Kindle Publishing-offering something for free

I'm going to move this to the self-publishing forum. Folks there have offered things for free on the Kindle and they can talk you through the procedure.

There isn't a free option on Kindle but there are ways to have Amazon list your book as a free download.

Anthony, you can read how I did it HERE

I have a story on Kindle that just went freebie a week ago. It's a science fiction short story.

I offered it free months ago on Smashwords, first, which unlike Amazon, offers that option. Through Smashwords' distribution, the story was also offered free on Barnes & Noble's site, the Apple store, and elsewhere. (I could have sped up part of this process by submitting the story to B&N on my own.)

When I made the story available on Amazon, I picked the lowest price possible, which was 99 cents, wondering how long it would take Amazon to find the free versions of the story and price match it. Several months later, with no price matching in sight, I decided to speed up the process.

On the story's Amazon sales page, under Product Details, there's a link, “tell us about a lower price.” I clicked on that link and reported the $0.00 Smashwords, B&N, and Apple store prices. Seems it took about a week or more for Amazon to price match, thus making the story free.

Now, a week later, the story has been downloaded 988 times. My original idea was to see how well this freebie worked as a marketing tool, if at all, to spur sales for my other stories. So far it hasn't worked one bit. It did, however, generate one review, after 633 downloads.

My conclusion, of course, is that despite the nice review, my stories must suck, and I must be a terrible writer. So of course I keep writing.

Here's the freebie: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005XD5GD0/?tag=absowrit-20

Offering a free e-book did not translate into sales of my other books, except the other books in the trilogy. YMMV.

Adding tags will help, but again, that is if people are looking for a certain type of book. I wish I had more answers about how to drive traffic to your book. I have a website with links to the places my book is available and a Facebook page solely for my books. The best advice I've seen is to write another book, and keep writing.

When I spend too much time looking at data, I remind myself that my focus has become misplaced. It's about writing and telling a good story in my way. I believe if I keep that as my focus, the rest will fall into place. That is not to say all the other stuff is not important (of course it is!), but I always come back to this thought, "A writer writes." Incredibly simplistic, but true.

The over-all answer to all publicity and marketing is this: Write and publish more books.