Will Kindle Select work the Second time? Updated

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Nightmelody

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I got a lot of exposure and sales following Kindle Select free days over Memorial Day. Book 2 is going up next weekend. I am thinking I will try Select again this time. If only I could rely on my Magic Eight Ball!
 
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mkeyth

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It should work again. Remember about other marketing options
 

nitaworm

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Why not try it? That way you can figure out if it works and plan you marketing for your next release.
 

Nightmelody

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Thanks, I am going to do it and see how it goes. If it does as well as the first I'll be happy, and if it does better I'll be ecstatic.

I made actual money in May and June. Still pinching myself.
 

James D. Macdonald

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Best of luck to you! It's still early days (in the "Nobody knows nothing" stage). Every bit of data that folks who experiment bring back is a positive good to the whole community.
 

Nightmelody

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I thought I would report back on my experience with my second book in Select with five free promo days.

My free promos happened at the same time as some kind of kdp reporting glitch! It wiped out ranks and took a few days to get right again. During that time I had a few thousand downloads, but about half of what I had with book one. I only received one review, but it was a good one. Later I picked up a couple on Goodreads, and a couple nice blogger reviews.

Sales in July were slooow for the first half but picked up the second half. The KDP glitch probably factored into that.

My August sales have been good and have my books hovering on and off the paid bestseller scifi-> space opera list. This is the first for Book 2, and book 1 hasn't hit the list since the end of June. So am pretty happy with that.

In Sept book 3 of the series comes out, with book 4 in November. I plan to bundle bks 1-4 prior to book 5 and books 6, planned for winter 2013. Also by then the books that age out of select will be with other retailers.

Meanwhile, though novel rank tells me my small press books are making sales, I've made a total of $7 from one publisher and the other publisher has not sent or emailed a statement for 3 quarters, though I can hope for Aug 15th I guess. Whereas I got a nice check last week from Amazon and expect an even nicer one the end of this month, and one next month.

I have absolutely no incentive to return to small presses with my work, and since I write long novellas, the Big Six are not and never have been on my radar. I might do a continuity or an antho if the story idea was fun and short for writers/publishers I cyber-know and like. Other than that, I have another series up my sleeve.

Oh--wanted to add that I priced bk 2 a dollar higher(3.98) and have not noticed a difference in sales from my book 1 at 2.99--they are almost neck and neck.
 

merrihiatt

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My free trial rank right now is 2,100 for my first book after coming out 12 hours ago. But for the life of me, where do you go to see how many books have been downloaded? Is it in the Bookshelf somewhere, or some other place?

tri

Go to Reports and then Sales This Month (I think that's what it's called). it's the first option under Reports.
 

Nightmelody

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My sales have been really good this month and a friend told me she got an Amzn Marketing email for scifi rom/ futuristic and I was on it. Very happy about that.
 

triceretops

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Eight days on Amazon, two of which were free download days. I had about 540 downloads, for a total overall free trial rank of 654. I hit and held the #87 slot for mystery/thriller for about 30 hours. I dropped the price from $2.99 to $1.99 immediately after the free trial expired.

I've sold four copies. Current rank is 184,000. And this was with extremely heavy promotion every day, as tastefully as I could perform it without pissing off the world, friends and contacts. I spent no dollars on marketing, only spent time social networking.

Where did the sales come from? Three came from very large writing groups, like this one. I know this because the purchasers told me so. Don't know where the fourth came from--could have been a browser/spontaneous purchase.

Does author promo work? Hardly at all, in my instance. But I've been told that the month of August is rather poor for book sales, and this bears out since all my other stories and books are at a dead still and have been for eight days.

I think I'm the perfect example of a new self-publisher who has (so far) average results. Pretty damn sobering. Oh, I'm not giving up. Just changing my tactics and regrouping for now. There's some tweaking that could be done.

tri
 
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kaylastonor

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I have a tentative plan. I have enrolled two novellas on KDP Select and am doing one day book promotions on each alternately. I'm viewing the next 90 days as a learning curve.

Which means I might change my mind!

One thing I noticed researching the sales ranking is that one excellent week of sales (say during a 5 day free promotion) might get wiped out by the averaging across several weeks of sales, hence trying to spread the promotions over more weeks.

Now if anyone knows why I shouldn't do this, please let me know!

Also I'm doing my free promotions at the weekends, only because I think people have more free time at the weekends to browse the lists.
 
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Nightmelody

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I don't know what works best. Originally for my first select book I was going to only do 3 days free, but I was creeping up close to the top 100 free so I decided to do the entire five. My second book went free during that weird glitch so I gave up after 4. Bk1 made it to 124 free, bk2 only made it to 2500 or so. But sales for the two are very close now.
 

merrihiatt

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I have a tentative plan. I have enrolled two novellas on KDP Select and am doing one day book promotions on each alternately. That means almost once a week one of the two is free for a day, hopefully drawing attention to the other at the same time. So even if it is 2-3 sales a week maximum it might haul me out of the 100,000s+ on Amazon's sale rankings. Then I plan to publish the third in the series towards the end of the current enroll period, doing 1 day free every third week or so. I have absolutely no idea if this will work or not, but I am definitely NOT going to enroll the two on there now a second time, as I have no way of distributing through other platforms. And not everyone has a kindle, i-phone or i-pad. I'm viewing the next 90 days as a learning curve.

Which means I might change my mind!

One thing I noticed researching the sales ranking is that one excellent week of sales (say during a 5 day free promotion) might get wiped out by the averaging across several weeks of sales, hence trying to spread the promotions over more weeks.

Now if anyone knows why I shouldn't do this, please let me know!

Also I'm doing my free promotions at the weekends, only because I think people have more free time at the weekends to browse the lists.

Two to three sales a week may not be enough to keep you below 100,000 in rank.

I had better luck offering a title free for one twenty-four hour period. You can always add another twenty-four hour period, if you decide to keep it free longer. You may find offering a book free more than once a month actually doesn't gain paid sales. A lot of folks who download free books never actually read them.

Sales are generally higher on weekends, so I offer free titles during the weekday. I want the downloads to be paid!

Good luck to you.
 

kaylastonor

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That's helpful, thanks.

I think I will have Day 1 for both books at the weekend and then adust the other 4 days (for each book) to the week. Will let you know what happens!
 

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Hang in there, Chris. It takes time. Are you writing a new book?

I should really get on the new book train, but I have non-fiction content articles to write for clients that are getting in the way. I might have to steal time like a thief to do it. Really frustrated right now.

tri
 

EngineerTiger

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Sounds like you are making progress, Nightmelody. Hope it continues to go well for you.

I know what you mean, Chris. Real life has reared it's insistent head big time just when I reached the point where the narrative was poised to really roll for me. Oh well, get the boring stuff that pays the bills out of the way and then turn back to the stuff that I enjoy.
 
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