Category Archives: Promo
New Newsletter Subscribers
A newsletter is an important promotion tool for an author, especially indie authors, because it’s your direct pipeline to your readers that no middleman can touch. With a newsletter you don’t have to worry about the Book of Face throttling your posts, or some bozo billionaire tanking another social media platform (or the government trying to shut down a SM platform, grr). As long as you have a list of genuine fans and readers you can email them directly about upcoming publications and sales, give them pertinent buy links to your Shopify store, show them adorable pictures of your cats, etc.
The trick is to build your newsletter list in such a way that it contains only the people who actually read your stuff. Yeah, a huge NL list is great, and there are all kinds of ways to boost your NL numbers through things like swaps and paid promos. But if 80% of your NL members come from those mechanisms, they probably signed up for a free book and aren’t really going to bother opening your newsletter when it hits their inbox. The word here is “organic.” You want people to sign up because they found you, think you’re interesting and your writing is fabulous, and they want to hear more.
Why am I rattling on about newsletters? Well, I’ve had three people sign up to my newsletter in the last month or so through the signup form here on my website. This freaking delights me because it means (at least, I hope it means) that these three subscribers are organic—they like my work and they want to hear about new releases. When I send out a newsletter next week with a pre-order link for A Court of Green Clover, I can pretty much guarantee that they’ll want to buy it or read it on KU (as an aside I’ll be releasing ACoGC on Amazon and KU first, then after the KU period expires I’ll be releasing it wide, so if you prefer to buy your books on Apple or Kobo you will be able to pick it up in three months).
Right now, my newsletter list is only a skosh over 500 members. I prune out the hard bounces and the unsubscribes without rancor because those are the people who wouldn’t have opened the NL anyway. The important thing is that even with pruning the member list is growing, slowly but surely. Or to quote Sall Field as Norma Rae, “You LIKE me, you really, really LIKE me!”
And Now We Wait
So my first ZoeBub/Stuff Your Kindle/eReader event is done, and I had over 8,800 copies of Crystal Shard downloaded, plus a significant handful of Empress of Storms.
For ease of math, let’s say that 9,000 people downloaded one of my books. Seeing as 1) romance readers are absolutely voracious when it comes to reading, but 2) they also tend to have immense TBR backlogs, let’s posit that maybe 5% of those 9K readers will get around to reading my book in the next six months or so and like it enough to want to buy the next one in the series.
That makes 450 readers who will either buy Crystal Blade or read it in KU (although I already have three purchases of Crystal Blade racked up since the beginning of the event). If those 450 readers buy it, I’ll make $1,548. If they read it in KU, I’ll make less than that but I’ll still make a significant amount. And if I have Crystal Reflection, Crystal Citadel, and Crystal Empress out by then, I could make as much as $6,192.
Now, let’s look at Empress of Storms. If one reader read Empress and decided that she wanted to read the entire series (and this happens a LOT), that’s the purchase of three novels, a novella, and a short story, which earns me $13.46. And Empress of Storms is romantasy, which is really starting to take off now (more on that in another post) so it’s very likely that more readers who read Empress will want to read the entire series.
But that’s just the money aspect from this one ZoeBub event. From a purely audience building point of view, knowing that one of my books was downloaded almost 9,000 times is absolutely tremendous. And it’s building the audience of dedicated readers that makes an author’s career.
TL;dr, I deemed the Stuff Your Kindle event to be a tremendous success, and hopefully I can participate in the December event as well.
Last Day To Stuff Your E-Reader!
High Tide Episode 15: Dangerous Truths is now live on Kindle Vella. Go forth, enjoy, and all that stuff.
I would also like to remind you that today is the last day of the Stuff Your Kindle/eReader event for romance readers. You can still head over to www.romancebookworms.com and pick up over 2400 free romance ebooks in seventeen different categories. I already picked up a bunch of awesome titles, and my own WC fantasy romance Crystal Shard is in the event, in case you haven’t read it yet and would like to try it for free.
I also got a review for Crystal Blade, the sequel to Crystal Shard, today and it has me squealing in joy:
Crystal, our relatable heroine, has a remarkable journey from the mundane life of a Sav-R-Mart clerk to embracing her newfound role as the potential Empress of Sideros. Her character development remains a highlight of this series, as we get to witness her growth from an average human girl with a troubled past to a powerful and determined force to be reckoned with. The political maneuvering and the competition with Crystal’s cousin for the throne add layers of complexity to the plot, keeping readers engaged and invested in the outcome.
If you are a lover of high fantasy books with a great plot, amazing character development, and forbidden love… read this series!
This pleases me because I recently made the discovery that apparently I write romantasy—a story with a strong romance plot and an equally strong adventure plot with worldbuilding. I always follow the romance requirements of a HEA/HFN and a romantic couple/group at the core of my stories, but I also send my characters out on adventures, regularly put them into danger, and require them to do some personal growth before the end of the story. That’s what I like to read, so that’s what I like to write.
And now it’s officially a thing, which is fabulous from a marketing perspective. Anything that makes it easier to get my books into the hands of readers who will enjoy them is aces with me!
The Stuff Your Kindle/eReader Event is LIVE!
Boy oh boy, do I have some good news for you! I’m participating in the Stuff Your Kindle (and Other eReaders) event hosted by thirteen-time USA Today Bestselling romance author Zoe York and Romance Bookworms.
So what does this mean for you? It means that over 2,400 romance eBooks in seventeen sub-genres are free for the next three days. Did I mention that this event has a bunch of books that have never been featured before? Just go to www.romancebookworms.com and browse the entries, then download all the books you want.
My entry for this event is Crystal Shard (Paladins of Crystal Book 1), so if you’ve never read it and wanted to try it, now is the time to snap it up. And don’t worry about how to get the books onto your Kindle or eReader—you’ll be downloading from major retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, et al.
Most importantly, if you enjoyed a book and want to thank the author for their work, please leave a review. Believe me, reviews help authors write and sell more books, which means you have more books to read. It’s a win-win situation. (And hey, if you have the cash, consider buying other books in the series or see if you can order them through your local public library. We love selling books to libraries, yes we do.)
Stuff Your Kindle/eReader runs September 20-22, so head on over to www.romancebookworms.com and start stocking up on some amazing romance eBooks for fall!
Happy Book Birthday to Rosanna Leo!
Rosanna Leo’s awesome new paranormal romance Darke Music (Darke Paranormal Investigations 2) is now available!
She’s no stranger to ghosts. But love? That’s a mystery.
Historian Susannah Darke is no stranger to haunted houses. As one of a trio of ghost-hunting sisters, she’s had plenty of experience investigating the paranormal. When an opportunity arises to explore a haunted opera school in Toronto, she jumps at the chance, even though she once had her own frightening brush with its resident ghosts.
Noah Bellamy is the dean of the Asch Institute of Opera, and a former opera singer himself. He was once a student at the Asch and is well-acquainted with its boisterous spirits. But when the activity worsens, threatening one of his star students, he knows he has to take action.
The fact that Susannah and Noah have been hooking up for the past year complicates things, but they agreed long ago to keep things casual. As long as they both remember their boundaries, the investigation should go smoothly.
When the paranormal activity begins to target them personally, it becomes harder not to seek comfort in each other’s arms. For the first time ever, Susannah and Noah have to decide if it’s worth taking a chance on love.
The ghosts present a huge challenge, but battling their personal demons may be even harder.
In Search of Good Indie Reads?
Or perhaps you’re an indie author who would like to get your book out there on a website where people can browse some of the freshest titles in indie publishing?
Do I have a website for you! Pretty Bookshelf, run by Zoe Blessing, is a quickly growing resource for indie publications (and not just romance—Pretty Bookshelf hosts everything from mystery to historical fiction). If you’re a reader, you can browse by author, title, spice level if you’re looking for romance, or just wander through titles until you find something that interests you. Click on a title and you’ll be taken to a page with the book’s blurb, reviews, buy links, similar titles, and a place where you can leave your own review.
If you’re a writer, this is a fantastic (and free) way to get more eyes on your work. I currently have Crystal Shard listed there and I’ve submitted To My Muse, and will be sending the rest of my catalog once I have a moment to breathe this week. While submitting to the website is free, they do have a Ko-fi account where you can drop them a buck or two to help support the work they’re doing.
So if you want to read some great indie published fiction or submit your own indie published book, go check out Pretty Bookshelf!
Looking Disconsolately at TikTok
I really shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve posted videos about ECS:OE and Shifter Woods: Claw, and they’ve gotten a handful of views. I posted a video of me reacting to the Gen X Flute Call (aka the opening to Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”) and I’m over a hundred views so far.
This is not unusual, nor is it isolated to me. A lot of romance writers I know have been complaining about how hard it is to get their book posts seen because—ta-da—the TikTok algorithm gives them a low weight. I understand that the clock app is heavily slanted towards content creators who post daily skits or duet with cooking/renovation/building videos, but writers used to get a fairly good slice of the pie. Not any more.
And now we have next week’s testimony of TikTok’s CEO to look forward to, then we find out whether or not TikTok will be banned in the US. That does have a lot of romance writers up in arms because low views or not they do make sales thanks to being on TT and this is going to hurt their bottom line. I know about the security threats associated with the app, but the fact that it allows writers to advertise to a wide audience of younger readers is incredibly valuable. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
TikTok is Definitely Pushing Sales
It’s time to admit that TikTok does have an affect on my sales, even if I can’t immediately see the link. Before this morning I posted my last TikTok last Thursday, then got caught up in other stuff over the weekend (okay, okay, I was quilting) that meant I wasn’t camera ready. In the intervening four days my KU pages reads dropped precipitously to the point where I am a good fifteen bucks behind where I should be in earnings by this point.
Apparently me acting like a loon on TikTok prompts enough people to check out my profile, hit my LinkTree and take my books out in KU. I know other authors have huge success with page flipping videos (or vids where they stand there and pretty much look beautiful at the screen while quotes from their books appear over their faces) but those don’t do anything for me.
Wearing a teal, green, and yellow wig and pretending to be a Muse or trying on different filters? Those get views, and then I get sales. Go figure. So I posted four TikToks today, and the shortest one where I mention how great it is to start the day off by writing a sex scene is already up to 245 views and four comments. I ask you.
Cover Reveal: Darke Passion (Darke Paranormal Investigations 1)
Hey folks! Rosanna Leo’s awesome new paranormal romance Darke Passion will be available on March 21, 2023 (pre-orders start February 7, 2023), and here’s the cover reveal!
Cover artist is Kelly Martin of KAM Design. If you want more information, here’s the Goodreads link!
The Greak TikTok Experiment, Day 6
As you may remember, Bob, I signed up for TikTok last week. As per the webinar’s instructions, I’ve been posting 2-3 videos a day, most of them on the subject of my books or writing but some of them just goofy little filips.
So far I have 324 followers, one of my posts from Sunday has crossed the thousand views mark (unsurprising as it stars J.J.), and I know for sure that I’ve sold six books from my posts. I’m also having a whale of a good time making these vids and learning a lot about the different filters, effects, and other visual goodies that come with TikTok. I’d also like to get some apps to help me with captioning, but I need a phone that can handle iOS13 first (come to me, iPhone 12).
I have to admit that this surprises me, but after a week of participating I have to say that joining TikTok was a good idea. I might change my mind in a month or two, but so far it’s been both a ball and surprisingly lucrative.
And if you want to see me in action, you can find me here.
Nicola Cameron Writes 