The other day a fan on Twitter asked how she hadn’t heard of my podcast Vicious Whispers where I share a chapter or short story at the end of each episode. The easy answer was that I’m terrible at social media and marketing and spend all my time creating. As any independent author will tell you, that’s not a very wise tactic.

The Twitter question made me think of what I could do differently. Knowing I’m not prepared to commit to anything that takes more than a day, I looked for a way that would increase exposure quickly.

Generally, I focus on ebooks, but with three new audiobooks released this year and two more on the way, I figured audio would be the smartest approach. Regardless of format, reviews are incredibly important, so I went to Audiobooks Unleashed. For a small fee, this platform allows authors to upload their giveaway codes and listeners can download for free in exchange for a review. A while back I put up two of my older books, 25 Perfect Days and Try Not to Die: At Grandma’s House, using codes from Audible/ACX. Between the two books I got 85 downloads using up most of my codes.

I was disappointed I wouldn’t be able to obtain codes for my other audiobooks through ACX because they aren’t exclusive, but then remembered that Audiobooks Unleashed could now give away codes from Findaway. Findaway is a competitor of ACX where authors have much more freedom when it comes to pricing and promotional opportunities. One of the big pluses with Findaway is that they give 30 codes per book, and 100 codes for exclusive ones in their Voices Plus program.

Last Friday, in less than an hour, I put up five audiobooks on AU, opting for the cheapest plan ($10 per book) because I wasn’t in a rush to get reviews and figured 25 codes per book would last a while. By the time I entered my last book, I realized that getting downloads was not going to be an issue with several copies already requested.