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Day 4 and 5 of Does a Free Kindle Promotion Work?

August 28, 2012

(Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. No excuses. I just forgot) Some of you may have caught wind of the I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin free Kindle giveaway that is currently going on now through August 28th. What you may not know is that I am also planning to post details about the giveaway—details such as the giveaway totals and the tactics I used to make people aware of the giveaway—every evening here on my blog as part of my Book Marketing Tests and Studies category. This post serves as the fourth and fifth in the 5(ish) part series. For full details about the test, see the first post here. Day 4 tactics 10:57 am: Sent tweet using my personal account, and my literary news aggregator account. 12:03 pm: Sent tweet using my personal account, and my literary news aggregator account focusing on my daily documenting of this kindle giveaway (rather…

Day 3 of Does a Free Kindle Promotion Work?

August 26, 2012

Some of you may have caught wind of the I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin free Kindle giveaway that is currently going on now through August 28th. What you may not know is that I am also planning to post details about the giveaway—details such as the giveaway totals and the tactics I used to make people aware of the giveaway—every evening here on my blog as part of my Book Marketing Tests and Studies category. This post serves as the third in the 5(ish) part series. For full details about the test, see the first post here. Day 3 tactics 11:08 am: Sent tweet using my personal account, my literary news aggregator account, and I hijacked The Velvet account for this one message. 11:31 am: Posted about the giveaway to The Cult and Lit Reactor forums. 11:46 am: Shared link to the Day 1 results on Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious,…

Day 2 of Does a Free Kindle Promotion Work?

August 25, 2012

Some of you may have caught wind of the I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin free Kindle giveaway that is currently going on now through August 28th. What you may not know is that I am also planning to post details about the giveaway—details such as the giveaway totals and the tactics I used to make people aware of the giveaway—every evening here on my blog as part of my Book Marketing Tests and Studies category. This post serves as the second in the 5(ish) part series. For full details about the test, see the first post here. Day 2 tactics I was informed by a generous friend that $50 has been donated to promoting a Facebook message about the giveaway. Thanks to you, anonymous SuperPac donor. 12:00 am (CST): Goodreads CPC ad at a $0.50 CPC bid and a $5 daily cap. 5:28 pm: I sent an email blast to my 145…

Day 1 of Does a Free Kindle Promotion Work?

August 24, 2012

Some of you may have caught wind of the I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin free Kindle giveaway that is currently going on now through August 28th. What you may not know is that I am also planning to post details about the giveaway—details such as the giveaway totals and the tactics I used to make people aware of the giveaway—every evening here on my blog as part of my Book Marketing Tests and Studies category. This post serves as the first in the 5(ish) part series. The plan I am giving my newest novel, I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin, away for FREE through the Amazon Kindle store from 8/24 through 8/28. No catches. No gimmicks. Totally Free. My hope is a simple one: I want to see how many free copies get downloaded, which I hope translates into a few reader reviews, which I hope perpetuates future readers…

The Second Conducting: What is the Value of a Goodreads.com book giveaway? 84% had never heard of me. 34% plan on reading my books.

April 16, 2012

Does giving away your books lead to more readers, and in turn, more fans? A few weeks ago I conducted a pretty in-depth study regarding the effectiveness of a Goodreads.com book giveaway in which I found that 93% of entrants had never heard of me and 88% planned on reading my books. Couple that with 51% of entrants signing up for my email newsletter, and the giveaway was well worth the two books I sacrificed. Science must be repeatable, right? A couple of weeks ago I ended yet another giveaway. The Setup I listed a 2 copy giveaway for I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin to take place between 3/14/2012 and 3/31/2012. During this time the giveaway received a total of 378 entries. After the giveaway was closed for entries, I sent a 9 yes/no question questionnaire to 222 entrants. 156 entrants could not be sent the questionnaire, either because I know…

Does posting purchase links in social network comments lead to book sales?

March 20, 2012

It’s been only two days since I started my Annoying Links test, and though I originally intended to stretch the test for a full week, I am going to cut it short. Why? A couple of reasons. One, I simply feel dirty posting links everywhere (even though I stated very explicitly up-front that the links were for study purposes only). Two, though only two days have gone by, the test isn’t looking too positive. The abbreviated results Will posting self-promotional links in social network comments lead to book sales? Maybe. But is feeling like a dirty sales person worth it? No. The process Over the course of 2 days, I posted a total of 42 comment replies on Facebook and Google+, each containing two links at the end of the post. The posts themselves were genuine responses to comments, things I would have posted even if I weren’t conducting a…

You may notice some really annoying links out there during the next week

March 17, 2012

UPDATE: The results of this annoying link test can be found by clicking here (If you got to this page via an annoying social media or blog comment link, keep reading. This is all for the sake of science.) I’m a data nerd. I’ve gone record stating such, and I’ll go on record again. Something about seeing charts and graphs and trending lines and mapping the effect of X to Y and…let me pause to catch my breath a bit. I am fresh off a really successful Goodreads.com user study thing, so I’m itching to get back to the spreadsheets. So why tell you this? I am going to conduct a week-long test of sorts that will probably be a bit more intrusive than most of my other studies. I’ve noticed a lot of incessant product whoring on forums, blog post comments, and social status updates. You know the kind:…