Cross-promotions

I have been participation in cross-promotion the last few months. I have been using the site StoryOrigin to distribute sample copies and ARC's of my work. I am not affiliated with them-they just have a good infrastructure in place. It is currently free, and that may change.

StoryOrigin is basically a way to connect with other authors to cross promote books to each other's readership. You upload your ARCs, review copies, or reader magnets for readers to download, and you can also integrate your mail host to collect new subscribers (if they opt in).

I have gained more subscribers to my weekly newsletter and received a few reviews. I have also given out several free copies and received no reviews-that's going to happen anywhere.

My goal is to have a network of authors working together to cross-promote our works through various avenues. We could do it through here, or on GRs.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/21744499-welcome-authors

Let me know what you think, or if you have any questions

Leon

I actually would really like to get a group of authors together to cross-promote. It has always seemed to me to be an intelligent way to lessen the difficulties of getting the word out when one is published independently.

For such a group to have much of a point, I would need authors whose audience would likely cross-over with mine. I would also need to feel comfortable with the quality of those other authors' products, or I would feel dishonest promoting them. (They would also have to feel comfortable with the quality of my own books, I assume.)

I actually have read several books by people I have met here, and my experience makes me feel that accomplishing those two goals would be fairly easy if my own dislike of making people feel excluded didn't get in my way. I know I can find independent authors out there whose books I like -- they aren't even all that rare. But if I start trying to form (and publicize) a group with them, how then do I deal with interested writers whose books seem to me to be not quite there yet? I think not wanting to be in a position where I have to tell someone, "I'm sorry, but you are not not welcome" is one of the reasons I haven't already tried to form such a group. ::rueful::

I also used to think it would be best if we were at least somewhat local to each other so we could do live events together. In the middle of an epidemic this seems less important than it did previously, but that used to be the another reason I never tried do this. And my last reason is that I always worry that my phobia of doing reviews and my frequent health crashes would prevent me from pulling my own weight in such a group.

But if someone could come up with a clever way to deal with problems one and three, I am totally interested. :)

I went over to the StoryOrigin page, BYW, and to be honest I found it a bit off-putting. It had a whole lot to say about what it can do, but hardly anything about HOW it does things. At any rate, signing up seemed to be something that really ought to wait until I'm a little more recovered, so I am keeping it in mind for later.

There are several platforms for cross promotion, StoryOrigin, BookFunnel, ProlificWorks, etc. Generally, they are self-service. You find other authors in your genre that want to promote your books in their newsletters, or you can join or create promos to reach reviewers, giveaway reader magnets, advertise sales or KU titles. The onus is on the contributors to share an as many platforms as they can.

I have had limited success in getting reviewers. Oh, I've given out plenty of review copies, but have yet to get more than 10% ROI.

I have increased my mailing list, and had more reads on my KU title by using it, so overall, I would say it is worth it.

I did set up a Goodreads group to address the many different genres : https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1128785-goodreads-authors-cross-promotion-n...

>2 LShelby:

I can confirm the usefulness of StoryOrigin ;) Grew my newsletter from 0 to 200 subscribers in about a month. Though the swaps have been very effective, I'm still skeptical about the promo groups.

Haven't tried getting reviews through them.

Kindle swaps have been less successful, but I suspect that has more to do with my blurb. Should have a new one up by tomorrow, so we'll see if that improves things.

>3 LeonStevens: "I have had limited success in getting reviewers."

As someone who abhors doing reviews, I guess I shouldn't find that strange, but I actually thought that most other people didn't have that particular hang-up.

I wonder if people are downloading the books but not actually reading them, and that's why there are no reviews?

>4 slarken: "I'm still skeptical about the promo groups."
From what was said by >3 LeonStevens: , it seems that people are responsible for getting their own groups together, and the site just provides tools for collaboration.

Under that circumstance, I would assume the effectiveness is all a matter of how good a group one ends up with.

What is a Kindle swap?

...

I am currently envisioning an "author partnering system" where authors sign up and make one of their books available as a free download to verified author members. They read other people's books and then check a little widget to say "yes this is an author I would be interested in cross-promoting with". And whenever two authors check each other, the system notifies them that it has found them a new partner. Then the system would encourage people to read books their partners are partnered with, in order to attempt to form larger and larger groups of associated authors.

For readers, they could look at a favorite author's profile to see which other authors they are partners with.

It could be fun and useful for authors and readers alike.

But I'm really, really good at coming up with cool but impractical to implement plans, so this is probably yet another pipe-dream.

Also, I think there needs to be a system in place where people have to read and respond to each free book before they get another free book.

Maybe I could combine this system with another of my pie-in-the-sky projects, a site that instead of reviewing books, it "describes" them. (Is the plot fast, slow, moderate, or disjointed, Is the mood dark, optimistic, somewhere in the middle, etc.) In order to download the next free book, you must fill out the survey on the one you already downloaded.

>5 LShelby: "Under that circumstance, I would assume the effectiveness is all a matter of how good a group one ends up with."

Not really. Because all end users see in the newsletter is a banner. So regardless of anything else, the graphics and text on that banner are what will make people click or not.

But the real issue I feel has more to do with the number of books in those groups. There are always too many, so it kind of dilutes the clicks.

So for instance, if I do a swap and get 12 clicks, all of those are seeing MY book and nothing else.

With a group, those 12 clicks end up on a page with 10, 20 or however many covers. Obviously, they're not gonna click on everything. So you might end up with only 1 or 2 clicks on your own book.

Thus, less effective than swaps.

Well, that's my impression so far anyway.

> "What is a Kindle swap?"

Oh, I just meant a regular newsletter swap but for a book that's available in KU (as opposed to a reader magnet, for instance).

Re: your "author partnering system"... that made me chuckle cause my first thought was "Tinder for Authors" LMAO. Swipe right if you like that cover, left if you don't haha.

I do like though your idea of requiring some form of feedback from readers before letting them get another free book. Having them "describe" it as you say is pretty cool, especially if it doesn't involve writing. Since people seem more comfortable rating than reviewing, I think something in between might work well. Something like a multiple choice questionnaire.

Fun!

>4 slarken: "Grew my newsletter from 0 to 200 subscribers in about a month." That's pretty good but is is quantity over quality? I routinely purge my subscriber list if they don't open 5 weekly emails in a row (I do send them an entertaining and polite final email). I want my subscribers to be interested in my writing journey in between my projects.

>5 LShelby: "I wonder if people are downloading the books but not actually reading them, and that's why there are no reviews?"
I asked about the % stats for reviews from one of the sites I am trying (for the 2nd time) and was told about 5-15% of downloaders will leave reviews. I know that they don't guarantee reviews, but from a site that promotes itself as a site connecting reviewers with authors, it is disappointing.

I think that the reality is is that people take advantage of it and are in it for the free books.

"I am currently envisioning an "author partnering system"..."
This is what the newsletter swaps are for. I have declined to work with some authors because I don't think they are a good fit with my subscribers. I also read at least the samples of an authors work so I can give my honest opinion.

I know that there is room for more author/reader platforms. There are new ones coming out all the time.

>6 slarken: "But the real issue I feel has more to do with the number of books in those groups. There are always too many, so it kind of dilutes the clicks."

I know that some authors create promo after promo, many running concurrently. I did have thought that the may be doing it for the affiliate clicks because if an author doesn't provide one, the creator gets 100% of the royalty.

"I do like though your idea of requiring some form of feedback from readers before..."
Hard to vet readers though, right?

Tinder for Authors. Ha! Binder? Typer?

>7 LeonStevens: "That's pretty good but is is quantity over quality?"

Well 200 is my total number (225 now). But not all of them make it into my main list (that one just went to 101).

I only keep in my main list those that open at least one of the mails in my welcome sequence (3 sent over a week). This technique has allowed me to maintain a ~73% open rate and ~32% click rate, which is better than a lot of the other ratios I'm seeing on Story Origin.

Since my list is only a month old, this is enough for now. But in a month or two, I'll likely do some additional pruning as there'd be no sense in keeping someone who's opened only 1 email out of 10 or however many I decide to go with, ha. Haven't really given this much thought yet, but will eventually.

"I know that some authors create promo after promo, many running concurrently. I did have thought that the may be doing it for the affiliate clicks because if an author doesn't provide one, the creator gets 100% of the royalty."

Aaaahhh... I hadn't thought about that. Good point. Hmm. I really need to look into this affiliate thing. I used to have one, not sure if it's still valid or compatible with books (I'd created it for something else entirely).

>8 slarken: " ~73% open rate and ~32% click rate" - This is excellent!

When I was creating my latest promo, I finally used mine(my affiliate tag), and then realized that may be why some authors are doing so many.

>5 LShelby:
Maybe I could combine this system with another of my pie-in-the-sky projects, a site that instead of reviewing books, it "describes" them. (Is the plot fast, slow, moderate, or disjointed, Is the mood dark, optimistic, somewhere in the middle, etc.)

Have you come across Storygraph? I only poked around briefly, but books are tagged with characteristics and somehow you get recommendations based on those tags. Though (afaik) it's not for freebie/review arrangements.

>10 MHThaung:
I hadn't, but naturally when I you mentioned it I went and looked it up.
I checked out the browse, and found myself wishing they had a section for "doesn't include the following moods." But it does seem to be sort of based on the sort of thing I was thinking about. (Only, alas, it doesn't do me as an author any good, because I don't know how to get added to the system.)

Besides I LIKE the idea of crowd-sourcing the data.

>7 LeonStevens: says that it's hard to vet readers, and with the StoryGraph system which is built around tags, there would be some point to mendaciously tagging a book with every single tag, so that it would show up in every single recommendation list. So it really does seem to be best as an "authoritative source only" system.

I had been envisioning a sliding scale Dark to Light, Fast to Slow, etc. Part of the reason to do it that way was so that there is no motive to lie, since no answer is "good" or "bad".

I also had an idea for another way to use the system. If you have the book survey/description set up, and the free downloads for authors set up, then you could use all that same code to run a Reader's Choice award. Participating authors would make their books available to everyone for a certain length of time, and would have to commit to acting as readers also, just not, obviously, of their own books, which is okay because the award would use an average score system rather than a "most votes" system. (Although possibly with a few elimination rounds. Then each book that makes the cut ought to accumulate more and more reader responses over time, as the eliminated books become unavailable, and so the "grading" would become more accurate over time.)

The basic idea is the readers read as many books as they want, as long as they fill out the survey for the previous one, and then sort the books that they read in a most-liked to least-liked order. Points would be awarded based on how many books are in the list, and where a book lands in the order. Part of the author commitment is to read books that are getting fewer downloads, so that all the books submitted to the contest are getting read by someone.

It seemed like a positive use for those people who just want free books, and don't actually review. :)

But I'm painfully good at coming up with these sorts of ideas. ::rueful::

The worst thing is that I know I could code it all. It's just a matter of how much time/energy it would cost me. Right now I can't even seem to keep up with discussions here on LibraryThing. :(

>11 LShelby: "Right now I can't even seem to keep up with discussions here on LibraryThing. :("

I've always been impressed with what you do keep up to on here.

>1 LeonStevens:
I've been wondering about this concept. Thanks for the links, I'll check them out.
>2 LShelby: re how then do I deal with interested writers whose books seem to me to be not quite there yet?
I was considering doing link exchanges with other space fiction SF (when my site is ready) by private invitation. Slow going I'm sure, but would avoid the rejection thing. Though I suppose one might start getting queries if your site was popular...I think an honest polite statement that their book isn't similar enough if style that the same readers would enjoy it kind of thing.

>13 WendyGamble: Doing exchanges with other authors makes sense because most readers don't just read one author, but as LShelby said, you want to make sure that the styles are compatible with your readership, but you don't want to be to narrow in your scope.

I've made a few connections through some of my poetry and Sci-fi promotions, and started to organize a more permanent arrangement for authors to post each others links on their websites, especially links to purchase directly from authors.

For some reason I am reminded that once upon a time there used to be this thing where websites would join up in "circles", and put little badges on their sites that would navigate to the next/previous site in the circle as well as linking to a circle homepage with a list of all the sites.

It was actually a fun way to explore what sites were out there on a similar theme, but the concept appears to have mostly died out. I think maybe because the circles started getting too big?

(I once contemplated this issue in regards to writer critique groups, and the concept I came up with was to have "interlocking" crit circles. Each participant is assigned to two small sub-groups. That way the entire group can grow and develop to any size, without any one crit circle growing too large, or the entire group becoming too fragmented, because each sub-group was always in contact with the others via shared members.)

Ordinary link exchanges have a similar issue. If there are too few of them, the readers check out all five links or whatever and then never come back again, because they've seen it all. If there are too many, there's no reason to have them listed at all -- if we want to look at an unmanageably long list of links, we can use a search engine.

But with a list of links its probably easier to just decide on a good number and stick to it. :)

Would twenty be about right as a goal?

...
It has just occurred to me that setting up a web-circle system for independent authors would be way more manageable a task than some of my other promotion schemes. Authors wanting to apply send a copy of one or more books to the moderator(s)) who look over the submission text and assign the author to a sub-group, and email back the html for the connection button.

Maybe send a list of possible sub-groups and let the author decide which one(s) they want to join?

Anyway, the coding would be minimal -- the biggest chore would be reading the submissions and assigning the matches. And if I fall behind on that task, everything that I've already set up can just keep running on its own regardless.

(I don't know if this makes sense to anyone, but I would feel more comfortable "matching" books than I would rating or recommending them.)

>15 LShelby: For some reason I am reminded that once upon a time there used to be this thing where websites would join up in "circles"

Oh, we're old. That's 1990s interwebs for sure.

>15 LShelby: For some reason I am reminded that once upon a time there used to be this thing where websites would join up in "circles"

>16 paradoxosalpha: Oh, we're old. That's 1990s interwebs for sure.

I remember those! I think they were called webrings - used to spend ages going round them, probably looking for gaming stuff. Those were the days indeed :)

Possibly they died out because of the rise of search engines (Yahoo, Google etc), so finding new sites via links wasn't so useful?

>15 LShelby: "...and put little badges on their sites...It was actually a fun way to explore what sites were out there on a similar theme, but the concept appears to have mostly died out."

Did they? #hashtags?

>3 LeonStevens: Hi I have been inactive on LT for over a year but I'm back now. Yes, I'm on Bookfunnel and SO and yes, I am looking for authors to cross promote with / newsletter swaps. I'll check out your group on GR

>3 LeonStevens: Hey, I tried to join your group but I'm getting an error message to set my age... which I have already done on my settings... any idea why I'm not allowed?

>20 Nadishka: I'll check it out.

>20 Nadishka: I'll check it out.

Try here:

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1128785-goodreads-authors-cross-promotion-n...

I've authored a couple published works, and have a big one in the oven, but firstly I am a reviewer. I really enjoy reviewing books for authors. As both a reviewer and an author, though, I can see both sides of the story.

If I can't make it through a book, or I read it and hate it or maybe it's just not my cup of tea, I have a problem. I can either write a very bad review, or I can email the author and explain why I can't review it (awkward), or I can just forget about the review. Usually I'll just put my bad review up, because I promised to do so, but sometimes I've resorted to the other options. Long story short, sometimes when reviewers don't put up their reviews, it's because they either couldn't finish or didn't like the book. Other times, the "reviewers" are in it for the free books, which is wrong.

Y'all might want to check out AXP, Author Cross Promotion. It's a really good website that might be what you're looking for. And reviewers have any further books they request locked until they review what they have.

Oh, and I REALLY don't like StoryOrigin. Authors have tried to send me review copies through there, and not once was I able to download it or view it. It always resulted in a blank, perpetually loading page that never came up. Maybe it doesn't like my browsers, or maybe the website is too graphic. All I know is it never worked for me.

>23 SDaisy: The owner of StoryOrigin is pretty responsive to feedback. I started with SO and then added Bookfunnel to my platforms. BookFunnel has been around longer and both have pros/cons.

"And reviewers have any further books they request locked until they review what they have."

That's a good system.

>24 LeonStevens: "BookFunnel has been around longer than StoryOrigin and both have pros/cons."

So, um, what are those pros and cons exactly?
Did you ever check out AXP?

...I do like it when reviewers who are getting free books are required to exhibit some kind of responsibility, but as someone who can't even stand to post reviews at all I totally sympathize with SDaisy saying "If I can't stand to finish the book, then I have a problem".

I was thinking myself, that in such a system reviewers should be allowed a certain percentage of "pass" votes as long as they come in and fill out a pass form explaining why, to prove that they aren't just blowing the matter off.

I think I looked at AXP at one time. I don't remember why I choose not to use it.

I started with SO first because it was free during its beta testing and got a good deal when it launched as a paid service.

- you can see a reader's review history and deny a review request if the stats are not to your liking
- It now has a beta reader function which I have yet to try out.
-You can search for individual authors and see what their newsletter readership and click rate is
- You can tie your Amazon Affiliate tags to promotions that you organize and the royalty is split 50/50 with the authors who sign up. I think there are some authors who try to take advantage of this by creating as many promos as they can, so sometimes there can be too many going on at once.

BookFunnel is newer to me so I probably haven't taken full advantage of all functions.

- BF has been around longer and has more authors to choose from
- I pay a bit more for BF, but I don't get email integration, which is extra. That means I have to manually export anyone who signs up. With SO, that's included.

There may be more, but with anything there is a learning curve and it takes time to explore all the functions.

Both platforms have expanded my email subscriber list, but it's hard to say definitively if any of those subscribers have become buyers.

>26 LeonStevens:"Both platforms have expanded my email subscriber list, but it's hard to say definitively if any of those subscribers have become buyers."

But did your sales go up after you joined? Because in my experience sales tend to decrease over time, unless you do something new to grab some more eyeballs. So if you get active on one of these sites and there's an upward tick in sales, it's a pretty good bet it was helpful. If there's no upward tick, then not.

...Although, if you are doing other things at the same time, it might be harder to figure out which ones are beneficial, and which aren't.

And I admit to having a couple phantom bumps, where I suddenly got a scattering of sales when I didn't think I had done anything. They weren't as big as the clear and obvious bumps I got from two of my reviews, though. (But not the rest of the reviews, proving that not all reviews are created equal.)

>27 LShelby: ""But did your sales go up after you joined? "

Marginally, but more than when I tried BookBub and Amazon ads. I think the main benefit is the networking aspect.

I could spend $10/month on ads with no sales, or use that money to develop relationships with similar genre authors and get you book noticed by a new group of readers.

"...sales tend to decrease over time, unless you do something new..."

Yeah. It's a constant endeavor.

Running multiple promos at the same time does make it difficult to track sales.

>28 LeonStevens:
"I could spend $10/month on ads with no sales, or use that money to develop relationships with similar genre authors and get you book noticed by a new group of readers."

I would probably choose to create a relationship with another author over running ads myself. But I'm not sure why I need to pay money to do so. Relationships are paid for with effort and attention, surely?

Maybe I'm just being naive.

Mostly I guess I'm afraid that I still would need the effort and attention, and that I'd pay my money, and then have my health crash and my money would be wasted. :(

But I still think it's a good idea, and something I would love to try if my health gets a bit more reliable.
(It's been a bad few years, but I used to be much more consistant, and I see no reason to believe I can't get back to that again.) :)