I got 326 Downloads of my Book in just One Week

October 20, 2023

Note: this is the transcription of a YouTube video I made in 2023

My book got downloaded more than 300 times in one week. Want to know how I did it?

Alright, I had promised that I’d do a recap video of the book marketing experiment I did back in February. Here we go.

CONTEXT

For context, I found an interesting list on Kindlepreneur. That list showed free and paid websites that offered ways to reach new audiences via newsletters. It features names like Freebooksy, Bargain booksy, The fussy librarian and the like. But what interested me was the list of free promotion websites. As you may have guessed: I don’t like spending money on marketing. That’s why I rely on ARC readers to get reviews, Instagram and YouTube to get new readers, SEO to get discovered and so on. All these marketing strategies are free. But let’s get back to the main topic.

WHAT I DID

My book marketing experiment was organised like this: I had set one of my books — The Londoners — free for five days with the Free Book Deal tool on Amazon KDP. Then I booked free promo websites to advertise my book promotion through their websites, social media and newsletters.

From February 19th to 23rd, I booked a total of 8 free promo websites. My aim was to have at least two sites per day. You’ve got to know that I organised this whole week a couple of weeks in advance. I didn’t even know at the end of January that I’d do this marketing experiment in February. So it’s possible to organise everything closer to the date, even though I wouldn’t recommend it.

RESULTS

So, I’m gonna break down the results, day by day, and give you the names of the free promo websites I booked.

Day one

On day one, I actually realised I had made a mistake. You know, I translated The Londoners in French in October 2022. Guess who messed up the two versions when she set up the promotion on Amazon KDP? Yes, it’s yours truly. So instead of setting up the promotion on the English version, I did it on the French. No big deal, it didn’t jeopardise the entire experiment, but I was still gutted. I, of course, changed the promotion on the right book so the rest of the week would actually work as intended.

I had booked a promo on Awesome Gang, which never sent me any confirmation email by the way, and Armadillo ebook. To be honest, I thought I wouldn’t be advertised on any of those websites because they do say when you sign up that you need to respect the deal. As my book was still at $2.99, I was really surprised when I saw my book on Armadillo’s website. It was nice, but I got 0 downloads that day as it wasn’t set as free. Totally normal.

Day two

On day two, I had booked Best Book Monkey and The Book Circle. I never received any confirmation email from The Book Circle, so it wasn’t a surprise that I wasn’t promoted on their website on the day. As for Best Book Monkey, I did receive a confirmation email one week before the promotion. And I got promoted on their website, newsletter and social media. So it’s fair to attribute all the downloads of the day to Best Book Monkey.

What’s good to know about this free promo website is that it has multiple Facebook and Instagram pages according to the genre. So I knew my book was pushed in front of readers interested in non-fiction. They also segment their newsletter so I wouldn’t be surprised if The Londoners got promoted to the same kind of audience, which is amazing. As a result, I got 101 downloads from Best Book Monkey.

Day three

Day three is actually the day I got the most downloads. I had booked a spot on Reading Deals and It’s Write Now. It’s Write Now I actually booked a promotion for three days. I got the confirmation email from Reading Deals on the day of the promotion, but never received the one from It’s Write Now. And I got promoted on both websites.

I had been featured on It’s Write Now right at the beginning of the day and got maybe 6 downloads? It really started to pick up when The Londoners got up on Reading Deals. So I think it’s fair to attribute most of the downloads to Reading Deals. Total downloads for the day: 155.

Day four

Day four saw a dip in downloads. I had booked on Pretty-Hot and It’s Write Now. Never got any confirmation email from Pretty-Hot so it wasn’t a surprise when I wasn’t promoted on their website. As of It’s Write Now, it simply continued promoting my book for the second day in a row. I got 50 downloads that day, which can all be attributed to It’s Write Now.

Day five

The last day of the promotion, I had booked Free Book Tips and It’s Write Now. I did got promoted on Free Book Tips, for which I had received a confirmation email a few days before. And It’s Write Now promoted it for the third and last day in a row. But day five was my lowest day of the promotion as it resulted in only 20 downloads.

CONCLUSION

So if you calculate all the downloads from the five days of the promotion, The Londoners got 326 downloads, using free book promo websites only. From the eight websites I had booked, only five went through.

I’d recommend working with Best Book Monkey and Reading Deals in priority, as both websites bore the best results. It’s Write Now is also to be considered because they brought me consistent downloads over three days. I’m not convinced by Free Book Tips as I’m not too sure it brought me any results, and I can’t say anything about Armadillo Ebooks because I had made that mistake at the beginning so it wasn’t their fault if the promotion kinda failed when it was their turn.

I think this marketing experiment with book promo websites was way better than the one I did with only my social media. Because unlike myself they have built a huge audience of readers.

What I did love about Best Book Monkey is that they had segmented their audiences so they’d be able to promote the book to the right audience of nonfiction readers. I’m pretty sure it was also the case for Reading Deals, even though I hadn’t noticed any segmentation. But the results I got from both free promo websites speak for themselves.

But what about the other result? You know, the ones you’re supposed to get after you give your book for free? Well, I could expect 10% of it to actually read the book, and from those 10%, I was expecting 10% would review the book on Amazon. If you do the calculation, it means 32 people would read The Londoners, and 3 would review it. Have I got the expected result? I’m happy to say I got 4 reviews after the promotion. So it went above my initial expectations.

All the websites mentioned in this video promote both fiction and nonfiction. Have you ever tried them for your own book? If yes, what were your results? If not, are you planning to try any of them?