Eroticon is coming up in just a couple weeks! I’m so sad I can’t go this year. I’m hoping to be at the next whether it’s in the U.S. or the U.K.  If you’re still on the fence about going, I’d like to refer you back to my February column Ten Reasons You Should Attend Eroticon.  If you are attending, please give everyone a big hug or spank from me.  I’ll be twitter stalking ya’ll.  

***

Today’s blog is sort of a follow up to May’s column on utilizing the free or discounted book to generate sales. Today I wanted to highlight the various services out there that will publicize your free or discounted book.  Some are paid services, some are free.  As you might expect, the paid services generate the most sales, and the most expensive ones seem to generate the most.  Many of them are curated, meaning they will not accept your book unless it has a certain number of reviews with an average rating of 4.0 or better.  For obvious reasons, I will not include any of the services that don’t list erotica.

Paid

Bookbub:  This one is the biggest and most expensive.  If they select your book (and it is difficult to get accepted–you may have to resubmit every four weeks until they do), it will cost you $600 and you can expect to get an average of 24,000 downloads of a free book or 2800 of a discounted book.  I know authors whose book rankings jumped to the 20-30 range overall on Amazon on a Bookbub day.  As I said, it’s difficult to get your book selected. You may want to check out this recent blog post on their criteria: http://insights.bookbub.com/how-bookbub-selection-process-works/

Kindle Nation Daily:  This will set you back $150 to be the Romance of the Day. It includes a review of your book, as well as a send out through Book Gorilla (see below).  I signed up to try this next month, so I will report back.

Book Gorilla: This is a more affordable option and may not be as difficult to get in.  They won’t take books with less than 100 pages, and you need an average rating of  4.0 and at least 5 reviews.   To promote a free or $.99 books, it will cost you $50 or for books $1-2.99, $100.  They book three months out, so it’s not great for a new release, although when I emailed them, they were very easy to work with and said they would consider scheduling a new release of an anthology if I provided them with compelling details on the authors involved.  Author Livia Grant used them for a free book promotion last month and she had 1900 downloads, bringing her book to a #135 rank overall.

Bargain Booksy: I have used them for three separate books, and each time I sold about fifty extra books (and it costs $40-70 depending on category).  The time I didn’t have luck was when I tried to promote a full-priced ($4.95) book. They allow any book priced under $5, but I think the lesson is that their readers are looking for the deeply discounted books.  I did, however, sell an extra 50 books of a book priced at $3.99.  Strangely, their counterpart for free books Free Booksy, costs more– $100.

The Fussy Librarian:  I just ran my first promotion with them on a $.99 book.  It cost me $12 and got me about 25 extra sales.  Books are curated and require at least 10 reviews with an average rating of 4.0 and a price of $5.99 or less.  You pay per category, and additional categories are half-price, so a promotion might run you between $12-20.  For $2 extra, you can add the “add to my TBR list” on Goodreads button.

Many Books:  They have a free service, but it seems hard to get into.  For $20 you can list a book. I haven’t tried them yet, so I can’t report how well this works, but when I get some data, I’ll update this.

BookGoodies:  For $5 you can post your sale. It definitely bumped my sales but at least 25 books.

Digital Book Spot:  They charge $5 on Fiverr. Don’t pay for any of the add-ons.  Unfortunately I ran this the same day I had a BookGoodies spot, so I can’t say for sure how many extra sales it got me, but my book ranking went from 8000 to 3000 that day.

Peoplereads:  $15 for a week – I’m signed up for this week, so far I would say nothing magical happened

ebookboster:  For $25 they will submit your discounted book deal to a bunch of sites including: awesomegang, ebookasaurus, hot-zippy, bargain book ehunter, pixelscroll, wanton reads

Choosy Bookworm:  It’s $18 for a guaranteed feature. You must have at least 8 reviews up for your book.

Ebooksoda:  For $10 they’ll send out your sale book to their newsletter subscribers.

BookButterfly:  This one is really cool because they will guarantee you a certain number of downloads.  For example, for a $.99 erotica book, he told me to order the Silver package, because they usually only sell around 50 copies.  For a free book, he can guarantee 1000 downloads.

Free Services

• Buck Books (.99 books) They are currently not accepting new submissions, but I’ve bookmarked it in case they open it back up.
• Ignite your Book (free book listing)
• Bestebooksfree.com ($.99 or less)
• Books on the Knob (will list sale prices but NOT free books)  
• Book Lovers Heaven (less than 3.99 and you must have 10 reviews)   
• Choosy Bookworm (must be at least 70 pages and less than 3.99)
• Bookgoodies: free listing for books under $3
• Dirty Book Deals – I’m not sure if they have an email list, but they will post your book and send out a ton of tweets about it.
• Shameless Book Deals – book must be under $2.99
• Erotica.freebookpromotion.com
• Read Cheaply
• Addicted to ebooks: You can sign up for an account and post your books, but it says no erotica.  I tried with one of my books anyway…

Please leave a comment letting me know about any I missed, or about your sales results using any of these mentioned.  Thank you!

Renee Rose