Marketing "Holo Sapiens"

So, once again I find myself about to start a promotional run for a new independent novel, and I couldn't have hoped to have been in a better position. Checking Amazon UK's stats this morning, Holo Sapiens is already #14 in the Post Apocalyptic category, with Eden just ahead of it at #7.

This is fabulous news - less than 2 weeks after its launch and Holo Sapiens is already featuring prominently on the store ( and at the 3,300 position in Kindle UK overall ). Once again, this is with no publicity other than here on the blog and on Facebook and Twitter, and a single industry blogger's review ( featured in my previous post ).

The story in the USA is different, however. With a launch at a different time of year, the remarkable set of circumstances that saw Eden rise to the top 1,000 position in just a few weeks no longer exist. Holo Sapiens moves between the 70,000 and 200,000 positions, which obviously means that the novel cannot be seen by many potential readers yet.

Fortunately, this time around I'm more savvy with the marketing and have already pre-booked my advertising campaign. This falls on the 11th, 12th and 13th of December. The first day is a one-day banner with popular e-book forum KBoards. The second and third are both one-day promotions on Kindle Nation Daily, for the Kindle Fire and ordinary Kindle respectively.

The idea of this campaign is not to propel Holo Sapiens into the Amazon Top 100 or anything ( although that would be nice! ) but merely to sell enough copies of the book to rise sufficiently in the rankings to get some visibility. From there, I'm hoping that the book's professional look and intriguing subject matter will sustain a decent ranking, generate regular sales and start the ball rolling.

Just like Eden, there's a long way to go, but I'm confident that the book is good enough to succeed even against the huge competition created by the Christmas season. I'm planning advertising for 2014 also, but I recently learned an interesting and valuable lesson over at KBoards: summer is, by and large, a low-selling period for most independent authors. This contradicts what I would have instinctively thought, that the holiday season would be a good time for people to be buying books to read on the beach etc. My only conclusion is that people do read books at the beach, but not so much on their Kindles - they buy paperbacks for their holidays.

The BIGGEST selling periods for independent authors seems to be post-Christmas, with many saying their sales spike during Boxing Day ( presumably as Kindles are received by countless people as gifts ). January and February are also big months for many self-published authors.

With this in mind, Eden's success was even more surprising during the summer of 2013, so I'm hoping that the more favourable marketing conditions of winter will help Holo Sapiens rise in the ranks over the next few months...