I have put together a synopsis of what I did for the free 5 day free promotion on amazon .com for my book Is Your Chair Killing You?
My personal goal for the promo was 3,000 downloads, although I secretly thought that the chances of getting that many were slim to none. I told myself I would be totally jacked if I could get 1,500 and pretty darn happy with 1,000. I kept all this to myself because I wasn’t going to make the same mistake I made when we originally launched the book (I had told my wife we would never sell 10 copies of the book in the first week because most indie authors sell about 4 books a month. She said we would indeed sell 10 and I defiantly said “if we sell more than ten copies in the first week, I’ll run naked down the street.” She took the bet. We sold 40 copies… the neighbors thought my midnight run was hilarious).
In March when I first launched Is Your Chair Killing You? I set up several Google Alerts. One for my name, one for the title of the book and one for “sitting health risks.” It would prove to be very helpful to my promo.
Three weeks before my free promo I sent out my first press release to some local news outlets, magazines I have contributed to, and several health and wellness blogs and websites. As far as I can tell no one paid any attention at all.
Two weeks before my promo I sent out a second press release which generated just about as much enthusiasm as the first. I also registered with Pixel of Ink which showcases free Kindle Books as well as a couple of other free sites. Every couple of days I did a teaser on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for the upcoming promo. I also tried to find an E-zine to post to with no luck.
One week before the promo I contacted some of the companies that have products featured in the book. Really wish I had done this sooner. Several said if had I contacted them a couple of weeks earlier they would have sent out press releases as well ( they have professionals doing theirs that actually get some attention on the web). Oh well; live and learn. The companies did agree to push the book on their social network platforms. I decided not to waste my time with a third press release. A couple of days before the promo I sent out an email blast to my data base. In all honesty I thought that this was a waste of time because I figured I had pretty much exhausted most of my people in my original March launch, but I did it anyway. The night before the promo I posted the book on 24 free book and freebies sites then headed off to bed.
Day 1. I woke up to 250 downloads. I was in shock. My wife and I danced around the bed in our pajamas. I spent the morning announcing the promo on my social network platform with a direct link to my book page. I hit Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn 3 times in the morning and 3 times in the afternoon with non book posts in between to keep from getting too spammy. The book started moving up in the free healthy living category and in the free personal health category. By the end of the day we had more than 800 downloads and were ranked #4 in the free healthy living category.
Day 2 . Slept in, dawdled around the kitchen making breakfast then checked our stats. Holy shitake mushrooms! We had over 1,500 downloads. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I went back and hit my social media again and by early afternoon we had 3,000 downloads. I checked our overseas downloads but they were pretty meager—just 11 in the UK and 1 or 2 everywhere else. I was starting to get a few new reviews, most of them 5 stars, and then I got my first 1 star review. I was a little ticked about it–not because it was a bad review, because I totally expected to get a few bad reviews (you can’t please everyone) but because it wasn’t actually a review of my book. The reviewer just accused me of faking my reviews (I didn’t) and never talked about the book at all.
In the late afternoon I got a Google alert for sitting health risk. A big study in a prestigious British medical journal had just been released. The new study found that people who sat for extended periods of time doubled their risk of getting diabetes, heart disease and dying (which just happens to be the subject of my book). Eight or nine major online news outlets (BBC, New York Times, Huffington Post) were reporting the story and I plugged my book in the comment section of each one of the stories telling people about the book and where they could get it. All of the outlets posted the comments. By the time we went to bed we were #2 in free healthy living category and had 4,500 downloads.
Day 3. I sent out a follow up email to my list and suggested that if they had already gotten the book they could also go on Amazon and gift a copy to a friend or family member. Got more Google alerts and again left comments. Went back to all the free sites and reposted (the original posts had been pushed down below the first page by then because of newer posts). At the end of the day we had a little over 6,500 downloads and had climbed to the #1 spot in the free healthy living category as well as the free personal health category. Even more surprising, we had cracked the free Kindle top 100 list at 38.
Day 4. Things started to slow down a bit on the fourth day in the USA but the UK was on fire. I had gone from 11 downloads to almost 300 and every time I looked the numbers were going up. I kept hitting my social media while trying not to piss off my followers by being spammy. Headed to bed with a little more than 8,000 downloads. We were still #1 one in both free healthy living and personal health and in the top ten of free Kindle nonfiction. Even better we hit #13 on the free Kindle top 100 list.
Day 5. I spent most of the day just checking the numbers. It had been an incredible ride. Now I had to figure out how to keep this momentum going and try not to worry… “is there going to be anyone left to actually purchase the book?” Somehow even though it had been five days, it still didn’t feel real. It was like a great dream that I really didn’t want to wake up from. As day turned to night I started to feel sad, which is nuts because it’s one of the coolest things I had ever experienced, but sad none the less because it was almost over. I turned off the computer at 9pm. We were #1 in both free healthy living & personal health and cracked into the top 10 of the kindle free top 100 list. My book had been downloaded 10,542 times worldwide in those five days. Honestly it still doesn’t feel real, but it certainly feels good. I think that when my next book is published (in the next three weeks) I think I’ll do a two or three day free promo and position it to start mid-week—I’ve heard that the numbers can be bigger during the week. That’s all I know.
Sitting
for extended periods of time is as bad for your health as smoking
cigarettes. And exercising for 30-60 minutes a day isn’t enough to undo
the damage from extended periods of sitting. Is Your Chair Killing You
reveals shocking new research showing that sitting for long periods
greatly increases your risk of developing obesity, heart disease,
diabetes, stroke and cancer.
Our bodies were designed to move constantly over the course of the day, but most of us sit for hours a day at work and at home! Fitness and wellness expert and award-winning author Kent Burden has created brief, simple movements you can incorporate into your daily life to combat the damaging effects of sitting.
These simple movements, done standing for 1-5 minutes each hour will burn calories, energize and refresh you, and you won’t even break a sweat; you’ll even improve your back pain. This book is a how-to for weight loss and disease prevention. Read this book–you’ll be healthier in as little as 8 minutes a day.
Our bodies were designed to move constantly over the course of the day, but most of us sit for hours a day at work and at home! Fitness and wellness expert and award-winning author Kent Burden has created brief, simple movements you can incorporate into your daily life to combat the damaging effects of sitting.
These simple movements, done standing for 1-5 minutes each hour will burn calories, energize and refresh you, and you won’t even break a sweat; you’ll even improve your back pain. This book is a how-to for weight loss and disease prevention. Read this book–you’ll be healthier in as little as 8 minutes a day.
Nominated for the Dan Poynter Global Ebook Awards and won honorable mention at the Los Angeles Book Festival
Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre – Non-Fiction
Rating – G
More details about the author
Website http://www.kentburden.com/
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