Everyday Monsters Kindle Scout campaign - Day 12

Day 12 was a huuuuuge improvement in my numbers! I got 93 page views (the most I've had so far) and 4 hours back on the Hot & Trending list!

How, you ask? By going to a family party armed with my phone, my husband's phone and the direct link to the page. We both asked everyone (including our brother in law's family and their friends) to go to the page and nominate EM while one of us was standing there. And then I started going through the whole contact list on my phone texting people directly and asking them to do it too. I think this really paid off, as we got sooo many page views and one friend texted back saying that he got 6 of HIS friends to nominate the book too, and one person was badgering him about how to get a copy to read now. Not when it goes on sale in several weeks, but where to buy it NOW. So I emailed her a free copy this morning and asked her to let me know what she thinks and to please leave a review when she can. I'm super excited about this. As of right now, it's 11:00 AM CST and Everyday Monsters is still on the H&T list, so that's 12 more hours on the graph. 

Woo hoo! Here are the screen shots for your viewing pleasure. 

Everyday Monsters Kindle Scout Campaign - Days 8 - 11 and end of the Facebook ad

There's not a whole lot to report for the Scout campaign for days 8-11 because I lad literally 0 (yeah, ZERO) hours on the Hot & Trending list all four days. The total page views for all four days was only 66, and the lowest day was day 11 with 5 views. Yep, FIVE.

My Facebook ad wrapped up on September 3, which was Day 10 of the campaign, so clearly that didn't help out very much. I think I'm going to run a Fiverr ad next to see how that goes, but I wouldn't recommend running a Facebook ad for a Scout campaign again. I don't know if it's because I wasn't actually selling the book, or if more people respond to something with a price tag instead of a call to action like nominating something, or if a lot of people didn't feel like putting in their Amazon accounts or what. I would not personally consider this a $10.00 well spent. The only thing I feel like I got out of it was 3 page views on the Scout campaign (but I have no idea if they nominated it or not - Amazon doesn't give me that statistic) and 1 person liked my Facebook author page. I invited all of the people that clicked "like" on the ad, but only 1 responded out of 25.

Here is the final screenshot of the ad, showing that it reached 953 people with 24 post likes, 1 author page like and 3 link clicks to go to the Scout page. So, worth it? I don't really think so for these purposes. I'll definitely try again after the book goes up for sale and I have reviews on it, though. I think it will be more effective then.

 

Here are the dreaded screenshots showing my crappy page view and H&T hour numbers for the last 4 days. It can only go up from here, right?

Everyday Monsters Kindle Scout Campaign - Day 7

Well, it looks like the campaign is losing momentum on Day 7. We only had 2 hours on the Hot & Trending List, and 10 page views. Spamming is losing its effectiveness lol, and I honestly haven't been doing much else to promote it in the last day. I'm trying to see how well the Facebook ad is working to drive new readers / page clicks to the Scout page, but it doesn't look like it's working.

Everyday Monsters Kindle Scout Campaign - Day 6

We are still going strong on Day 6 of the Scout campaign. My Facebook ad is still running, but it doesn't look like many people are actually clicking on it to go to the Scout page, so that kind of stinks.

Today's totals were 32 views and 9 hours on the Hot & Trending list, which is pretty awesome. I think we are still riding the wave of husband's texting campaign to get more nominations, so a big thanks to him!

Everyday Monsters Kindle Scout Campaign - Day 5

Day 5 went much better than day 4! I got 27 page views, but that translated to 11 hours on the Hot & Trending list, so my math of 3 nominations per hour on the H&T is shot, but I'm thrilled to be proven wrong lol.

I can attribute about 90% of my success today to my fabulous husband. He got on his phone and told several friends and family members that don't have Facebook to nominate the book, and texted the link to them, then made them verify once they'd nominated. Yay! Go husband :-) He's the best.

Other great news is that as of writing this post, Everyday Monsters is STILL on the H&T list, so apparently the momentum that he built up for me has brought it enough visibility to keep itself on the list with organic nominations / views, which is thrilling.

My Facebook ad is still being pretty crappy, unless it's working some kind of magic in ways that can't be measured. So far, 276 people have been "reached" (whatever that means - probably that they just scrolled by and it counted as a view) and 4 people have liked the post. I'm starting to wonder if people like the boosted post on my page, if that will show as more likes on the ad and then peoiple might engage more? Because no one wants to be the only person sticking their neck out to like something new. No one wants to be first, basically. I'll have to ask for volunteers to experiment on it. If anyone reading this wants to try it out, please go to my page and click like and comment on the post pictured below. I'd appreciate it!

So, here are the graphs from yesterday's data. Here's to hoping the upswing continues :-)

Everyday Monsters Kindle Scout Campaign - Day 4

My numbers for Day 4 were a little disappointing, to be sure, but I guess every campaign has those days. I have high hopes that it will get better, as the farther along my book ages, the higher more readily visible it will be on the categories lists, instead of having to scroll over 3-5 times to find it.

My numbers for yesterday were: 0 hours on the Hot & Trending list (*cries* I know, I know. There's always tomorrow.) 23 total views.

I guess none of those views translated to nominations and that is why I didn't get on the H&T list at all? I'm still trying to figure out the threshold for getting onto the H&T list, and I think it's 3 nominations per hour, maybe? I'm basing that off of the least amount of page views over H&T hours that I've had so far, and that was 21 page views for 7 hours on the H&T on Day 3. But I suppose only time will tell if that's actually accurate or not.

My ad on Facebook didn't do that well yesterday, which I chalk up to people having things to do on a Saturday. It hasn't reached many people yet, but it's supposed to run for a whole week, so hopefully it will gain traction as time goes on. I'm not thrilled with it yet, since only 1 person has even liked it and no one has clicked through to my author page OR the Kindle Scout page, but we will see if the $10 ends up being worth it in the end. As of right now, I'd say no, but we're only on the second day of it running or so.

Without further ado, here are the KS statistics screenshots for you to pore over even half as much as I have.

Everyday Monsters Kindle Scout Campaign Day 3

Good morning everyone, it looks like Everyday Monsters had an okay day yesterday, but I'm starting to get a little confused as to how a book gets onto the Hot & Trending list.

The reason I'm confused is because Everyday Monsters was on the list for 7 hours yesterday, but I only got 21 page views, total. But on Day 1, I got 86 page views and was only on for the last 4 hours of the day... So I'm assuming that means that during the hours that people are viewing the campaign page at a very high rate, is when books get on H&T.

But I'm wondering what that rate is, if I got on it for 7 hours with only 21 page views for the whole day. That's only 3 page views per hour. I have no idea how many nominations those page views resulted in, since I can't see that information, but even if all 21 views were unique nominations, that doesn't seem like a lot per hour. I don't know. Anyway, on to this morning's graphs that show yesterday's activity.

I'm up  to 171 page views overall, and 34 hours in the Hot & Trending list. I'm pretty happy with these results since I haven't actually paid for any promo, and am just now widening my efforts to Google+.

Facebook continues to be my biggest contributor of traffic, so I'll keep focusing there. I'm in a LOT of groups on Facebook, from geeky mama groups to reading groups to all sorts of stuff. I love modern technology and how it puts people in direct contact with so many others. I suppose Twitter does the same thing, but I think I have 1 or 2 followers, so I haven't even really touched that platform yet. We'll see how that one goes too. 

As always, if you haven't nominated Everyday Monsters, please go here to the Scout page and do so! Every single page view and nomination count, and if you're feeling super nice, please go nominate my friend +Jack McDonald Burnett's book, Pauper here. It has 5 days left in its campaign, so its on the home stretch.  

Thanks everyone!

Everyday Monsters Kindle Scout Campaign - Day 2

Good morning everyone! It looks like yesterday was a pretty great day for Everyday Monsters on the Scout page, as we are up to 150 page views as of midnight (Eastern time) and it was on the Hot & Trending list almost ALL DAY!

23 out of 24 hours were Hot & Trending! Woo hoo! It's so exciting.

So what did I do yesterday to promote for today? Not really that much. I dropped the link onto a few posts on my romance forum (which I've joined for future projects and because I love the genre), and promoted the blog post from yesterday. I haven't paid for anything yet, but that's ok. I'm thinking about boosting a Facebook post per week, since most of my traffic seems to come from there. I modified my forum signature to include my Kindle Scout page in a few places hoping for some organic traffic as people see it every time I post, and hopefully that helps.

Anyway, hope everyone has a great day and I'll be back to update you in the morning! Thanks for following along, and go to https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1FOJ1LNEIT23R to nominate the book!

Everyday Monsters Kindle Scout Campaign - Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of my book, Everyday Monster's Kindle Scout campaign, (to nominate the book go HERE!!) and I can see how this could get pretty addictive, yet nerve-wracking. It helps to have really no idea whatsoever how the Kindle Scout team selects books, aside from actually reading them and deciding from there. I've done the best I could on Everyday Monsters before submitting it, so I'm not really stressing the stats, at least on day 1.

My total stats for yesterday are 86 total campaign page views (40% of which came from external links and 60% came from the Kindle Scout page itself), and 4 hours on the Hot & Trending list. All of the stats are updated 1 day at a time, 1 day behind, so although today is day 2 of the campaign, I won't see any information from today's activity until tomorrow morning. Which is fine.

The only thing I wish I knew was how many people actually nominated it yesterday, as several of my Facebook friends said that they clicked the magic button. But I don't see a spot for that, so I'll have to ask around and see if I can access that information in another way. I know a lot of other authors get a lot better numbers on the Hot & Trending page for multiple days in a row, but I have no idea how most of them do on Day 1. I've gotten several compliments on my cover so far though, so that's reassuring. 

Ahh, marketing. Yesterday I put my link up on my personal Facebook page, my author page and several groups that I'm part of. One of them is a women's-empowerment make-up and beauty group (because trust me, I need all of the help I can get. These wonderful ladies helped me choose my author profile picture out of several option that I loved from a photoshoot by Lily June Photography here in Houston).  Like 10 of these ladies said that they nominated it for me, so a big THANK YOU to them. I also shared it on a geeky page just for moms, and several of my friends shared it on their personal pages as well, for which I also owe them a big THANKS!!!

So I didn't do much right out of the gate, but I'm really excited to see that as of 8:30 am CST it's still listed on the Scout website as "Hot" - woo hoo! This is super exciting for me. I plan to book something on Fiverr in the next few days to try to keep the momentum going, and of course keep sharing on Facebook and Google+ next. I'll probably do Google + today, but I didn't want to exhaust my meager list of contacts right out of the gate. I've read several times that this 30 day campaign is a marathon - not a sprint - and to pace yourself accordingly. 

Thanks for reading, and I hope I have more great news tomorrow! 

Everyday Monsters Cover Reveal

Three..... 

Two.....

One....

Ta-da!

It's so pretty. I got it from an awesome cover designer on Fiverr, of all places. The first designer that I had originally bought a custom cover from for this book had a meltdown and basically quit on me. So, ladies and gentlemen, always use professionals that you can actually leave reviews for and rate their work with a real organization, not just a random "designer" that you found on Facebook. No matter how awesome their back catalog looks. 

Kindle Scout Submission and Campaign Approval

I did it. I finally did it, and I'm so unbelievably excited.

I submitted my book, Everyday Monsters to Kindle Scout, and got my campaign approval email from them.

I'm so incredibly nervous.

For anyone that doesn't know what the program is or how it works, the official guidelines from Amazon are here. Basically it's something Amazon has recently come up with called "crowd-sourced publishing" for their ebook publishing imprint, Kindle Press. You submit your ebook via their website, then they respond to the email address on your Amazon account (not the email address you entered when you filled out the submission information, FYI) within 1-2 business days with your campaign approval and the URL your campaign will be listed at. The "campaign" is a 30 day period that the book will be listed on the Scout website for "Scouters" (basically anyone with an Amazon account) to look at and nominate for publication. Your book will either stay on the Hot & Trending list, depending on how many page views and nominations it gets per day, or it will fall off this list to chill with the rest of the not-so-popular books. Which is also fine.

It sounds a lot like a popularity contest, but apparently it's not. There have been several books that stay on the Hot & Trending list for the majority of their campaign, but don't get chosen for a publication contract, and there have been quite a few with great Hot & Trending numbers that have. It's entirely up to the Scout staff, who actually read the book sometime in the whole campaign + 2 weeks decision making period, and then decide from there whether or not Kindle Press will be choosing your book to publish.

So, the 30 day campaign isn't a popularity contest, but more of a genius marketing tool. Which makes sense, being Amazon and all. Authors generally stress out about their page views and nominations for the whole 30 days, doing their best to stay in the Hot & Trending list, thereby increasing their book's visibility on the page. They scream for attention from friends, family, coworkers, social media platforms and strangers on the street much like former CEOs of the failed tech-bubble wonder companies from the early 2000s. However, unlike most other programs in which people have to vote for their favorites, you actually get something out of this if the book wins.

The geniuses at Kindle Scout have decided that if a book is awarded a contract, everyone that voted for it is given a free ebook copy 2 weeks before it goes live for publication on Kindle's platform. Yay! Free ebooks for everyone! This is done in hopes that all of the people that voted for it will submit reviews for the book, thus giving it a great starting point in the Kindle rankings, and of course, increasing visibility so that new readers can find it organically as they shop. Brilliant. Reviews are any author's bread and butter in this industry, and Kindle has done a great job of making sure that your book is put in the right hands for maximum effect early in the book's release.

This is a great idea, and in light of that, I think I'm going to do the same thing if Everyday Monsters isn't chosen by Kindle Scout. If you vote for my campaign and it isn't chosen, I'll email you a copy of the .mobi or .epub file, if you sign up for my newsletter or like my Facebook author page and send me a screenshot of Everyday Monsters in your Scout nominations. Because I appreciate your support, and readers mean more to me than anything. I would love to know that I've written a story that people enjoy, that helps them relax and have a nice time in my world, and that gives them even half of the joy that my favorite books have given me.

Because you guys are the best, and I love each of you.

So, after all of this hubbub, the most exciting part of this post for me is that I GOT MY APPROVAL EMAIL!! YAY!! I submitted Everyday Monsters on Saturday morning around 1 am after agonizing unnecessarily (I have anxiety issues, don't judge me lol) over all 3 of the questions that I answered as part of my author bio section, not to mention the bio itself, and I just got my email at 9:18 am CST saying that I'm approved for a Kindle Scout campaign. Yay!

Everyday Monsters will be listed here at 12:00 AM on Wednesday, August 24, 2016.  I'm super excited, and yet terrified, all at once. It's a good thing there's no turning back now, as once you submit, you can't change your mind and pull your book back out. So here's to 30 days of stress, excitement and daily blog posts with all of the Scout information I can possibly give you,

Author Photos

I just had my first set of author photographs done today, and I must say, I'm pretty excited about them. I can't wait to get them from the photographer (all touched up, filtered, and made to look like a Victoria's Secret model, of course) so I can upload it to Kindle Scout with my new book, Everyday Monsters. It's been a loooong process, but I can at least say that I'm 90% of the way there.

I'll upload a few of the pictures when I get them, but for now, yay, I did a post. (I hate blogging. Feels like I'm just talking to myself.)

Photos added on 8/22/2016. These were taken by Lily June Photography, a great photographer here in Houston who I use for everything because I just love her so much:

The one I chose for my Kindle Scout campaign:


Others that I liked:



And a few of my dear, sweet boys and I just because: