Do you use Instafreebie?
Have you used it as a reader looking for books, or as an author looking to promote your work?
I’m currently in the middle of my first ever Instafreebie promotion, #Instafreebie Non-fiction Books for Authors and Writers.
It’s going well. Really well. In the first 24 hours, I received 60 new newsletter subscribers. To put that in context, it took me 18 months to get my first 60 subscribers.
But how did I get here?
I’m a member of the Self-Publishing Formula group on Facebook, and I’ve signed up for their email newsletter. One newsletter talked about forming smaller genre-based groups for cross-promotion. I joined a couple of groups, including the non-fiction group.
I’d only been in the group a couple of days when one of the members, Jackson Dean Chase, floated the idea of a joint promotion of books for writers.
All I had to do was have a book I could use as a reader magnet, and have it uploaded on Instafreebie.
Well, I had a book—Christian Publishing: A Guide to Publishers Specializing in Christian fiction. I didn’t have it uploaded on Instafreebie, but a couple of hours on Canva and Calibre fixed that. And I was in.
Jackson contacted Instafreebie, who promised to promote the giveaway if we could get ten or more authors involved.
We got 18.
All participating authors agreed to email our current lists, and to promote the giveaway on social media. The beauty of this promotion was that participants weren’t required to have a minimum number of subscribers. Many cross promotions do … which makes it difficult for authors with smaller mailing lists (*raises hand*).
Jackson created some graphics for us to use, and Barb Drozdowich collected all our covers and set up a landing page. She linked the 18 books on the landing page to the book pages on Instafreebie. Visitors can click on a book cover and be taken to Instafreebie to sign up for the author’s mailing list and collect their free download.
Promoting on Social Media
Jackson set up a Headtalker campaign to run on the first day of the promotion. This hit the targeted number of supporters, and meant 53 supporters combined to reach 1,221, 732 people on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.
Yep, that’s more than 1 million social media contacts. It wasn’t difficult to reach because we have 18 authors in the cross-promotion, and many of them have more than one social media account. It helped that one of the authors in the cross-promotion has over 180,000 Twitter followers!
We have also set up a Thunderclap campaign for 11 February, the day before the cross-promotion ends. (We’re still recruiting supporters—Thunderclap requires a minimum of 100 supporters in order for a campaign to go ahead).
We got mentions on a couple of big author groups on Facebook, including The Smarter Artist. Giveaway authors also posted on groups they are members of. For example, I posted on Australasian Christian Writers, Christian Writers Downunder, and New Zealand Indie Authors, and Romance Writers of New Zealand. I’ll post on some other groups later in the week—making sure I only promote in groups which permit self-promotion, of course!
I’ll be blogging more about cross promotions at Australasian Christian Writers over the next few weeks, and I’ll post links in my next newsletter. If you’re not already on my newsletter email list, you can sign up at Instafreebie (surprise!).
Here’s the link: http://indiebookpromo.com/instafreebie-books-just-authors-writers/
There are some excellent books on offer—and they’re all free!
And if you’d like to support the Thunderclap campaign, click here: https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/52900-nonfiction-books-for-writers
We need 100 supporters in the next four days in order for the campaign to go ahead. It doesn’t matter how many likes or followers you have—you still count as one supporter for Thunderclap.
Have you participated in any author cross promotions? What was your experience?
If you’ve never used Instafreebie, what questions do you have?
