​Is promoting through Fussy Librarian worth it?

Before you read, see my most recent test in July of 2021 on Patreon.​

The short answer is not really (it isn't a YES! but is still worth considering depending on your goals).

​Bargain Ebook Promotion

I decided to test their promotion with my most successful book, "Save the Ocean." This book is established, has been an Amazon Best-Seller, and I figured it would have the best shot at a cost-efficient advertisement. I didn't run a free promo but instead decided to promote my book at it's "bargain" price - which is $2.99 or under.

Since my ebook sells well daily - I wanted to see if this promotion would reach new readers and expand my audience and grab people I wasn't able to reach before.

With AMS I only spend about 10-20% of profits on advertising, so with the same results, a $10 promotion should result similarly. I assumed some purchasers wouldn't buy the ebook, opting for other versions, so the number of books sold will vary based on your profit margin for your books. However, I wasn't sure if the profit margin would be as good as AMS, so at the least I was hoping to break even.

The promotion went out (I saw my book in the email and on the website - both of which had working links to my book) and then the day after I went to check the results.

Nothing.
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So what this means to be is that despite the large email list they boast there aren’t real people or people that actually care on the other end, which makes the advertisement useless. If they have a list of over 200,000 people this seems highly unlikely that not even one was interested. I would not recommend this service. Yet, I had heard other authors happy with the free ebook promotion so I decided to give it a go despite by better judgement.

​Free Ebook Promotion

This promotion was $15 but I gave it a shot. I again wanted to test just the Fussy Librarian advertisement power. I shut off ads, and told no one, to let the sales be organic. I sat and waited as downloads came in. They were steady. Incredibly steady. Finishing at 322 ebooks downloaded in one day. The following day had 190 and then 60 for the last day in total 572 ebooks.

Great!

Free ebook promotions are wonderful not only do you get to share your work with amazing readers, but often times you will generate a lot of reviews and sales if people enjoy it.

My physical sales were still on track with my normal rate. Typically after my own free ebook promotions (using free resources) I notice a dramatic spike in sales and in this case there were none out of the ordinary.

It was advertised on their site, and email list. As they said it would. It did receive downloads. It just resulted in few to no benefits in terms of audience gain or in profits. I did gain 2 reviews, one of which that simply promoted another site to download free eBooks from... Yikes.

The week (7 days) prior and post the advertisement sold the exact same number of books proving that their advertisement had no increase in regular sales of the book, for me. However I did increase with ebook sales for the surrounding week by 5%.

So was it worth it? If you want a free ebook rank boost - then go for it! It does work. It does get downloads, and it does get your book at #1 in the free ebook section across multiple categories which DOES have the CHANCE to reach more people. I did have a small increase in ebook sales which may or may not be attributed to the promotion considering it wasn't a significant percentage.

To share your work, and boost your rank then sure! I'd say go for it.

To get increased valuable reviews and a great ROI that is immediately visible, and lead to increased sales of printed formats I would recommend other advertising avenues.

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