Resources for Writers: Book Raid

Hello Writers of Bloglandia,

It’s time for another post in which I share with you a resource that I hope will make your writing life even more marvelous.

If you’ve missed any of the Resources for Writers posts, you can find them by clicking that category link hanging around near the title of this post. And if you want to see why and how this all started, be sure to jump over to the very first Resources for Writers post HERE.

Testing the Promo Sites

This is my second promo site review for this little resroace-filled endeavor. If you missed the first one in which I tested out Fussy Librarian, you’ll want to head HERE.

Now, if you’re already familiar with the caveats and methodology for these tests, go on and scroll down to the review. If not, I highly recommend you read all the little tidbits before the review.

And Those Tidbits Are….

While I’m running these promos individually to test them out, normally you would want to stack promotions from these sites over the course of four or five days. This helps boost your book in the stores and should lead to long term sales/downloads long after the promo ends.

Your best results in getting that long-term stickiness are going to come from getting consistent downloads over the course of those four or five days. But how can you know what sort of results the sites will deliver?

THAT is the point of this experimentation I’m sharing with you. You can see how my promos went, judge the numbers, and then set up your own stacked promo accordingly. And yes, i will be doing a stacked promo in January and I will share my results with you on that.

And if you have any questions about stacking and stickiness, do not hesitate to ask in the comments below!!

Your Mileage May Vary

But before we start, let’s cover a few caveats, warnings, disclaimers, or whatever you want to call them.

• First, I’m sharing nothing but my own experience with the promo site in question. Your results will vary. You might blow my results out of the water (most likely), or you might get little response. I’m not guaranteeing anything.
• Second, I am not getting anything for this review/analysis.
• Third, I am being very honest with my results. The good and the bad. And that includes my starting points. This is very uncomfortable for me because I know my book sales numbers suck. Please don’t judge me, or laugh.

Okay, I think that’s it let’s jump into this and explore the promo site….

Book Raid – Promotion Spot

Overall Opinion: Welcome this Viking onto your promotional shores!!

The Book in Question

As before (and to keep things consistent) the book I used for this promotion is Domna, Part One: The Sun God’s Daughter. The book is permafree on all retailers. I released it, oh hell, I can’t remember, maybe January 2018. Sure, that sounds good.

However, I recently gave the series a new look with a more genre-specific cover. I also updated the back matter in all the books in the series. Part of that new back matter includes providing a direct link to buy the next book in the series.

The Goal of the Promotion

To give the newly revamped series a little boost and to see if the Fussy Librarian results were just a fluke.

The Starting Point

Without any promotions running (say via BookFunnel), this book normally gets about 10 downloads a day. The rest of the series sells maybe a handful of books a week.

The Promotion and the Results

For this promo experiment, I purchased a spot on the Book Raid newsletter. Their newsletter features a combo of free and discounted books. I’ve used Book Raid once in the past for a 99c deal on my first Osteria Chronicles box set earlier this year. That promo worked really well, but how would a free book do?

The promo ran on 18 November 2020, and that’s a Wednesday for anyone keeping track.

The results were pretty good, not as staggering as Fussy Librarian, but definitely good enough to keep Book Raid in my promo arsenal.

Keep in mind, not everyone opens the newsletter on the day it’s sent, so you should see some downloads/sales trickling in after Promo Day.

Anyway, here’s the download numbers (this is a tally of my results from Amazon, Draft2Digital, and Kobo)

• Day 1 = 275
• Day 2 = 55
• Day 3 = 15

And then things went mostly back to normal. While I did see a fair number of sales during the promo and for about a week after, it was nothing like the surge after the Fussy Librarian spot.

But…here’s the odd thing. Several days later (the following Monday), I got 310 Amazon downloads for Domna, Part One. I have no idea why or if it has anything to do with the Book Raid promo. Since my other permafree book didn’t have this weird surge, I’m thinking it might have something to do with the Book Raid deal, but I can’t be certain.

The Nuts & Bolts

The interesting thing about Book Raid is that they have a cap on how much they’ll charge you. You pay per click on your book and this varies depending on the price of your book.

Free books cost 15c a click, 99c books are 18c a click, and other price points are 24c a click. If your book never gets enough clicks to reach $1, you are charged nothing, nada, zip!

The most you’ll pay is $40 which is insanely reasonable. Even if you get 1000 clicks on a book, you’ll never pay more than $40. Only get 100 clicks on your free book? You’ll pay $15. Pretty nifty, eh?

I ended up with 777 clicks (jackpot!) and paid $40.

The process of setting up a promo on Book Raid is super smooth. You’ll have to enter all your links, write a quick description, select a promo date, and enter payment info…all of which is pretty basic across all promo sites.

Your book does have to be discounted (by at least 50%) or free, fiction needs to be 120 pages long (although Domna, Part One is just a tad under that, they still accepted me), but you don’t need to have a specific number of reviews…which means it could be good for new releases.

Once you submit your request, they’ll contact you within a day to let you know if you’ve been accepted. The promo then runs and (it seems) they tally up clicks for two days. They’ll then charge you for your promo and send you an invoice.

It’s all super smooth and well run.

The Recommendation

So do I recommend Book Raid? YES! Again, this wasn’t my first promo with them, so the fact that I’ve been a repeat customer should tell you something (I hate wasting money!).

You may not get a holy-crap number of downloads from this promo, but it does give enough that, if added to a stack of promos over five days, will give you the exact boost you need.

Besides that, the process is smooth and simple, the price is tough to beat, and the ability to book a spot within a short time frame is very convenient.

*Note: Since writing this post, I’ve also done promo with them on a 99c boxset. The results were pretty small – only 16 sales (which was about half of what I had from another promo site earlier that week). Still, I only ended up paying about $10, so it is what it is. I’d still recommend Book Raid.

Have you tried Book Raid? If so, did you find it useful? If not, are you planning on giving it a try? Let me know in a comment!!

* * *

Available Now for Pre-Order

The Undead Mr. Tenpenny

If you’d like a 14-chapter sample, you can grab that HERE.

Or click the image below if you’re ready to pre-order.

When I saw the book title…my first thought was, “another zombie apocalypse”. A wonderful surprise greeted me with an entertaining story that was written with humor, a great story line and new twist on the undead.

—J. Tate, Eugene Reviewer