Image source: Story Origin
Today, I am writing a detailed introduction to STORY ORIGIN, the author platform that has long changed the way I do book promotion. And I am including my hottest tips!
Story Origin has everything an author needs for their book marketing – landing pages for reader magnets to garner new subscribers, newsletter swaps and group promotions with other authors, goal trackers for writing progress, landing pages for ARCs to find new beta readers and reviewers, and more! I am about to include my hottest tips from my own experience with Story Origin in the past two years, so stick around even if you’re already using it. Who knows? You may gain a new idea or two for your own promotions!
Let’s face it. Being an indie author is hard work. Having organizational skills is a must in order to succeed. Still, it seems that no matter how organized we are, finding time for the mountain of tasks that await us each day is always a challenge. We all could use a little help, but few of us can afford a virtual assistant. This is why, for most of us, promoting becomes a tedious task.
Let me tell you something. I used to be one of those authors. Promotion to me had become an aversion. I could only manage doing major promotion 3-4 times a year tops. I’d spend money on ads that didn’t pay off, and also paid to participate in group promotions with other authors, but they often didn’t result in any significant ROI either.
And then came Story Origin. And just like that, I started to promote without any hassle, because this brilliant author platform helped me organize everything swiftly, saving me hours of work. And I saw a rise in my sales too. The features of Story Origin cover all you need! Before we start, here is a short glossary of the terms Story Origin uses. You could ignore it for now, but it may come in handy if and when you sign up, in order to understand what each term means:
GLOSSARY
‘Campaign’ = this is your newsletter. You add a new campaign on Story Origin for every newsletter you will be sending out.
‘Mailing list’ = This is just the description of your newsletter. You only register it once.
‘Universal book link’ (UBL) = your book’s Amazon link. You register it once for each book, add any Amazon affiliate tags you may have, and you’re done.
‘Reader magnet’ – a free book that you put up on Story Origin to garner new subscribers.
‘Tracking link’ – this is the unique link that Story Origin assigns to you every time you are to promote a book of another author or a group promotion. This link will be visible to the corresponding authors so they can see how many clicks they gained from your effort.
‘Archive link’ – this is the link to your newsletter. After sending it out (with Madmimi, Mailerlite, or whatever), you are encouraged to go in your ‘campaign’ page and put the archive link in there. This allows the authors who swapped with you to see your newsletter. I always publicize my archive links as I appreciate other authors allowing me to have a look in their newsletters too, if I want to.
Story Origin’s founder and developer is Evan Gow from the USA, who is very nice and friendly – always readily available to help if you have a question or if you stumble upon a technical issue (the latter is very rare). Of course, there’s also an online tutorial, which I didn’t have to use, simply because Story Origin is self-intuitive and thus easy to learn. From the moment you sign up, there’s a fair amount of ‘hand-holding’ on the platform. I’ll also do my best in the following paragraphs to show you how to start!
SETTING UP YOUR MAILING LIST
The first thing you do on Story Origin is set up your mailing list. This is just a description of your newsletter and you only register it once. Here, I have to stress that Story Origin is simply the place where you organize your newsletters. You still get to create the newsletters where you normally do, like MailChimp, AWeber, MailerLite etc.
SETTING UP YOUR FIRST NEWSLETTER (CAMPAIGN)
After you’ve created your ‘mailing list’, Story Origin will prompt you to set up your first newsletter (It’s called a ‘campaign’). You don’t have to choose a frequency for it. You can create the next ones whenever you’re ready. This, in itself, is the best benefit I have reaped from Story Origin. By having to decide on my next newsletter date early on so I can apply for swaps and group promotions, my mind soon got used to thinking far ahead. I never knew before when my next newsletter was coming. Now, I know from one month, even two months in advance, what my newsletter dates will be. And I soon got greedy and found myself sending out two newsletters per month, filling each one to the brim with even 20 swapped books and 4-6 group promo banners!
Did I get punished for my greediness? Not really. Quite the opposite.
What I got was wonderful spikes in my book sales in the USA, something I’d never seen before, as I used to sell mostly in the UK. I even had up to 1,000 KENP spikes on days I did no promo and hence could only attribute these to newsletters of authors I swapped with or group promotions running. What I also got from using Story Origin was sales in many different books in my back list at the same time – books that hardly sold any more. And that’s because every month, thanks to the group promotions, I can promote many books at the same time. I am sure you know how much work it is to do this on your own. But with Story Origin, all you have to do, is register the books in different group promotions, put the banners in your newsletter and tweet about them individually a couple of times. That’s it. And what do you get for this little trouble? While the group promotions run, that’s 2-4 weeks usually, you get sales without having to do a thing from day to day. Great, huh?
HOW TO LOOK FOR GROUP PROMOTIONS
From your Author Dashboard, take the option ‘Browse group promotions’.
Group promotions can be generic, like… ‘May Romance Sale’ , ‘Beach Reads For a Buck’, or very particular, like… ‘Characters With Protective Instincts’, ‘Love Found in Unusual Places’. Your books don’t have to be discounted (only rarely they do). Make sure to read the rules of each promo to the letter, though, and stick to your commitments. Slowly, you’ll build a good reputation, which means the same group promo organizers will accept your books for their promotions again and again.
Note: When you apply to a group promotion, you’re allowed to put in a little note. If you share your newsletters wide on your social media or on your blog, say it in the notes. If you have a large following on, say, Twitter, and are willing to share the promo there, make sure to mention this too. Some organizers also pose questions to answer in the notes, so make sure to answer them all clearly. Most of the time, they’ll ask you to clarify something, like the heat level of your romance, or to confirm that your book will be on KDP Select for the duration of the promotion.
Before you hit the button to apply to the group promotion, make sure to go to the very bottom of the page and check how many authors have already applied. The more you see on there, the better, obviously. Though, if it’s early on, you may see only a few, but the list may get longer later on.
Make sure to also choose ‘Preview’ to see what the landing page of the group promotion looks like. For me, the banner is very important. If it’s not appealing to the eye, chances are the promotion won’t be successful. One last criterion for me, is how many books the group promotion organizer accepts. Some accept more than one books. So submit them all in one go. I always give high priority to those accepting 3-4 books, for obvious reasons!
So! When you check out a group promotion, these are the important questions to ask:
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Does it suit my audience? (e.g. don’t go for a steamy book promo if you write clean romance)
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How many other authors are in this promo?
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How many books do they accept per author?
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What does the banner look like?
Check all four points before you decide. This way, you’ll make the best decisions for your books!
YOUR UNIQUE TRACKING LINK
This is the one thing you must not miss! Very important! Make sure to always use in your newsletter the specific tracking link Story Origin assigned to you for each book and group promotion you have committed to feature. This way, the other authors will be able to see how many clicks their book or promo got from your newsletter. And, this is the only way you can prove you’ve kept your end of the bargain. See this detail from my last campaign page:
The campaign page lists–among other things–the books and group promotions that are to be featured in that newsletter. As you can see, each has their own tracking link. You can see how many clicks each one got in this particular newsletter. The authors and organizers also get access to this information so they can check if I fulfilled my obligations to them.
Similarly, on the campaign page, you also get to see how many clicks YOUR books got in the other authors’ newsletters.
HOT TIP #1: On the day of your newsletter, or anytime before that, when you wish to finalize the content, you have to ‘mark the slots full’ and also delete all the pending requests for swaps you made to other authors that never got accepted. If you don’t do that, and if you don’t check your campaign page one last time before sending out your newsletter, you may have a last minute entry you don’t get to notice and thus will not honour with a slot.
HOT TIP #2: If you have registered Amazon affiliate links in your UBLs (Universal Book Links), you need to click on ADD in the campaign page for every book and group promo. This adds your Amazon affiliate link to them. When people click to get to Amazon and buy, you get a small fee. In the above image, it says ‘UPDATE’ instead of ‘ADD’ because I had already added my affiliate links for each book. However, please note it’s not a good idea to add your affiliate link if the book will be FREE on Amazon when you send out your newsletter. I check prices of all books on the day I send out my newsletter, partly for that very reason 🙂
HOT TIP #3: If your book is going to be FREE or 99c on specific dates, go to your Author Dashboard, then to the option ‘Newsletter Swaps’, and leave a note for every author who will feature your book during the days of your promo. Something like this: “Please note my book will be FREE March 20-22. Thank you!” The sooner you do it before their newsletter goes out, the better their chance to see your note on their campaign page, before they get to put their newsletter together. Who knows? They might give your book a top slot to highlight the FREE or 99c offer!
IMPORTANT: After you’ve sent out your newsletter, you need to go back to your campaign page and add your newsletter link (it’s called an ‘archive link’). This way, other authors and the group promotion organizers will be able to view your newsletter. They’ll need to check that you featured their book or group promotion, for example, if your tracking link shows 0 clicks. It’s fine if you put it in the newsletter and it got no clicks, of course. In any case, for me, posting the archive link is common courtesy (if not the mark of a true professional) and I strongly suggest that you provide it.
HOW TO LOOK FOR NEWLETTER SWAPS
From your Author Dashboard, take the option ‘Browse newsletter swaps’.
To look for suitable swaps, you can narrow down the search by using tags that relate to your own work. If you write about witches, angels, or ghosts, use these words as tags. Or use genres, for example, ‘paranormal’, ‘romance’, ‘clean’ etc. When you swap, you swap books that will take readers to Amazon (these are marked as ‘UBL’, i.e. ‘universal book link’) or Reader Magnets or Review Copies. The last two are freebies authors put up on Story Origin. You can cross-swap among these things, no problem. Anything goes, as long as both authors are happy.
Personally, I swap similar things. I think it’s only fair, for example, to ask an author to feature my reader magnet only if I offer to do the same for them (since I’ll be getting some of their subscribers to sign up to my newsletter).
Reader Magnets and Review Copies are books that the authors have uploaded on Story Origin as freebies to get new subscribers or reviewers respectively. The FREE books are offered in three formats: PDF, EPUB and MOBI (PDF is optional, the other two obligatory).
HOT TIP #4:
Amazon no longer provides authors with MOBI files in the bookshelf. You can make your own MOBI by downloading Kindle Previewer from your KDP Bookshelf. Open the app and open your manuscript (word or epub format) then choose EXPORT to export your book in mobi format. This procedure won’t add a cover to your mobi, but what you can do is create a Word file with the cover on the first page, and use that to make your mobi. Then your cover will be a part of the book 🙂
READER MAGNETS
If you have a reader magnet to swap in order to garner new subscribers, your best bet is to pick reader magnets to apply for a swap. The author you apply to will be more likely to accept your reader magnet if they’re looking to promote their own too. To promote your reader magnet more effectively, I advise you to also enter it in the ‘Giveaway’ group promotions.
This worked like a charm for me: I uploaded an ARC copy of my book “Running Haunted” as a reader magnet when it was on preorder on Amazon (but not in KDP Select yet – otherwise I’d be breaking Amazon’s exclusivity rule). I then promoted it for at least two months on Story Origin, both in swaps and giveaway group promotions. I got nearly 900 subscribers (a CSV file download) and it cost me sweet nothing!
Obviously, you don’t have to use your preorder as a reader magnet. You can create a short read, perhaps, to put perma on Story Origin for that purpose. Choose a genre that will attract the readers likely to love your novels. Personally, I don’t swap with reader magnets that are incomplete books (samples). All my reader magnets are complete books. I think it’s only fair (and courteous) to do that in exchange for a reader’s email. Besides, readers are more inclined to sign up if you offer the whole story.
IMPORTANT: All your associated swaps and group promotions must run their course fully before you delete your reader magnet from Story Origin. That includes the newsletter dates of the authors who are featuring your reader magnet, obviously. And only after everything has run its course you may register your preorder book on KDP Select, let us not forget, as Amazon demands exclusivity for all kindle books registered on KDP Select. So double-check your dates when you set up swaps and enter promotions for reader magnets (or review copies.)
THE ONLY FAULT I FOUND WITH STORY ORIGIN: Deleting a reader magnet will delete the record of all associated swaps i.e. the tracking link for your reader magnet and the one of every author’s book it got swapped with. It will result in you not being able to honor any future swaps with other authors associated with this reader magnet. Plus, you won’t be able to see the full history of your stats. A way around this would be to mark the reader magnet as ‘unavailable’ instead of deleting it from Story Origin. Speaking from (unfortunate) experience, I highly recommend you do not delete a reader magnet.
REVIEW COPIES
I haven’t used this feature yet, but from what I can tell, the platform does all the work once again, collecting the readers’ details and distributing your book to them. And you get to screen every single application! Story Origin shows you each reader’s review history on Amazon so you can decide if you’re accepting their application or not. Both reader magnets and review copies are available in MOBI, EPUB and PDF on Story Origin. It is obligatory to upload your book in EPUB and MOBI format. PDF is optional.
Earlier in this post, I gave you a tip on how to get a MOBI for your book. Here are free online converters that work for me to convert books to PDF and EPUB:
WORD to PDF converter: https://www.freepdfconvert.com/
PDF to EPUB: https://www.zamzar.com/convert/pdf-to-epub/
Once you’ve grown familiar with Story Origin, it’s worth checking out all the other options on your author dashboard. You’ll find, among other things, a beta reader feature, goal trackers for your writing and editing progress, as well as great stats from its powerful database.
I hope this information has given you a good idea of what awaits you on Story Origin, if only you give it a try!
GO HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT STORY ORIGIN, SEE THE PRICING OPTIONS, AND SIGN UP!
I am on the Standard plan, which is paid (it costs me $10 per month), but I get my money back, just with my earnings from the Amazon Affiliate tags embedded in my universal links. It all adds up considering all the swaps and group promotions I feature in each newsletter.
If you prefer to start with the FREE plan, please note, it will NOT allow you to do newsletter swaps or participate in group promotions, or to create reader magnets in order to garner new subscribers.
Some of the things you CAN do on a FREE account: You can use goal trackers, create universal links for your Amazon books with your Amazon affiliate links embedded, and you can also create landing pages to give your readers free books. But, this is not the reader magnet feature. It’s called ‘Direct Downloads’ and won’t allow you to collect email addresses. It’s just a landing page to give away a free book in MOBI, PDF and EPUB format.
VISIT STORY ORIGIN NOW AND SEE ALL THE FEATURES YOU CAN GET ON A FREE ACCOUNT
Whether you prefer to find your feet with a FREE account first or to jump straight to a paid plan so you can do swaps and participate in group promotions right off the bat, I urge you to try this wonderful platform.
If you write paranormal, fantasy, humorous, or contemporary romance, I hope to see you there and collaborate with you!
Interested to see how my newsletter looks like with Story Origin’s group promotion banners and swaps?
Go here to see one of my newsletters from March 2022
A note about my own newsletter here, and my ‘strategy’ with Story Origin, which may help you:
I spoke about my ‘greediness’ earlier in the post. Because I feature 20+ books and 4-6 banners of group promotions in every issue. But, let me tell you something. Not only does this ‘greediness’ work, but I have zero ‘shame’ for it as well. Why? Because despite featuring a lot of books, most of them get clicks in double figures. See some of the click stats from my newsletter of March 25, for example:
That’s a higher click performance than the ones I see in many other authors’ newsletters who only feature a couple of books in their newsletters. So what’s the harm in featuring a lot of books then? I mention this here, because I see a few authors on Story Origin ban those who feature more than a couple of swaps! And yet, when I check their past stats I see really poor figures… (Yes, past stats are visible in Story Origin for all authors so you can check them before you attempt a swap with them. Nice, huh?)
So, obviously, I have a different opinion. And that is because I feel it is not about how many books you feature – but about your efforts to market the newsletter. Authors have better chances to see their books get double figure clicks in my newsletter among 20+ other books than they have in a short newsletter of another author who won’t do much after sending out their newsletter.
I send mine out again to those who don’t open it a couple of days later. And I also share each one widely via my two blogs and social media. One of my blogs is accessible via Goodreads where I have a couple thousand friends. It all adds up!
So, bear my logic in mind, if you use Story Origin… Do not shy away from authors, like me, who feature many books. If you check the stats of an author and most books are getting clicks in double figures (or triple figures if the book is FREE) then their newsletter is a good bet!
This sums up my introduction to Story Origin, and I wish you all good luck with it, if you try it. For me, it’s long become the best way I know to market books. Other than giving me a steady trickle in sales, KENPs and Amazon Affiliate earnings, it has also given me a place where I can get organized, and that, in itself, is golden.
I hope you have found some value in my tips and advice, enough to be inspired to try this awesome platform for yourself. I wish you success! You are welcome to comment below if you have a question or wish to share your own experience.
DISCLAIMER: This post uses an affiliate link. It means Effrosyni Moschoudi will earn a commission for any resulting paid plan subscriptions on Story Origin. This will not affect the price paid on the platform.
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In my latest newsletter, I share a few more photos of Loulou and Sissi, but that’s not all.
