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.

Fly Away Freebie

Right?  It's a Gimme Cap.  It is totally legitimate to try a giveaway of a novella with excerpts of NLM and UD with the proviso that I'm being coached this time.  I was given a list of Facebook pages guaran-damn-teed to increase visibility.  Which of course if I had been on FB at all before 4 weeks ago I could have searched for myself had I even thought of it which I wouldn't but I was a FB virgin and quite liked it that way.

In preparation for this big day, I got everything all perfect.  I had the cover.  I wrote a blurb.  I asked for input.  It was tweaked.  The description was tweaked.  I was so good to go.

Then I had a nightmare about 6 hours ago--no this is true, why would I invent something so stupid to say to you--that ALL my books were free due to some horrible computer glitch.  I woke up and hauled myself to the computer to ascertain it was not true.  It was not.

Okay, start the process.  About 1/2 way in I realize --Wow.  The cover is wrong.  It's imperative to move the title.

It was an artistic choice to leave the text off the wing.  But as I was looking at it in thumbnail, it wasn't doing me any favors.

So here's what's being posted on various Facebook pages.    If you include the link, FB will automatically go to Amazon, get the cover and the description and post it on the page for you.  Everyone besides me probably knew that already.

Yes, most of it actually happened to me and "Jake" was a pilot for American Airlines.  That should make you all kinds of comfortable next time you get on board a commercial jet.  (After being groped by the TSA, of course.)

FREE.  FLY AWAY. July 12-July 14.  Lis wanted to fly away but didn’t mean it so literally until meeting daredevil flyboy, Jake, who redefines the phrase "turning your world on its head".

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006IEX0YA

Schtupid Cupid New Cover

And new title.  Someone has been making suggestions and I've been listening.  Nothing is chiseled into granite like in the old days.

I guess Schtupid Cupid worked but it didn't work that well.  Without being a marketing genius it's hard to know what people are glomming onto.  Are they confused by the word Schtupid?  I'll bet some are. 

Is it a romance or is it a comedy?  What's a romantic comedy?  Then what do you focus on?  Jake the fly boy or how chaotic things are when cupid shoots a zinger at you?

Mona Ingram is telling me how she makes KDP Select work for her so I'm being tempted to try again with her tutelage.  I also recommend any of her romance novels as they're very well written entertainment.

Between that and the rest of life throwing me curve balls, that's why I haven't been around.