I decided to do another promotional giveaway on the same book to boost sales again. Started Saturday morning and as of Sunday morning there've been 1700 DLs already.
Wow...tried a giveaway for a week
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What's your secret cause I haven't gotten any where near that many downloads when doing a free promo. lol
I think the genre helps. Military SF is a popular genre and I know that I often cruise Amazon looking for promotional giveaways of SF books.
Wow, 654 pages!? Maybe its length is part of its download-appeal. That's certainly a lot of reading to get for free.
I don't mean that in a putting-down way; I love big books (and I cannot lie
) and a lot of self-published books seem to be on the smaller side of the novel range instead of the bigger side.
I don't mean that in a putting-down way; I love big books (and I cannot lie
) and a lot of self-published books seem to be on the smaller side of the novel range instead of the bigger side.
Wow, 654 pages!? Maybe its length is part of its download-appeal. That's certainly a lot of reading to get for free.
I don't mean that in a putting-down way; I love big books (and I cannot lie
I write the books I like to read, and I like bigger books.
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I just loaded it on my Kindle and phone. I enjoy reading bigger books, but for some reason that's not what I write. My latest work is only 40K words, but it's a retro-pulp adventure so the shorter length felt right for the story. What matters is what feels right for the story - at least in my opinion.
The result of a free book download in future sales - though hard to really calibrate - is an interesting discussion.
One author friend of mine with over 60 published works says I should never do free... and then he just gave away the Kindle version of his latest book for one day, though not through the Amazon store.
I challenged him with this based on the advice he gave me and he just laughed, telling me that things change every day and he was trying to validate his theory by giving this book away for a day.
His one day giveaway was 12,000 copies - though that is because he has a large following on Facebook and Twitter. He suspects all of those people would have bought the book anyway.
I'm on the fence.
My first book is finished and will be published when the cover art is complete.
I am 16K words into my second book and it will likely be ready in the early Spring.
I have read both positive and negative results at the $0.99 title as well as free for a week, and I'm curious where you think this giveaway positions you for your future.
Good luck!
-t
One author friend of mine with over 60 published works says I should never do free... and then he just gave away the Kindle version of his latest book for one day, though not through the Amazon store.
I challenged him with this based on the advice he gave me and he just laughed, telling me that things change every day and he was trying to validate his theory by giving this book away for a day.
His one day giveaway was 12,000 copies - though that is because he has a large following on Facebook and Twitter. He suspects all of those people would have bought the book anyway.
I'm on the fence.
My first book is finished and will be published when the cover art is complete.
I am 16K words into my second book and it will likely be ready in the early Spring.
I have read both positive and negative results at the $0.99 title as well as free for a week, and I'm curious where you think this giveaway positions you for your future.
Good luck!
-t
Thewitt, I doubt I have anything to lose. The book has been on Amazon for over 3 years now and the boost in sales it had received from the third book in the series coming out back in July had about petered out. I know for a fact that the 4600 people who've downloaded it so far would NOT have purchased it at $2.99 because they WEREN'T purchasing it. This way, at least a portion of the people who read it will like it enough to buy the sequels.
RikWriter, how do sales of subsequent books in the series compare to the earlier books? Are you seeing higher sales in the follow-on books than in the first one?
A very detailed and informative thread, RikWriter. As someone who's on the fence about offering their work for free, I appreciate the "inside baseball" raw numbers. And the eight (and counting) reviews are intriguing. Continued success.
My sales seem to be better on the third book in the series than the second when it came out, but it's hard to quantify the exact effect of the giveaway as I also did other things new this time, such as a social media presence and more attempts to advertise.
Let's hope this turns into a bunch of new readers and sales of the subsequent titles. Good luck!
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Thanks for sharing. I'm looking at doing a giveaway on my most recent release, but I'm thinking of timing it to hit just as I release the sequel. Hopefully it will give both a push.
I think making one book free is one the best strategies an author can use. I recommend a mixture of prices. Some who download my free book buy my .99cent books, others are willing to buy the $2.99 books. Just remember that you will get hundreds of downloads of the free book for every paid book.
I'm at the point past the release of the latest book in the series that sales (going by the release of the previous book) would be seriously slowing down, but it seems like they're going to be about the same as they were last month or perhaps even a bit better, so I think maybe the giveaway is having a positive effect.
Not 100% sure though, as I am also doing other things I didn't do last time, as I said before.
Not 100% sure though, as I am also doing other things I didn't do last time, as I said before.
You using KDP Select? I was skeptical at first however it's really boosted "sales" for the one ebook I switched over. Probably going to switch all of them.
Just an update: sales seem to be a bit higher at this point past the publication of my latest book (which was in July) than they were for the previous book. Also I have been getting several reviews (most of them good) recently. So the giveaway seems to be producing some results.
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