Welcome to my Wild West!

But it’s a pain!

When I looked into BookFunnel, both of my books had almost two months left in their Kindle Select enrollment. Depending on who you talk to, and mostly on when they enrolled their books, this meant I couldn’t share an ebook copy of my novels at all or no more than 10 percent of each.

That put a major dent in what I could do with email marketing. It also meant I couldn’t publish the ebook anywhere other than Kindle. 

So, after setting up BookFunnel and MailChimp to the tune of $150, I’m stuck in a holding pattern regarding any major marketing campaigns until the Kindle Select enrollment runs out.

Most of what I’ve read on the marketing side is that wide distribution is the way to go as an independent author since it diversifies your platforms and gives you that added level of giveaways for hooks.

For example, BookFunnel has two kinds of promotions you can run with other writers. There are newsletter swaps and book swaps. Book swaps only allow for full books. I missed out on a book swap promotion because it ended two days after the KU enrollment ended for both of my books. Ugh!

Oh well! I’ll just have to keep my eye open for another one. I could set one up, but I doubt anyone would sign up for it because I still have a small audience. 

Right now, I’m the only author hosting a newsletter swap. Ida Smith has signed up with a historical fiction piece set in the 1950s. It’s a comedic short story about a married couple homesteading in the Idaho Rockies. 

As Ida said, it’s not a western, but it is rural in setting and goes back to the days before homeowner associations when social media required talking to other people. I’ll be sending that out later this week through my email newsletter. So sign up below if you want a free copy of this very funny story!

For the next few weeks, I’ll be featuring writers through BookFunnel in my newsletter. If you’re a fan of historical fiction or westerns, I recommend you come check out these writers. You might find your next favorite author.

My main concern about dropping my novels off Kindle Select is the loss of KU sales. Once before, I tried a wide distribution with both novels which resulted in exactly one sale for about a year.

However, I take most of the blame for that. I knew nothing about advertising at the time. I was going off the fact that Kindle floats better selling books to the top of searches. That was before Amazon Ads got big on purchasing a higher chance of your book appearing at the top of searches.

I will say that for my level of authorship the Sponsored Brands campaigns are a waste of money. Embarrassment prohibits me from giving the exact numbers, but I’ll just say that I spent roughly 1,500% more than I made off the campaign.

Sponsored Products ads yield better, but I still spend more than I make. I’m currently signed up for Bob Eager’s free webinar about marketing on a shoestring budget. I get that it’ll only be a snippet of his larger program on the topic, but every little bit helps. His books have been helpful, and I’d like to attend a full session of one of his classes someday.

In the meantime, I’ll keep plugging away at what I’ve learned about marketing so far and keep scrounging up more information.

Until next time, don’t lose your bookmark and don’t forget to sign up for email newsletters. It’s not too late to catch the first author in my feature series!

TW