Saturday, June 02, 2012

KDP Select Experiment Stats

Gave away 153 copies of my ebook short, One More Book Before I Die, during my first of five free promotions yesterday. I think it topped out at #1,355 in the Free Kindle Store but didn't make any subcategory list (for example, #1 in Fiction / Religious / Mystery). Have to figure out how to make the description more specific on my next give-away.

I know there is some hullabaloo among those who study these things, but evidently Amazon changes their algorithms quite a bit to keep publishers from manipulating their system (like trying to get to #1 in the Fiction / Religious / Mystery category :).

Plus, "free days" in the KDP Select program used to lead to a bump in sales the next day when the ebook went back to normal price. But that's not happening as often anymore (or so the folks on the kindle boards are saying, even though I don't read those discussions, lol). In my case, I have 4 sales today (#37,049 Paid in Kindle Store), which at 35% commission means I made a a buck forty. Almost paid for my Starbucks tall bold this morning.

But at this point, my goal isn't to get rich quick via short stories. The conventional wisdom there is that novels in a series sell best, then stand alone novels, then novellas, then story collections, and last on the totem pole is the lowly single shot. I'm simply posting my stories now in order to hone my editing/formatting/cover art skills, plus, I want to get my "back list" up in case someone does stumble on my work, likes it, and wants to buy more. Never know!

And since one never knows, here's my catalog at the moment. All are 99 cents at Amazon. Thanks for reading!



~*~
BTW, here's the cover to my latest bit of silliness. Last Laughs. Three humor shorts featuring a Neanderthal's greatest invention, a superhero's early retirement party, and an alien's romantic ponderings. Plus a bonus flash fiction. All told about 18 pages long.

5 comments:

  1. Are these strictly on Amazon KDP, or are you doing Smashwords too? I found Smashwords to be much easier to work with, but maybe that's just me...

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  2. All but "One More Book" will be at Smashwords as well. I'm trying out the Select program for this one because it's the only one of my stories that aren't online some place. I didn't want to deal with Amazon coming down on me, lol. But I agree, Smashwords is easier.

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  3. I've enjoyed my KDP Select experiment for the past couple months -- it's been a great way to hook new readers. I've got a copy of "One More Book" and will write you an Amazon review in the near future.

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  4. Thanks, Milo. Don't expect any favors, of course, so if you don't like it no prob, lol. But yeah, I can see that the more reviews a story has, the greater the likelihood it'll make "a list" and thus perpetuate the cycle. I've seen free stories that were ranked worse than mine was but were #4 in their subcategory and couldn't figure out why except they had 20 or more reviews. So maybe that's it.

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Keep it clean and positive. (And sorry about the word verification, but the spmb*ts are out in full force!)