A shot of EspressoCoco is good for the soul

I don’t do promotion, or rather I don’t do it very well. Being a fledgling horror writer, and an introverted one at that, I don’t put as much time as I should into promoting my work. Partly because I’m waiting to have something I want to promote (a novel or novella) rather than just short stories. But that leads to a chicken and egg situation, when I do get something worthwhile to talk about who do I tell?

This is a big thank you to Dave Graham (Dakegra) of Espresso Coco a good friend of mine who recently featured a promotion of three of my short stories. I thought that I would take the time to compare the impact of being featured on Dave’s site compared to a paid targeted Facebook ad campaign.

If you are not familiar with Dave’s site, have a look. Recently he’s been involved in a number of high profile book tours. If you’re short of your next read, you could also pick up a suggestion or three from there.

I’m comparing being mentioned at Espresso Coco, and a targeted Facebook campaign.

The first day, I let Dave’s reach do its thing. All the downloads were in the US, so I know that it was nothing to do with me. Keeping in mind that the promotion was running for three days 12th-14th inclusive, it was featured on the 12th on Dave’s blog.

The second day I triggered the facebook campaign, I paid £6 to boost a post for 24 hours – targeting the US with anyone who has listed ‘Reading Horror Books’ or ‘Horror Fiction’ in their interests. I’m not picky, so that sounded like a good match. How hard could it be? Assuming that the target person has a kindle, they like reading horror stories and I have horror stories that I want to give away for free – it should have a high hit rate.

Since the facebook post I boosted in the morning in the UK, it should have been visible from the morning of the 13th in the US.

I know the figures are low, but hey, as an unknown in the field – with the exception of one reader in the US (thanks Lisa!) then at least it’s comparing like for like.

The results from facebook were reported as:

You also have to consider that the Amazon figures on the facebook promotion day could have been boosted by people reading Espresso Coco a day later – but the stats speak for themselves, even with this bias.

It’s clear that even with the diverse audience that follow Espresso Coco, the impact was more (and a lot quicker) than a paid campaign on Facebook with very specific criteria.