My Write Road - SL Baum

... MY WRITE ROAD - S.L. BAUM ... I am a mother, a wife, a former teacher, and a writer! Crafter, baker, taxi driver.......

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The FREE experiment... results :D

So as I posted a few weeks ago, I was attempting to get Amazon to offer my first novel - A Chance for Charity (The Immortal Ones) -
for FREE on Kindle. It happened pretty quickly. On Tuesday 11/15 Amazon chose to price match with Apple iBooks (which had already lowered my book to free) and within 24 hours I had over 10K downloads...

I made it up to #7 on Amazon's top 100 free Kindle book list. Downloads slowed over the next week and a half, but I was(am) amazed by the number of new potential readers I have received.

I say potential because I realize that there are many people downloading every free book available (whether it is in a genre they enjoy or not) and some may never get around to reading it and some may just not find it to their taste. But that's okay!

After 10 days free the book went back to paid...
it continued to sell - making an appearance at #2 on Amazon's Movers and Shakers list for Kindle and then reaching the spot of #251 (that is out of every single book in the entire Kindle catalog). I was a happy camper...

But that seemed to be a glitch of some sort because 3 days after being removed from the free list it was put back on the free list once again. From what I can tell, Amazon is price-matching with a site called Kobo... because that is the only place where I can find A Chance for Charity still offered for free. I haven't asked Amazon for the price to be raised (although I could email them and request it). I've just decided to see how long this lasts... how many new readers I can get. So far the response from new readers has been wonderful. I have new "Likes" on my FB page and new followers on Twitter... I have new reviews, FB comments, and emails from new readers letting me know that they enjoyed the series. It is a blessing!

So... here is the count... as of today 12/6/2011... after 3 weeks of being a FREE Kindle book... just over 35,000 copies of A Chance for Charity have been downloaded. This has led to increased sales of  My Link in Time and the companion novella Of Fire and Brimstone.

The series is growing a larger fan base and that is exactly what I had hoped for!