I’m running a free promo for Shadow of Stone right now, which I had intended to be the last. At the end of this term in KDP Select, I was going to take the book out and offer it elsewhere.
But now I have a dilemma. I’ve had very little time the last couple of days, and I didn’t do any announcements for the freebie like I usually do. An ad got cancelled at the last moment as a result of the changes Amazon is making to the Amazon Affiliate program, and the book didn’t get picked up by either of the big sites, POI or ENT. It did get picked up by Kindle Tips and Tricks and Top 100 Best Free Kindle Books, which certainly helped.
And what happened? I’ve given away over 2000 copies, almost cracked the top 100 free books, and have sold 25 copies of Yseult since the free run started. That’s almost a third of my sales of the book for the month.
Normally, 2000 copies given away wouldn’t get me anywhere near the top 100 list. So I’m wondering if it has to do with a lot of blogs abandoning ship since Amazon announced the change to Amazon Affiliates. I don’t want to go into that in detail, so if you’re curious, I suggest reading Michael Gallagher’s post on how it is going to effect him and his blog.
But if there are fewer freebies out there, and it’s possible to get better results with a free run, then perhaps it makes sense to stick it out a little longer. I’ll wait and see what the borrows are like after Shadow of Stone goes back to paid, and then I’ll decide. The handful of sales on B&N and Kobo aren’t worth it if borrows for the book pick up again. But it totally depends on what the bounce will be after this free run is over.
In other publishing news, I finally got “The Leaving Sweater” uploaded to Amazon and Draft2Digital, but it’s not yet available. I will let people know when it is.
And I only have another 4 chapters to go on this pass of Chameleon in a Mirror. Almost done! 🙂 Brainstorming of A Wasted Land is coming along as well, just slowing down a bit.
Ruth Nestvold - Indie Adventures 
Good luck with the promo – I’ve downloaded a copy to help your stats!
Thanks, Huw! 🙂
This just came in my email … Have you heard of these sites? I haven’t checked them out, but I did think of you … 😀
http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/02/promote-your-free-ebook-with-pixel-of-ink-and-bookbub/
Yup, BookBub was the most effective advertising I’ve ever done. 🙂
Hey – you’re with D2D too! They are good aren’t they? Thanks for the heads-up with them. I’m also on Smashwords, mainly for the coupon service. Hope D2D try that. It’s so useful for giveaways, especially as Scrivener compile is failing me.
I haven’t bothered trying going free yet; I heard it had run out of steam as a marketing ploy. But it looks like it might be an idea if that many find interest and it pushing you up the list of besties like that. Well done to you! I don’t have a back list of other books to benefit from it though, and my how you keep on adding to them. I envy your productivity! X
Thanks, Shah! But in all fairness, a lot of the ebooks I’m creating are previously published short stories, so not new work.
Don’t forget that today began the site-wide promo at Smashwords for Read an eBook Week. If you have books there, enroll them now to pick up follow-on momentum from your KDP Select promo.
Thanks, Friday! Just did it. 🙂