My Amazon KDP Select Free Experience, Part II

UPDATES (SCROLL DOWN FOR ORIGINAL POST)

UPDATE #17 (6:31 a.m.) -- Free promo is over. Nerves shot. The book managed to hang on in the Top 100 Free until the end of the promo, and it's still in the Free bestseller list for now, so I am glad I didn't shut it down early. Now time to see what kind of bounce I get. Total free downloads = almost 11,000.

UPDATE #16 (1:35 a.m. Friday) -- Stayed up way too late wrestling with this. Dropped to #58 briefly, but then rebounded to #57. The book should come off Free status in about 90 minutes. Have decided to stick it out through the end of the promo. Will be curious to see how the day goes. Very unlikely I will repeat my experience from January 27, but some bounce would be nice to see.

UPDATE #15 (11:26 p.m.) - Still hanging at #45. 3.5 hours to go before I automatically switch back to Paid. I've got to think I've got enough juice to hang in the Top 100 Free until the switch and then have enough slack to stay in until I get cycled out onto the Paid side. You drop fast on the Free list once you're not Free anymore. Makes sense. One thing I need to remember. No matter what happens -- these two Free promos have pushed out 36,000 copies of the book. If even just 1 percent read it, that's a lot of new readers I didn't have before.

UPDATE #14 (10:41 p.m. Thursday) -- Big decision to make. The book has dropped quickly to #45. I'm at about 11,000 downloads overall. I do not want to come off the Free list outside the top 100. As I said in my January 29 post, I think a big factor in the bump was showing up in the Free bestseller list once the book was back in Paid. Do I cut the promo short now while I'm still in the top 50, but risk losing East Coast buyers who are going to bed and would miss the book being on the Free bestseller list? Or do I hang tight and hope I finish the run in the top 100? Gamesmanship.

UPDATE #13 (5:30 p.m. Thursday) - Looks like I will peak at #18. Did not quite make my goal, but came damn close. Really happy with the results, but it kind of stings a little to get that close and come up just short. Ideally, I will hang in the 20s for the rest of the evening and then switch back to Paid overnight. I could cut it short and switch back to Paid almost immediately, but that makes me nervous. More sad TLC reality show music.

UPDATE #12 (11:20 a.m. Thursday) - Those 11 books ahead of me did drop off, and I've jumped to No. 18 overall. Ya-hoo! Most interesting discovery -- It seems to have taken fewer downloads to get inside the Top 20 than it did during my first free run in January. Not sure what that means (or if I'm even totally correct). You'd have thought the opposite would be true as more people enrolled their books in Select. Glad I stuck with another day. Already thinking about tomorrow, when I switch back to Paid status.

UPDATE #11 (7:00 a.m. Thursday) - Strategy time. I've extended the Free promo and am now using my fourth of five Free days. Here's the data. I'm No. 29 in the store. Eleven books ahead of me have switched back to Paid and presumably will be dropping off the Free Top 100 in the next hour or two. The big sites haven't posted yet, and it takes a few hours for those books to reap the benefit. I am HOPING that once those 11 no-longer-free books drop off, I will bounce up to the Top 20 where I can just ride the wave of having such great exposure. Stay tuned.

UPDATE #10 (10:45 p.m. Wednesday) - The book has climbed to No. 37 overall in the Free store, and the downloads continue to be brisk. I am leaning heavily toward a second Free day. It's possible there's some more room to climb, especially if some of the books ahead of me switch back to Paid overnight. Plus, there aren't that many suspense/thrillers ahead of me. Could be a good chance to get back to the top 10. Last time out, I made it to No. 5 in the Free store, and I think that had a HUGE impact when I went back to Paid.

UPDATE #9 (8:25 p.m.) - No new site mentions this evening, although many people have been kind enough to Tweet and post the link on Facebook. After getting stuck in the 120s nearly all afternoon, the book finally bumped up to No. 73 overall. It's now the No. 1 Legal Thriller in the Free Store. It's been a tougher row to hoe this time around. I think that not getting the Pixel of Ink mention definitely made things a little harder. Now I will need to think about whether to add a second day.

UPDATE #8 (4:35 p.m.) - Looks like I made all the sites except for Pixel of Ink. My book is now No. 122 in the Free Store, and the No. 2 legal thriller. The combination of the various sites mentioning the book have really combined to push the book today. I'm going to need another push or two to get as high as I need to. Remains to be seen if it will happen. Cue sad, "future is cloudy" music from your favorite TLC reality show.

UPDATE #7 (2:45 p.m.) - Interesting discovery. E-Reader News Today put me and several other books today on their site a while ago, but I didn't see much download traffic until they posted it to their Facebook fan page. Since then, it's been a firehose of downloads. ENT is a free book MONSTER. For those curious, I submitted my book to them eight days ago.

UPDATE #6 (1:30 p.m.) - Caught some big game! Got a mention on E-Reader News Today! First book listed! Puppies and rainbows! Also mentioned near the top of The Frugal E-Reader! *Flailing my arms about like a Muppet!*

UPDATE #5 (12:00 p.m.) - Hit Bargain e-BookHunter and the Indiebookslist.com. Also on the Kindle Nation Daily free book sweep. Downloads remain stable. Decided cannibalism was bad. I am up to No. 468 in the Free Store. I've hit every list I've wanted to except for the two big boys. Missed the second cut on Pixel of Ink.

UPDATE #4 (11:00 a.m.) - A mention by All Things Kindle. Downloads have stabilized at about 200 per hour. Missed the first cut on the biggie sites. Now resorting to cannibalism. Sorry. Interestingly, while my downloads are comparable to my first run at this point (before I hit Pixel of Ink a little before noon on 1/25), my rank is quite a bit worse. I'm still at No. 2,582, but I've jumped to No. 4 in Free Legal Thrillers.

UPDATE #3 (10:00 a.m.) - The book was also picked up by the Kindle Author Facebook page. More than 200 downloads in the last hour. Also tweeted by several free e-book Twitter accounts. No. 2,582 overall, No. 7 Legal Thriller. Holding my breath for the biggies. I didn't make the first cut at E-Reader News Today, but they post multiple times during the day. *eyes scotch*.

UPDATE #2 (8:30 a.m.) - I just discovered that the book was picked up by a Facebook page called Kindle on the Cheap sometime in the last two hours. Downloads are steadily increasing. Waiting to see if I get picked up by the big sites, which I believe start posting mid-morning. I pass the time by looking at screenshots of when I hit the Paid Top 100 and then engage in self-loathing for doing so.

UPDATE #1 (about 7:00 a.m.) - The book has been free for a couple hours. About 100 downloads so far. No. 3,973 in the free Kindle Store. No. 6 in Legal Thrillers. Pretty pleased so far. A little behind the first promo's pace, but better than I'd expected.




ORIGINAL POST

Click to visit my Amazon page

Today, I send The Jackpot on its second free run on Amazon. As you'll remember, KDP Select participants get five free days to use during their 90-day commitment. I've got three left to use before I have to decide whether to re-enroll in Select or throw my book back out onto the other e-bookstores. I decided to blog about this second run as it happened, because people are super hungry for actual data, and I haven't seen one address a Free run in medias res, as my English teacher used to say.

I've decided to use at least one of those days on Wednesday, February 29. Depending on how Wednesday goes, I may extend it a day. The key to a really successful Free-to-Paid bounce appears to be hitting not just the Top 100 Free, but the Top 10 Free. Top 100 will give you a bounce, but it's a short one, and will get you maybe as high as 1,000 or 1,500. Nothing to sneeze at, of course, but if you want real sales in the thousands, you've got to hit that Top 10 Free List. I could be wrong, but I've been studying a lot of books in the last month and that seems to be the key.

PREP WORK

I actually did some this time. I submitted notice of the book's impending free status to seven different Kindle sites that cater to Kindle readers looking for low-cost or free books.

Pixel of Ink
E-Reader News Today
Bargain E-Bookhunter
Frugal E-Reader
Free E-Books Daily Blog
Indie Books List
All Things Kindle

I also hope to get picked up by Kindle Nation Daily's free book sweeper. I can't remember if I did last time. There are other sites that sweep the Internet daily for all manner of free deals, and hopefully, I can pop onto some of those as well.

I plan to notify a couple of book bloggers who gave The Jackpot good reviews. Obviously, whether they choose to share it with their readers is entirely in their discretion.

I also plan to Tweet the news on a semi-regular basis during the day. I'm hoping these tweets won't be viewed as annoying spam since the book is in fact, free. I could be wrong. Of course, whether my followers download the book or choose to re-tweet the news about the freebie is up to them. I won't ask. I've been asked directly to re-tweet something before, once, and I didn't like being asked.

THE MENTAL GAME

First time out, I had as much success as anyone could ever have dreamed of. I ended up with 25,000 downloads. I reached heights on the big-boy Amazon bestseller list that most traditionally published writers never do. For all I know, that might be the only time any book of mine ever makes it that high. Jesus, I hope not, but it's very possible.

But the stupid naive side of myself is all "puppies and sunshine!", and expects nothing but the best. Stupid naive self.

I am as anxious about this as I've been about anything in my writing career. When I went free the first time, I had no expectations because the book was dead. I would have been happy with any paid sales, let alone the thousands I ended up with.

LIVE BLOG


I plan to update this post during the day when I can. I'm one of these types that can spew a bunch of bloggy words when I'm nervous, and I think that helps settle me down. I'll try to share as much as I can. Feel free to duck in and out during the day and see how things are going.

Incidentally, my January 29 blog post about my KDP Select experience has become the biggest thing to ever come out of The Corner. To give you an idea how big -- prior to January 30, this blog had about 62,000 lifetime hits in 18 months. A respectable number, one I was proud of. On January 30 and January 31, this blog got 35,000 hits, thanks in very large part to a link from a site called Daring Fireball.

I will be as honest as I can. I may equal my first run's success. I probably will not. But I've got these free days to use, and they've proven to be a valuable weapon in my arsenal. I've gotten 25 new reviews, the vast majority of which are from people who loved the book, and who had never heard of the book before a month ago.

I've heard all the arguments about the danger of being so beholden to Amazon through this program. But you know what? No matter what happens, for the rest of my career, I can point to this book and say it was a success. And it was because of Amazon.

How Amazon's KDP Select Saved My Book

Gather round, my fellow writers.

I have a tale to tell.

As I write this blog post, The Jackpot is No. 68 on Amazon's Paid Bestseller list.

(UPDATE: The book ultimately reached No. 34 on the list on January 31, 2012, and remained in the Top 100 for a total of nine days. It hung in the Top 1,000 Paid for another week or so after that.)  

CUE FLASHBACK SOUND FROM LOST

One week ago, my book was dead in the water. And I mean dead. After a promising start last summer, sales crashed, completely, totally and spectacularly, despite wonderful reviews (from people who didn't even know me!). From December 1 through January 24, I sold 21 copies on Amazon. One on BN.com. And that was it. Barely enough to fund a lunch date for me and my wife. The previous couple months hadn't been much better. To be honest, I was trying to forget the book even existed as I worked on my new manuscript, my internal doomsayer wondering how badly I'd effed my career with a self-publishing disaster.

Now, I'd first heard about Amazon's KDP Select Program during the holidays. Here was the deal: In exchange for providing Amazon a 90-day exclusive, authors get their book(s) listed with the Lending Library, which allows Prime members to borrow books electronically. Second, authors would be able to run free promos -- for each 90-day period I enroll in Select, I could make the book available for free for up to five days, divided however I liked. 

At first, I wasn't sure what to think about it, especially given the exclusivity requirement. Part of me was aghast -- how dare they ask me to pull my book from the other retailers! And then something occurred to me. Between October 1 and December 31, I had sold a grand total of .... ONE book on all the non-Amazon platforms -- that one sale on Barnes & Noble. 

Now I had heard anecdotal evidence that running a free promo later translated into real sales. There seemed to be no real explanation for this, other than the fact that a ton of free downloads gave a book good exposure on Amazon. So with nothing left to lose, I decided to give it a shot. 

I pulled the book down from all the other e-retailers (Number of People Who've Since Asked Me Why My Book Isn't Available on the Other Retailers = 0), and in the wee hours of January 25, The Jackpot went free for a two-day run. At that moment, the book had logged nine sales in January. I woke up at 6 a.m. and was surprised to see that the book had already been downloaded nearly 100 times. I knew these were downloads and not sales, but still, it was exciting to see a number other than 1 or 2 under the monthly sales tab on my Amazon report. 

The download rate increased steadily during the course of the morning, and by lunchtime, it was being downloaded more than 1,000 times per hour, occasionally pushing 2,000 per hour. And it was rapidly climbing the Free bestseller list. It got featured on a number of the big Kindle reader blogs that showcase free books each day (this was easily my luckiest break, especially since I didn't know that people often submit their books to these sites in advance of their scheduled free dates). By Wednesday night, the book had hit the top 10, with about 14,000 downloads. Thursday proved to be nearly as successful, with another 11,000 downloads, and the book spent much of the day ranked No. 5. 

As the day wore on, I became increasingly anxious about switching back to Paid status. What would happen? What would 25,000 free downloads mean for real sales? I was nervous.

I woke up early again Friday the 27th and checked to see what was going on. The book was back in Paid status, and it had been borrowed through the Lending Library for the first time. I noted a few sales hit as I got ready for work. This was pretty awesome, as I hadn't been sure what to expect -- remember, I'd only had nine sales in January, and I was set to top that while eating breakfast. Now I had heard that the big sales bump for Free-to-Paid came about three days after it came off of Free status, but I didn't know how accurate that was. Regardless, I didn't want to get my hopes up on the first day.

Then sales started to pick up. It went from 225,000 to 38,000 to 10,000 on the bestseller list in short order. Then it hit 4,573 (the best ranking the book had ever had), and although sales continued to pick up, it only rose a few hundred spots in the afternoon. I pictured the book doing mighty battle with other books in the 1,000 to 5,000 range, and I wondered if this was the Wall. Was this the place where my book would have to make its stand? 

And then it broke through. It hit No. 549 by late afternoon, and No. 151 by dinnertime. It settled at No. 76 by the end of the night, but the sales kept rolling in, even late on a Friday night. It's currently ranked No. 1 among all Kindle legal thrillers, No. 2 among ALL legal thrillers, and even No. 44 in Fiction and Literature, which I really like because it sounds very official. 

MY THEORIES AS TO WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED

This is my guess as to how a book that couldn't muster a sale a day became an Amazon bestseller, virtually overnight.

Early Friday morning, the book continued to appear on the Free bestseller list, even though it switched back to Paid. There was a little bubble above the price marked "Why is This Not Free?", and if you scrolled over it, you got Amazon's explanation about it (although I can't quite remember what the explanation is) -- regardless, the now-$2.99 book was getting bestseller exposure even though it wasn't really a Paid bestseller. This only lasted for a couple of hours, but I think it helped get the ball rolling.

Also, I had so many free downloads, the book began to appear in other books' "Customer Also Bought" pages. Amazon doesn't seem to care if these books mix together on the Also-Bought lists, so many more people were seeing the book once it switched back to Paid status, even though all its prior traffic was due to free downloads.

Other factors that might have kept things snowballing: I write in a pretty popular genre (suspense/thrillers), and I've got a pretty cool cover.

It should be noted that several other books (from different genres) that made it to the top 10 Free List on the days I was there seem to have experienced similar success when switching to the Paid list. One book, Fresh Powder, has made it all the way to No. 26.

HERE'S THE BAD NEWS

Also worth a discussion -- what doesn't help or boost sales. I hate to say it, but I'm gonna. My blog, my Facebook fan page and Twitter feed didn't help push the book beyond the confines of my regular following.

I like blogging, so I never have done it simply as a sales tool. But any sales generated as a result of my blog posts have been minimal at best.

As for Twitter: I think I'm a decent enough Tweeter -- I interact with people, I retweet interesting content, and a good number of my own tweets get retweeted. I venture outside the insulated Twitter world of writers. I like the people I interact with on Twitter and on my Facebook fan page, and those are good ways to get my blog posts out or to tell one-liner Twitter jokes (to be honest, I think Twitter is really effective for sharpening writing skills). And I don't use Twitter as a place to shill my books (I've probably sent a dozen or so self-promo Tweets, most in the days after I initially published the book).

But it's probably been ineffective as a book marketing device. Now perhaps I don't have a big enough following for it to make a difference. I know one thing -- of the few hundred books I'd sold before all this happened, a good chunk were bought by my family and friends. I did very little self-promo, especially on Twitter, because I know how poorly other authors' self-promo tweets worked on me. And the tweets I did send? Probably didn't make a lick of difference. I hadn't run any advertisements, but I had purchased two (ironically, the first one doesn't even run until Feb. 27, and the second won't run until March 31).

The thing that bummed me out the most, though, was the complete disconnect between hits on my viral animated videos and book sales. The videos continue to draw about 1,000 hits per day -- amazing, right? But my research suggests that this translated into no more than a few dozen sales -- a couple hundred at the very most. Why? Who knows? Maybe there isn't much overlap between Kindle readers and folks looking for a quick chuckle watching a video. I had truly believed that these videos would serve as effective billboards for me, and that people would make that jump from my YouTube page to Amazon and buy my book. Yeah. They didn't. In fact, not only did they not buy the book, very few even made the jump to my Amazon page (maybe half a dozen a day) to look at the book.

Click to visit my Amazon page

So. I'm not sure what any of this means. I learned that the Internet is a very, very noisy place, and that just about everyone is selling something. I learned that people aren't sitting around thinking about your book as much as you think and hope they are. I learned that all this time we worry about social media is probably best spent worrying about something else -- like writing books.

Much like I will never quite understand why my So You Want to Go to Law School video went viral the way it did 16 months ago, I don't know exactly why my book finally took off the way it did. No idea how long ride this will last, but obviously, I am very thrilled and will enjoy it as long as I can.

So, if you've been thinking about trying KDP Select, I hope this gave you some additional insight into the program.

Good luck! 

The Jackpot -- Currently Free on Kindle

A quick post - My novel, The Jackpot, is currently FREE at Amazon.

Click here to go to my Amazon page.

This promotion will last until sometime Thursday, so make sure to scoot on over there to download the book for free before then.

Also, of course, please share this post.

Thanks!

Pink Power

My daughter is loud. She loves to read and play outside and eat French fries and help me cook dinner. She adores her mommy and her big brother and her friends. She's as happy playing Power Rangers or light sabers as she is playing with her toy kitchen and bringing me pretend coffee or a warm slice of make-believe pie.

Oh, and she fucking LOVES pink. And she loves purple. And she loves her baby dolls and she loves princesses.

And she can KICK YOUR ASS.

So for all the anti-pink stormtroopers out there who have gotten it in their progressive little heads that doing and loving stereotypically girly things and being a smart and kind and all-around-awesome little girl are somehow mutually exclusive, here's fifty Internet bucks to go buy a clue. I didn't tell her to love pink dresses. I didn't reward her with cheese each time she picked up the pink crayon in her chubby little fingers or zap her with little electric shocks every time she plucked the blue one out of the box. It's who she is.

Every day, I see some new article or blog post from some pseudo-intellectual about how This Pink Thing or That Doll Thing is ruining girls and their self-image and teaching them that they are secondary life forms and putting them on an express train to Stripperville. The same people who cheer boys who love pink and purple to show how open-minded they are also robotically condemn parents who supply their girls with a pink doll, as though I've given my daughter a pixie stick of crystal meth. And I think about my brilliant, beautiful little girl, and it makes me angry.

Angry that somehow, people have yet again forgotten that it doesn't matter what any kid (boy OR girl) wears or what toys they play with or what color they love. All that matters is what my wife and I teach my daughter about life and working hard and believing in herself. Same goes for my son. I mean, it's not that hard, really. I'm not splitting the atom with this. She likes pink because SHE LIKES PINK.

If my son liked pink and playing dress-up, the "all that matters" thing would be exactly the same.

But it seems like we've become so obsessed with finding some quickie band-aid fix for the problems that kids face growing up that we've lost sight of the fact that there really isn't a set of grayscale, hemp-wrapped hoops that a little girl must jump through as a prerequisite to becoming an independent, strong and self-assured woman. Rest assured, you pop-psychology-reading, truffle-eating critics, I'll be teaching her the same things I teach my son, I'll be expecting the same things I expect from my son, and I'll be pushing her to follow her dreams the way I'll push my son -- who, by the way, is equally smart and kind and funny and would, if he could, round up every pink item in our house and shoot them all into outer space.

So please, the next time you see a little girl who looks like she's vomited pink and you wonder how will she ever make it in this world, remember -- that's probably my kid, and she'll probably be operating on your decrepit, judgmental ass in 25 years.

With a pink Disney princess scalpel.