How to Promote Your eBook: A Step-by-Step Guide for Indie Authors

From the eBookHounds Author Resources library.

You finished the book. You uploaded it, hit publish, told your friends… and then watched the sales graph flatline. If that sounds familiar, you're in the overwhelming majority of self-published authors — not because your book is bad, but because publishing and promoting are two different jobs, and nobody hands you the second job description.

The good news: ebook promotion isn't mysterious, and it doesn't require a marketing degree or a four-figure budget. It is a sequence — get the book ready, set up a price window, put the book in front of readers who already buy in your genre, and pay attention to what happens so the next round works better. This guide walks through that sequence in order.

Step 1: Make Sure Your Book Is Ready to Be Promoted

Promotion amplifies whatever is already true about your book. If the product page converts browsers into buyers, promotion makes you money. If it doesn't, promotion just shows more people a page they won't buy from. Before you spend a dollar, check four things:

Cover. Your cover is competing against professionally designed books in the same genre, at thumbnail size. If it looks homemade next to the bestsellers in your category, fix it before promoting. This is the single highest-leverage fix for most indie authors.
Blurb. Your description should open with a hook, not a summary of chapter one. Read the blurbs of the top books in your genre and notice how they're structured — promise first, details second.
Reviews. You don't need hundreds, but a book with zero reviews converts poorly no matter how much traffic you send it, and many promotion sites won't feature a book with no track record at all. If you're starting from zero, an ARC (advance reader copy) team, StoryOrigin or BookFunnel group promos, and honest requests to your own list are the legitimate ways to build that first base. Never buy reviews or trade them — retailers ban it and readers can tell.
Series and backlist links. If this book is part of a series, the back matter should point readers to the next book. Promotion economics change completely when one new reader can turn into three or four sales.

Step 2: Fix Your Store Page Before You Send It Traffic

Readers decide in seconds. Two quiet pieces of setup do a lot of that work:

Categories and keywords. Your categories determine which bestseller lists and browse paths your book can appear in, and your keyword phrases determine which searches it surfaces for. Choose the most specific categories that honestly fit your book — a narrow subcategory you can rank in beats a huge category where you're invisible — and use keyword phrases readers actually type, including your subgenre, tropes, and comparable authors or series ("for fans of…" style phrasing belongs in your description, not your keyword fields).

Price. Know what your book will cost on promotion day before you book anything (Step 3), and make sure the price shown on the store page matches what your promotion advertises. A deal email that says $0.99 landing on a $4.99 page wastes the entire promotion.

Step 3: Choose Your Promotion Window and Price

Almost all ebook promotion is built around a temporary price: free, or discounted (most commonly $0.99). Pick based on your goal:

Free maximizes downloads and is the classic strategy for the first book in a series — you give away book one to sell books two and three. Through KDP Select, you get five free promotion days per 90-day enrollment period.
$0.99 produces fewer downloads but actual revenue and paid-chart ranking movement, and it filters for readers willing to pay something — usually better read-through than free.

If you're in KDP Select, your two built-in tools are Free Book Promotions (your five free days) and Kindle Countdown Deals (a discounted price for up to seven days, with a visible countdown timer; Countdown Deals run on Amazon's US and UK stores). Both need to be scheduled in advance — Countdown Deals at least 24 hours ahead, and your book must have sat at its regular price for 30 days first. If you're not in KDP Select, you create the same window by temporarily changing your price manually at each retailer.

Either way: the discount must actually be live, everywhere the promotion links to, on the day the promotion runs. Check it yourself the morning of.

Step 4: Book Deal Newsletters and Promotion Sites

The workhorse of indie ebook promotion is the deal newsletter: a service that has spent years building a list of readers who signed up to receive free and discounted books in specific genres, and that features your book to that list for a flat fee on a chosen day. This is how a self-published author with no audience borrows one.

A few honest things to know about this landscape:

The biggest name is the hardest door. BookBub's Featured Deals are the most powerful single promotion in indie publishing, and correspondingly selective — a small minority of submissions are accepted, accepted books generally have strong reviews and professional presentation, and fees in large fiction genres can run from several hundred dollars to well over a thousand. Apply, absolutely — but build your plan assuming you might not get in, especially early in your career.
Mid-sized genre services are where most authors actually start. Services like Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy (for free and discounted books respectively), Robin Reads, and The Fussy Librarian charge genre-based fees that are a fraction of BookBub's and are far more accessible to newer authors.
Genre fit beats raw list size. A smaller list of readers who love exactly your subgenre will outsell a giant general list. When you compare services, compare them within your genre: list size for your category, price for your category, and whether they feature books like yours.

This is the category eBookHounds operates in. Our Daily Deal ads are priced by genre — currently $10 to $60 depending on category (Mysteries, our largest list at 64,000 subscribers, is $60; several smaller genres are $10) — and you can target up to three genres in a single ad if your book genuinely crosses over. You can browse the full genre pricing here, and when you're ready, submit your book here. Whoever you book with — us or anyone else — book early: popular dates at most services fill up well in advance. At eBookHounds, submit at least 48 hours before your promotion date. Our own requirements are spelled out on our requirements page: your book should carry a rating of at least three stars with at least ten positive reviews, be free or discounted at least 40% off its cover price on promotion day, and — for non-novellas — run at least 20,000 words.

Step 5: Stack Your Promotions in One Window

One promotion on one day produces a spike. Several promotions layered across the same few days — "promo stacking" — produces momentum, and momentum is what store algorithms reward: sustained sales over several days push your book up category rankings, which generates organic visibility that outlasts the promotions themselves.

A simple, workable stack for a $0.99 or free window:

Your own email list and social channels on day one (small, but the highest-converting audience you have).
A mid-sized deal newsletter on day one or two.
A second service, or a genre-specific one, on day two or three.
Free and low-cost listings filling the gaps across the window.

You don't need a BookBub to stack, and you don't need eight services — two or three well-chosen placements inside one price window will teach you more than one expensive placement alone.

Step 6: Measure What Happened (So the Next One Works Better)

After your window closes, look at three things:

Units and revenue during the window, per promotion, as best you can attribute them (promotions on different days make this easier — one more argument for spreading a stack across days).
Sell-through. If the promoted book is in a series, did books two and three move in the following two weeks? That's where promotion profit usually lives.
Ranking and reviews. Did you gain category visibility? New reviews? Those are assets that keep paying after the window ends.

Then promote again with what you learned. Authors who sell steadily almost never did it with one promotion — they run a promotion every month or two, keep the books that convert, drop the services that don't, and compound. The authors who struggle promote once, conclude "promotion doesn't work," and stop.

What Promotion Can't Fix

Straight talk to close: no newsletter, ours included, can sell a book whose cover, blurb, and reviews tell readers to pass. If a promotion underperforms, audit the book's presentation before blaming the channel — and if you fix the presentation, a book that flopped in March can perform in June. Promotion is a multiplier. Make sure what it's multiplying is ready.

When you're ready to put a date on the calendar, Bailey — our resident ebook butler — and the rest of the pack would be glad to help dig up readers for your book. Start with the genre pricing page to see what a feature in your category costs, then submit your book and pick your day.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to promote an ebook?
It ranges from free (your own list, social media, group promos) to well over a thousand dollars for a single top-tier placement. Most indie authors run effective promotions in the range of a few genre-based newsletter fees stacked together — at eBookHounds, a Daily Deal costs $10 to $60 depending on genre, and featured placements (eBook of the Day, Genre eBook of the Week) add $25 to the genre price.

How many reviews do I need before I promote?
There's no universal number. Some services state minimums and the largest are effectively closed to books without a substantial review base, while many mid-sized genre services will feature newer books. As a practical matter, even a modest base of genuine reviews noticeably improves how many browsers become buyers — which is why building early reviews is Step 1, not an afterthought. At eBookHounds, our stated minimum is a rating of at least three stars and at least ten positive reviews. If your book isn't there yet, our Diamonds in the Ruff program exists for exactly that situation — it features books that don't yet meet the standard requirements rather than rejecting them outright.

Should I promote my book free or at $0.99?
Free generates the most downloads and works best as a funnel into a series or as a list-building move. $0.99 generates fewer downloads but revenue, paid-chart movement, and typically better read-through rates. If the book is a standalone, $0.99 is usually the safer default; if it's book one of a series, free deserves serious consideration.

How far in advance should I book a promotion?
As early as you can once your dates are fixed. Popular services and popular dates fill up, and your price window (especially a Countdown Deal) has its own scheduling rules that have to line up with your bookings. At eBookHounds, we ask for at least 48 hours between submission and your promotion date.

How long before I see results?
Downloads and sales from a deal newsletter land on the day of the feature — you'll know quickly. The longer effects (ranking improvement, series sell-through, new reviews) play out over the following one to three weeks. Judge a promotion on the full window, not the first hour.