A few weeks ago I put up a post describing ways I've tried to promote my novelette "The ElectroLive Murders," figuring that other authors self-publishing on Kindle might be interested--even though none of the methods I'd used had been very successful. Last Friday, I finally found a strategy that seems to have resulted in at least some success, and I figured I'd mention it here. The strategy is, basically: give it away for free.
Most Kindle authors probably already know that Amazon has a Kindle Select option. What it means for Kindle owners is that they can pay a special annual fee to gain Amazon Prime status, which allows them to "borrow" certain books on their Kindle, and watch certain movies, and listen to certain music, without additional charges. What it means for authors publishing on Kindle is you promise to make your book available only on the Kindle for at least 90 days, and in return your book is made available for borrowing by those customers enrolled in Amazon Prime. If someone borrows your book, you get a portion of a monthly fund set aside for books signed up for Kindle Select. For the past several months, the money a "borrow" earns has been higher than what many authors actually earn for a sale.
That's all well and good, but the reason I'm mentioning Kindle Select now is because of the other benefit an author gets for signing their title up--they gain the option to make the book available for free for up to five days during each 90 day period. After putting a second novelette up on Kindle--my horror story "Cool Blue"--I decided to make "The ElectroLive Murders" free for a day, in hopes that people would download it and then, if they liked it, go on to buy "Cool Blue" as well. Originally, my plan was to make it free on Saturday, April 21, but at the last minute I decided to make it available for Friday, April 20 also. I did this because I wanted to compare the number of downloads on Friday and Saturday, to see which day had more people looking for free books.
In the end, I didn't actually check up on how the free days were going until after they'd both passed--I generally try to avoid computers and the internet on weekends--so I'm not sure what the counts were for each day. I do know, however, that in 48 hours 350 copies of "The ElectroLive Murders" were downloaded; and that at its best the book reached #4 of the top 100 free High Tech Science Fiction books, and #10 of the top 100 free Hardboiled Detective Mysteries (for the Friday and Saturday time period). And since then, four copies have sold, and one new review of the book has been put up.
Obviously, none of these numbers are especially impressive when compared to what lots of other people are selling, but for me this has been the single most successful promotion attempt I've made so far. I'm guessing that many of the free copies won't ever actually be read, but I'm hoping that eventually at least some of the people who picked up a copy will read it, and I think that a lot of them will like it when they do. And maybe, just maybe, they'll look up my name and consider buying other titles I've written, if they like the first thing they've read.
I put "The ElectroLive Murders" up on Kindle over a year ago now, and even though I haven't sold enough copies to earn any sort of payment for it yet, I'm still confident that it's a fun story, and that all I really need to do is get the word out to people, and they'll buy it. Finally, after a series of failed attempts to get the word out, I've found something that actually does produce some sort of positive result. And even if this free promotion doesn't result in any significant sales, just getting the book out there to more people--and having a larger audience for my work--feels like success to me. In the end, I'm writing because I love to write--getting paid would be a bonus.
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