[00:00:11] Carissa: I'm Carissa Andrews International best selling indie author and CEO of author Revolution. With more than 15 books published, it's safe to say I have made a ton of mistakes in my endeavor to become a full time author. The most important thing that I've learned in the past decade is that indie authors need to protect their creativity and their serenity. Being an author is a long game, and that's why I'm on a mission to teach other in these just like you how to publish books with a sustainable rapid release method. I created the author Revolution Podcast to give you insights and actionable step by step strategies to help you do just that. If you're an ambitious author or one in the making who's looking to create a long term author career and a life you love, you found your tribe, my friend. Let's get your author revolution underway. 

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. Boy, do I have a special treat for you today? And the author, marketing guru David Gaughran is joining us to talk about promo stacking and had a best leverage free and discounted books. About a week ago, I stumbled on his new video on promo stacking. Okay. Admittedly, I'm on his email list, and I have been taking his incredible free course, starting from zero More on that in a moment. But anyway, in this new video, he talked about how the best leverage book promo sites for new releases and backlist marketing campaigns. Promo stacking has played a big role in my own campaigns in the past, and when I watched the video, I knew I needed to ask David to come on the show and talk more about it. He so graciously agreed to be a guest. Now David is an historical fiction author as well as a non fiction author helping thousands of Indy's to self publish their work. His books include Let's Get Digital, Let's Get Visible, Amazon Decoded Strangers to Super Fans Book Bob Adds Expert and Following. He's been featured in The Telegraph, The Irish Times, The Guardian, the Irish Examiner, The Sunday Times, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Forbes, Mashable and more. I know without a doubt you're going to enjoy this interview and get some invaluable insights into your marketing strategies so I won't make you wait any longer. Let's get started, obviously. Thank you so much for joining me today, David, for being on the author Revolution podcast and saying yes to this crazy notion of joining and talking about all the things that you do. So I've introduced you on the podcast already, But why don't you go ahead and kind of reintroduce yourself and what it is that you do?

[00:03:01] David: Well, my name is David Gaughran. I'm I'm an Irish author. Although I'm living in Portugal at the moment. I just moved over here just over a year ago, just before everything started shutting down. So I haven't really got to see the country yet, but I write historical fiction, and I also write books for authors as well. And I have a YouTube channel and all sorts of stuff as well. That's

[00:03:19] Carissa: fantastic. So now I got to know about the whole Portugal thing. How did that happen?

[00:03:24] David: Well, I've seen I've seen eyeing up a move for quite a long time. It was something like 10 or 15 years, and it just I've always wanted to do it. It just wasn't practical until recently on dso we just we bit the bullet Then at the end, right at the end of 2000 and 19.

[00:03:39] Carissa: That is awesome. Talk about fantastic, that that's like one of those big moves where people go, How in the world now, Now, why Portugal? Was it just something that you've always wanted to experience?

[00:03:48] David: Um, growing up in Ireland, we used to go to Portugal and Spain quite a bit on holidays. And I just always loved Portugal and always wanted to move here at some point or retire here or spend a good chunk of time living here. And I've actually been here a few times before, you know, for a few months. And when I was writing a book and things like that. So I was always kind of, you know, kind of toying with the idea of making the permanent move. And then just the timing was right at the end of 2019, well, except for the whole world, going to hell in a hand cart, except for the part of the timing wasn't exactly perfect. I'm actually glad we made the move before all that happened, even though, you know, we didn't get an opportunity to make friends and stuff like that yet here. But way got a lot more space. We're living right beside the forest on a beach. So you know, if we want to get out there but be away from people, it's very easy to do that here. So I waas living right in the city center and Dublin in a small apartment on a very noisy apartment. So I would have been able to do all these things on YouTube and other things that I'm playing with at the moment.

[00:04:44] Carissa: That's fantastic. See, it was definitely meant to be Then, even even if it did, go to hell in a handbasket. At least you're able Thio, enjoy your space in a little more peace and quiet, I guess.

[00:04:53] David: Yeah, that that that has been huge. Definitely because my apartment building just turned into a massive construction site All around it, there were building these huge office blocks like all these companies moving to Dublin because of Brexit. So, like there was massive big buildings being built in these foundations just being drilled from, like, seven in the morning every single day. So I had to get out of there.

[00:05:13] Carissa: That would be brutal. That's like trying to record these types of videos when all the kids were home for distance learning. I've got four in my house. That's nuts. Yeah,

[00:05:20] David: The worst thing was the neighbor's dog, and he's so cute. You can't be modern him, But he's definitely made in the parents and a few of my YouTube videos. Now, at this point,

[00:05:27] Carissa: yeah, you might even hear our dogs. I have them in their little kennels there. The Huskies. And of course, when they get I don't know, disenfranchised, I guess you'll start hearing them howl or talk. It's like, Oh, jeez

[00:05:38] David: and they get hungry every every 10 minutes,

[00:05:41] Carissa: right? Oh, my goodness. Okay, so obviously we're We've got a lot to cover in this episode. There's so much that we could unpack, and I would love to pick your brain forever, but we're gonna keep it, try to keep it kind of narrow. But in the beginning, I mentioned you know who you are and that have taken your starting from zero course and that as a you know, someone who's been in the in the author business for 10 years. It was very helpful even for me. I was trying to get a refresher as I was putting out my latest Siri's last year. And so I really wanted to kind of see Okay, is there any kind of new stuff that I'm missing? Anything that I could start to incorporate? So even though we're gonna be talking about promo stacking here in a little bit, is that a really great place for newbie authors to kind of join your world and kind of learn more about what you do and how you teach?

[00:06:25] David: Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it because you know what? I'm used to getting one star reviews as an author that's been around for 10 years. You tend to pick up a few along the way. I've never had one life, so it was a little bit nervous there for a second when you started talking about it. But yeah, like the whole idea of the course actually came from me trying to manage my email inbox a bit better because, like, I've always got a few projects on the go on, I get a lot of emails from authors, and I'm always trying toe find better ways to manage that kind of inflow of emails if you like, and usually if I'm getting a lot of emails on a particular topic. It means that I don't have a good enough blood post on something, or I need Teoh a YouTube video on something. So the whole thing that starting from zero was was literally me being lazy. Even though it seems like a weird way to be lazy, t make a whole court,

[00:07:07] Carissa: it

[00:07:08] David: really wants to like the number one question I was getting. And especially in the last kind of year and a half, I just started getting lots and lots of emails from authors just saying like, you know what? What do I do from starting from zero, like Or, you know, all this stuff you're talking about about email automation or about Facebook ads or whatever else is, is all very good. But how do I actually get started like thes things that you're saying seem to assume that you're already set up, that you already have. You know, your email list open running or that you already know how to do something like promo stacking? Or that you even know what a promise ideas or that you know how to brand your book or that what is actually a good cover for your Jonah. All these basic questions. Andi, I think you know, publishing has just gotten so much more complicated from when I started 10 years ago that there is that kind of gap now in that kind of gulf. You know where you know, we sometimes don't realize that we picked up all these little skills and all these little acronyms and jargon, and just like knowing which side to go to for a certain piece of information on that, you know, if someone arriving today Well, I don't think it's that much harder for someone starting today. I think they face broadly the same challenges. There is a lot of stuff that they just need to get set up with before they can really get going. So I wanted to give someone kind of like gold plated, started self publishing, just like try and get him to focus on the right things as well, you know, because I get emails from authors who might have even released their first book yet. And they're talking about how to run these complex Facebook ad campaigns. And I'm like, hold on, like get get two or three books. At first, you know, focus on the promo sides. First, get your email list open, running first before you start spending money on Facebook ads or or spending a year to learning Facebook ads, you know, because it doesn't take a lot of time as well as a lot of money. So I felt like newbies. We're kind of focusing on the wrong things like they were. They were trying to jump to very complicated strategies, like maybe rapid release or something like that before that even released something, you know. And that is a difficult strategy for an experience of publisher, let alone someone who hasn't actually released anything yet. So I tend to find, Well, this doesn't scrub described everybody. Some people like seem toe spring forth, fully formed. I could do everything. I don't know. I don't know where to get all that information from, but,

[00:09:12] Carissa: you know, in nature.

[00:09:13] David: Yeah, but, you know, I think there's a danger when you start, you know, looking at these kind of flashier, more complex things that you skip over the basics. Like Like how do I possess how my positioning myself in the market your your blurbs, You know your keywords like like things like this that you really need to have perfect. Or else you know you're not going to get the return that you need to make Facebook ads work or with our complicated marketing strategies. So I just want to get all that basic stuff. But it's a lot of stuff and just walk people through. Teach them how, you know, learn their niche. You know, go and find two or three categories on Amazon that are suitable for their books. And look at how those books are presented. Look at the style of Blurred because, you know varies like there's a massive difference between a blur for, like, an urban fantasy novel with a sassy protagonist than you know, some nonfiction history book or even a historical novel, you know, or even even science fiction like there could be a different point of view in the novel. And then there's probably gonna be a different point of view in the blurb is definitely gonna be different language, a different way that you talk to readers and your email on boarding sequence on your Facebook page like there's all these things that they need to grapple with and that are different from genre to genre on, just to start training them to look for the shelves in the Kindle store where they put their books and then make sure their books fit in with everything else. Because I think especially those who are on the more artistic end of the spectrum, tend to want to stand out rather than fit in e. No,

[00:10:35] Carissa: I definitely started like that in the beginning, whereas, like, I wanted to be as as different as possible. But I have a graphic design background, so that was like my I need to be artistic with it. Yeah, and then it that all went out with the bathwater that was gone through

[00:10:49] David: things you have to learn. So like, even if you're even if you're good with graphic design, you don't realize that you know the cover is a sales to its only job is to get people to click on it, and you want the right people to click on it. It's not. It's not that it's not supposed to be pretty. It should be pretty to that, like you really wanted to look good as well, but it's what Most importantly, it should look like, you know, not just like a romance, but like a historical romance. And even if you're running historical romance, it should look like a Scottish team historical romance. It should have a burly chap with a sword rather than a You know, a lady in a nice ball game, you know, and these little differences, they're important, and you've got to learn them. You don't need to learn them for every single niche you know, you just need to learn for your niche, and you need to package your book so that it's like a bat signal to readers that tells them straight away. This is the kind of book that you love, and you can't be too subtle with that. There's probably something you have to rain as well with your graphic design background where you know, graphic designers tend to have these huge monitors that take up half the room, right?

[00:11:43] Carissa: S. O. J

[00:11:44] David: s. So it's like the balance star Galactica or something. But when the reader, when a reader encounters your book for the first time, it's not even on the nice sized image on an Amazon product page. It's often like that, that stamp, you know, that Tom Nail

[00:11:57] Carissa: size in

[00:11:59] David: an also bought or in a book, bob email or in search results or in something like that. So it really has to be kind of simple, striking design. So you know, you often only have two seconds or, you know, to milliseconds to grab somebody's attention on the Internet. So it has to be really obvious. Like like there's a reason why all romantic comedies have a cartoonist blonde way down with shopping bags, or why all thrillers will have a dead body or a bullet or police tape. You know, it's not because the designers of the publishers and the authors are lacking in imagination. It's because they know you only have a second to grab some attention on. You do that by saying this is the kind of book you look

[00:12:35] Carissa: right. That is really important, But I think there's a lot. There's so much I don't know you. When you talked about the Blur part, it just makes me think, too. There's so much that's changed in the past decade that since we started that, you know, even if you don't get a really good grasp on it. Now just continue to learn that that concept of it, because you're gonna keep coming back around By the time you really honing those skills, the copyrighting skills or whatever the case might be that you're trying to

[00:12:59] David: learn your genre,

[00:13:00] Carissa: it will tweak a little bit, but it'll you know it'll change. It'll shift just a little bit, but it makes even more sense in your brain as you're kind of going through the whole process. Or maybe you meet better people to help you create those things, too.

[00:13:12] David: Yeah, that's something I had to grapple with a lot personally when I started in 2000 and 11. I was coming from a print mindset, you know, because E books hadn't certainly hadn't taken off in Ireland. They were just starting to take off in the U. S. And it's something that I still have to deal with a lot when I'm talking toe authors who are from my part of the world because they're they're coming at it from, you know, all their authority. Aled dreams involved, like having you know ah, hard back in the window or drinks with their editor. All these all these other things. I have to try and get in that to focus on the E book market so they have to optimize their entire business for selling e books. It's not necessarily because we think e books are better. It's just because they're easier to sell right on. But when it comes to e book marketplace, we have much more of a level playing field there than we do in the print marketplace. Like I would love to sell a million, you know, paperbacks a week. But it's far easier to get digital sales going than it is to get Prince sales going, not least because you're not gonna be in every bookshop across the country when people can actually go to bookshops. But you know, it's it's it's not just availability. It's not just distribution. Its's marketing. It's so much easier to reach a new owner of a candle than somebody who shops in their local indie bookstore. It's so much cheaper to do that as well, on your facing far less competition for their attention, and you can track your efforts as well so you can optimize. So that's the reason why we focus on the e book market. And once you realize that, it kind of opens up your mind for all these other things that you were talking about, that my blurb doesn't need to be set in stone. I can change that any time I want. I can change my cover any time. I want my price. You know my title even. You know, there's all these things that you can tweet like. Some are easier than others, but certainly or blurb like I I don't tend to publish the best blurb on Day one because often it's something.

[00:14:58] Carissa: Yeah,

[00:15:00] David: no, Andi usually went like, you know, I start removing the typos and the errors, and you know, the fact I was talking about the wrong book or something. If my head is really swamp, but then it starts to get tighter and tighter. And then usually, after, you know the first couple of reviews come in on a reader who has that emotional distance from the book just sums it up in a second. I'm like, there's my new tag line, thank you very much. And then I stick that into the blur. Eso, Yeah, but you have to learn that you're able to optimize and tweet these things in an evil world that you can't really in a in a print world, it's much more difficult.

[00:15:31] Carissa: What's really nice, though, is like if you have that aspect where you have where you're pushing the promotions for your book, but you have a paperback book or you have an audio book, it usually will filter in some degree for two of those if if your reader happens to see the E book version of it. But they're actually a paperback fire, they could end up buying the paper back, even though the promotion is actually for the e book version. At least I found that Have you found?

[00:15:54] David: Certainly you will. You will always see a little bit of spillover into into your other editions, and they don't It doesn't always go back in the other direction. I think that's just a function of how Amazon's recommendation engine works. Like, for example, someone buys an e book Amazon. If you've got whisper Sync, I'm not on the audiobook edition. Amazon will push it to them for, you know, it used to be 1 99. Now it's often something more like 6 99 or 7 99 but they will push it. So if you get a spike in e book sales, you will see a little bump at least in your in your audio and to a certain extent with payment back as well. But it doesn't go the other direction. Like if someone buys the audio book, I wish they would offer them the e book for, you know, 99 cents or something. And then we could see both kind of you'd Seymour of us energy if you like. So I wish Amazon kind of linked up all those pieces a bit more, but it's cool that they do it at all because some of the other retailers don't even do that. So I'm grateful for

[00:16:45] Carissa: Okay, So obviously this past month, you came out with this new training video and we're gonna talk about promo stacking because for me, it was kind of one of those things that I stumbled on. Oh, gosh, I probably would've been 2018,

[00:16:57] David: 2017.

[00:16:58] Carissa: I don't know. Somewhere in there. And it actually helped my first book, my first ever book that came out in 2013, become an international best seller. So promo stacking. So when I saw your videos and I saw how you were laying everything out in your recommendations that you then posted in a block post afterwards, I was like, This is

[00:17:14] David: awesome. This is This is exactly

[00:17:15] Carissa: what authors who are looking to really make a splash with their books need. So can you give us a cliff notes version of you Know What you were talking about in that video? Obviously, I'll link to everything so that people can go back and watch your video and check out the rest of that that entire awesome block post. But I would love for you to kind of share a little bit of how promo stacking works and why authors need toe know about it.

[00:17:35] David: Okay, so the basics artists like a prom aside. In case anyone is unaware of the rial basics, it's just it's like a Groupon for books or regions will sign up. They'll indicate the genres they like, and they'll get a daily deals email in whatever genres. They fair, you know, unusually, the books are free or 99 cent. Um, promo stacking is where you run a number of those promotions, usually for like, four or five days in a row to try and tickle Amazon's algorithms into recommending your book. And this is something that we on the algorithm side that we figured out probably back in 2000 and 12 or 13. Those people like Phoenix Sullivan, who were and Ed Robertson and Dead Geary. They were really cracking the Amazon code on I was learning from them and they figured out that, you know, if you do all your promotion on one day, like often this way, traditional people would launch a book or promote a book. They would hit everything at once. They would hit their mailing list. They would, you know, do all the promotion and however everything rolling out on on launch day and a book will go really high in the charts, and that still works. They will go really high in the charts, but it also fall really fast. If you have ever been lucky enough to have a book, both featured Deal, which is not just the biggest problems. I doubt there were probably four times bigger than all of them combined, and you will have seen that effect, it might have throwing you into the charts that could even throw you into the top 50 on Amazon. But then you fall very fast afterwards. If there's nothing else you know in the mix on Amazon's albums are explicitly designed to do that. It's It's not so much that they force your book down like I've heard some people describe it. Actually, I've described it incorrectly like that in the past. So sorry it's not that they actually actively force it down is like like these algorithmic dancers just, you know, showing you back the door. It's more that gravity in the candle store is a hell of a thing, because I often think of it like, you know, salmon going upstream and they're all leaping over each other like hundreds of salmon at once. If you've ever seeing that, it's quite amazing, and they're all kind of pushing each other down and and leaping above each other on That's what's like in the Kindle store you've got, I think, nearly eight million, or maybe more than eight million e books in the Kindle store now on DWhite. I'll not everybody is aggressively promoting all those books every day. There's a good chunk of books and every single niche which are being aggressively promoted every single day. What if that's true Amazon ads or Facebook ads, or just new releases or whatever else? So if you do nothing, if you stand still in the Kindle store, you're going to get stampeded by all these books that are actively promoting on DSO. That's what happens if you have a book, Bob one day and nothing the next day you're basically standing still and you're getting steam roller. So we figure it out that if you could string together like if you spread your promo like if you split your list over four days or if you take spread your Facebook ads over four or five days or if you get promo sites and instead of having them all in one day to have one on Monday, one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday you won't go with high in the charts, so you won't have that same level of bragging rights. But you'll stay around for a lot longer because Amazon sees that you're not just a one trick pony. It's not just a flash in the pan that this book looks like it has some staying power. So Amazon sees, and a few days of consistent sales, usually four, usually five. To be safe, I find is the way I like to structure it. Then Amazon will say, Okay, well, maybe this is a book worth recommending to our customers. So Amazon would start recommending your book, either on site in various places around the site, like there's literally millions of slots around the site where Amazon recommends books on Amazon sense that millions of recommendations everyday thio to use this by email as well. So it will start doing both of those things and then, depending on the response of Leader, continue do that or do it even mawr, or it will stop doing it if people aren't acting on the recommendations. So it's not as simple as flipping a light switch. But your very best chance of getting Amazon to recommend your book and to do the setting for you is to have four or five days of consistent sales instead of just like a one off spike. So if you can manage that, if you construct your launch, your structure, your marketing campaigns toe have that consistency instead of a one off spike. Then you are greatly increasing the chances that Amazon will start supporting you and recommending your book to lots of readers and Provo stacking, then, is the easiest way to do that. Like it's complicated doing this. You know, with your list on Facebook out and everything else but promo stacking. Use a really easy way to to start and exploring this technique, because all you've got to do is book your ads on different days with the reader sites, and some of them will let you explicitly pick a day Orders like E and T. You kind of take what you're given, but it's such a good site that you know that's worth doing. But what other ones? Most of them these days you can pick a date on the counter, so it's a lot easier than it used to be to do promo stacking, whereas before it was a bit more of guesswork. But these days you can actually pick the days in the calendar, blocked them off and trying more or less have an even spread across the five days or maybe seven days. If you're doing a Kindle, can't and deal.

[00:22:26] Carissa: So you mentioned even evenly across. But I know that there is some sites that you know say that it's ideal to try to almost scale them. Do you recommend doing it where you try to do like the sites that it maybe won't have as great of a chance of getting sales and kind of work that you work your way up to like the book, But at the end, or does it really matter? Have you found

[00:22:45] David: I? Well, it zit gets quite technical, but let me make it very simple. What your overall shooting for is a consistent level of sales, but increasing if anything, so you don't want to dip, right? So the best way to ensure that you don't have a dip is t scale it. But I just wouldn't take that to the extreme where you have a very small day one and then it kind of a medium Day two and then a really big day. Three. I like to finish strong, always with a promotion. I think that's that's good for a number of reasons, but I don't like to start very, very small, so I will start relatively strong and then just scale it up a little bit every day.

[00:23:19] Carissa: That makes sense. That makes sense a lot. Like you said, some of the promo sites, you can't even choose the day. So you kind of have to work around. You know, if you get your book Bob deal on the day you launch, well, then that might be day one that you're tryingto do your promo stacking and you're not gonna go up higher than that unless you're working with ads. Been on top of that. So that's craziness.

[00:23:37] David: Yeah, Well, it's so it's almost impossible. Thio, balance it out when you do have a book book. But in that case, then I would I would tend tohave it towards the end of the towards the end of promotion. But with a book again. You really do take what you're given and you're looking to get it. So I think, you know, trying to balance the promo kind of goes out the window when you have a book will feature deal. Unless you have insane amount of money to spend on Facebook ads. But you're getting throws thrown so high in the charts that you know, if you could get a stick anywhere on the way down. Then you know you're doing fun.

[00:24:08] Carissa: Absolutely. So, like I said with you with this particular video, you did such a great job explaining everything in detail. And then you go on even further to give the block posts. And so you give some really great recommendations on how to stack everything. One of the ones that I was surprised about, though, was in your discount of one you recommended. Robin reads for those with 99 cents. If you could only pick one. And you did that with free books as well for the free version, which that one totally made sense in my brain. But why? Why? Robin reads What kind of do you have any, um, experience with that? And why would you choose that

[00:24:41] David: one? Well, it was very it was very close call honestly, between Robin Reads and E and T and the reason why the sole reason I picked Robin reasons because not as many people are aware of it, is e and T. Whereas most people know e and T already. So I just wanted a highlight. Robin reads as well, but I think I recommended three. They're pretty strongly out of the five or six to try and indicate. You know, if you've got a lower budget, go for these guys. If you've got more to spend. Lupin, these three a swell and then fussy librarian and fairness Thio. It's better for free books, but considering the low cost over 99 cent promotion there, I think that's a good one to throw into the mix. So there's not much between them and in terms of, you know, in terms of relative cost in terms of like, sale per sale costs between the three of those. So I think they're all worth doing. And I would always do all three of those when I was doing in 1919 promotion on I probably throwing a few others as well, depending on which particular John in the book was like there was science fiction fancy. I would definitely include book Barbarian. That's a very strong one for any science fiction fancy books. And there's a bunch of romance ones that I don't write romance, and I've never promoted the romance book, but and there's Red Roses romance. I think some people like and then There's the the other romance, one that I can't remember how to talk My

[00:25:52] Carissa: love romance reads or something like that.

[00:25:54] David: No, it's a different one. Um, it's I can't remember. It's on. It's on the list of book promo sites anyway. There's a There's another specialist site for mystery thriller and suspense, which is Book Adrenaline, which is run by the same Guiza's book, Barbarian. It's not quite as powerful, but then I think it's about half the price, so it kind of works That works as well. But I just wanted to highlight in the Post that there was a different set of recommendations for free books and for 99 Cent books, because some some sites have been much stronger with freebies like free books or sorry, fussy librarian is now one of the one of the big like it's really grown a lot in the last year, too. So if you only tried it a couple of years ago and you didn't see big numbers, I would recommend giving it in our world because that's probably the fastest growing free side of the moment. Free books, the obvious brilliant like that's aside from book Bob easily the best one for freebies. Awesome.

[00:26:45] Carissa: Yeah, I've used three books. See, In fact, I recently talked with Clayton Noblet at written word media. We were talking a lot about, you know, free books, see versus bargain books. See? And now, obviously, we have this, uh, Siri's promo using free books C which is something that I wanted to talk to you about because you you mentioned that in the block post and he mentioned it when we were talking. And I was like, How did I not know about this? Like, really, like was under a rock. But this I have to Siri's I should really be using this, But you mentioned that they have this Siri's promo thing that's relatively new, I guess. So. I'm just wondering if you could give my audience annoy idea of how that works. And if you've used it in the past on what kind of results you pad?

[00:27:23] David: Yeah, have used it. And it's great, and a bunch of my friends have used as well. It's with spectacular results. Actually. Andi, this is brilliant case. In case anyone thinks that remote, remotely biased, right? I love I love free books. He's free pro most bargain books he I haven't had personally that great results with I Don't Think It. It really compares two free books at all and I Never had. I never heard that good reports on their new release thing, the new in books. But the free books. This serious problem is genuinely brilliant and in terms, off cost and return. It's probably one of the best promotions out there and would even compare favorably to book book feature deals not in terms of absolute scale but in terms of just sheer instant profit. Andi, it's a fairly unique promotion on, you know, fair play to them. They really listen to author feedback on this. They heard a bunch of us saying that, you know, we were running ads to our Siri's pages now on Amazon with Facebook ads and boucle gods, and they thought, Well, here's something we could do around this that nobody else is doing, and it's a really great promotion because not only does it run traffic straight to your Siri's page on Amazon and what you will find when you do that, whether it's with a free books, you serious problem or a Facebook card If you're running discounts across the Siri's, you will get people buying the entire Siri's all at once. On the more discounts you run across the Siri's, the more you will see that effect on. It's pretty cool to see a bunch of new people coming in and buying your entire Siri's at once, because aside from the money right, which is good, I like money. I would like more often aside,

[00:28:54] Carissa: aside

[00:28:57] David: from that and one big problem we all face when we run a free promotion, even when we do it with book club or something and you got, you know, 30,000 downloads or whatever, there's a lot of those books, rather frustratingly will sit in someone's TV or pile, possibly forever. And in case anyone doubts how long readers of genuinely will hoard a book, I haven't had a book off my own in Kindle Unlimited for over four years, and I still get reads on those books. So that's how long people will hoard it, and they only get to borrow 10 books at the time, so there's a strong incentive not to hoard, and they still do so it's even worse with freebies, right sure, if you take your own candle right and really go to the back of the archive, you'll see a whole bunch of free books that you never even looked at. And you know, it only calls people to click, and they just forget about it. They move onto the next thing, and they're not invested in it. In the in, the in the monetary sense, right? They don't have skin in the game. But if you convince someone to buy 234 books at the same time, you better believe that's going to go to the top of their TB or pile. So what I personally found I'd love to hear from other authors if they found something similar when they run, either the free books you want our other their own. Siri's promotions with syriza page odds. What I personally see and this is my favorite part of it is that people don't hoard those books. They jump on them right away. Peter, drop what they're reading and they start reading the Siri's or they make it. The next is of the very next thing they read because you've got three or four books by that author on your Kindle now and it's guilting you because you bought all of them. You paid money for a few of them going to read them, right? Um, so that's that's really wonderful. So it's a It's a really cool promotion. They spend time actually building the really kind of attractive page for readers. If you're not subscribed to their and their their free books email, I recommend doing it just to see what these actually look like for sure, and they cost a little bit more. But instead of a free promotion where you're you're hoping to get cell through or sign ups or or whatever you know, future benefit down the line, you get a lot of instant income because people will buy, you know, the entire series of ones because they're actually sending the traffic to the Siri's page. I think they linked to the individual books as well, and so they'll do a hard push on the free book one, and then they'll say, Pick up the rest of serious here and they linked to the serious page. And I think they linked the individual books as well. Because international readers, I think the serious page will only work in Amazon. US? Yeah, and Amazon UK. I think they're the only two countries with serious pages in in English language anyway. And it's really powerful, and people will, if you don't. If you discount the other books in this area now, they strongly recommend running a 99 cent deal on the book to when you're doing it with a free book, one which I recommend. Anyway, just because I personally find that if there's a big step up in price from the freebie to the to the book to even if it's 2 to 99 you'll lose quite a lot of people. But if you make it 99 cents, you guys Yeah, So you see more of that instant sell True, which I always like to cultivate because then I feel like I'm not gonna be hard. I'm gonna be I'm gonna be red because I wanna be read as well. It's just like selling books.

[00:31:59] Carissa: Absolutely, Absolutely. So with that in mind, then, even though the free book see, or the free book promotes are obviously you're going to get a better traction, you're gonna get more downloads. Do you think that they're still worth as much as than the 99 cent pro mo's. Or how do you How do you think those two fare against each other?

[00:32:16] David: You mean, is it better? If you're like, you know, let's say you're running a problem when you're trying to decide what I do a free promotion or a 99 cent one?

[00:32:23] Carissa: Yeah, let's forget. Forget the serious for a moment is just one book, even though you might get 1000 downloads for your free book, you know, like you said, it might sit in the to be read pile forever. Do you think it's It's still has value that way? Or do you think Yeah,

[00:32:37] David: absolutely, absolutely.

[00:32:40] Carissa: And it depends if your

[00:32:41] David: defense you've got several books out or you don't. And if you're in Kindle Unlimited or you're not, that those will change my answer a little bit. So maybe I'll run through all for use cases. If you like. We have. That's not too corporate. Um, if you've only got one book out there and it's a stand alone, I don't see the point in doing a free promotion personae unless you're explicitly using it. Thio. You know Dr email sign ups for a launch that's about to come, unless you have a very specific plan. If you're just doing it just to get it out there, I don't think it's gonna do a huge meant for you. But if it's the first book in a Siri's, then obviously you're going to be saying, Read through and sell through and it can be an income generator for you. It's a bit different if you're in Kindle Unlimited, because the way the algorithms work and page read income and all that doing it doing a free run just on its own, just gonna be lucrative on its own once you're able to generate enough, Daniel is a kind of a critical mass, like I usually back when I was in Canada limiter when I was running promotions for other authors, I didn't tend to see much of a page reads like after the promotion, unless you got around maybe 5000 Daniels, maybe a little bit more in Amazon US. So it's kind of a high bar. You need Thio be running a few free promotions unless unless you're running a book, but then you're fine. And but once you got over that point, then I would tend to see, you know, a few days after promotion, we tend to see a spike in page res and sometimes a really good spike Andi that would continue onwards and really, you know, pay for itself. Um, but in general, I think free is best used. Like I love free. I love using Freas a tool. It's one of my favorite tools, but I think it's best use is part of an overall plan I think you need. You need either a very specific reason to be doing it, or you need to have a fair few books out there to make it work. And but But in general, when you when you are an experience author and you have a few things out there and you're, you know, email sort of things got a bit slicker and all that I like to switch between the two tactics. So if I'm promoting a Siri's and I might be doing one promotion, you know, around the time will launch or something I might I might I might make the first book free temporarily on, then run a few discounts on maybe book two and three is well, depending on how long the Siri's is. But then the next time I'm doing a large say three months later, I won't necessarily do. Even if it goes really, really well won't necessarily just repeat it. I'll do something different the next time because I think because the selection of sites is different for free books and 99 cent books, I think you're reaching different demographics as well in different crowds. And so I think, you know, if you keep repeating the same tactic all the time, and it just that well will go dry. So I like to switch it up, let the field go a little bit, follow, reach some different people in different eyeballs, and just it keeps it fresh for Mia's. Well, it keeps me on my toes, which I think is an important part of the equation as well. So I like to mix it up.

[00:35:27] Carissa: Okay, so there's a lot of authors, probably more so. The newbies who like are thinking about this whole concept of free promotions or even promote stacking with discounts and wondering, you know, Well, I don't really, You know, maybe I only have one book. Maybe I don't only have a couple of books, so I don't really want to discount it. Can't I still do promotions or promotion stacking with a full price book? Can that be done? Or do they need to seriously be rethinking that strategy?

[00:35:54] David: Well, they think this is kind of book marketing. Eldorado like, How do I sell lots and lots of full price box thio Anybody that I wanted? E think it's, um, Sometimes I think it's like it's asking a bit much to have a marketing methods, which will just work with, like a light sweater, a tap that will instantly convert strangers into wanting to buy your books all the time of full price. It can work, you know you can sell books on Facebook at full price. You can even do it on book book, which is a deal site at full price. But it's very difficult, and even something that's very experienced or has very well presented are popular. Books will struggle because it's an audience looking for deals. So I think the best way I think people are coming out that question, especially newbies air coming out that question the wrong way. The best way to sell lots of books of full price is to develop fans and to develop super fans especially, and to grow your mailing list to grow your readership. And the way you could do those things is via discounts, right? So, like I'm not like the bargain king or something, I do sell most of my books. E. That'd be a great business card, actually. The barn, anything. I

[00:36:57] Carissa: love it. I do

[00:36:59] David: sell. Most of my books are full of rice, and I do sell most of my books at 4 99 but you get to that point. You grow your audience are one of the easiest levers Thio Getting new people to try your work is with a discount, right? Are are free promotion because you're reducing the resistance. They don't know who you are. They don't know your name. They probably haven't read a review of your books. Or they might have heard another. You know, human being recommending your book. So the best way to get someone to take a chance is to drop your parts and then to advertise that discount on promo sides or wherever else now, because then you can. You can turn, but just I always hear authors talking about free hunters are bargain hunters and ended a pejorative way. But you can convert free Hunter or a bargain hunter into a full price reader. You know, long as you've done your job with the book and even if even if you couldn't people forget that these people have friends, you know a lot of these people who

[00:37:51] Carissa: right that's a good point,

[00:37:52] David: are downloading free books. They might be retired people. They might be on a fixed income or they might. They might just might have that much money to spend on books, but they could end up telling, you know, 10 2050 people that, you know, they should read this book and they could end up putting a lot of money in your pocket. So, you know, I don't think people should be too dismissive, but its so called freeloaders especially, you know, when when the economy is looking a little bit rocky and there might be more, I'm knocking around soon enough. But yeah, you use those levers like I always look at price like as a tool free promote Frias. You know another very powerful tool for May on, I want to use those tools to grow an audience of people that are happy to pay full price for my books.

[00:38:30] Carissa: Absolutely well. Some of the best ways to be able to pull people into that newsletter that you were talking about two is to use your books a czar like a free promotion or reader magnet coming into your reader list your email list and being kind of or into your ecosystem altogether as well. So then you don't even necessarily need to use a promo site or promo stacking in order to give the discount. You could do it straight from your website, assuming that you're not in K U and use that toe kind of leverage your your newsletter and built like you said that base of

[00:38:57] David: fans. Yeah, I think like like reader magnets, are the most powerful thing that you could do to grow. Your list is certainly being the biggest driver of growth for me, like by far and again, I think sometimes authors used them a little bit in the wrong way. Like sometimes they will, you know, they will put their Perma free book as their reader magnets. And I don't really see the pointed out that somebody can get it from Amazon, which is easier. Why would they go through a couple of extra steps to be a book formal or whatever to get your reader magnet? Why would they sign up to their list? It's not really, you know, exclusive or enticing, in my opinion. And sometimes people offer a book that's on sale on Amazon. Now that's that's a little bit better because you're you are actually getting something. Now that people can't get elsewhere, you're giving them basically a discount, right? But I think to really work the reader magnet strategy well, you need to have a reader magnet for me, a reader. Magna good reader Magnet has two essential qualities. It's enticing. So it's something that readers actually want and its exclusive. They can't get it anywhere else. So the time I have when I have had most successful reader magnets is when I've taken something that I knew I could make money with and gave it away for free. You know, it wasn't like I was looking, you know, here's a book that's no longer selling. I'll just make a reader magnet that But it was something that I knew I could tell. I could launch this and I could make money with it. I'm gonna give it away for free on make the only place people can get it on my list, and that will lead to huge, meaningless growth here.

[00:40:23] Carissa: I think that's definitely huge. I mean, like, especially when you think about your starting from zero course. I think it is such an incredibly valuable course, and in the amount of information that you go into in there for free is just it's absolutely beneficial to anybody who's starting out who's looking at. You know how to do just this India author game in general. So I think that works in so many different ways. But I know it works obviously with the types of books that you give away as well.

[00:40:49] David: So it's, I

[00:40:50] Carissa: think you're right right there on the money, for sure.

[00:40:53] David: Yeah, I think you know, we should remember the enticing part as well, you know, because I think there is a danger sometimes that you know, you have, like, a short story which doesn't really fit your brand and then I see some people making that the reader magnet. I'm like, Well, then, you know, if you're attracting, let's say you're writing contemporary romance and you've written a romantic suspense or something that doesn't quite fit with your brand. Why would you have that as your reader magnet? You're just gonna be attracting people who maybe don't like contemporary wrong. You know, I think it should be It should be like I see some people doing interesting things now where they have to reader magnets, and I like this idea. It's not something I've tried myself. But it is something I'm considering doing in the future where they have one, which is essentially for fans and one which is essentially for new to you readers, right? And the idea is that, you know, you might have something which could be like an off cut from your from your book. Or maybe a couple that didn't didn't quite get it on in the main book or or something like that, some little so plot that you know, something that was really like catnip for for existing fans and that will turn them into super fans and then. But that wasn't quite work. As you know, someone coming to you completely cold hasn't read when your books yet, and you might need a different reader magnet there. So if you're doing something like an aggressive mailing list growth strategy where you're leading a lot on Facebook ads, you might consider having a different reader magnet. That'll appeal mawr to people who haven't read any of your stuff yet because I think e think people are pretty good at coming up a reader magnets that existing readers will like and getting existing readers onto your list. We have to remember there's another group of readers as well who might be interested in joining your list who haven't necessarily read anything of yours. Yes, so that's not something I've personally done yet. I'm exploring it, but I've seen some people do it, and it's really, really interesting strategy.

[00:42:33] Carissa: Have you ever looked at one of the things that made me think of is like Mark Dawson talks a lot about how he's done starter libraries in the past, words like the first books in certain aspects of Syria's. So, for example, if you have multiple Siri's do you give 33 book ones away and let them kind of choose what track to go down. Have you ever tried something like that or looked into things like that before?

[00:42:54] David: I haven't I haven't tried that personally. And the question I would have about that is you know, is it not better? Toe have one which is super enticing, you know, and use that to draw people in and then turn the others into into Perma freeze everywhere and just increase the different kind of sources of readers coming into. I don't know. You would probably have to try both and compare to see the results, but that's would be my gut reaction to that,

[00:43:20] Carissa: right. It was one of the things that I was looking at last year when I was launching that big Siri's and I was trying to decide, Do I want to do you know, a starter library to pull more people into my list? And it was a concept where I was like, Well, I'll give it a try for a little bit and see if it makes a difference. And for me, at least, I didn't notice. Like a huge difference between people wanting a starter library versus wanting a just a single freebie. So it was one of those things I kind of like set to the side and just did one book instead, or one freebie book. But it was interesting was an interesting concept at the time, just kind of going, huh? Let's let's see if that works. But

[00:43:52] David: maybe the thinking was like box sets or so attractive. Like what if he gave people the box set as a reader magnet? So E can understand why you know the thinking behind it. But from my perspective, just as a reader, maybe maybe order readers feel differently. But just putting my reader had on, like, one really enticing free book is going to appeal to me. Maybe mawr. And maybe it's easier to market that, because you can, you know, you have a tagline for that book you have, you know, a bit of marketing sales copy. It's easier graphically to make make you know Facebook ad for something like that, I think has just made more focused. I think so. I think if you have one really attractive thing, I think putting two half attractive things beside it doesn't make it more attractive. Overall, it might even make it less because you're kind of, you know, you kind of muddying the picture a little bit. Maybe. I don't know.

[00:44:37] Carissa: I think so too. A little bit, because then it's like, Okay, which book did I read first? Then if I've got three different books and they're all kind of equally sounding, okay, And then then you kind of get that whole cognitive dissonance. Where is like, No, I'm not gonna read any of them because I don't know which one to pick s way. Don't want that either. E.

[00:44:52] David: I think that is a danger, especially in the kind of e think it was. Jeff. There's also was one of those Internet entrepreneur people who said something like the currency of the Internet is attention right on. Bears always so much distraction everywhere that I'm always trying to think about the pathway that a reader takes from, you know, not knowing anything about me to being a super fan and all the different stages on the way, I I just I always worried, like I I spent a lot of time thinking about things like my end matter at the back of my books. I know, authors like to list out every single thing they've written there and put it all No, all the links. And they're like, Well, you know, you never know where you might pick up a sale. I get it. But in my personal view, it's much better just to really train the focus on the one or two things that you want the reader to You're gonna you're gonna almost definitely want to assign up to your mailing list. And you probably want them to buy a book to in Siris on You could list all the other boats there if you wish, you know you can. But in terms of focus, I think sometimes there's a danger of letting that focus get defused a little bit too much, and you really want to kind of narrow, narrow beam that, you know, on the to one or two things that are truly important.

[00:45:59] Carissa: I think that's really powerful. Its's so important for people, especially authors toe to remember. I think we kind of get stuck in this trap where we've got, like, all the hats that were wearing all the different things that we're doing that we think we have to do all the things all the time, and it's kind of a shotgun method. You know what I mean versus really, really getting really getting our skills honed in doing that. The one thing that does, you know, work really well. The 80 20 rule, whatever, however you want to describe it. And I think that's really a good reminder for people, even even myself. I mean, I tend to focus, like, back matter wise. Um, the two main things I want to have happen right away. And then if people you know tend to keep flicking, then sure, you can. Then look at the other stuff, you know, the other books or whatever. But I always start with you know what it is. I really want them toe to be thinking about next first. And I think that's just it's very important for authors to remember to do that sort of thing. Okay, so we've talked about a lot more than just promo stacking today, which was awesome. Thank you so much for doing that because you are like the marketing guru. You are one of the people that I love going, going back to and seeing. I mean your website is like Dave Chesson is on Kindle preneurs like you start at one thing and you're in there for hours because it just goes from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. It's amazing.

[00:47:12] David: So

[00:47:12] Carissa: it really is. It's fantastic. You have done such a great job. So where is the best place for everyone to come? Find you and to learn about your courses, your books, everything. Where do they go?

[00:47:24] David: Well, the websites. A good start. Unfortunately, I have one of these names. That's what it's easy for me to France. You

[00:47:31] Carissa: would think what

[00:47:32] David: people don't know how to spell it. David gawker dot com. But if you go to marketing with a story dot com, which people should be able to spell and that will redirect you to my website, so it's a handy want to throw it there on podcast and like,

[00:47:45] Carissa: Awesome, that's fantastic. And I'll make sure to post everything inside the show notes for today as well. So if anyone wants to make sure they're clicking to the right site, we've got you covered so well. Thank you so much for joining me today. I am so grateful that you said yes when I reached out and was like, Hey, I know this is like this weird, weird chick kind of reaching out of nowhere. But I loved your your promo stacking video I want you to come talk about It s so I appreciate you saying yes.

[00:48:11] David: Well, thanks for having me long. This is pretty much the only way I get out of that thes days. So I was very grateful for the opportunity.

[00:48:18] Carissa: Absolutely. It's It's about all the only time I get out as well. It's really weird. It's not even out. But it's in. It's out. I don't know. Well, thank you so much. And I am looking forward, Thio seeing more coming from your camp and all the great stuff that you got coming up on your site.

[00:48:33] David: Alright, Cool. Thank you very much.

[00:48:36] Carissa: Well, there you have it. My friends. Wasn't that a fantastic interview? Now I don't know about you, but don't be surprised if you have to listen to this episode A couple of times I know I'm gonna have Thio. There's so much value packed into this tiny little space, So heck, if you want to deepen your experience. Did you know you could also head over to the author revolution YouTube channel and watch the unedited video interview? Yeah, you can Now, don't worry. There were a lot of things covered, so I'll make sure the link to everything in today's show notes. I'll also make sure the video is linked, as well as David's website, his free course, his video on promo stacking and so much more. Head over to author revolution dot org's Ford slash 69 to get the details. So one last thing. I don't know if you could tell, but the winds of change are sweeping through the landscape of this podcast. My friends going forward, you're gonna be seeing and hearing a lot more from other industry experts. As I recruit some of the most talented minds in the business to be on the podcast, you can just call me the Indy author Oprah. I mean, because, man, this is fun. If you like today's podcast episode, be sure to leave a review or drop a star rating so others will know that there's gold within this space. Also, make sure you head over to David's website and sign up for either his free course or his email marketing tips. Email. You'll get his exclusive title following, as well as weekly marketing tips to rock the India author space. Alright, guys, that's all I have for today. Go forth and start your author revolution.