Marketing Your Book with the KDP Free Promotion, Book Trailers for Non-fiction Books, This Week

Hello and welcome to the J.Q. Rose blog! 

I bet you had a blessed Easter and/or Passover. Now spring is officially here! 

Many folks' thoughts turn to vegetable gardening this time of year. My DH, Gardener Ted, and I joined forces to offer information in our guide, Quick Tips on Vegetable Gardening: Starting Your Garden, to help them get inspired and to offer practical advice on gardening. 

Vegetables from J.Q. Rose and Gardener Ted's garden

I had a blast putting all the articles together and working with my hubby on the final product. I uploaded the file to Amazon on February 15, 2015. The eBook hit the Amazon bestseller lists the next day!  I was thrilled. But after the first rush, sales fell off. 

I decided to try the KDP promotion of offering the eBook for free. I don't have the second book in the series available yet, but I decided to use part of my 5 days of free promotion at this time since 'tis the season to start a garden. 

I was blown away with the response to the three day "sale." I gave away over 1100 eBooks and reached #1 in crafts/hobbies and seasonal categories of Amazon's free kindle eBooks. 

I decided to use the free promotion for several reasons:

• Create buzz to earn real sales after the promotion
• To gauge the interest in vegetable gardening
• To garner reviews for the book

I chose the dates because in Michael Thomas eBook, Crush It on the Kindle: A Guide to Publishing and Maximizing Sales, advised offering the free promotion at the end of the month. He explained "The biggest jump came from people borrowing my book at the beginning of the month, which increased its sales rank, which increased its visibility, which increased its actual sales and profits." I figured if he achieved great results when giving it away for just one day, I'd offer it for three days to include the end of the month and the beginning. Perhaps this was erroneous thinking on my part. (Just like the assumption that if fertilizer is good for a plant, give it more than the directions say, and it will grow faster. No, don't do that,)

I'm sure I made an error when selecting the days for the give away because by making the promo 3 days, I bumped up into Good Friday, Passover, and Easter weekend. When the give-away ended on Thursday, April 2, the next day to actually purchase the book was Friday and the beginning of the weekend. As I write this blog on Monday morning, I have not sold one eBook. So the "buzz" didn't translate into actual sales. 

Do I have hope this week will see sales? You bet I do because the royalties are going to support local food pantries in my area. Have I missed the optimal time to sell a book on Starting Your Garden? Not in Michigan! It's still snowing there and in many northern states. I also rationalize, people always have that desire to get their hands dirty. Gardening is not just a few weeks in the spring.

Another tidbit for you to tuck away in your marketing tool box--I notified several websites who feature FREE eBooks so I could rely on not only Amazon's promotion, but also those sites. Shelley Hitz Places to Submit Your Free KDP Select Promotion PDF made it easy to find and enter the eBook info. The link to the PDF is in her eBook, Marketing Your Book on Amazon: 21 Things You Can Easily Do for Free to Get Exposure and Sales.

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Besides the give-away as a marketing tool, I decided to make a book trailer for the eBook. I worked on it and got it ready, then it dawned on me that book trailers are usually for fictional books. Have you ever seen a book trailer for a non-fiction book?? Hmmm....well, after all that time I spent on this video, I'm going to be brave and share it with you below even if non-fiction trailers are not done! 

VIDEO: Quick Tips on Vegetable Gardening: Starting Your Garden

Book Trailer for  Quick Tips on Vegetable Gardening

Have you tried using the KDP Select Free Promotion in your marketing efforts? Is it in your marketing plan? What do you think of book trailers for non-fiction books? Please leave a comment below. We'd love to hear from you.

This Week:

Thursday, April 9--Author Kyla Phillips is my guest. She suggests four points when world-building in your stories. Come back for this helpful information and to discover her new urban fantasy, Agent of Light, releasing in May.

Be sure to get notices of new posts on the J.Q. Rose blog by submitting your email in the box in the right side bar. I promise, NO SPAM!!

Self-Publishing with KDP, This Week, Giveaway

The Good Neighbors
How could being good turn out to be so bad?

Self-publishing with KDP by J.Q. Rose

Yes, I tried it. I published my short story, The Good Neighbors, on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). I am not a guru when it comes to formatting, so I was really nervous about getting it right. I learned a LOT about formatting from Mark Coker's FREE Guide to Publishing on Smashwords and reading amazon's information. I think the short story, 4000 words, was a good one for my first project because there were no chapter headings to worry about formatting for a Table of Contents.

After I published The Good Neighbor, I discovered a ridiculous, obvious error, so I re-pubbed it after fixing the error. I uploaded the story and it was live again within hours. 

Designing the book cover was difficult for me. I'm not satisfied with this one…pretty amateurish, but I wanted to use the cartoonish flamingo to clue readers into the idea that it is a funny, holiday story. It also helps readers realize the same characters are in my mystery novella, Sunshine Boulevard,  because flamingos are on the cover of the mystery e-book.  

Sunshine Boulevard
Mysterious deaths upset the Florida retirement community
interfering with their seasonal activities and turning up more than dead bodies...

 Not only did I enjoy re-visiting my characters, Jim and Gloria Hart, in my mystery/horror novella, I hope The Good Neighbors will stir up interest in reading more of my books. 

Check out my humorous story, The Good Neighbors on amazon. While you’re there, discover Sunshine Boulevard on amazon or at the Muse It Up Publishing bookstore and major online booksellers.

Have you tried self-publishing? What did you learn? Are you a reader? Do you notice who publishes the books you read? Thanks for your input.

Post originally published on my Word Press site

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Coming Up This Week

Wednesday, January 7

First Wednesday of the month means it's time for the Insecure Writers Support Group (IWSG) blog hop. Join me and a few 100 of my writerly friends as we talk about writer's insecurities.

Thursday--January 8

Romance and Mystery Authors on Writing series 

Mystery author Sara-Jayne Townsend offers her writing tips and advice. Sara's newly released title, Dead Cool: A Shara Summers Mystery, is second in the series of the Shara Summers Mysteries. Find it at amazon, MuseItUp Publishing, and all major online sellers. Please join us and enter to win a door prize!!

DEAD COOL
They were dying to be famous.
And someone was prepared to kill for it.

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