<aside> 💡 Written by Sami Valentine, urban fantasy author. Find out more at samivalentine.com.
</aside>
Goal: Boost sales and pre-orders in the month before the third book's release using a 99 cent sale on books 1 and 2 as well as a free run on the prequel novelette.
Strategy: After the pure luck of getting a Bookbub International featured deal ($118 for Feb 25th), I arranged 40+ newsletter and social media swaps with SFF authors to run during the sale. I also have a $30 FB ad running along with a number of low budget AMS ads.
Challenge: .99 cent deals in Australia, Canada, and Indian require you to manually lower the royalties to 35% instead of doing a countdown deal like in the UK to keep the 70% royal. This royalty change is across the board. I didn't realize this and arranged to do the newsletter swaps promoting a sale to mostly US lists at the same time. I could have spread them out so I could get the US sale for 70% royalty. I also made a tactical error in putting book 2 in the sale because I could have recouped some of the lost royalties on book 1. This could have been more lucrative though I did earn back my expenditure. I found the bookbub and the newsletter swaps more effective than the ads.
Expenses:
Earnings between February 25 - 26, 2020**:**
(according to the beta KDP dashboard)
$75 on 25th
$110 on 26th
Units between February 25 - 26, 2020:
108 free ( all the prequel novelette)
396 paid