Managing Promotional Loops
I have been published three months now and I’m still feeling my way around the promotion end. This summer, I’ve been trying out different email loops that promote books. That can be extremely overwhelming (sometimes 500 posts a day on all the loops combined!) So I’m working out a system.First, I joined this yahoo loop: Promotion Loop Schedule. This group sends daily reminders of which loops accept excerpts and other promo and on which days.
There are a LOT of loops. And you have to join them. And sometimes you have to tell them why you’re joining. And they all have different rules. However, some of them have databases where you can upload excerpts and book covers and links to your websites. Some of them have author days where you can promote yourself, or get together with friends. So far I’ve only done this on publisher days because I’m shy ;)
Then I got my royalty statements and figured I needed to do some more promoting. I looked at the rules for the different loops again and made myself a chart about which loops take excerpts which days. My chart looks like this:
What I need to do next is figure out which excerpts to post when, so I’m not being TOO repetitive. I have three excerpts for each book, a romantic one, a sexual tension one and an action one. My books are fairly long. I probably will only have two excerpts for my Wayback Rodeo book.
If you’d like a copy of my chart, you can get it here: Weekly Promo Chart.
And if you have any suggestions on how to improve it, I would love to hear!
Labels: book promotion
posted by MJFredrick @ 4:40 AM
12 Comments:
Thank you for this post. Quite frankly, I had no idea any of this even existed.
So these loops are made up of authors and readers?
Thank you so much for this entire month of information, WNP. I may not need it yet, but at least I'll know where to go when I do! :)
You'll need it soon, my Passion's Slaves friend! Gillian has written one funny, sexy, poignant Regency historical, ladies.
I didn't know any of this existed either. I have learned so much from the Posse!
I wonder if people realize just how much hard work this author gig is?
Well, I've been published since 2004 and I didn't know of these either! Thanks for the info, Mary!!!
Good post. Your spreadsheet beats my little piece of paper tucked into a sheet holder on my desk. Actually, I think someone in one of my groups actually did a huge spreadsheet which I have somewhere...if I'd bother to find it.
One "problem" I find with these loops is that they're cumbersome. I've moved to Digest mode to cut down on traffic. But then, people don't trim posts, so you have to wade through screens and screens.
Also, you see the same posts on all the loops. And just yesterday, An Alternative Read had a publisher day, but as I've found after doing this for at least a year, 95% of the people are other authors, not readers. Yet it sucked several hours away from my writing time.
I've really cut back on my loop presence because it's such a time suck. I also find that I rarely read the other excerpts unless they're short and formatted well on my screen, and are of a genre I'd be interested in.
That brings me to what genres the people on these lists seem to prefer, and it really appears that erotica is the biggie for e-books on a lot of the sites.
I'd love to get more feedback from people who have found this to be a viable marketing tool, because it's labor and time intensive, even when you're organized.
OMG, Mary, this is GOLD!
This is the kind of info people pay for.
Great info, Mary. Maybe it's just me, but the link for the Promotion Loop didn't work.
Wow, you're organized!
Trish - I think it was just you, because it worked fine for me (both the link to the loop and the one to the actual spreadsheet). Maybe you could try a different browser.
Mary - Thanks for a tremendously useful post. and for being so generous as to share the spreadsheet. This will save me *hours* of charting.
See you on the loops!
Thanks, Mary. You've done a lot of hard work here. This is all good to know. Thanks for sharing!
Wow, I'm so glad you all found this helpful! I admit, I'm a bit like Terry, wondering if it pays off. One of my chapter sisters swears it's how she built her readership, and she sells like wildfire. Still, it's a huge time investment. I thought since I'm on summer vacation, I'd give it a shot, but I'm still pretty overwhelmed.
I should have known somebody would get this organized! Thanks Mary! I can really use this!
Mary -
As I said, I'll be curious to see if you think you're getting good results.
Also, another caveat -- there are loops who schedule author and/or promo days on their regular "OK to post promos" days, and that's one more thing to check, because you don't want to step on toes.
Frankly, I don't understand why they have to do this, but it happens all too often, so make sure you'll be welcome (which means going over to the main site and often it's calendar) to make sure it's still an open promo deal.
Did you have Romance Excerpts only on your list? No chit-chat, only posting of excerpts, but I can't say that I'm aware of any traffic based on my posts, or if people actually go to their files and read them.
Wow! I'm totally impressed. Thanks for sharing, Mary!
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