I published my book The Sun Zebra in November of 2011. From that date to the time I did my first successful free promotion on April 11 (about 20 weeks) I promoted, e-mailed, tweeted, blogged, and whatnot but only managed to sell 27 copies of my book. That is 1.35 copies per week. This is an experience that many first authors go through. In fact, the rule of thumb used to be that self-published authors would sell on the average only 100 copies of their books. The best ranking my book ever achieved was 17,580 and from there it started sinking reaching a ranking of 500,000 on a couple of occasions. Every now and then a buy would send it “soaring” close to 100,000 after which it would start sinking again. Then along came Amazon’s KDP Select program, which allows authors to give away their book for free.
Here let me state that I did an early promotion that did not go well but then I introduced some changes to my book and marketing strategy, and I tried the promotion again. I gave my book away for free during 3 days. People downloaded 19,000 plus copies sending it as high as #9 in the free Kindle store. When the promotion ended it ranked #1,999 and in the 3 weeks since the promotion I have sold 170 copies with 46 units being borrowed, which (at a book price of $1.99) may count for 80 units or more. Even though I expected better results because my book and its cover are really good, it is a collection of short stories, and short stories are not a very popular category. This is why I think it did not gain further traction in the Kindle store. Other authors have had better experiences.
However, with the promotion I achieved in 3 weeks results that I had not achieved in the 4 plus previous months. Although even with these improved sales figures I will obviously not be quitting my day job anytime soon, the point is that with the KDP Select program Amazon has given no name self-published writers like me a powerful promotional tool; if we use it well.
My question is: for how long?
There are 140,000 books in the KDP Select program and more are being added all the time. Multiplying that by 5 gives you the number of free days these books represent. There is now an endless supply of free books on Amazon. Unless a reader cares about reading a series or about an author’s other works, it is possible for said reader to upload hundreds of books into his/her Kindle without spending a single cent. So far “free” seems to still work. People are downloading free books but they are still buying. In fact the sales of some well-known authors have actually been increased by the program. But can we expect this to go on forever?
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Here let me state that I did an early promotion that did not go well but then I introduced some changes to my book and marketing strategy, and I tried the promotion again. I gave my book away for free during 3 days. People downloaded 19,000 plus copies sending it as high as #9 in the free Kindle store. When the promotion ended it ranked #1,999 and in the 3 weeks since the promotion I have sold 170 copies with 46 units being borrowed, which (at a book price of $1.99) may count for 80 units or more. Even though I expected better results because my book and its cover are really good, it is a collection of short stories, and short stories are not a very popular category. This is why I think it did not gain further traction in the Kindle store. Other authors have had better experiences.
However, with the promotion I achieved in 3 weeks results that I had not achieved in the 4 plus previous months. Although even with these improved sales figures I will obviously not be quitting my day job anytime soon, the point is that with the KDP Select program Amazon has given no name self-published writers like me a powerful promotional tool; if we use it well.
My question is: for how long?
There are 140,000 books in the KDP Select program and more are being added all the time. Multiplying that by 5 gives you the number of free days these books represent. There is now an endless supply of free books on Amazon. Unless a reader cares about reading a series or about an author’s other works, it is possible for said reader to upload hundreds of books into his/her Kindle without spending a single cent. So far “free” seems to still work. People are downloading free books but they are still buying. In fact the sales of some well-known authors have actually been increased by the program. But can we expect this to go on forever?
***
If you like this blog you can have links to each week's posts delivered to your e-mail address. Please click here.
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