Good News/Bad News - Book Promo Results

From August 17th through the 22nd, 2016, I ran an Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal for my epic fantasy novel Mirrors & Mist (Book II of the Oxbow Kingdom Trilogy). I discounted the e-book from $2.99 to $0.99 for the entire 5-day promotional period.

Since I had success with BKnights previously, I decided to use them again, and also expand my marketing to a few more book promotion advertisers. I invested $100 in three sites; BKnights (via Fiverr) ($10), Booksbutterfly ($50), and Bargain Booksy ($40).

Now that the results of my e-book sale promotion are in, I've got some good news and some bad news.

The Good:

• I sold 34 ebooks (24 of Mirrors & Mist and 10 of Crimson & Cream at regular price), which was my best 5-day sales period ever.
• My Amazon author rank reached it's highest rating ever.
• Both Mirrors & Mist and Crimson & Cream reached their highest position on the Amazon Bestseller Rank.

The Bad:

• I didn't break even on the promotion, as my sale revenue fell short of the amount I spent on advertising (I lost approximately $60).
• I didn't stagger the days I advertised, and hence, can't really evaluate how each of the three promotional sites performed on their own.
• My first day of promotion on BKnights listed Mirrors & Mist at the regular price instead of the discount price. It turns out that this was my fault, because BKnights requires all books to be discounted by 8 a.m. Eastern time, since that's when they pull their data from Amazon. However, my promotion didn't start until 8 a.m. Pacific time. BKnights was kind enough to run the book the next day at the discounted price.

Lessons Learned:

• Read the promo specifics and make sure the start times match with your Kindle promo start times.
• Use only one promo per Countdown day if you want to quantify the results for that specific promo vendor.