The Review Chase

It's generally accepted that reviews help sell books on Amazon. Since that's where I sell virtually all of my books, I'm constantly on the lookout for venues to get reviews. The best place I've found is BookBub. I've put several on the site as free books. They racked up 30,000 to more than 40,000 downloads. That brought a large number of reviews, though subsequent sales didn't bring in much more than the cost of the promotion.

My last book published, Overture to Disaster, final book in the Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy, available as an ebook on Amazon, has sold a modest number of copies but has no reviews.

I'm reluctant to go the free route anymore at BookBub, but the price for paid books is pretty steep. Promoting a mystery that costs $1.99, for example, means a fee of $930. They promote it to 930,000 subscribers, but to break even I'd have to sell about 668 books. I have difficulty imagining that. On the other hand, a thriller priced at $1.99 would cost $660 with the promotion going to 820,000 subscribers.That would require 475 sales to break even. It might be worth a try.


Meanwhile, I'm trying something new to get multiple reviews. There's a site called Story Cartel where you pay a small fee and they put up a page for your book. Readers can click on a link and get a free copy in exchange for writing an honest review. It stays up for three weeks, during which Story Cartel promotes it, and the writer is urged to do the same. They say you can expect as many as 100 reviews from the promotion.

I put up Overture to Disaster a few days ago and am working to promote it in such places as Twitter, Facebook, and various listserves. If you'd like to try it free in exchange for an honest review, just click on this link.

Last Day Secret of the Scroll Is Free

Secret of the Scroll was ranked #1 in the Thriller Suspense category on Amazon this morning among free Kindle books. It ranked #16 in the Top 100 books category. If you'd like a free ebook, today is the last of my giveaway days.

As of this morning there had been about 7500 downloads, which I'm happy with after the late start because Amazon didn't list it as free until Thursday. According to many of my colleagues who have gone this route, I should expect a pickup in sales of all of my books over the next week or so. Since Secret is the first book in the series, if they like it there are four more to read.

There has been a lot of haranguing on the lists lately about giving books away that we labored so long and hard to produce. It's all a part of marketing. "Loss leaders" they're called in the retail business. You sell something way below its value to attract customers to your other products. I'll know if it works in the next week or so.

Meanwhile, back at the keyboard, I'm getting the final edits on The Poksu Conspiracy, book two in the Post Cold War thriller trilogy. Got a great cover from Stephen Walker, which I'll post in a few days after it's finalized.