Kindle Countdown Promotion

I'm currently running a Kindle Countdown Promotion and so far the results are looking pretty good. We've sold approximately 16 copies in the first iteration of the sale (at $0.99) and there is still a day left in this phase.

There was zero advertising on the first day because of a travel conflict and we didn't do any advanced promotion. We made one post about 30 hours into the deal on the Facebook page which was only seen by about 70 people. My inkling is that Amazon does something with these promotional items to bring them to the forefront - especially now. I can only imagine how well the sales would be in a stronger category.

A few quick things I'm seeing from this promotion:

1. The way Amazon rates books must be based a lot on how quickly the sales come - as we've hit #10 in the Paid "Supernatural" category with just a few sales in this short frame of time (we actually peaked at #9 for a bit but we're holding between 10-12). The number seems to drop/fluctuate quickly and we've generally been well out of the top 100 in this category prior to this promotion. I'm sure now that the strategies I've read about how to build your book sales based on getting to #1 in a category is fairly accurate; and I think, as these books have mentioned, the key is to simply promote well in advance to get as may sales as you can at once. I bet for most categories simply selling 50-100 copies would easily secure you the #1 spot. How easily you can hold #1 remains to be seen...
2. We've likely overpriced this book quite a bit and I'm fairly certain that once this promotion ends I'll drop the price permanently to $2.99. We may even have to consider a drop all the way to $0.99 but the sales have been so much lower than we had hoped that it would be nice to keep that 70% royalty rate in place.
3. It appears that Amazon will also drop the price of a Paperback that is linked to the same Kindle book by a few dollars. However, though we've seen the price fluctuate, it appears the royalties are locked at the rate they approximate when setting the price. 

More information as the promotion progresses. There are still 4 days remaining.

Edit #1: Update

The promotional countdown was pretty successful! We did limited - and I mean limited - advertising for this deal which was a day late because of travel conflicts. We only mentioned the deal once on our Facebook page but  the total sales from the promotion were 45 units.

We will definitely use this to our advantage more in the future - probably much more beneficial than the previous "FREE" book deal unless you're building an audience for a book series and just want to get a lot of copies spreading around. 

Attempting to gain more interest on a Facebook page

We've had a steady increase in random page "likes" for Paranormal America and we've actually had a fairly steady drip of a purchase or two each day this month with little-to-no promotion on our part. In addition, we've now gained two unsolicited 5-Star reviews for the book and have sold two copies of the paperback.

However, we'd still very much like to get this project a bit more solid and figure out how to sell enough copies to make it worth all the authors' time who sent in a story. To that end, we're trying to come up with some more things we can do to create a more steady flow of traffic and interest to the page and hopefully, the website/Amazon to buy the book.

Today, as a first step I've created 127 (!) images with little facts from across the country about the most haunted locations in America. The idea is that people will find these interesting and dig through them and more importantly, share. I've subtly asked them if they've been to any of these locations and to give their thoughts/findings if so.

My only concern with this idea is that it has nothing to do with the book and might be confusing - but there is only so much we can do with the book information before it's just tedious spamming. I'm trying to build up interesting information to go along side the book.

Here are some examples:

Will update with any noticeable changes in reaction to this first set of images.

Update:

So the response to these images? Practically zero. Had a couple of comments (from authors of the book) and a few likes from those who generally like other things we've done (friends of my wife).

In retrospect, these may not have been entirely clear so I guess next time I'll just need to come up with a better way to present information if it is purely for random knowledge.

There was not a single share, no increased likes to the page, and no discussion generated. This is clearly marked as a FAIL in my book of learning. :)

Paperback released

Today we made the announcement on the Facebook and Twitter pages that the paperback is available for purchase. We've had more excitement about that than the Kindle version, so I hope people will actually buy some copies!

We've had nearly 50 people claim interest in getting it when released in paperback so we'll see how that goes!

Edit:

This was actually posted on the 11th but drafted earlier in the month on the 4th.

As I was initially typing this post up, we received news that my wife's grandfather had unexpectedly passed away and we have since been pulled away from our focus on this project in the days afterward.

On a related side note, her grandfather was actually one of the 50 authors in the book. We were planning to visit Texas later in the month in what turned out to be just a few weeks after his death. We had a copy of the paperback book and intended to surprise him with a copy. Unfortunately, that wasn't meant to be.

Another lesson in life that you hear all too often and is always true - Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today.

R.I.P. Gene Wheeldon