Writing Tip Wednesday: HUGE success listing Thunderstruck with The Fussy Librarian

The Fussy Librarian (TFL) is a free ebook subscription service, providing a list of free and bargain ebook selections daily to readers who sign up. TFL is widely regarded as one of the best promo sites for indie authors, putting indie books in front of a ton of readers!

TFL provides a list of blogs written by authors helping other authors navigate the wild west of self-publishing. I strongly suggest that you bookmark this list and refer to it frequently, as all the blogs listed on it are great. One of the difficulties of being an indie author is that we are faced with a plethora of companies and individuals selling us their services on how to make more money, grow our audiences and build promos. Many of those are not worth your time. TFL is very much worth your time.

Authors can list their free and bargain ebooks with TFL to be included in the daily subscriber email. You can check current availability at TFL and list your book.

TFL recently offered a free one-time promo, and I jumped on it. Before trying TFL, I had had the best download results using BookDoggy. Today I’m here to report on the results with TFL, which were, by far, the best results I’ve had to date.

I listed my latest romance novel Thunderstruck as a free eBook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo on March 9. Since I’m not enrolled in Amazon KDP, I had to go through the step of price-matching to list the book as FREE. Amazon didn’t make the change until March 10, the day after my promo went live.

Here are the March 9 results (day of the promo)

Amazon – 0 downloads

B&N – 59 downloads

Kobo – 58 downloads

March 10 results (one day after the promo):

Amazon – 11 downloads

B&N – 17 downloads

Kobo – 24 downloads

March 11 results (two days after the promo):

Amazon – 2 downloads

B&N – 0 downloads

Kobo – 4 downloads

The above suggests that the 11 Amazon downloads on March 10 resulted from readers viewing the March 9 email a day late, and thus being able to download it for free.

I ran the FREE eBook promo again on March 15. Here are the results:

Amazon – 836 downloads

B&N – 14 downloads

Kobo – 16 downloads

Results for March 16 (one day after the promo):

Amazon –  115 downloads

B&N – 8 downloads

Kobo – 3 downloads

Results for March 17 (two days after the promo):

Amazon –  39 downloads

B&N – Not reported yet (apparently B&N reports a day behind)

Kobo – 1 download

The March 15 promo was a HUGE success with Amazon. Further, the number of downloads catapulted Thunderstruck into the top 100 bestsellers for the Contemporary Romance category on Amazon, and the #1 spot in Political Fiction on Amazon. This gets the book in front of tons more readers.

I will definitely use TFL again!