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Wednesday, February 15, 2012

An Overview of Free Campaign

There are many unknown variables involved that I am not privy to.  For instance, how many other free books did mine compete with each day?  If 4,000 on Day 1, then it's a miracle I ranked #99 that first round.  If 100, well then everybody was ranked in the top.

When is the best time to offer your free days?  The middle of the month?  Kind of like Wednesday, Hump Day?  The first of the month?  But mortgages and rent are paid then.  With this major bill a primary focus for most of us, do we automatically then think, I wonder what free books are offered at Amazon?

Should we do all five days consecutively, or pepper them throughout the first three-month exclusive run on Amazon?  Should we have a minimum of two novels uploaded before we offer one for free?  These are just a few questions that I've mulled over and remembered long enough to add to this blog.

Not to mention genre.  My e-book, my debut novel, Good Ole Boys, is a contemporary love story and I have properly placed it within the contemporary romance genre.  Within the Amazon rankings, there are two:  a generic one among all the freebies and then the specific genre-related category for the giveaways.  Emphasis on the FREE in both.  There are other rankings for the strictly "sold" books among Amazon.

In the first FREE ranking, my love story is competing against any and all genres, if I understand this correctly.  In the second FREE ranking, my contemporary romance is competing against all others within that category.  [Remember, as Indie-published authors, we choose our categories.  And as I've noted in an earlier post, there are some fiction books seated in nonfiction categories which makes for skewed bestseller ratings.]  But for our purposes here, we'll assume all books deemed "contemporary romances" were in fact truly a contemporary romance.

However, "tweaking the bestseller rankings" aside, between the general and the specific among FREE offerings, a contemporary romance seems to be a good fit for what readers are seeking, for the rankings were nice numbers for a newbie author like me fresh on the scene.

Plus, I have to wonder how many who downloaded my free book will ever read it.  I know I have many such e-novels patiently waiting for me to have the time to relish a five-hour read, uninterrupted, while working two jobs.

Still, I think most people are like me--downloading only those free books that I truly have an interest in.  So I like to think I have garnered 2,096 readers out of which there possibly are 209 (an estimated ten percent) who will become addicted fans.  Just my mental meanderings here, no math or facts to support it.

Now, for the overview of my last five days:

STATS
DAY 1 of 5
DAY 2 of 5
DAY 3 of 5
DAY 4 of 5
DAY 5 of 5
FREE RANKINGS Kindle Store
#1,110
#296
#557
#530
#688
Contemporary. Romance
# 93
#46
#71
#69
#95
DOWNLOADS
Fr, It, Es
0
0
0
0
0
Germany
7
9
10
11
11
U.K.
67
97
182
338
374
U.S.
637
1033
1201
1481
1711
Totals
711
1139
1393
1830
2096

The first day had the most downloads compared to the remaining four.  In fact, Day 1 had over 700 downloads and Days 2 and 3 had another roughly 700 downloads, followed by a repeat on Days 4 and 5.  Again, I don't know how that compares to other authors' free campaigns.

Take what you will from my chart, use it as you contemplate your own foray into the five days of promo offered by the Amazon Lending Library.

Best wishes to all!

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