My Select Experience

     I'm halfway done with A Midnight Dreary—the next book in The Poe Files Mysteries trilogy—but I'm taking a little time off right now. It's been a year since I began my indie publishing venture and I feel like I'm still no closer to understanding the indie market than I was when I started.      The Blood Gate, which until my Poe books, I had considered my best work, languished for 9 months in utter obscurity until I entered it in Amazon's Select Program. In case you don't know, this program, among other things, allows you to make your books available for free for a few days every 3 months. Having nothing to lose, I did this with The Blood Gate, and the results were spectacular. 7000 downloads in 2 days, followed by 300 sales over the next 72 hours. This for a novel that had sold all of 50 copies over the preceding nine months.       The program also worked with The War God's Men. This novel had always been an easier sell than the superior Blood Gate. This, I suppose, is due to its narrow focus and easily defined genre. Although it only got 700 free downloads, it garnered more than 300 sales over the next 2 months, an excellent download-to-sales ratio.       The Poe Files Mysteries pose an especial problem for me in that they are so hard to categorize. Are the books Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery? When I put My Clockwork Muse into Amazon's freebie grinder, it was downloaded 700 times, but only made 20+ post-free sales. Even worse, after the dust had settled I found that one of the books in MCM's "What Other Books Do Customer's Buy After Viewing This Page" list was The Quilts of Lancaster County. Clearly, I had failed to find the market I was looking for here.      So what have I learned from all this? Hard to say, exactly. A few points leap out at me, I guess. There are more free downloaders of Epic Fantasy novels than Roman War Novels and Historical Mystery novels (where I had first categorized MCM). Overall, as an indie, I would say it's probably easier to sell novels that appeal to younger readers. Also, visibility is the single most important factor in book sales. The Blood Gate benefited from being on some very popular books' Also-Bought lists, if only for a couple of days. Ditto The War God's Men (thank you Bob Mayer and the rest of the gang on the "War & Military" list). My Clockwork Muse never made it onto any good Also-Bought lists. I'll need to pay closer attention to category next time, as I don't think Poe is all that big a draw in the Amish quilting world.      So where do I go from here? As tempting as it is to start cranking out fantasy novels (no more 160,000-word Blood Gate epics, however, I can promise you that), I'm going to finish my Poe trilogy before I begin to think too deeply about the future. That should take me to the end of 2012 at least. And who knows how the world will have changed by then?