Why Free Still Works...

I've found that marketing tactics among indie authors seem to go in waves. A couple of years ago, free ebooks were all a hit. Then this time last year, it was the $0.99 'deal' ebooks that were riding high. Now it seems to be $0.99 box sets that are hitting the best seller lists.

I have debated putting together a box set for some time now. To be honest, the only thing holding me back is time in formatting it, and also creating a box set cover. I'm sure I could figure it out if I had the time, but I don't right now because new books still take priority with my writing time. With the kids off school, so I now have three little ones under my feet all day, I need to stay focused.

However, that wasn't the point of this post today! No, today I wanted to talk about free ebooks and why as a marketing tool, they can still work.

May 2014 was one of my slowest months, sales-wise, that I've had for at least a couple of years. I had the third book in the Spirit Shifters series in the editing process, and I just thought sod it, I'll put the first book as free and see what happens. I did this by choosing the free option on Draft 2 Digital, and then within a few days, Amazon price matched.

Within a few days, I had over 14,000 downloads of Autumn's Blood on Amazon, and thousands more on Barnes & Noble and Apple. The sales of the second book took off, and as soon as I released book three, my sales jumped to a height I've not seen for some time.

Because my free book worked so well in this instant, I decided to take one of my other books, The Sound of Crickets, and put it into KDP Select. I've not been in KDP Select for eighteen months, but the book wasn't selling on any platform, so I figured I had nothing to lose. I set up a number of ads and set three of my free days on Amazon. Well, even these results surprised me. In three days, I had almost 20,000 downloads of The Sound of Crickets. I'd been hoping for a couple of thousand, so those numbers were overwhelming. When it went back to paid, the sales continued. Over the last few weeks they've begun to drop back down again, but I'm still getting more sales than I did before the KDP promotion.

One of the best parts of this free promotion hasn't just been the sales. When I started my give away, I had about fifteen reviews on Amazon. Now I have 35 reviews for the book, and all of them state that they're 'Amazon Verified Purchases' and all of them loved the book. I always expect at least a few negative reviews from such a big give away, but so far there hasn't been anything below a four star! (This may change any day though!).

So, here's a summary of the benefits of running a free ebook:

• Exposure. People who haven't come across you before may put your book on their kindle, or other e-reader.
• Sales. You may get continued sales after a free run, or the readers may buy other books in the series, if there is one.
• Reviews. Hopefully people will be good enough to leave a review once they're done reading.
• mailing list sign-up. I always include a link to my mailing list at the back of my books. 

Want to try one of my free books? I have several! Thanks for reading!

• Alone (Book one in the Serenity Series)
• Autumn's Blood (The Spirit Shifters, Book One)
• The Vengeful Vampire (Alone prequel)
• Go Back (Underlife prequel)

'Captured', Book 3 in the 'Serenity' Series is Now Available to Buy!

Wow! What an exciting 24 hours it has been! Yesterday saw the release of the third novel in my dark vampire 'Serenity' series and within the day the book hit the top 100 for fantasy on Amazon in both the States and the UK.

On top of that, the first book in the series, 'Alone', is currently offered for free and is sitting firmly in the number one spot on Amazon for free contemporary fantasy!

This whole thing has just been such an adventure and I can hardly believe that this is just the start. Though I was first published in 2009, it was only when I began releasing books myself that anything started happening. I'm currently only a year into this 'indie author' course of my career and I can't wait to discover what the next year will bring. I'm literally hearing from readers every day now, telling me how much they love my books. Nothing feels better than that.

'Captured' is my fourth published novel, but I still have plenty more to come! I have three completed manuscripts waiting patiently in my laptop. One of which, 'Underlife' is my personal favourite and I hope to have out in August. I could get the book out sooner, but I want to take a break from the editing for a while. I'm planning on writing my Young Adult spin-off over the summer and then I'll start editing again!

I've also made the decision of employing the services of the lovely Danielle at Philia Book Tours to help me do the one thing I'm terrible at in this business - scheduling guest blogs! She is going to be setting up blog posts for me each month so I hope she'll keep me in line. If I've got a deadline for anything, I'll always get it done, but if it's a case of 'I can do some writing or I can start contacting people to see if they'll have me on their blog' you can bet I'll chose the writing every time! Danielle is an absolute necessity for me if I'm going to start having a presence in the blogging world.

So don't forget, if you have not tried the series yet, you can read book one, 'Alone', for free at many different book sites, including Amazon. And, for the first week only, 'Captured' will be offered at only $0.99, so if you're thinking of working your way through the books, now is a good time to buy. Just click here to go through to Amazon!

Catch you all later. I'm off to plan book four!

Work Hard and be Patient!

This is the motto I've been telling myself this week.

I'm now about two and a half weeks into the relaunch of 'Alone' and sales have been steady. I've worked out that I've sold about 140 copies since the launch, which is pretty good, but could be better. This time last year I would have been thrilled at that number but things have changed.

Last week I received a royalties statement for my M.K. Elliott name (a pen name I write romance and erotica in) and learnt that I'd sold over 10,000 books within the first five months of releasing my first title. That first title hit the #1 spot for Erotica on Barnes & Noble within a week of being launched and no one was more surprised than me! Since then I've had a number of titles hit the bestseller list on Amazon (two of which are still there and have been for several months now).

Because I've seen this success in my other name, it makes things so much more frustrating in my 'real' writing. I so desperately want my novels to see the sorts of sales my other work has but I know its going to be a much slower process. I've still got four titles which will be released between now and next Easter, all of which are written, they just need a final edit on my side and to be professionally edited. I've also got a short story collection, 'Apocalypse Ever After,' which I hope to have out in the new year.

So my marketing strategy is going along the 'flood the market' tactics. Sure, I'm also guest blogging and sending my books out for review, plus running f/b ads. I'm also hoping some clever pricing and free reads will boost sales.

Anyway, here is the cover for 'Buried'. What do you think guys? The image has once again come from the very talented Rebecca Treadway and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. It totally captures the whole feel of the book.

Right! Back to work!

The Results of my Foray into Facebook Ads...

This time last week I set up a facebook ad for my short story collection 'Where the Dead Live'. I wanted to test out how well the ad worked before bothering to consider using ads as part of my promotion for 'Alone' when it is relaunched (and I'll be done with edits today, hurrah!).

So, I only wanted to spend a small amount of money as this was more of a tester than anything else. The way facebook ads work, you're basically paying for each time a person clicks through to your facebook page via the ad. You can choose the limit on how much you want to spend each day and once the money has been used up, the ad is withdrawn until the next day. You also decide how long you want the campaign to run for. I went for eight days at £3 a day, which totalled in a £24 spend.

The Results!!!!

Initially, I saw a definite jump in sales. I went from selling one or two books on Amazon a week to selling seven in the first four days. However, after that sales dropped off again. The main thing I noticed was a definite increase in the number of 'likes' I had on my page. I went from 221 likes to 256 in a week, an increase of 35 likes which I was really pleased with. Normally, I'll add a couple of 'likes' to the page in a week so this was a huge jump.

My Conclusion...

Because of the initial jump in sales, followed by the tail off, I've decided for my 'Alone' facebook ad campaign, I'm going to spend more money over a shorter period of time. I've decided to spend £10 a day over three days to try to give the book a good boost as a 'new' release. Getting a book up those sales charts early on really helps because it makes the book more visible to those who otherwise might not have stumbled across it. I'm also going to focus the ad on people with precise interests in vampires/vampire romances/etc. Dare I say it, I'm even going to aim the book at Twilight fans and also fans of The Vampire Diaries.

So I'll definitely use facebook ads again. They turned out to be a relatively cheap and VERY easy way of advertising. I will be using it in the future as well as for my 'Alone' campaign. I don't think its the be-all and end-all but I think used in combination with blog tours etc. it certainly doesn't do any harm!

Oh, and here is a link to my facebook page should any of you want to check it out. I hope my results prove useful to all you other authors trying to find ways to promote. I know its a long, hard slog!

Progress Report...

I'm now well over halfway through the edits for Alone and my editor is way faster than I am, so she is patiently waiting for me to get some more chapters to her. It feels great to finally be on, not quite the home straight, but certainly close to it.

For the most part, I've enjoyed this re-edit. Because this book has already been out there and has received some fantastic reviews, I'm not filled with all the usual paranoia that accompany a new release (will people like it, will people buy it?!!!). Okay, maybe the 'will people buy it' part still applies but I think I'm learning more and more about what parts of promotion work and which don't. I plan to release Alone at the $0.99 price mark for at least two weeks (possibly a month) to try to get it up the sales charts. Alongside that, I'm working on a short story which will be about Sebastian (the main vamp in Alone) being turned by his maker, Madeline (the vamp-bitch in the novel). The short story is set during and just after the Spanish American war, two hundred years ago. I've never written anything historic and I have to be honest, I'm a little nervous about how I'll do. I have a couple of friends who have written historic pieces so I intend to let them have a good critique before I release it to the public. However critical other writers are, having critical readers is definitely worse! Anyway, the short story will be  freebie, along with a nice chunk of Alone to get people interested.

Another thing that is coming together is the cover. I can't wait to show it off! The designer Rebecca Treadway, has so far done a fantastic job to putting together exactly what I had in my head. I'll be previewing it here very soon!

As always, I'm also looking forward to what I'm going to do next. I've got The Dark Road to re-edit and re-release, but depending on how well Alone does, I'm also tempted to get the sequel, Buried Alone finished. The book is basically done, minus the last chapter so all I need to do is give it the usual ten edits (and write the final chapter of course).

As my husband always says when I complain about being busy...there's always another book, Marissa. I guess he's right. As long as I stay as motivated and determined as I am, I'm always going to be busy!

Help Needed! Win $25 Amazon Voucher.

On June 1st, my next novel, The Followers, will be released. I'm looking to create as much noise as possible about the release of my new book, and I'm looking for help from each and everyone of you guys.

Here is my proposal. Each person who is willing to blog/facebook/or tweet about The Followers on June 1st will be given two copies of the ebook: one for themselves, and another to giveaway as they see fit. Each person who blogs/facebooks/or tweets about the book (including people who RT on twitter) will then be in to win a $25 Amazon gift voucher. Let me know what you've done by commenting on my post on June 1st or emailing me marissafarrar@yahoo.co.uk. Each blog/fb/tweet will count as an extra entry to win the $25 voucher!

Now, I know June 1st is still quite a long way off, but if you're interested in getting involved, make sure you contact me, but either emailing me or leaving me a comment. I'm happy to email out a synopsis/cover/etc to be included in blog posts.

Hoping to hear from you all! Marissa.