Another promotion for my book

[dkersten]

I'm running another 99 cent promotion for my novel, The Freezer.  99 cents in both US and UK Amazon sites. 
This link will get you there:  http://mybook.to/thefreezer

My website/blogsite: www.davidakersten.com

 

[Malenko]

you push this book harder then PL1 pushes Kades

[BorgDog]

I've enjoyed reading your work David.  If you don't mind me asking, about how many books have you sold?

[dkersten]

I've enjoyed reading your work David.  If you don't mind me asking, about how many books have you sold?

Thanks!  I am excited to get the next book finished, although the past few weeks I have had a hard time sitting down to write.  I am about 55-60% done with the manuscript, and if I can get myself motivated to write, my goal is to get it out by the end of August.  If you enjoyed the characters in The Freezer, I think you will love what is coming up in this book.. I am really having fun with them and I have added some new characters as well.

To date, I have sold just over 1100 books and made royalties of approximately $1750.  If this promo works out the way I am hoping, I will be at 1600 by Sunday night and over the $2k mark.  Unfortunately Uncle Sam will take 48% of those royalties because they are not "passive" (an oil well is passive income, royalties from something you create is active, so the IRS says you are self employed and you pay double social security plus full federal plus state taxes). 

Yes, I promote it hard because there are 3.4 million ebooks on Amazon with 20,000 new ebooks being added each week.  Amazon isn't going to promote anyone who isn't a top 100 seller, and even then they don't promote them, they just make them slightly more visible.  Imagine trying to make a needle stand out in a pile of millions of needles.  Selling 1 ebook per day on average will put that book at a selling rank of around #50,000 out of those 3.4 million ebooks, and selling 10 per day will put you at a rank of around #15,000 per day.  That gives you an idea of how hard it is to sell a book on Amazon.  Most books never sell more than a copy or two, usually to Mom and maybe a friend.   

The last promotion I did sold 370 books over the weekend and got me as high as #405 in all of Amazon and #6 in my genre.  It increased regular sales by over 250% and only after 7 weeks did those sales start to drop off significantly.  Unfortunately I can only do promotions like this every ~90 days (once each 90 day cycle) unless I want to take half the royalty during the promotion, and there are only a small handful of places to advertise.  This promo I have 8 ads running that should reach about 250k people via email and another 500k+ facebook/twitter impressions.  My goal is 500 books by the end of the promo, but I have only sold about 40 so far (in the first 5 hours of the 72 hour promo) and most of my advertising is still rolling out.  It will take about 100 sales at the promo price to break even on the ads.