How to Get Your Book Displayed on Ebook Reader Websites During Giveaways

There’s a huge and growing number of avid readers, hungry for ebooks, as Kindles and other devices have helped people discover or rediscover reading addiction. That love of books, the feeling of getting lost in a book, the desire to read book after book -  it all seems to fit well with an ereader that lets you carry a number of books around in your pocket, and people find themselves reading more than ever before.

This hunger for books has led to a growth in the number of reader websites, selecting and offering ebooks. For an author or publisher it helps to get books listed on these sites. During the latest Ward Wood giveaway of V.G. Lee’s classic comedy novel, Diary of a Provincial Lesbian, I tried out all of the listing sites I could find to see which were most helpful and which would list books for free. As always, I found the pros and cons and offer tips to those of you wanting to submit your own books to these sites.

There are a few important considerations if you’re thinking of releasing a book with a giveaway promotion. The first is that some of the best sites get thousands of books submitted every day, so they make their selection process easier by asking for a number of reviews on your book’s Amazon page, and a minimum average star rating of 4. One site (Digital BookToday) asks for a minimum of 18 reviews. It’s a good idea to build a number of reviews and a good star rating for your book before running the promotion. Easier said than done, I know.

The second thing to remember is that some of these reader sites like to be informed up to a month in advance (including Pixel of Ink, which is one of the best known so very useful). Others like to be informed at least two weeks in advance (including Kindle Book Promos and The Kindle BookReview). So you need to plan in advance and set yourself a schedule of tasks. These tasks become more time consuming as the giveaway approaches so it’s a good idea to allocate tasks to a few people in order to make the most of the opportunity.

In order to submit your book to these sites you will need the ASIN as they all ask for it. This only gets allocated by Amazon when a book goes live on Kindle, so if you want to submit to the sites mentioned above you’ll need to publish the ebook at least a month in advance of the promotion. If you’re planning a promotion on a book you already have available there’s no problem.

We were launching Diary of a Provincial Lesbian with a giveaway, so we didn’t want to have it available too long before the first day of the giveaway. This made it difficult for us to submit to some of the reader sites, but we did try just in case. The results have been so helpful that I’ll definitely submit to all possible sites for all of our promotions.

Give yourself plenty of time to submit to the reader sites because there are more than 50 that I have seen so far. I was especially grateful to a site called eBookBooster which gives a listing of these sites with links. This made a very repetitive and time consuming task much easier. I might have given up without it and certainly wouldn’t have found the sites. I’d recommend going to eBookBooster to guide you through your submissions with all the links in the side panel. There are also some more sites that collect links to good reader sites, including Author Marketing Club. I found good reader sites myself but eBookBooster and Author Marketing Club will give you a great start.

Most of the sites have online forms for you to fill in, and they ask for the same information, so it helps to have it prepared so you can copy and paste. If you’re lucky enough to have an assistant or long-suffering friend or partner you could ask them to help. You need a photo of the book cover, plus the title, author name, brief and catchy book description, the ASIN, link to the book on Amazon (usually in the US or UK or both), and perhaps an author bio and the category/genre. Some may ask you for something unique about the book to let them know why they should choose yours rather than somebody else’s.

Many of the sites ask for ‘no erotica’, so you’ll need to point out that your book is not in that category if it has a title or cover suggests that it is. There are genre specific sites (like Erotica Every Day) that might be better for you write in this category. Again, the excellent eBookBooster website gives links to genre specific sites for erotica, sci-fi and young adult. Some of the sites cover all genres and organise them neatly for readers to find their favourite type of book.

The next step, after submitting to the sites that ask for the book details well in advance, is to separate the sites that want submissions on the day of the giveaway from those that want information just before the giveaway. The eBookBooster website divides these, and I was curious to see which websites would display our book even though we were submitting at the last moment.

I was also curious to see if they really would display our book, as they tend to say they consider all books but ‘for guaranteed inclusion on the site’ you can pay. This is often a small amount, just $5 in many cases, but it would add up. We did get included although we didn’t put budget into this part of the promotion.

I've seen stories on the Kindle Boards forums about authors and publishers who have paid about $50 to advertise on some high traffic reader sites, and they sometimes get a very high number of downloads during a giveaway (20,000-30,000 but it's not guaranteed and many don't achieve this with advertising). Although we don't do this, some of you might be considering it.

For those of you who are new to giveaway promotions - if you're asking yourselves why someone would pay to advertise a giveaway, it's because a giveaway promotion that gets thousands of downloads leads to sales. In my experience, each 1,000 books given away lead to 100 books being sold in the first few weeks after the promotion ends. Sales then continue at a less intense level. The author's name is also more widely known in the international market, and other books by them also sell, including print books.

The websites that included us at short notice were:  FreebieBooks, ebooklister, My Book and My Coffee, Free Books for Kindle (efreebooks), Snicks List, Centsless Books (which picks up the highly ranked ebooks) and the beautifully named Free Book Dude. Addicted to Ebooks listed us later, and it's worth looking at this and all the other sites to see if they will also consider listing your book if it isn't a giveaway (quite a few people are asking me about that).

We also had the book listed on HotUKDeals which has really helped with two of our giveaways – the fact that most posts aren’t for books on HotUKDeals means that the books stick out from the crowd.

Some sites let you enter your own giveaway, including SuperE-books, which felt a bit complicated as it involved registering to use the Wordpress site yourself. I’m used to working with Wordpress, so did find my way around it and got our book included. Being able to list your own information is a bonus as it can be done even if you’re having to do it at short notice.

With some sites there’s a questionnaire to be used for an ‘author interview’ so you’ll need to ask the author to do this if you’re the publisher. These were Free Ebooks Daily and Rainy’s Book Realm. With Rainy’s Book Realm, the website links to a group on Goodreads, so you can actually list your own book in the Goodreads group forum under giveaways.

One final way you can get your ebook listed on websites is to find the Facebook group for the site. If they let you list your Kindle book on their Facebook wall, this often has a feed to the website and it can show up on the main page.

Once again, thanks and credit to the people who put together the information at eBookBooster and Author Marketing Club, as most of the sites mentioned here can be found with links neatly arranged on their websites.

Diary of a Provincial Lesbian by VG Lee Free for Kindle and the Free Kindle Reading App

For 5 days over Valentine's weekend we've been giving away VG Lee's novel Diary of a Provincial Lesbian on Kindle. If you don't have a Kindle you can download the free Kindle reading app from Amazon.

You need to download it from the Amazon site for your country and it's available on all Amazon sites around the world, including:

UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Diary-Provincial-Lesbian-ebook/dp/B00BFGFKSA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360799431&sr=8-1

US http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=B00BFGFKSA

Free Kindle reading apps are available here http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=dig_arl_box?ie=UTF8&docId=1000425503

Diary of a Provincial Lesbian is a book that can be enjoyed by women and men, by anybody who has ever asked themselves the question: ‘What is love?’ The heroine, Margaret, thinks she has found love, until her partner Georgie gives her the classic book Diary of a Provincial Lady, and an empty diary where she can record her own life.

The following year will bring changes she doesn’t expect, to her life and to herself. In this novel, filled with the comedy and sadness so typical of all our lives, VG Lee shows what love really is, if it’s expected to last beyond the first thrill of meeting.

She also shows the importance of other types of love – the love of pets and of friends, and the importance of accepting those close to us with all their faults. As always, VG Lee makes the reader laugh out loud and also cry, and by the end of the novel the main character and the readers are no longer the same.

VG Lee’s novels have been endorsed by Sarah Waters, Stella Duffy and Time Out, and she was shortlisted in the Stonewall Awards for Writer of the Year at the end of 2012. She is also a stand-up comedian and regular comedy feature writer for The Lady magazine.

Ebooks. You Can't Give 'Em Away. Or Can You?

This week I'm experimenting with the free ebook giveaway idea until Wednesday. So that this experiment will be useful to other authors and publishers I'm going to be completely open about the number of people who take the book, the techniques used, and the pros and cons of this idea. Some of this is hard to find unless somebody tells you, especially the number of books you need to give away in order to get to a good point in the Amazon rankings so that you're visible to readers beyond your own contact list.

I'll start with the figure you all want to know. In the first two days 220 people have downloaded the book. More than 100 were in the US, 85 in the UK, 1 in Spain and 2 in Germany. The higher figure in the US, despite the fact I'm a British author based in London, helps to show the importance of an engagement with social networks in order to reach out to international readers.

It also shows that ebooks are vital as it's almost impossible for many publishers to get their printed books stocked and sold in other countries due to the cost of sending them combined with the demands of bookshop managers for big discounts that would put publishers into a loss. In the US, Ireland and UK bookshops tend to want to buy only from their wholesalers, so unless you can get stocked by their wholesalers it's almost impossible to sell to some countries.

Although bookdepository.com is excellent for supplying UK books to the US, Amazon only supplies books stocked by its wholesalers. We're stocked by the major wholesalers, but many aren't so it's a huge problem. So ebooks are the most effective way for authors and publishers to become internationally known and read. One problem is that potential readers don't realise they can only use the Amazon site for their country to download ebooks, which no doubt loses a lot of takers as it's complicated giving links to all regional websites. There are also some strange factors (such as ebook sales to Ireland going through the US Amazon website only).

Giving ebooks away isn't as easy as you might think, even though I'm a publisher with a track record as a published author. With so many people contacting me every day asking me to download their free ebook, my main fear was that nobody (or very few people) would take it. People are inundated with requests from their friends to accept and read a free book. This could be worrying for people selling printed books and ebooks, but one of the main surprises is that the giveaway has led to a flurry of interest in the printed books, and sales have increased. A printed book costs less than a visit to a coffee shop for a drink and a cake, so maybe this isn't so surprising. Paying or getting a book free isn't perhaps as important a factor in reader choice as we imagine.

But a free gift of an ebook people already quite fancy is going to tempt them to make that step and actually get it. The second question that will be on your mind is how many people I had to promote to in order to get about 200 takers. The maths for this seems quite simple. I have two main social networks I can promote to, both with contacts involved in books and writing, and the total number of contacts is just over 2,000. So, in the first two days I seem to have about 10% take-up of the offer. I'll keep you updated on the figures as I move into the second half of the promotional period.

To some of you 200 will seem like an excellent figure. '200 new people discovering your book' another author said to me. But in fact they aren't 200 new people. They are people who have been on my Facebook list because they have a particular interest in writing and publishing, and in the virtual world of Second Life, where I have been organising a large voluntary project for writers for 6 years. When you look at it this way, 200 might seem quite low and shows just how many 'friends' truly interested in our projects we really have on social networks. However, some only log on occasionally so it was probably a good idea to run the giveaway for the full 5 days Amazon allow in any season all in one go.

An unexpected bonus was the feeling it gives to see so many contacts downloading the book, reading it at the same time as each other, and giving feedback to me. It's a time when many people are short of money, and those who love books tend to buy too many and try to cut down, so it's rare to have this sudden burst of 'book sales' and simultaneous reading by many. It's usually an experience that only bestselling authors can enjoy.

With 200 downloads the book got to 835th position in the Amazon sales ranking for free books in the UK, and just over 2,000th in the US. People in each country can only download from one Amazon site and the rankings are based on the total for each location. I'm starting to see the downloads starting to grow in Germany, Spain and France.

What are the best ways to promote a giveaway without making your friends and contacts feel 'spammed'. I sent out a notice to the publishing company group, inviting members to an 'event' during the giveaway. I also invited friends and contacts from my personal Facebook friends list to an 'event' with a link to the Amazon sites as the location. Apart from the problem of people clicking on the wrong Amazon site for their country, this did work well. The downside to this is that some people don't realise they should turn off group notifications if group discussions become active and start arriving in their email. During a giveaway a group wall will get active so brace yourself for people getting irritated and it's important to remind people how to turn off notifications. Luckily I only had one complaint, but he made it very public on my wall - in fact you may find that you get trolls.

I then also sent group notices to the writing groups I have on Second Life. I have to say, I found the Second Life bookloving community very supportive and this will be part of the reason the downloads are higher in the US than the UK. They also account for the downloads to France and Spain. People on Second Life tend to be technology lovers as well as booklovers, and many of them are enthusiastic about ebooks. It's a mutually supportive environment for writers on Second Life, and I was touched by the number of people who shared the news on their Facebook wall and also on blogs without being asked to help.

At this point I have done as much as I can with my social networks without driving people crazy with reminders to take the book if they would like it. I have to be very careful as a traditionally published author and a publisher as I mustn't do anything to damage my own reputation or that of the authors with Ward Wood Publishing. I didn't send reminders to the group, or to friends individually, after the first invitation.

A self-published author probably should go for it with even more gusto, contacting friends to remind them to download the book, and letting them know how and why it can help. This might be the only way many authors can head up the Amazon rankings during their giveaway period, and the book could then go viral if it gets into the top 100 or top 10.

It will also help if the book is in the right Categories in your Kindle settings. I hadn't selected these myself and you do need to check that your publisher has put you in the main categories you feel are right. Amazon only allow two categories and my book had mistakenly been put in Women's Fiction (which it isn't) and General Fiction. This lost me about 12 hours of the giveaway period as I had to have it changed to Literary Fiction and Humour. Being in the wrong category (and I really don't consider my book Women's Fiction) not only makes it hard for readers to find what they want, but the correct niches give a book a better chance of getting high in its particular category.

So this is the point I'm at. I need to use some additional methods for the final half of the giveaway and will explain them in another post and how effective they are. Any feedback on your own giveaways, and also ebook sales, with tips, pros and cons, will be very welcome. And thanks to all who have dowloaded the book! I would love to see links to any reviews and feedback, good and bad, and also any places you have shared news of the giveaway.

The Importance of Ebooks and Online Selling

Over the festive period much has been said about ebooks and online selling, and in particular how rapidly sales are growing in this part of the bookselling market. Responses vary, with me sounding extremely encouraged by this, and some bookshop managers sounding worried – if you look on the Bookseller website you’ll see all sides to the argument.

The truth is that we absolutely need the ebook market to take off – whether we’re authors, publishers or booksellers. The crisis in bookselling is far more extreme than authors and readers realise, and publishers don’t want to dishearten authors by letting them know just how difficult it will be to sell their books should they overcome the first hurdle of getting published.

Ebooks also let publishers take on authors who are difficult to promote, perhaps because they live in another country and aren't available for the many events needed to help a book take off. Or they might write short stories, which are even harder to sell than poetry as there's no network of live events for short story writers. It also means publishers can take on long novels by debut writers, whereas the pagecount usually means the cost of printing and postage can't really be recuperated without a high cover price and/or high sales.

Bookshop managers tend to get defensive when they see the way ebooks are taking off. The Kindle sales this Christmas show that the UK is finally following in the footsteps of the US and the many people getting a Kindle as a present will no doubt follow up by buying some books for it. This is great news for publishers and authors at a time when companies are closing due to the difficulties selling our one product – books.

I do think bookshops can get in on the act too, rather than trying to defend an either/or position where ebooks are seen as killing the traditional bookshop which stocks books in print. There’s no reason why bookshops shouldn’t also have a screen where customers can buy the books they can’t find on the shelves and have them delivered straight from the publisher’s distributor to the customer’s home.

It would be just like buying on any other online bookseller site, but would be managed by the bookshop. And at last we would be able to order literary fiction, poetry and short stories through our high street bookshop if we wanted to, and not just the few they have in stock. Even the excellent bookshops that do stock plenty of poetry and literary fiction can’t stock everything, and they could offer everything publishers have registered on the central Nielsen database. Bookselling websites update automatically by feed from this, so it’s easy to manage.

Bookshop managers also complain that customers say they can get the books cheaper from Amazon, but customers know that Amazon isn’t reliable when it comes to supplying some of the books they take orders for, particularly poetry. Emails arrive for a few weeks saying the book is temporarily out of stock and finally that it’s unavailable. So I would certainly trust a bookshop more. I just feel that bookshops need to see this as an opportunity and adapt more than they’ve been doing so far.

With ebooks it’s tricky at this stage because Amazon dominates the market due to the popularity of the Kindle. But I’m not going to hold that against them and fight them over it. The situation will change. At this stage it’s helpful that Amazon is creating the market with the Kindle and Kindle books. We’d be doing a disservice to our authors if we didn’t go along with that and make all of their books available for the Kindle. Our fiction is all available for Kindle and we’re working hard on getting the poetry perfect at the moment – we didn’t stop over Christmas!

Amazon has a monopoly on Kindle ebook sales. But we’re also working on Epub versions which provide ebooks that can be sold on any website. This will provide even more of an opportunity for bookshops, authors, publishers, and anybody else, to sell direct from their websites. Amazon and Kindle are paving the way but it would be impossible to keep a monopoly in this market. It’s only possible to get an early lead.

What has surprised and encouraged me most this Christmas is seeing how ebooks have levelled the playing field between authors and publishers of all sizes. The major publishers have their huge budgets for promotional activities, which usually crushes others out. It’s impossible for a smaller publisher to get books stocked in bookshops over Christmas when major publishers have bought all the best space and there isn’t even shelf space left for new books by others.

I would have thought this would also affect ebooks and that titles by major publishers would dominate the list of bestselling Kindle books. And yet two out of the top four Kindle titles were by self published authors. They weren’t expensive ($3 and under) but they were for sale, so they weren’t just downloaded because they were free.

While one was a genre novel, and various genres do well on Kindle (it was the crime novel The Abbey by Chris Culver), the other novel sounds like literary fiction - Darcie Chan's The Mill River Recluse. The sales figures are also much higher than you might imagine and the books get into the New York Times bestseller list. High advances will be available from major publishers for those authors next time I think.

I’m not quite sure how these authors managed to compete with the promotional activities of the major publishers but I’ll be researching it in detail. If it really is possible to compete and win with ebooks then that certainly makes a major change in publishing, and we all need to take an interest.