Bookbub Experiment 5 by John A. A. Logan

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I hadn’t given away any free ebooks for a year, so I did a 5 day Kindle Select Free Promotion of The Survival of Thomas Ford from 16-20 October.

I paid for a Bookbub ad, going out to their Thriller subscription list on 16 October.
Luckily, I was able to get my order in during the first month of Bookbub’s new UK-specific listing, which sends the book out to a list of their new UK subscribers when you pay an additional 5 per cent on top of the US Bookbub fee for your genre.

In the past, a Bookbub promotion would result in mainly US downloads with not much result in the UK, but I noticed right away that the new UK subscription list resulted in the strongest UK downloads I’d ever had during a free promotion.

I also took out a $20 Ereader News Today ad on 17 October; a Dailyfreebooks.co.uk ad at £10 on 18 Oct, along with a Kindle Nation Daily FreeBookHighlighter ad on same day at $30/and a $10 eBookSoda ad on 19 Oct/with a Freebooksy ad on October 20.

As previously, I only spent a proportion of money that had come in from earlier sales on the advertising, so, in other words, reinvesting money already derived from ebook sales, in order to advertise and reach new readers.
Also, it had been a year since my last free giveaway promotion, as I said, so there was no danger of “flooding” the market/readership here.

The end result was 40000 new downloads of The Survival of Thomas Ford (34000 in US/over 6000 in UK/with about 500 remaining downloads split between Canada/France/Spain Germany/Australia etc)

37 new reviews came in over the next couple of weeks after the free promo, as well as a few hundred paid sales of The Survival of Thomas Ford and my other 2 ebooks, split between paid sales at $2.99, plus Kindle Select borrows and Kindle Unlimited downloads, each bringing in about $2 each approx.

Visibility of the book was achieved, too, as The Survival of Thomas Ford was the Number 1 ranked bestselling free Thriller, in both the UK and the USA, during the promotion.



Thanks very much to everyone who downloaded!

The 188th review for Thomas Ford also popped up on Amazon US, along with the 64th five-star review there (thank-you, V. Turner!):

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read!, October 28, 2014
By V. Turner - See all my reviews
Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Survival of Thomas Ford (Kindle Edition)
Not your garden variety thriller, this one has twists and unexpected turns all the way to its dysfunctional and disturbing end!


The Survival of Thomas Ford, available on Kindle in UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Survival-Thomas-Ford-John-Logan-ebook/dp/B006Q68W7U/ref=pd_sim_kinc_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=110FC4WRMC3MRPG5615Z

The Survival of Thomas Ford, available on Kindle in USA:
http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Thomas-Ford-John-Logan-ebook/dp/B006Q68W7U/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

www.johnaalogan.com


Comments

Ann Evans said…
Interesting blog, John. There's just so many different ways of promoting books, it's all a bit of a minefield knowing what will work and what won't. I'll make a note of the ones you've used successfully, and take a closer look. It certainly seems worth spending a little bit to get such good returns on downloads.
Thanks!
11 November 2014 at 17:30
Margaret Tanner said…
Hi John,
Great post. Interesting stats there. I guess it is true you have to spend money to make money. Glad to hear that it paid off so handsomely for you.
Regards

Margaret
12 November 2014 at 11:44
John A. A. Logan said…
Thanks Ann, yes, there's a lot of luck involved, and things are always changing, too!



Thanks very much, Margaret!
14 November 2014 at 04:08
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