The first thing I’m doing is looking for all the free promos I can. For me, this means reviewers first. This is a Book Marketing 101 tip you will read in just about every marketing article you read: Reviews sell books.
Reviewers sell more books. Why? Because most of them aren’t simply dropping a review on Amazon or Goodreads. They are sharing on their blogs and their social media. They’re spreading the word, which is a lot less complicated than trying to figure out how reviews impact Amazon algorithms to get your book visible.
I found a list on Reedsy of book reviewers and looked at every single site that accepts Indie authors. I submitted to every site that was still accepting submissions and listed YA or fantasy as genres they accept. Of the 248 review sites listed, 207 are listed as accepting Indie Authors. Of that list, I submitted to 29.
And heard back from five. Four said yes. (I do appreciate the one who replied back with a decline though - not every book is going to be a reviewer's cup of tea and taking the time to give a response was very thoughtful given how many requests reviewers get.)
Four out of 29 is still awesome, in my book. Then why did I put it like that? Because of one simple phrase: Return of Investment. ROI is something you’ll see me use a lot in these posts.
“But Mara, all these sites you submitted to are free. How does Return of Investment apply?”
Just because you don’t spend money, that doesn’t mean there is no investment on your part. You’re still investing your time and maybe even your emotions in everything you do with your books. You have to measure the value of your time and emotions against the successes. It took me weeks to comb through this lost, submitting as I go. I’m not pinning my hopes on getting positive responses, so there’s not much of an emotional investment for me. At this stage in my writing career, I am happy with my 6 newsletter subscribers and two purchases on Amazon. Anything else is just a bonus.
It did take up a lot of time, but I’m good with that because I had four positive responses. That means four new people either agreeing to promote my book or read it. With my expectations, that’s a win. If you’re setting your hopes on becoming a best seller overnight, this will probably be a source of discouragement for you. (To that end, I beg you to reframe your thinking so that you can stick to this journey for the long haul)
Now one thing I will say is proving to not be worth the time or clogging of my Facebook feed is review groups. Maybe I’m not in the right ones, but I see a lot of posts by authors and not a lot of engagement from reviewers. I’m not going to list the ones I’ve tried because the intention is good, but I’m just not seeing the delivery on any of the posts.
I’m not running a promotion with a timeline right now, so these promos/reviews don’t have deadlines. I can’t tell you if I will see more sales because of them until they get around to mine (and it was a “no pressure” review request, so that could be two years from now and that’s cool). But I do know that one more review or post about my book is probably not going to hurt my sales and I did it all with no money.
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