Well, the holiday season is in full swing and all of us here at Grant Scotland Enterprises are full of good cheer, not to mention copious amounts of scotch! But we’re not just celebrating the annual month-long feeding frenzy of consumerism nor the yearly visit of a conspicuously overweight Aelfan man of notoriously unstable temperament and questionable judgement nor even the secret pagan rites of the Winter Solstice festival.
No!
I mean, yes. All of that, of course. But also, no!
We are chiefly celebrating – and we’re really excited about this – our first Grant Scotland T-Shirt recipient! That’s right, ladies and gents! We have a winner! A verified winner! Someone who has actually succeeded at something! Right here in our very presence! Can you believe it?
But let me back up a second, if you don’t mind. We’ll bring our lucky contestant out later so we can gaze in admiration and swoon with adoration. First things first, though. Let’s talk business.
I just recently finished my first promotion of the holiday season and I wish I could say that everything went super terrific. In fact, it was just the opposite of that. What would that be, anyway? Unexceptionally inferior? Insignificantly awful? Ordinarily bad?
Ordinarily bad sounds about right. It has a certain sad-sack tone to it.
What is the sound of one clown crying?
Anyway, I had decided on marching my promotion efforts sequentially through each Grant Scotland novel as the holiday season progresses, so I began with Spy for a Dead Empire. I bought advertising space on two ebook advertiser’s websites and newsletters during the first two days of a Kindle Countdown Deal. For those who aren’t familiar, a Kindle Countdown deal is a week long period of price-reduction (either graduated or not) where the publisher (me, in this case) signs his book up for participation in the 90-day Kindle Select program (which means Kindle Unlimited subscribers can borrow it and I get a little bit of money from borrowed pages read) and Amazon allows some additional internal promotional options. That may be a little much to take in all at once, but essentially it’s a deal with Amazon where I publish with them exclusively for a time and in exchange they help promote my book.
So, my Countdown Deal days were from November 23rd to the 30th. I tapped Booksends to run an ad on 11/23 and Booktastic on the 24th. Concurrently, I gave Amazon a budget of $100 to run pay-per-click ads on their site (you may have heard of it) for the period of 11/23 to 12/7. Let’s see the breakdown and the results:
Countdown Deal: Discount Spy for a Dead Empire @ $0.99 from 11/23 up to 11/27 and @$1.99 from 11/27 to 11/30.
Booksends newsletter ad space for 11/23 – $25 + $10 for EReader IQ partner newsletter
Booktastik newsletter ad space for 11/24 – $10
Facebook community page promotional post boost for two days starting 11/23 – $5
Amazon pay-per-click ad campaign 11/22 – 12/7 – $0 to $100 depending on results. Actual result was $75.56
Total marketing expense: $125.56
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And lets take a look at those sales from 11/23 to 12/7:
Spy for a Dead Empire Amazon sales: 12 copies @ $0.99, 2 @ $1.99
Spy for a Troubled King sales: 0 copies @$3.99
Spy for a Wayward Daughter: 0 copies @$3.99
Spy for a Dead Empire borrowed pages read: 882
Spy for a Troubled King borrowed pages read: 271
Spy for a Wayward Daughter borrowed pages read: 1 (for real?)
Total Sales: $16
Royalties from borrowed pages read: (roughly one-half cent per page) $5.77
Amazon pay-per-click stats:
Impressions: 104,519
Clicks: 95
Average Cost Per Click (aPCC): $0.80
Detail Page View: 103
Estimated Total Sales: (Resulting from same user clicking the ad and then buying) $7.96
Gross income (not adjusted for Amazon’s 30% cut on sales): $21.77
Net: -$103.79
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YIKES! That’s awful! And highly unsustainable. What really did me in was the pay-per-click. I definitely was too competitive on that. An $0.80 cost-per-click is ridiculous. Maybe I’ll tone that down for Troubled King’s holiday promo. We’ll see.
The sales were so dismal that I don’t feel like including the daily counts. Most happened on the first day and then the rest happened sporadically, probably mostly attributed to Amazon’s click ad. Booktastic was notably horrible. Maybe resulted in one sale. Maybe.
Well, I don’t have to guess what my financial adviser has to say about this…
“When I’m president, remind me to deport you. Now, show me this winner you mentioned. I only want to talk to winners.”
Ah, yes! To the good news! The first week of our Grant Scotland T-Shirt giveaway is completed and the winner is….
JOSH PHELAN! That’s right! Josh Phelan is a WINNER!
He’s actually wearing a Grant Scotland T-Shirt underneath his suit.
Congratulations, Josh!
I’ll shortly be contacting Josh via my fancy-shmancy newsletter (Sign up now and don’t miss next week’s giveaway!) to get his size and address. Soon he will be receiving his short-sleeved shirt just in time for winter.
I know, I know. Someday I’ll figure out how to schedule things appropriately… but it is not this day!!!
So long everyone! Tip your driver and review a book! Alternatively, you could tip a writer and review a driver, but we’re not equipped for that here.
This Tone of Voice 