Hello fellow crime author.
Thanks for reading the email we sent you.
What Is This?
This is an invitation for you to participate in a new initiative to promote the books of true crime and crime fiction authors in an organized, collective and powerful way. It is aimed at helping all of us reach new, highly-targeted readers. The promotion will happen twice per year.
Who is Doing It?
This is operated by Jamie Malton at Malton Publishing LLC, a true crime author.
What Does It Cost to Be Included?
Zero. But it’s by invitation only because it needs to be laser-targeted to serious true crime and crime fiction readers who appreciate highly rated books. (There is a very significant crossover in these fiction/non-fiction audiences. The people who read true crime also read crime fiction, and vice versa. They want to know about similar authors.)
Is This An Affiliate Play?
No. All the promo book links will be our Genius Links because those will redirect readers to the Amazon store in their own country, but we will not attach our affiliate account to those links.
If It Doesn’t Make You Money, Why Do It?
As crime authors (fiction and non-fiction) we all need to reach new readers on an ongoing basis. This promotion is a way for us to leverage our collective clout in an effective way and show the Amazon algorithm we are are the authors who aggressively market our titles. Amazon rewards the authors who show up for work. Further, there is a shortage of sharply targeted promotions for crime books, and certainly a dearth of powerful but affordable promotions.
How Does It Work?
The debut of this promotion will occur on Thursday, May 16th, 2024
Every invited crime author can promote one to four books per promotion but the emphasis is on free books, so at least one free book is always required.
However, an author can choose any ONE of these scenarios:
- 1 Free e-book
- 2 Free e-books
- 1 Free e-book + 1 $0.99 e-book
- 2 Free e-books + 1 $0.99 e-books
- 2 Free e-books + 2 $0.99 e-books
– The promotional price(s) needs to be active on the day of the promotion, but we highly recommend extending it for an additional day or two to catch the stragglers.
– We want to promote deals – so permanently free books are not a good fit for this. However permanent $0.99 books that are the first in a series are OK because we know how critical those are to capturing new readers.
– Participating authors agree to notify their own mailing list before the promotion so those readers can join our list to be notified of the promo page on the day it happens.
– Our goal is to have 30-50 titles included in the May 16th, 2024 promo and systematically gain more visibility in our indie author community so that this bi-annual promotion grows into a very powerful marketing tool for all of us, perhaps involving 100+ titles and tens of thousands of readers in the future.
Will This Work?
Many of you already know that there is a Stuff Your E-Reader Day for romance books. The romance category is a leviathan and that promotion gets a ton of free publicity. Its success caused Amazon to create its own Stuff Your Kindle Day. While we have no expectation of achieving the level of visibility of the romance category, let alone Amazon itself, this marketing tactic is well proven and crime writers need to have something similar of our own.
Who Gets the Slots Near the Top of the Page?
Not Jamie Malton. Her book(s) will be mingled lower in the page. Placement will be allocated on a first to submit, first to appear basis. So the earlier you tell us your ASIN and price, the higher your title will appear on the page. The final order on the day will be affected by Murphy’s Law. Inevitably, a busy author will forget to set the price(s) in time, or Amazon will fail to make the change. We will check all prices immediately before pulling the trigger and books at the incorrect price will be pulled from the promo at the last minute and everyone else will move up on the page. We have to focus on reader experience and we want crime readers to rave about how great this promo is and to tell all their friends about it.
Also, the authors who participate in this May, 2024 promo will get early invitations to the November, 2024 promo – ahead of additional authors who will be solicited. Thus ensuring better positions on the page in November for all returning participants.
What Else Should I Know About This?
There are three things you need to be OK with.
1. We need all the participants to agree to send at least one broadcast email to their mailing list and one social media post (if you are on social media) to tell them you are participating in this promotion and to include our link to where those people can subscribe to our list so they can be notified of the dedicated landing page on launch day.
2. We will create some advertising graphics of our promotional page and some of those graphics will show a collage of book covers. All or part of your cover could be in a collage, so you need to be OK with that. If for some reason you don’t want that to happen you can send us an email saying so and we’ll make sure any screen grabs avoid your cover(s).
3. It’s important to realize that this is a bootstrap initiative by us. By virtue of the relatively small indie fiction/true crime niche, this will always be a semi-private promotion between a discrete number of indie authors trying to gain more visibility in the niche. And while the nice people at Malton Publishing LLC have over 20 years of online marketing experience and every incentive to execute this promotion flawlessly, in the event that Malton Publishing LLC drops the ball and a promotion does not happen on time, or your titles aren’t properly included, you need to agree there will be no financial restitution made or liability incurred. This is a free promotion done via co-operative execution from all parties, and no guarantees are being proffered by anyone or to anyone.
I’m Not Sure Yet, I Have Questions
You can send an email to this address. (Please don’t share the email, this is for invitees only and we don’t want to reject other authors and create hard feelings.)
I’m in! Where do I send my info?
Visit this page to submit your info and secure your slot(s). (And please don’t share this page for the same reason as above.)