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BearMountainBooks · 06-22-2013, 10:55 AM

Thanks, Julid. What I noticed is that when I have a borrow or sale, it pushed my rankings a bit faster than with non-select, but in all honesty, I don't think it's made enough difference to matter. The bottom line is that if your book isn't in the top 100 lists, be it genre or popularity or best sellers, the books don't get visibility. A lot of authors have found going free gets them visibility for about 3 days.

So if you are going to go that route, do it with a first in series and then hope you pick up readers. Frankly, I think free has run its course. Amazon doesn't support it with as much visibility as they used to and so many of the people who download the books don't ever read them--so you're not going to see sales of book 2 anyway.

I think authors have had tremendous success with it in the past, but not so much these days. There are a few threads I've seen where readers pretty much rely entirely on free and if it doesn't go free, they just download something else or go to the library. It takes a pretty special book to get through to that crowd such that any of them stick with the series. They don't have to. There are tons more freebies every single day.

At this point of my experiment, I don't intend to leave Under Witch Curse in exclusive. I don't plan to put any other books in the program either.

Sales on B&N used to be very good for me, but that market has slowed. Kobobooks has been a slow market all along, but I sell a handful there every month. Smashwords used to be a fairly good market for me, but not anymore. Of course, they no longer allow me to buy my own ISBN through their program so I won't be publishing any future books there. I realize that Smashwords is still the "background" owner when I buy the ISBN, but I prefer to have my imprint show up. I still have some of my books available through them.

I wish you much luck with your books as well!!!

06-22-2013, 10:55 AM	#4
BearMountainBooks Maria Schneider Posts: 3,746 Karma: 26439330 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Near Austin, Texas Device: 3g Kindle Keyboard	Thanks, Julid. What I noticed is that when I have a borrow or sale, it pushed my rankings a bit faster than with non-select, but in all honesty, I don't think it's made enough difference to matter. The bottom line is that if your book isn't in the top 100 lists, be it genre or popularity or best sellers, the books don't get visibility. A lot of authors have found going free gets them visibility for about 3 days. So if you are going to go that route, do it with a first in series and then hope you pick up readers. Frankly, I think free has run its course. Amazon doesn't support it with as much visibility as they used to and so many of the people who download the books don't ever read them--so you're not going to see sales of book 2 anyway. I think authors have had tremendous success with it in the past, but not so much these days. There are a few threads I've seen where readers pretty much rely entirely on free and if it doesn't go free, they just download something else or go to the library. It takes a pretty special book to get through to that crowd such that any of them stick with the series. They don't have to. There are tons more freebies every single day. At this point of my experiment, I don't intend to leave Under Witch Curse in exclusive. I don't plan to put any other books in the program either. Sales on B&N used to be very good for me, but that market has slowed. Kobobooks has been a slow market all along, but I sell a handful there every month. Smashwords used to be a fairly good market for me, but not anymore. Of course, they no longer allow me to buy my own ISBN through their program so I won't be publishing any future books there. I realize that Smashwords is still the "background" owner when I buy the ISBN, but I prefer to have my imprint show up. I still have some of my books available through them. I wish you much luck with your books as well!!!