Do Freebies Work

• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #415 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
  • #32 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Contemporary Fiction
  • #72 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Romance > Contemporary

They don't work for me.  Okay.  The numbers we see here, I say success.   If you're in the top 100 of a category that's excellent.  You have a good chance of being found.  Top 10, then that really changes the dynamic.

Here's the thing.  I have not gotten 1000 downloads on this book.

Last weekend my pal, Mona, got 10,000 downloads on her book.  This weekend is dead.  Nothing seems to be doing so extremely well.

So let me put it to you this way.  I just tied up my book Flying Away to get the benefit of Amazon's wonderful freebie tool and it essentially fell flat on its face.  Now for 87 days my book is dead to me.  Oh yeah it's for sale but I can't put it at Kobo.  I can't make it live on BN.

Was this worth it?

I don't know.  If people read the excerpts at the back of FA and buy NLM or UD, then sure, it was worth it.  But do we see that?  I haven't.  And other people say the same thing.  Readers horde free books for the Zombie Apocalypse, they don't read them, review them or act on them.  Only a small number of very high concept books create that reaction.

I'm saying it's not worth it.  I want my books to be available to all readers not just kindle readers.
But I did learn how to clumsily navigate Facebook and now I can post my other books
which may or may not do any good but it's what everyone does.  I would prefer to continue to not be like everyone else and would if readers were finding my books without help from me.  The more I have to do this, the less I write.