I wanted to do a separate post for this last promo, since it crossed over months and I wanted a place to have the data at my hands if I needed it. I hope the experience is helpful to other folks.
The plan was to release
The Endless Hills on August 31 at 99 cents, then run a Kindle Countdown deal on
The Water Road for free. I wanted to get a good number of free downloads, but also hoped that the low price on the sequel might drive some sales of it, too.
For the actual promotional stuff I used:
- BKnights “Tweet your kindle book to my book loving twitter audience” ($5) on September 1 for The Water Road
- BKnights “Promote and market your book to 4800 kindle readers on our website of readers” ($5 plus $5 for mailing list inclusion) on August 31 for The Water Road
- Bookraid listing for September 3 for The Water Road
- NewFreeKindleBooks.com listing for September 1-4 for The Water Road
- My mailing list announcing the deal went out August 31
In addition to those I posted the deal to the “Book for a Buck” thread at Kboards, tweeted it myself a couple of times, and posted on Facebook on August 31 and September 4
The results, by day:
- Aug 31: 223 free downloads, 5 sales
- September 1: 90 free downloads, 3 sales
- September 2: 35 free downloads, 0 sales
- September 3: 44 free downloads, 2 sales
- September 4: 36 free downloads, 4 sales
Totals: 427 free downloads, 14 sales
We’ll see whether any of the freebies lead to future sale, reviews, etc., but overall I’m pretty happy, particularly with the sales. That’s 5 more Kindle sales for
The Endless Hills than I’ve had for
The Water Road only a few days in. Now that the price for that one is up to normal ($4.99) and
The Water Road has its new permanent price (99 cents) we’ll see if anything moves while I’m finishing up
The Bay of Sins.