Last Week's Promo Results

Had The Diner Girl not been free, I could have made a tiny bit of pocket change. In total, I managed to move 27 copies. Now, if I was to garner a couple of (good) reviews from those twenty-seven I would be satisfied. Regardless, I am going to target that same general audience with a paid ad (99 cents, but still) for Shadow Song on December 14-16, and time will tell how that goes.

My ad on The Fussy Librarian yesterday for New Kaitlyn resulted in two purchases (!?), and since I forgot that it wasn't a free ad ~ I had actually forgotten about the ad entirely ~ I scrambled yesterday morning to make my book free, but KDP wouldn't allow me to do that, so I defaulted to 99 cents. Turns out my ad read "$1.99", so those two purchasers got a deal. (I didn't.)

The above is one of the reasons I'm documenting these promos here, because I've easily managed to confuse myself. 

I've determined that The Fussy Librarian is not worth the cost of an ad. On the plus side, it's nice to winnow the options down. Too, Bargain Booksy is far too expensive for the return. I'm sure there are authors who swear by these two services. I'm skeptical. For one, I don't think the reader base is large enough to make an impact. My Fussy Librarian email yesterday contained exactly two books, which should make me ecstatic (less competition!), but I still only manged to sell two copies. Bargain Booksy's emails feature more books, but my results were similar.

I'm going to stick with BookBub for future advertising (if I do any). Its algorithm is more finely honed, especially with the ability to target readers of other authors in my genre. It's also far less expensive, and it lets me decide in which countries my ads will run. This last point, thanks to David Gaughran, is invaluable. I doubt I will ever run a US ad, mainly because other authors don't know this tip and thus will overload the US offerings, while I have big countries all to myself! (Well, not all to myself, but the pot is much smaller.) I'm going to be a huge hit in Australia, mate! 

And I won't be confused anymore about where I have stupid ads running, because they will all be in one place. 

Now I need to go back and change the prices of my books on KDP to their originals.