Anatomy of Amazon's Free E-book Promotion (LIVE)

[John Paul Cater]

This morning, just twelve hours ago, my e-book went on Amazon's KDP FREE book promotion program for two days. In that time I've had almost 60 free downloads, netting me zero dollars in royalties... but during that time my book has up-ranked from somewhere in the top eighty thousand e-books to the top five thousand, and is now #14 in time travel science fiction e-books. Still deciding if the promotion is worth it, I'll repost to this thread as time rolls on (no pun intended).

[TonyCooper]

Just done a similar thing. My short story collection goes free today and tomorrow. Done some promotion of it this morning and so far 6 downloads directly from that (just in an hour or so), hopefully more as the US wakes up and it snowballs a bit.
People seem to like FREE don't they?

[KileJ]

I'm also planning on doing a giveaway weekend in the immediate future. Sounds like some decent results to be had.

Anyone have advice on worthwhile places to promote? I've assembled a list of sites specific to my genre but wouldn't mind finding a few more spots to shill my book. I know Reddit has a free ebook sub and I've heard it can be a good place to promote -- are there other popular places folks go for free ebooks?

Thanks in advance for any and all replies.

[Froide]

Do you find helpful Karen Barney's suggestions in "Maximizing Free Days On Kindle Select (KDP Select)", posted at WorldLiteraryCafe.com?

[John Paul Cater]

The post-mortem on my 2-day Amazon Kindle FREE book offering goes like this: first day (Sunday) - 101 books given away, second day (Monday) - 45 books given away, third day (Tuesday) of the two day offering - I'm still wondering how this happened - 3 books, for a total of 149 books. I'm still waiting for my first review from that offering. That's what it's all about, isn't it? My book dropped from the top few thousand books during the FREE promotion back to the top 100,000 or so books after that. Was it worth it? The jury's still out on that one. I just added another e-book to Kindle and am putting it in the timed discounted book offering this time, hoping it will do as well and bring a few more royalties from the promotion. That's in early July. I'll post as it activates.

[TonyCooper]

I advertised my free 2 days on here, Kindle Users Forum and KindleBoards as well as on Twitter, my Facebook page and Reddit.

As for reddit, http://www.reddit.com/r/FreeEBOOKS/ is the most visited one and I got a lot of clicks and upvotes on there, but http://www.reddit.com/r/KindleFreebies/ is also pretty well populated. Do read the reddit rules though and follow them when you submit your link.

As for my 2-day free offer I had 189 downloads on day 1, 54 on day 2 and, like John, 3 on day 3 (maybe a time-zone thing?). Got to #1 on the Top 100 Free Short Stories and gained one review so far from someone who followed me on Twitter after spotting my offer tweets.

As for twitter, even though I hate them, using the correct hashtags does increase the number of people who see your tweet so make sure you get #free and #amazon in there

Hope this helps,
Tony.

[KileJ]

Thanks for the fantastic resources, everyone.

Self-promotion is difficult and makes me feel icky, so I really strive to be efficient when I'm out there pimping myself. Pretty impressed by the results Tony and John have shared in this thread, too -- very encouraging. Congratulations and good luck in the future.

[Jai Angel]

Self-promotion is definitely a task sometimes. I'll have to give that Reddit a try.

[AToren]

My novel has just gone free today so I am keen to see what happens. Thanks for some of the feedback and info on this thread along with some of the links. Very helpful.

[John Paul Cater]

A month or so back, I posted a thread describing the results of my first use of Amazon's FREE Book Deal. I received no royalties from that promotion, but gave away over one-hundred and fifty books. On July 11, my second e-book is going on the other Amazon promotion available to authors, the Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal. With this deal, my book drops from $2.99 to $.99 for the first day, then $1.99 on the 12th and back to $2.99 on the 13th. If you use this promotion, you may choose the price points and number of days at each point. I'm starting off with the minimum, trying to compare the two promotions. I'll post results to this thread as they develop. Stay tuned.