstanding, and I think it's my best one - oh well!).  I hope I will always be able to be realistic about these things, and not blame 'the industry' or make daft excuses!  The rock band-coupled-with-romcom-coupled-with-wife-of-an-alcoholic thing was always a risk; it's maybe not girly enough for the chick lit readers, and not blokey enough for the lad-lit lovers!  However, I did have far more downloads than I expected at first, from which there is always the possibility of new readers and reviews.  And I had far more actual sales of my other five books than I've had at the weekends recently, particularly Dream On, which is the prequel to Full Circle - so I'd recommend doing a free promotion to anyone - but do it right, not like I did!

(Incidentally, Dream On is still half price (96p/£1.53), simply because I haven't got round to changing it back yet....feel free!)


I would not have done half as well as I did if it wasn't for the help of others, and so I would like to give HUGE thanks to the following - and to everyone who downloaded Full Circle (or bought my others!) over the weekend:

Deena Rae of eBookBuilders and all her friends who tweeted my post thereon; Maria Savva (who did a blog post for me, too!), Dave Goodridge, Bert Murray, Susan Buchanan, Francis 'Vajazzle-Tastic' Potts, Carol Hedges, Darcia Helle, Rachel Thompson, Jenny Twist, Geoff West, Jenny Burnley, JD Hughes, Suzy Turner, Alice Huskisson, IndieAuthorLand, Zoe Saadia, Catterick Claire, Angela Thomas, Mandy Baggot, Alex Johnson, Mackenzie Brown, Soberistas, Rayne Hall, E L Lindley, Jackie 495, Zoe Saadia, Morton Balthus, Guy Johnson, Mary Coen, Evelyn Tidman, Jack Croxall, Jan Romes, Proofreader Julia, Jacy Brean, Carol Phipps, Dana Vickery, JE Ryder, Lisa Richardson, Diane Mannion, Electa Graham, Kimberly Biller, Karena Marie, Kitty Bittersplit, Peter Davey, Pam Howes, John Hudspith, Jan Ruth, Dave Perlmutter, Wendy Aizen-Smith, Janie Storer, Caitlyn Dawney, Terry Ridley, Marlena Hand, James Bryron, Michael Eging, Vonda Norwood, Wendy Potocki, Machel Shull, Suzy Ayres, Danny Kemp, Robert Bevan, Lisa Gillis, Jasmine Bath, Michelle Wilkinson, Sammy Sutton, Phillip Mayes, Ellis Vidler, Jenny Lloyd, Suzanne Jenkins, HE Joyce, Marc Mordey, Brian Menard, Phebe Bodelle, Mark Swain, Vanessa Wester, Josie Noonan, Glen Batchelor, June Kearns, Lindsay Townsend, Danielle Schnieder, Stephen Jennison-Smith, Jerry Beller, WC Hewitt, Polly Iyer, Chuck Bluestein, Lynette Creswell, Teresa Hamilton, Lisa Buist, Kate Hanney, Claudia Burgoa, Caroline Easton, Derrick Bickley, Toya Richardson, Wendy Storer, Blondie Waters, Neel Kay, Elizabeth Ziko, Jenny Kreeve, and everyone else who retweeted for me and posted on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere for me over the weekend - I tried to remember everyone, and I apologise I've left you out of that list.  I did try to return as many RTs as possible but I needed to do things like eat and sleep, too!

And if any of you are doing a free promotion - just let me know and I'll gladly help spread the word!