A couple weeks ago Matt Stone of Archangel Ink asked me to be part of a 99cent book promotion, with a few other authors I respect like Tom Knowles (The Kindle Publishing Bible; we did some sightseeing in Vancouver BC last month) and S.J. Scott (Habit Stacking; we had dinner with a group authors in Cleveland last night). Matt’s building a big list of readers who want “1 buck books” and aims to be a more nimble and robust replacement for BookBub.
The idea is, if several authors do a promotion at once, together we’ll sell more books.
For my part, on the day of the event I got carried away with work and didn’t do much promotion (sorry guys!). I did share the link a few times towards the end. But I wasn’t really focused on it, probably because I rarely promote my own books (did you know I just launched two new books on Kindle yesterday?)
I think building a platform by doing incredible stuff is better for long-term book sales, but I also need to learn to “ask for the sale” a little more often. At any rate, today I logged into my KDP account and saw this:
That huge spike you see from the BuckBooks promotion – even though most of my books are among the top 5 bestsellers in their categories, they still only sell a few copies per day – except on Sept. 3rd, where they jump to 309.
BuckBooks is still warming up, but Matt knows what he’s doing and the sales bump was impressive.
The basic idea is collaboration, so if you have zero followers and no email list, you aren’t bringing much to the table…
But if you want to work with other authors and sell more books, you should definitely check it out.
I’m a philosophy dropout with a PhD in Literature. I covet a cabin full of cats, where I can write fantasy novels to pay for my cake addiction. Sometimes I live in castles.
3 Comments
Thanks Amber, I didn’t know they weren’t taking fiction yet. Probably because it’s more about sharing author platforms than it is about $1 buck books.
The price tag is just marketing: a lot of people are going to buy more books at $1 than above. It doesn’t have to mean that the books are worth $1 (and it shouldn’t – otherwise where’s the good deal?).
It’s for more expensive books that are on sale for $1 for one day (and giveaways or cheap pricing continues to be the best book marketing; and authors need to use whatever works).
My only issue with $.99 books is the royalty split on Amazon. I’m (reluctantly) willing to let Amazon have a dollar if I sell a book at $2.99, but I can’t justify letting them have two thirds of the profit and only walking away with 30c a book! Otherwise I’d price more of my work at $.99
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