u/Head_Harbinger

So I ran a Kindle Countdown Deal and I scheduled the Robins Reads featured promo, a BookBarbarian urban fantasy spot, and a FussyLibrarian urban fantasy spot. I spread them out over the week.

I priced my book at $0.99 from $4.99. From July 19 to July 25, I saw 38 orders and 682 KENP (about 200 more KENP added up over the next three days after the deal was over) for a grand total of $28.41 profit, not enough to make back even the cheapest promo campaign, which was Fussy Librarian's.

Here's what I spent for this KCD:

$85 Robin Reads featured promo newsletter spot. Live on the 20th and gave me 19 orders and 3 more on the 21st.

$41 BookBarbarian urban fantasy newsletter spot. Went live on July 22nd

along with

$32 Fussy Librarian urban fantasy promo newsletter spot. Also live on July 22. Between these two I got 11 orders the same day, 4 more on the 23rd and 1 last one on the 24th.

All of these, plus I had a Meta traffic ad campaign running from the 18 to 24 midnight. $7 a day. Between two ads with different ad copy, the campaign itself got 3,009 reach, 194 landing page views, $0.19 per view, approx. 6% CTR, $36 spent. I'm betting the newsletter promos did all the heavy lifting in getting me those 38 orders. Of those 38, I'd probably attribute some 5-7 sales to the Meta ad campaign.

Plus almost 900 KENP.

So I sank $194 into marketing and made back $28.41. I've reworked and analyzed my Amazon page, blurb, cover, etc. and I don't know what else isn't working.

I'm coming to my wits' end when it comes to marketing and promoting my book. I need help to figure out where my book is failing. Cover, blurb, keywords, genre mismatch, marketing strategy, etc.

I already got some feedback from a small writers' group. Most of the comments pointed out cover mismatch with the genre (it's YA Urban Fantasy but cover looks like romantasy), and having a dry informative blurb (here all manner of opinions took place, from suggesting rewriting in first-person, to making it longer, and others pointing out at the same time that I should shorten it!). I already tried reworking it, but I'm still unsure. Also, I changed one of my three Amazon categories: I dropped "Teen & Young Adult Werewolf & Shifter," and changed it to "Teen & Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy."

The other two categories are: "Teen & Young Adult Vampire" and "Teen & Young Coming of Age Fantasy"

My book is in the link in my bio for reference.

Thank you for reading my marketing misadventures.

TLDR: I booked three newsletter promo services for a KCD and these were my numbers--budget spent, sales, KENP, impressions, reach, etc.
I'm also looking for feedback because I'm going to go crazy. Cover, blurb, Amazon keywords, A+ content, whatever I can do to optimize my page and get more downloads next time.

I had a featured book promo slated to go live today. It didn't. My Kindle countdown deal is running and have thus 0 orders and 0 KENP. I scheduled this for today and BookBarbarian within the next 2-3 days to stagger promos. Now I'm wholly dependent on BookBarbarian for later this week and a rapidly thrown-together Meta campaign that I'm trying to assemble to make up for Robin Reads's missed service.

I'm absolutely livid. I've messaged support and while I'm 100% confident they'll refund, I feel wrecked at having missed what is a featured promo, which in case you don't know, you pay more for higher visibility and then they have to accept you. A reschedule is pretty much not happening and even if I apply again in the future I might not get accepted.

Obviously they haven't responded yet. I don't know what happened. Not the least idea why my book didn't go live. But I think the most likely outcome is they'll just refund.

I'm posting this to warn others about this service. Completely unreliable. Do not use them.
Now to wait another three months to have another shot to maaayyybeee get picked for featured promo. No thank you.

Edit: Yes, that's right. It didn't go live. I paid for a service that schedules your book for a promo on an agreed date and it didn't go live. What else would I be ranting about?

Today, Amazon sent me a welcome email to the long-awaited KDP's Kindle Translate beta program.

And I'm honestly not sure of whether I should give it a try. I went through the program's terms and conditions page and it's somewhat scarce on information. I guess what gives me pause first of all is that Amazon might train their AIs with our books (you know, mega-corporations will do what they do best).

On the other hand, yes, I'd love to have my book available to more readers. I have thought of doing the Spanish translation myself, but that's time I could spend writing another book, and my meager sales don't justify paying thousands to translate it.

My question is then, does anyone else have any experience using this program? Are they using it to train their AIs? Is the quality of the translation actually good or is it typical AI-spewed garbage?

Thank you in advance, and keep it civil.

Edit: I've revised the proof the beta program spit out and it's... pretty terrible. Too literal translations and I couldn't help but notice it's really... Spain-coded, to give it a word. I grew up with Latin American Spanish and my family would probably laugh out loud reading it. Yeah, I'm going to erase its existence. Perhaps one day someone will purchase the international rights. Some wistful thinking.
If you were fancying to try it out, you'd need extensive revisions by someone who speaks and knows the language well. I imagine the German version suffers the same issues. Do not recommend.
Oh, and you cannot download the file or edit it!