I'm stoking the biggest poll on the internets…
Or maybe it's a survey…in any case, you probably know that yesterday, I decided to host a sale for Christmas. (If not, you do now.) I'm going to be giving away some ebooks on Smashwords using coupon codes, and discounting all others to 99 cents with another set of coupons. The thing is, I'd like to have you readers tell me which books you'd like to read, but have been reluctant to buy because a new book from an unknown author is just too much risk with so many other holiday expenses. So if you already know a book you'd like to see discounted to free for the holiday sale, mention it in the comments and I'll count it as a vote. If I get no votes, I'll select a minimum of four books to discount to free. BUT, since I want to encourage votes, I will discount more books for more votes. So if I get five voters with five different suggestions, I'll release five books. I'll do this for up to ten titles, at which point additional titles will have to jockey for the available ten slots.
Why? Well, I'm hopeful that having more free books will also be an incentive for y'all to get other people in on the poll, though preferably they should be readers who like ebooks, or who are expecting an ereader this holiday season. You could also talk friends into casting votes for the book you wanted, but since your one vote still counts as a nomination, there's really no need to stuff the ballot box unless there's a lot of voters. Which, given my comment history and current page views, seems a bit unlikely. I expect I'll have a couple votes here and there, so there will be four free books, for sure. And the rest will be 99 cents until the coupon codes expire in mid-January. Because I love you.
New readers on the blog may wonder what to choose, since you haven't seen anything by me, ever. First head over to my Smashwords bookstore and look over the blurbs. Smashwords also will let you read free samples on the site, and I give roughly 15-20% as a preview for most titles. So you can get a feel for what might interest you without buying, and then say in the comments which stories you want to be free. I also have to free books, if you like vampires. One is a parody of Twilight, and must remain free forever as fan-fiction, and the other is a short story from a much larger series about Vicky the vampire. (If you hated Louis from Anne Rice's series, you'll love Vicky.)
Either way, it's going to be a holiday sale to extend past Christmas and into the new year, so all the people getting new toys on January 1st discount day can also still take advantage of the freebies and deep discounts.
Now, I don't normally like doing the Spam-a-rama routine, but on this sale, I will have to get a bit spammy for a little while. I'm so very, very close to cover fees and a copy of Forza 4 from sales, BUT, making this kind of sale means that even if there's more readers, there's less royalties. And, giving books away means no royalties at all. But the point of this sale isn't to give existing readers another chance on the same titles. If you've turned them down already, you aren't going to change you mind just cause I lowered the price, right? Right, so this is my attempt to court all the new people just getting into ereading this holiday season. A million more readers will be bellying up to the online market for ebooks in 2012, and I have to hope that out of those million, I can find…I dunno, 20? 25?
Joking aside, there's a lot of new people coming in, I haven't offended them yet, and discounts and freebies for a one-time holiday sale won't kill me. D'oh, there goes the heart!
Okay seriously, this next year, it's a whole new ball game, and the market is expanding. Even with my lowly amateur status, I feel very good about being able to find some readers. I've got great reviews for most of my titles, and only a few bad reviews thus far. So if I can get some virtual bodies into my humble indie bookstore, perhaps 2012 can end with explosive new sales for me, instead of fiery explosive death for all living things, in accordance with the prophecy.
