— Mark Paxson
When I published my first novel back in 2012, I ran several promos on EReaderNews Today. Some were free promos, some were .99 promos. the end result of those promos was that thousands downloaded that novel and I actually made a couple thousand dollars on the book.
When I published a YA novel in 2021, I looked forward to running a promo on ENT and watching the sales soar. Well … that’s not what happened. My promo produced 11 downloads of the book. At .99, that meant I didn’t even reach $4 in earnings for a promo I paid someting like $40-50 for.
In August, I published a domestic thriller novella. I published it on Draft2Digital, as I’ve discussed here several times. D2D provides access to various promos the different e-book retailers and I’ve signed up for those. Unfortunately, D2D and the retailers don’t always let you know if you were selected for one of their promos. So … I have no idea what, if anything, has happened with those promos. Except that I haven’t seen any uptick in my sales.
Somewhere along the way, I read something about Written Word Media — another paid promo option. Like most, they have an email list and promise to include your book in an email that will go to hundreds of thousands of readers. So … I decided to try again.
First up, on November 30, my new domestic thriller novella. The promo cost $65 and promised an email to over 200,000 readers. The day the promo ran, I got about a dozen new downloads. In the days since, there have been more, bringing the downloads for that book since November 30 to about thirty. Meaning, I may make $20 on a promo that cost me $65.
I also ran a promo for that YA novel. This one was only $25 and promised to be sent to over 100,000 readers. As of this writing, that promo produced 4 downloads. So … $25 produced about $1.30 in revenue.
This simply is not a workable concept anymore. (I’d love to hear if other writers out there have experienced better success with these.) I’m convinced that the problem is that the market is just absolutely over-saturated at this point.
And, of course, there’s the other dynamic … do people actually read these emails and buy books from them. Well, obviously, a few do, but is it a meaningful number who do so? It’s not looking that way. I also wonder just how many people on their email lists are other writers, who signed up so they could run their own promo.
Anyway, I’m done with getting sucked into these promo sites. Next up is that I’m going to try some Facebook ads and see what happens. Oh, and I’m also going back to my earlier books and will be publishing them through D2D, to get away from the Amazon monopoly with those as well.
Writers Supporting Writers 
I’ve never done any paid promos for any of my books. All I’ve done is to make some of them free via KDP Select (Amazon) or the various sale events at the Smashwords store. I have observed a lot of downloads when the books are free, but no corresponding uptick in reviews or in actual sales of the books that aren’t free.
I’ll repost this on my blog and ask for input from other writers.
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Thank you. Apparently, my one success with the promo sites was an anomaly.
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As a reader, I ignore the book promo email newsletters that come my way. I think our email inboxes are too stuffed in general, so it’s hard to catch someone’s attention that way.
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I’ve never bought a book from a promo email. And you’re right about the stuffed inboxes. It just all leads to avoidance rather than engagement.
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I agree, Priscilla. I’ve been unsubscribing from newsletters to try to cut down on the amount of email I get every day. These days, I’m buying books from blog reviews.
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I suspect we indies are our own market, which is both good and somewhat limited.
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And there are a lot of us out there now!
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Hi Liz, that is what I do too. I have also unsubscribed from book emails (and other emails too).
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I’m the same. Just keeping up with people/writers I know personally – i.e. via blogging – is hard enough, reading newsletters from generic people is beyond me. Newsletters may have worked back when the ebook boom started, but they definitely don’t work now.
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Agreed.
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Me too, Priscilla, and like you, I read a lot of books.
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Life as a writer gets harder, and nothing seems to work. I worry that it will become impossible…
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That’s how I’m feeling these days.
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Hi Mark, I came over from Audrey’s blog. Interesting read, and a good expose.
I’ve never bothered with promo sites, paid or otherwise. I’ve always felt that unless these people have skin in the game, they’ve no incentive to do much, because they’ve already got our money. I view other paid author services with the same jaundiced eye, having lived through the typed manuscript era, and dodging what we used to call the vanity presses. I think those vanity presses have now moved into author services business. It has a similar feel to it.
We’ve done the hard, bruising work, committed our hearts and minds to writing a piece of fiction that might have been a year in the making. That’s a worthwhile achievement, but it makes us vulnerable, because we want to find readers, and these characters know that. I’ve tried self-promoting on Twitter, but it made no difference. I guess it might if you have millions of followers, same on Facebook, but otherwise I reckoned I’d be spending more time promoting than writing and still for very little gain. It’s the dilemma we face as independents. We’re still going to be obscure without a massive publishers’ publicity machine behind us.
A book I put up on Smashwords around a year ago has managed 244 downloads, which is fairly typical. All my books are free, btw. If I charge for them, the download rate hits zero overnight.
All the best.
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As another commenter pointed out … our email inboxes are full to overflowing with junk email that we never actually read. I think a lot of these book promo emails are treated that way by a lot of people. I mean … I get a handful of them every day and hardly ever open any of them, and I’ve never bought a book off of one of those emails.
My reading audience is pretty much limited to about 10% of the “friends” I have on Facebook, about 10% of my followers on Twitter, and a few random people here and there. That’s about it.
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This makes me wonder why some authors pay big bucks for BookBub.
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Yep. I’d really like to hear from another writer who has had success with these. (Other than my one from ten years ago.)
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I think they get a lot of downloads for free books, but I don’t know if they ever realize a profit.
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Back when I ran a few promos for Bridgeport, some were at .99 and some were free. Thousands were downloaded when it was free. And enough at .99 for me to actually make a few hundred dollars each time.
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I think there was a golden age for indie book sales, from about 2010 until maybe 2015. Since then it’s become much tougher.
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Yep. And there are more and more companies around who are looking to take advantage of writers.
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The majority of the paid book promotion sites I’ve looked at basically shotgun a bunch of covers for genres I don’t write or read.
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Yep. An image of the cover, a blurb, and a link to buy. All buried in an email that is buried among all of the other junk emails.
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Visibility, or the lack thereof, is the problem we all face. If you find something that works please let us know. 😦
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I’m trying!!
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I got a foot in the door with 3 free books in 2015 when books could still be discovered by browsing Amazon in your genre. These days it helps have a dozen titles to read when someone, somehow, happens on one of my books. I don’t know how they find my books, but they still do. Not in any great numbers, but all my books are still pulling their weight.
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I would hope that if somebody likes one of my books that would lead them to the rest. I rarely see evidence of that, except for my regular readers.
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Every so often I get a letter from a reader or a review that says that they are reading or have read all my books. For better or worse, I have a very consistent narrative voice, my type of stories, and several series that make that easier to do. I think that I have an identifiable “brand.” Plus I’m publishing in one of the top 4 genres on Amazon. All this helps, but nothing helps more than a free price. I know because I can look at the tiny trickle of sales of the books Amazon doesn’t offer for free.
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Hello Mark,
I also came over from Audrey’s blog.
From my experience, FB ads were useless — thousands of ‘reaches’ and no other engagements.
I tried Voracious Readers Only. Their website offered to send your book for free to the readers in return for a review. Less than ten percent of those who requested the downloads reviewed the book. I believe most of them didn’t read it at all. Three years ago, it cost $25 per month.
KDP Select didn’t work for me either.
When I offer my books for free on Smashwords, I can see lots of downloads, but no corresponding feedback.
The only income I earned came from Crazy Maple Studio. They offered books to their readers (readers pay for each chapter with some coins). It was free and my total revenue was about USA $300 for one year. But then, they forgot to take my books down after the contract expired. Their readership seemed much younger than my targeted audience.
I agree that oversaturation is the reason. I stopped promoting my books altogether.
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As I described, this is all too similar to my experience. I have a friend who has used Facebook ads with some success. So, I’m planning on trying them after the first of the year.
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I’ve had a very similar experience, Mark. “Free” book promos with Free Booksy have consistently produced thousands of downloads, but very few reviews, so I’m not sure the books are actually read. I used to use them simply to get my book out there. For fantasy, the promo cost is about $100, and it’s a write-off. Other promo sites have lower costs and fewer downloads. The only exception I’ve come across is Bookbub. The cost of the $.99 promo is huge ($750), but I’ve made my money back and gotten subsequent sales. The challenge is getting a spot and laying out that much money upfront. It’s scary!
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I’ve tried once or twice to get into BookBub and haven’t succeeded. I wonder what they do that makes them more successful.
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Hi Diana, $750 is a bit outlay. I am glad you made your money back and had additional sales, that is good to hear.
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I’m on a discord channel with other SF writers, and they were discussing promo venues. They also say that they’ve found that none of them pay. Some say that the money is worth getting your name out there – the long game. They say that it will only pay if you have more than one book to sell, as your profit will come from readers going on to read more of your books. Facebook will give you a breakdown of who is clicking, so that you can see who your audience is, which might be helpful.
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For me, paid book tours have worked quite well to get a few initial reviews when I launch a book. I have not had any success with Facebook ads, so I’ll be interested to know if you do. I am in South Africa, a different market, so my experience is not indicative of other jurisdictions. I agree that there is just to much choice out there.
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I’m not sure when I’ll run the ads. Lots of things on my to-do list.
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