I purchased a promotional package from Booktweeters, www.booktweeters.com, for my book God Child. I chose the premium package and used a discount code. I scheduled three days in a row, a break of two days, and another two days promotion. Then, I sat back and waited to see how their followers (readers and authors) would react.
How Did Booktweeters Perform?
This is what Booktweeters promises to do:
We will tweet your book 60 times a day, to our 480,000+ followers across 5 accounts (@eBooksHabit, @eBooksWeLove, @TheBookTweeters, @eBooktweeters, @eBookPriceDrop). These are real followers comprised of mainly authors and readers that we have connected with!
I didn’t do any other promotions during these days to see how Booktweeters would perform. After the first three days I checked KDP and: … nothing! I emailed Booktweeters and asked them whether the promotion is running. Booktweeters replied, but the reply was kinda unsatisfactory. They send me what they called a ‘proof’: a link to Twitter search, with the books ASIN, and an excuse (quote): “My thoughts? Your book is on a niche topic, a polarizing topic, so that itself is going to limit the interested audience of readers.” That rings a bit with truth, but zero sales? I can do better with my 800+ followers.
I waited for the other two promo days to pass and checked KDP again, but still no sales tracing back to Booktweeters. I responded to Booktweeters and told them that their Premium Package gave me zero ROI. I also complained that they just showed me the tweets they sent out. Everybody can send tweets, the question is whether Booktweeters has valuable followers. I asked them to send me the click-through stats of the shortened links to verify at least how many of their followers had a look at the book, but they didn’t respond.
On a side note, I also criticized Booktweeters’ remark that the book is a niche topic. Every indie book is a niche product. Most indie authors select a niche first before they even start writing a book. This is an indication that Booktweeters doesn’t know the essentials of indie publishing, meaning they don’t understand their customers.