My BookBub Promo ~ Final Tally

My BookBub ad for New Kaitlyn performed fairly well. I've read accounts from authors who've managed to reap downloads in the hundreds. I scored eighteen. For me that's quite a feat. Getting even a free book into the hands of eighteen people is a win. How many of them will read it? And more vitally, how many will leave a review? I'm not holding my breath awaiting reviews. I just don't think folks do that, unless they're really dedicated reviewers or fall in love with a book. New Kaitlyn isn't in the "falling in love" category, but it's a nice little effort of which I'm proud. 

Interestingly, and contrary to David Gaughran's advice, 100% of my downloads came from the US. And I may have chosen the right day to run my ad ~ a holiday that didn't come with obligatory tasks and thus a day during which people had time to browse. On December 31 I secured four downloads, but on January 1 I managed fourteen. Unfortunately, those do-nothing holidays don't come around very often.  

Surprisingly, all fourteen clicks on the 1st resulted in downloads. My ad copy may have hit the mark. As I've noted before, BookBub ads don't allow much space for wordy descriptions, unless the author wants to write this small. So I went with "New Girl, New Town, New Heartache".

 

 

It's also worth noting that I structured my ad a bit differently this time. I upped my budget a bit ~ to $25.00 ~ and again, defying Mister Gaughran's guidance, I decided to split the budget between two days, rather than having it depleted as quickly as possible (luckily for me, because my first day was kind of a bust). In his defense, though, he was referencing "test" ads, which are run to gauge effectiveness if, say, one wants to experiment with different ad copy and various targeting. I don't have the budget to play around with that. 

So, I started the new year with a smidgen of success. However, I won't be making any more ad buys until I have a new book to promote. I feel like my published novellas are starting to age out, even though three of them were just published in 2023. Book publishing is fickle, though, and an author has to produce. I'm working on that.