Any onething that boosted your sales

[*DrDln* (dr.s.dhillon)]

I have noticed authors reporting sales in response to various marketing activities.

What is one thing you did that showed significant increase in your book sales.

For example, was it KB discussion, a social net work like Face Book, a paid advertisement, lowering the price, a paid ad...etc.

The only thing I can really report is Kindle Boards, so far.

Hope authors share their experience and help each other. Wish all the best in your sales activities.

[Victorine]

The only one thing I can point to is paid advertising, like on Kindle Nation Daily. But that usually is a bump and then sales go back to what they were.

The best thing to do is a whole lot of little things that work together and grow your audience slowly. Sending out review copies to bloggers really helps, but I can't say that instantly sales increased from it, it was a slow build.

Vicki

[WilliamEsmont]

I'm going to echo Vicki...

- submit to book bloggers (then cross your fingers and sit back and wait)
- schedule a KND (what a rush that was the first time!)
- perform giveaways on GoodReads

And last but not least, write your next book. Keep your pipeline full.

[Bob Mayer]

Consistency and building community.
And writing more quality books.  Got to keep the pipeline fed.

[gatehouseauthor]

Not that I have a boatload of sales yet... one month in, and I'm just about to break 100 unique sales...

I get a small bump every time someone leaves me a good review.
I get a bump every time I have a giveaway (generally sell 1 for every 1 given away. I have given away 35 so far. Best marketing I've done.)
I got a bump when I was featured at dailykindlebargains.

I'm still waiting for some more editorial reviews from some of the popular blogs who are reviewing, we'll see what those do for me.  I'm also considering a Pixels of Ink advertisement.  And, I've got a book signing scheduled in 2 weeks, as part of one of our local libraries' summer reading program.  There could be a potential bump during the run-up for that, when the radio ads start and they list me as the featured speaker for the event.

[Cheryl Bradshaw, Author]

Consistency and building community.
And writing more quality books.  Got to keep the pipeline fed.

Agreed

[Alex Sinclair]

My blog has been my biggest boost. It gets about 20,000 hits a month, as I have been helping to promote other writers. It basically got very popular last month and since then my sales have been climbing and climbing. I think a lot of it is luck, as I have had a blog site for two years and had as much traffic as a dirt road in the middle of a jungle! ... a not very busy dirt road in the middle of the jungle, lol. And then I made a few smart decisions and in a short space of time the site started creating traffic for me.

[DonnaBurgess]

Consistency and building community.
And writing more quality books.  Got to keep the pipeline fed.

That. I only wish I could write faster! KND is also a surefire way to get a nice bump.

[jnfr]

Alex, if you catch this question, what were the smart decisions you made that seemed to help with traffic?

[swolf]

There was an increase in my sales when I joined a few tagging threads.

[Dara England]

What is one thing you did that showed significant increase in your book sales.

Pixel of Ink feature.

[Mike McIntyre]

In the case of The Scavenger's Daughter, it languished for nearly five months, then suddenly over the weekend sales soared. Near as I can tell, it had to do with Amazon pricing policy. I tried to raise the price, but Amazon kept it at $0.99 -- listing it as 80% off, giving the appearance that it was some sort of deal. At that point, some web sites automatically picked it up and listed it as a bargain. For example, on http://ireaderreview.com/2011/05/14/ad-kindle-takes-1-saturday-kindle-offers-deals/ it was 1 of 7 eBooks to be named as "Saturday Kindle offers & deals." iReader Review also mentioned that my first book was featured on Oprah, which may have helped.

But I would second the previous posters who said it was important to reach out to bloggers and reviewers. If I caught a lucky break last weekend, I'd like to think that customers who landed at my Amazon page were ultimately swayed to click the "buy" button by the positive comments left there by bloggers and reviewers (and their readers) I had reached out to starting last December.

That said, it seems to take time.

[Maria Hooley]

If you have more than one book, put a sample chapter of a different book at the end.  I couldn't believe how much it helped me.

[Krista D. Ball]

I changed my name to match that of a foot fetish site. It helped a lot 

[gatehouseauthor]

I changed my name to match that of a foot fetish site. It helped a lot 

There's a foot fetish site called Krista D. Ball?  What a stroke of luck for you! 

[Krista D. Ball]

Hehe no  Several years ago, our union went on strike. Around month 4, we were talking about ways to supplement our income without nudity. Foot fetish come up as a viable Month 5 option. Thankfully, we went back to work at 4 months, 3 weeks. 

[Sharlow]

 I was selling less then a hundred books a month until I lowered the price of one of my $2.99  books to 0.99 in the middle of December. I figured the Christmas rush would lift my sales up over the small amount I was moving, and I was about to release the sequel to it in January.

Now I've done the same thing (except for the Christmas rush part.)with my other series and I'm about to release book two this month hopefully.

[PJJones]

I always get a boost on blog days. PJ

[Alex Sinclair]

Alex, if you catch this question, what were the smart decisions you made that seemed to help with traffic?

Hi Jnfr, firstly I moved my blog to blogger.com, which was my first smart move. My other blog site did me no favours. I think the most obvious thing about publishing is "Don't talk about your books!" lol, in the sense that you end up spamming. So on my blog I realised if I just posted about me, me, me, people wouldn't care. So I started interview authors, letting authors post exclusive excerpts and for a month I went out of my way to promote them. Like really went to work, which meant I have Me, my friends, the author, their people, all promoting and I did back to back blogs and the site stats went up. So I went from 50 hits to 500 hits. What I did then was create a program.

Monday - Interview
Wednesday - Excerpts
Friday - Author Spotlight (Blurb/Cover/Reviews)

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO lol

I realised that was all well and good, but to increase traffic I approached some top kindle authors and asked if they wanted an interview on my site, said we made good traffic and we did.It worked. I had about five really good authors in the space of two weeks, which raised the site states, the traffic, the amount of comments on blogs. My next move was hosting the book of the month (twenty authors, twenty days)) and this was just as my novel, Five Days Notice, was released. And the site went crazy. I have done this for 2 months now, but next month I know how to make the site even better and more traffic. You can help yourself by helping others. I hope this helps!

[*DrDln* (dr.s.dhillon)]

Consistency and building community.
And writing more quality books.  Got to keep the pipeline fed.

Good advice. So far I focused only on writing which I enjoy. I tend to believe that promotion is a necessity in ebook world.

[jnfr]

Alex, I am faint from just thinking about all that work. I have to struggle most days to find writing time!

[Romi]

If you have more than one book, put a sample chapter of a different book at the end.  I couldn't believe how much it helped me.

What a cool idea Maria!

[Alex Sinclair]

Alex, I am faint from just thinking about all that work. I have to struggle most days to find writing time!

lol, it really isn't all that bad. It is pretty much the evolution of an idea. Oddly I was doing more work a few months ago. I mean now I am writing the sequels for, Five Days Notice & B***C, and working on my blog every single day. Next month I have a better way to create more traffic and will post my ideas on that once it is up. I mean I promote through talking books on hundreds of forums and if people find your imput interesting they tend to check out your profile/books, so the blog I was willing to do full time, but it really isn't that time consuming. It sounds like it, but once you have a plan, you have rules and you know what you are doing then it is easy. When you are posting bits and bobs now and again without a plan it can feel tedious, as your constantly searching for new things to write about.

[JRainey]

Pixel of Ink feature.

Yup.

[BellaStreet]

I was once featured on Daily Cheaps Reads for one of my 7 titles (under another pen name) and my sales took off, to the point where they're increasing by another $100 every month (they're all 99 centers). I've gone from paying for my fiddle lessons, to having grocery money, to making my mortgage payment. And hopefully more as time go on. Not bad for some cheap romance backlist stories!

Daily Cheaps Reads features Kindle books $5 and under and I think you need at least 5 reviews first before you can ask to be featured. There's another similar site called the Frugal eReader. Similar format. And there's an Amazon author who recommends tagging your books 'cheap kindle reads' (or 'cheap kindle books', I can't remember which) and he'll post him at his blog by the same name (but the minimum must be $1.99 so I don't get to be on that one).

In fact, it may be Amazon tagging that's really boosting my sales. I use the two above, along with '99 cents', 'cheap ebooks', etc. There are readers who simply type that into to Amazon's search bar.

Bottom line, lots of patience, good word of mouth, a backlist...I feel like if I can have success, anyone can!