[neilmarr]

***Years ago I remember reading a marketing study that said if you offer a free item that will get people into the store, they will "buy" the free item but while there look around and buy other goods, too***

Could well be, Richard. The 'loss-leader' system used for a long time by supermarkets, chains and online retailers is tried and tested and successful. Although that's not at all what we intended, it seems to have come into play here.

***I am starting to think that the formula is to have a book series or catalog of titles, and to periodically give away a book from that set in order to promote the other books.***

Smart thinking, B, and it can be used on a permanent basis and constant promo. If you're a self-publishing author with a single title or a series, the chances of success are good if you have the imagination and energy for constant promotion (just look at Hocking's results through the Kindle store alone).

Many authors are unwilling or feel unable to help promote their own books, so that job always comes down to me in the end at BB, over and above a heavy, editorial, etc, workload.

It's a little more difficult for a wee house like ours, you see, because we always have around 120 individual titles and so many authors to push on a tight budget. That's why our RAEBW promo opened the entire catalogue to requests (and we always sent more books that were asked for because it's not too difficult to judge reader taste from a short email and the choices s/she originally makes.

What we'd expected was a sales crash that might be more than compensated for over coming weeks or months by the increased exposure of the house and its excellent authors. In spite of what Richard suggests above, it's still something of a mystery to me that it didn't work out that way and that we actually saw sales rise during freebie week. We didn't actively encourage folks to buy -- just to take a free taste and then make up their minds.

We're not complaining, though.

And something else that surprised me was that some of our ebooks with the lowest sales so far were up among the most popular requested give-aways. How do you explain that?

Thanks folks. This is a fascinating thread. So special thanks to B for opening it. Best wishes. Neil