A bunch of new eyeballs

The free days promotion is one benefit of Amazon’s kdp select.

As I wouldn’t let you forget, if you happened to be watching my Twitter feed all weekend, Occasional Soulmates was available as a free ebook download for three days. I tallied up my final numbers this morning and was agog to learn that 3250 copies flew out the virtual door.

It’s hard to know what this will mean, in marketing terms. From what I’ve read, a huge percentage of free book downloaders (tempting to tag them “free-loaders” but I won’t) don’t even bother to read the books they pile up on their Kindles. It’s the thrill of getting something for nothing. But a fairly large percentage was attracted by the cover, description, and genre as given on the various lists I promoted the book on, so they likely will read it. And a percentage of them might review it. And another percentage might buy Yesterday Road and Parts Unknown. And my new one, when it comes out later in the year.

Too soon to tell, though I feel encouraged that 3250 readers have the book in their hot little hands now (that’s 6500 eyeballs, unless there are a few one-eyed downloaders among them), so many more than would have paid even 99 cents in a typical promotion. To give away more than three thousand books doesn’t feel like it cost me anything because I know I’d never have sold that many. Hell, my traditional publishers, William Morrow, couldn’t sell that many copies of Parts Unknown, with their professional sales force and access to print reviewers, radio, chain and independent bookstores, and capital. If they’d given it away, they might have taken a chance on my second novel…

So the freebie was successful campaign, at least in numbers. Thanks to all of you who took a little extra time to tweet about it and reblog my posts. You helped Occasional Soulmates crack the top 100 free Kindle list (reaching as high as No. 2 on the Literary Fiction and Women’s Literary Fiction lists). It was fun while it lasted.

I’ll report again later on any ripple effects I happen to see in my other titles.