In part one of this series, I described my book marketing journey since 2013 and the circumstances that led me to attempt procuring a coveted BookBub (BB) advertisement for the first book in the Crater Lake Series – Disappearing in Plain Sight (DPS – because acronyms are so cute – right?). In this post, I will describe the things I did to get ready for the promotion.

Step one: Before trying for the BB slot, I moved all my books into the Kindle Select Program. For those of you unfamiliar with the way Amazon works, a short primer may be in order. When I enter my books in the Amazon Select Program, I give Amazon the exclusive right to market my e-books. In exchange, they allow me the opportunity to do free promotions (up to five days in a three-month period) or countdown in price deals. They also enter my books in the Kindle Unlimited Program. Readers can subscribe to this service for a monthly fee and then they are allowed to download up to ten books at any given time free of charge. Authors are paid for these books based on the number of pages read.

Amazon calculates Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) based on a ratio related to the number of real pages the book would have if it were a print copy. The softcover edition of DPS has 328 pages. This translates to a KENP of 588. Authors are paid (as of last month – this rate varies) 48 cents per 100 pages read. If a reader goes the distance, I will make $2.82. More than I would make from a sale. Authors who write longer books do a bit better with this formula.

During and after a BB promotion, Kindle Unlimited subscribers really notice a book. Because DPS is the first book of the Crater Lake Series, there should be a ripple effect of notice over the other two books, as well – The Light Never Lies (LNL) and Chasing Down the Night (CDN). So, I really need to be in Kindle Unlimited!

Step two: Once accepted by BB ($330.75 CND), I set up my free promotion days on Amazon. Because the slot BB had given me was Easter Sunday, I decided to extend the common wisdom that advises three free days with the BB slot in the middle to five. This would give extra insurance that the book was actually free on the day of the slot. I’m so paranoid about things not working out. BB will not advertise a book if it isn’t free or at the price agreed upon for the arranged date and they will not refund your money! Five free days would also give people who didn’t check their email Easter Sunday or Monday a chance to still act on the sale and get DPS for free.

Step three: A friend recommended Book Marketing Tools  as an easy and inexpensive way of getting the news of my free days out on a number of sites. I signed up ($21.29 CND) and this service allowed me to fill in all my book and sale details once and then reap the benefits of being promoted on up to 32 different marketing sites. I made it onto 29.

Step four: I was advised to surround the BB slot with other promotion methods in order to go into the BB day with the lowest Amazon ranking possible and to extend the burst BB would create as long as I could after the day.

I booked a Fussy Librarian slot ($33.38 CND) for the day before the BB. As well, fellow indie author, Peter Ralph , offered to feature my promotion to his entire email list that day.

For the day following the BB slot, I signed up with BookSends. I wanted to go with E-Reader News Today, a less expensive and higher rated option but they were not accepting any new submissions until April. The services I chose on BookSends were expensive (207.07 CND). I debated going with their less costly option for only literary fiction subscribers but after perusing the actual emails they send out, it was obvious to me that the top slots for Free Books of the Day got the most attention from subscribers. I decided to go big or go home.

Step five: On March 24^th, the day before the free days started, I scheduled tweets with the hashtag #FREE and a catchy one-line hook to run every hour on the 25th. I’ve never done anything like that with Twitter before, always having held to the idea that one should do nine interesting tweets to every promotional one. I broke this rule because I really wanted to get the news of DPS free to as many people as possible.

Okay, there you have it. Tune into part three of this series to find out if I managed to catch any readers!