Amazon book campaigns

Has anyone here done an Amazon bestseller campaign where you get all kinds of celebrities with big lists to email their list on your behalf in return for the celebrities supplying gifts that will be downloaded?

If you have, did this work well for you? 

I helped organize bestseller campaigns with several of my editing clients. The results on Amazon were mixed--one person did very well, but he was already a celebrity in his field and thus had no trouble getting other celebrities to email on his behalf. He achieved good sales because the emails had gone out to over 2 million people. But most authors, particularly first-time authors, are not that well connected. 

The others' success was more modest. One author got an increase in sales that lasted a couple of days; another didn't get significant sales but did get some good reviews on Amazon as a result of people looking at the "inside the book" part of Amazon's listings, and two others got no significant increase in sales. 

If you have tried this, what has been the result for you? Would you advise authors to do it? Would you do it again?

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  • Hi Jeff,

    Re your FB comment: This site serves a very different purpose from Facebook, at least for me.  What you and Deborah have created here is a fantastic opportunity for writers, agents and editors to not only share invaluable information but to engage in significant conversations about topics that will never be discussed on Facebook---at least not in any meaningful way.  The reality is that all of us who have events, books, radio shows and other things to promote use FB to do so, along with engaging in 'sound bite' connections with our family and friends. We don't do that here, nor should we.  I, for one, am very grateful that this site is an effective way to 'meet' others beyond my Facebook friends.  And if we want to get to know someone we've 'met' here on a more personal level, FB seems to be a logical way to do that. To me, effective networking is done many places and in many ways. So these two sites seem to complement, not compete with, each other.  But having said all that, feel free to remove my comment if you'd rather not have it as part of this discussion.

    You should know, however, that Facebook has been the main way I ( and many others, I suspect) promote WAE Network. I can't tell you how many times I've posted links to some of our discussions here to my FB closed group of women writers, causing many of them to also join WAE Network. Thanks!  Mary

    • Mary, Thanks. You're right; it's a different party. Jeff

    • Jeff, I agree with Mary. FB is a different kettle of fish. The WAE network you have created is wonderful...it's a phenomenal opportunity for writers, editors, agents, and readers to have intelligent and indepth (and sometimes heated) REAL conversations with each other. I am really grateful that you created this opportunity.

    • Thanks for the reaffirmation. We aim to please.

  • Hey. Facebook is already close to owning the planet. Don't leave us boutique sites that want to keep it real and non-exploitative, and please don't invite others to do so. 

  • Thanks for clarifying, Sharon. I should think if I were such a celebrity, instead of giving up on the concept all together, I would then be more critical about which promotions I accept, which would then result in choosing books that are more targeted to that audience.

    I'm a fan of Wil Wheaton, and I sometimes wonder how much, if any, of the products he talks about on social media and uses on his shows are product placement. But because only ever talks about geeky stuff like comics and board games, it would be hard to guess which endorsements are paid and which aren't.

  • PS  meant to say on Facebook. I certainly welcome others who'd like to connect there too.. I'm at https://www.facebook.com/mtokeefe

    Mary T O'Keefe
    Mary T O'Keefe is on Facebook. Join Facebook to connect with Mary T O'Keefe and others you may know. Facebook gives people the power to share and mak…
  • Well said, Sharon! I agree heartily with everything you say here, especially about not paying for the 'upgrades' etc on teleseminars and other expensive promotions aimed at writers.  But the free stuff indeed can be helpful, especially when you discern which 'experts' (and yes, there are some very good ones on the upcoming calls) are worth our time. Because as writers, we also must be careful about spending too much time on activities that don't really help us. In my case, some of them enable my tendency to procrastinate instead of writing!

    By the way, I just sent you a friend request in case you'd like to see some of the campaigns I help promote and to keep in touch about our respective work.

  • Karma, the people who get the money are the marketing companies organizing the campaigns. What the celebrities get is hopefully more people to add to their lists; it's a way for them to get free marketing for their own stuff at the author's expense. 

    The idea that the effectiveness of the campaign could be tied to its relevance to a celebrity's mailing list is only partially true. In the early days of campaigns, celebrities' list  members were more likely to click through on the book being promoted, but as these types of campaigns have become as ubiquitous as dandelions, celebrities' lists now get multiple mailings from the celebrity, all promoting some book or other. The result is that list members get fatigued with getting all the emails from the celeb about all kinds of books and thus they start ignoring the book promotion emails altogether. I have interviewed a couple of big celebrities who were being part of book promotions and who stopped participating because they were getting angry emails from their list members asking them to stop spamming them with book promotions. They also found that people were beginning to unsubscribe from their lists. Of the celebs who keep doing this, they are well aware that only a small fraction of their list will actually read the book promo marketing copy and even fewer will click though on the link. 

  • Sharon, I'm not sure if it's worth spending all that money on the book campaign--probably not! You'd have to sell tons of books (especially if you are with a traditional publisher and only getting $1/book!)  to make this worth it. From what I've seen,  unless you are a celebrity, even if you get to the top 100 on Amazon, sales will quickly drop.  So, I'd have to say it probably isn't worth the money if it costs that much.. which is what I've been told it does cost by one of the companies doing this type of promotion.

    My response above was in regards to helping others who have spent that money by promoting their book launch, not mine.  So I'm going to monitor those book launches over the next 6 months to see if, in fact, each of those authors did get to become an Amazon bestselling author and how their books fare over time. I checked on one (for Henry Grayson, who I'd never heard of before this) I helped promote two weeks ago and his book  was at 5,600 three days after the launch, but I didn't check the actual day as I was just too busy.  Today it's at over 76,000.. so dropping fast!

    Here's a link to a program that sounds like it might help all of us with this whole publishing /marketing process. It's one of those that you can listen to free and download within 24 hours unless you want to pay and upgrade, which includes a contest with some wonderful prizes for those of us seeking publishers, etc. I signed up as I always get some good info from these teleseminars.  http://transformationalauthor.com/

    This info came from Steve Harrison via his Reporter connection newsletter, which lets us know about PR /media sources seeking interviews..  You might want to sign up for his newsletter as he does have some good seminars: http://www.reporterconnection.com/

    Hope this helps!

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