Hi All!

I wrote this holiday short story that I just love, The Group Seduction, that released toward the end of November, 2013. (You can find out more about it on my Home Page.) I don’t know whether it was the timing of the release – about a week before Thanksgiving/Chanukah, or that it was a short story at the $0.99 price point, or if it got swallowed up in the flood of e-books available for purchase, but the story didn’t sell near as well as I’d hoped.

Since The Group Seduction was published via a small press publisher, my royalty on each book sold will probably come out to be around $0.12. No, I never expected this story to be a big moneymaker. But I had hoped women, and maybe some men, would read it and relate to it and maybe, just maybe, get the courage to do what Bella did – take a risk to save her marriage.

What I love about small press publishing is their ability to get a book out within weeks, which is what happened with The Group Seduction. The downside of this is very little time for advance promomotion and setting up some blog visits. Most of the big book blogs schedule posts months in advance. So I tried to think of other, inexpensive ways I could promo the story.

I tweeted and posted on Facebook. But I got frustrated because, according to my FB stats, out of the 568 people who have liked my FB Author Page, (and feel free to do that now if you have a minute!) only between 68 and 229 people were actually seeing my promo posts. (And the 229 was when I’d managed to get some conversation comments going.)

So I decided to pay to boost a post on FB about an excellent review The Group Seduction received.

And here’s what happened:

I opted to spend $15.00 and to reach people who had liked my FB page and their friends. (I could have done a targeted promotion for fans of romance of a certain age and other pre-determined, specific criteria but chose not to.) Of note, the process was very quick and easy.

According to my FB stats this is what my $15.00 bought me:

Paid reach: 2,337

Engagement: 85 (Of note, most of the comments were from people who regulary interacted with my FB page.)

15 photo clicks

16 link clicks

2 page likes

The review in the post I boosted had a buy link for Amazon. According to Novel Rank (which is an estimate of Amazon sales), I sold 1 copy of The Group Seduction in the 24-hour period the post was ‘boosted’ on Facebook.

Was the price worth it? In my opinion, yes.  If nothing else, it was a learning experience. And there are a lot of variables I couldn’t measure. Maybe people purchased The Group Seduction on sites other than Amazon. It was a busy time of year, maybe people didn’t see the post during the 24 hours of the promotion but a day or two later. Maybe people were too busy to think about reading during the holiday shopping frenzy but they made a note of my story and plan to read it once things settle down. (If you fall into this category, now would be a good time!)

Would I pay to boost a Facebook post again? I think so. But I’ll probably do a targeted promotion and spend more time on the post I plan to boost.

So what about you? What are your thoughts on paying for Facebook promotion of your posts? Have you tried it? Were you happy with the results?