For at least the next few weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at various times to see how that will affect book sales. For example, you probably saw the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each on a few days, sometimes in sequence, to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers.
What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.
You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.
For at least the next few weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at various times to see how that will affect book sales. For example, you probably saw the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each on a few days, sometimes in sequence, to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers.
What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.
You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.
Starting today and probably for at least the next couple weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at different frequencies to see how that will affect book sales. Today, you will see the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers. What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.
You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.
Starting today and probably for at least the next couple weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at different frequencies to see how that will affect book sales. Today, you will see the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers. What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.
You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.
Starting today and probably for at least the next couple weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at different frequencies to see how that will affect book sales. Today, you will see the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers. What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.
Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.
You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.
I try to publicize my works as much as possible using social media, because it is very inexpensive (often free) and it has the potential of connecting with people around the world. My personal WordPress account shows that my viewers come from around globe from such diverse locales as Ireland, Russia, India, Singapore, Australia and Brazil among many others.
I became curious about what would be the best time to post to reach the largest audience. I did a little research on the Internet and made a few calculations and came up with some interesting results.
According to study by Fictionophile, the most “literate” of the United States is the East Coast, where most major cities are concentrated along with most major universities and Ivy League Schools. Therefore, to gain the most exposure to this audience, you have to time your posts with the eastern time zone. How you want to do that, of course, is up to you. I try to post at 7:00 a.m. EST, when most people are rising for the and reading their e-mail or newspaper. But you might want to post at 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. when most people are coming back from work and settling in for the evening. You might also want to post on Fridays, often advertised as #FictionFriday, when people start to seek out reading for the weekend. There are a lot of other possible strategies as well. Fortunately, WordPress allows its users to schedule their posts, so this is easy to do for me.
Here are a few notes I took during my research. Being a former Naval officer, I still find military time easiest to use, so most of my time references are based on the 24-hour clock. I live in New Mexico, thus the references to Mountain Standard Time (MST). UTC is “Universal Time Coordinated, the successor to Greenwich Mean Time, which is the time in London, England. More on UTC can be found at https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/timezone/utc.
To time European English-speaking countries for publicity, use Central European Time (CET) which is eight hours ahead of MST. (2030 MST Monday = 0430 CET Tuesday). Ergo, 0001 MST = 2001 CET.
India Standard Time (IST) is UTC + 5:30 or CET + 4:30. Ergo, 2030 MST Monday = 0930 IST Tuesday
Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT: Sydney, Canberra) = UTC + 11/CET + 10
Staggering release times of announcements would seem to be best to catch a world audience. Ergo, for a three day free promotion, Release as follows:
0801 Mon. MST = 0001 Tuesday CET = 0431 IST
0001 Mon. MST = 0801 Monday CET = 1231 IST = 1701 AEDT
To make this easier for me to track, I use the World Clock feature on my iPhone clock, which allows me to track the time in several time zones at once. Currently, I am tracking the time in Washington, DC; Brussels, Belgium; New Delhi, India; Singapore; Perth, Australia; Sydney, Australia; and Honolulu. By targeting these time zones, I believe I can reach the majority of the English-speaking world.
Note that, if you are interested in targeting an Australian audience, they are about fifteen hours ahead of us (MST), so promoting book giveaways or announcements for a specific day is tricky. For example, if you have a book giveaway that starts at 8:00 a.m. MST on February 25, it won’t start for the folks in Sydney until 11:00 p.m. February 25. Here’s a screenshot from my iPhone to show the intricacies involved. Still, I believe that proper timing of your posts with the audience you want to reach will eventually be worthwhile.
Examples of the time zones with the majority of English-speakers
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 