Tips on promoting e-books?

[HelenofTroy]

It seems there are a lot of Lit authors who also have published work, so I thought this would be a good place to ask this question. For those of you going the self publishing route, do you have any advice on ways to promote your book?

General tips are always welcome and helpful, but specific advice is more along the lines of what I'm looking for For example: I've had some decent "success" (ie: moving about 400 units into readers' hands) using free promotions in combination with the various freebie subreddits (r/efreebies seemed to do the best). That doesn't hold a candle to Lit readership of course, but turning Lit reads into Amazon visits has so far not gone well.

 

[sr71plt]

Sounds like you should be giving self-published-books promotion advice rather than asking for it. What is your concept of good sales for a self-published e-book, I wonder.

 

[HelenofTroy]

Well, it's been all 1's and 2's a month since then, so maybe don't start taking my advice quite yet

 

[JKendallDane]

That doesn't hold a candle to Lit readership of course, but turning Lit reads into Amazon visits has so far not gone well.

Perhaps the first thing you should do is add a mention of your ebook to your Lit bio and that it is available at Amazon. Perfectly kosher with Lit rules. Also don't forget the "Lit author" sticky thread at the top of the forum.

On the other hand, please, please, PLEASE do not try the trick that I am running across more and more here, where an author is brazen enough to promote at the end of a story...or even worse: insert links to either ebook sites or personal web pages in comments after a story encouraging readers to leave this site and buy their "many other offerings" available elsewhere.

 

[HelenofTroy]

Thanks JKendallDane! I appreciate the advice! I knew about the Lit author thread, but not how much was allowed in that fashion on your Profile.

 

[lovecraft68]

Lit is an incredible platform to post your stories, get feedback, get experience, learn from other authors and get better as a writer.

What lit is not is a platform to make money. Maybe a few of your hardcore fans will spend a couple of bucks in appreciation of your work here but for the most part its a waste of time in a money making sense.

I never mention lit on web sites, blogs, or in any of my bios on the site I sell on. Why tell a potential customer about a site where they an find hundreds of thousands of stories in any kink they want for free?

So nothing personal to lit, but they are not a huge help in the paying market, not from my experience anyway and I did in the past do something that helped me prove that theory. That's not to say no sales from here, but not enough to spend any energy here marketing.

Also I have a low opinion of the free strategy. Put a book for free you get hundreds of downloads. The theory is they will like your book and come buy some.

Reality is they take the book and if they like it wait for another free one. Meanwhile they move about the kindle store(or where ever else) and gobble up free books like pac man, why should they buy anything?

One of my pet theories is that if you could get all independent authors in the same place and tell them to never put up another book for free all if us would see a large increase in sales.

But everyone has their own ideas, methods and strategies. Those are just a few of my thoughts on the matter.