I will admit to being completely gobsmacked by my latest Amazon “free day” promotion. This is the last for Solomon’s Throne, as it will come out of the KDP Select program on February 27. I may or may not put it back in when I get close to having the third Quinn book ready to publish, but that’s more than six months away and I want to try it on some other platforms in the meantime.
ANYWAY, I scheduled the last promotion for yesterday and today. I ran one ad for both days on FreeBooksy, and another just for today on Pixels of Ink. The FreeBooksy ad was $50, which is at the top end of my tolerance to promote books I’m giving away for free. (I almost forgot about the promotion altogether, since I’m running around crazy this week getting ready to go to Uganda on Friday!)
Click on the picture to find the book on Amazon!
Yesterday morning, at 8:00, I had 36 downloads. That’s pretty par for the course. The most downloads I’ve ever had in one day was about 1250, and they usually pick up in the mid-morning and go through after dinner. I didn’t check again until about 1:00, when I had 944! I started texting my daughter and husband at that point, and the count was going up ridiculously fast.
- By 1:45, I had 1345.
- At 4:30, I was over 2000.
- 9:00 rolled around and it was 3125.
- When I went to bed, it was over 3500, and I was #84 on the Top 100 Free Kindle books list.
- My daughter emailed at 2:00am (college student) that it was #67 on the list.
- Right now, day 2 at 10:20, I’ve had 5012 downloads and am #49 in the Top 100 Free Kindle books chart — in the top 50!
Keep in mind that the best total for a promotion that I’ve ever had, and that was with a three day promotion, was about 2200. I can only attribute it to a combination of the FreeBooksy ad (obviously a great use of $50!) and getting onto the Top 100 list so that it was visible to more people. It’s also #2 in Action/Adventure, which gets it in front of people, too.
The Action/Adventure genre is teeny tiny compared to romance and YA. Miniscule! In looking over the Top 100 list, probably 75% of the books are romance. Another 7% or so are non-fiction. The rest are mixed, largely murder mysteries but also a kids book and a puzzle book. So for my tiny little a/a book to get this far is really exciting. I feel incredibly blessed!
I’ve enrolled IXEOS into the KDP program. The first free promo days will coincide with my blog tours in March, and then I’ll do another in April, just before IXEOS: Rebellion is scheduled to come out. And obviously, I’ll be advertising on FreeBooksy again!
Thanks to all of you who have downloaded the book! You have certainly made this an exciting week.
congrats! that’s really exciting!
Thanks! Honestly, I’m just completely baffled. Happy, but baffled! It made yesterday fun, though, I have to say!
i remember my one promo where i hit 4000. I’ve never come close to that before or since. I was in tears. So enjoy it!!!!! You’re doing better even than I did then!
It’s really incredible! I know you feel the same way – it’s great to have people reading your book.
Jennings, your free book was featured at The Cheap yesterday. http://the-cheap.net/2013/02/fiction-9-titles-6/ They have 8,000 likes on the facebook page that drove them to their blog page. I suspect you had some help there. Congratulations!
Thanks for letting me know!
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You are very welcome. I intend to buy some of their paid advertising this year. Their Nook followers are over 14,000 now.
Yay! Just found this – so glad we could help!