The Experiment Continues

Publishing is a business; writing is an art.

Last Wednesday, I offered Death Benefits free on Kindle, and despite the fact that the giveaway actually began five hours late, it turned into my largest yet. Because it was book 2 in my series, I expected a slight improvement in the sales of Absolute Liability, but I didn't anticipate the jump it took, going into the top 1000 in the Kindle store.

Two days after the free promotion, sales of Death Benefits began to increase, and it eventually peaked at rank 193 in the Kindle store, and 6 in women sleuths, a fact of which I'm very proud considering that category is dominated by about 20 books by Janet Evanovich. My price at the time was $3.99.

Now, from my previous experiences and based on what I've seen of other authors' free promotions, the spike in sales is temporary. I haven't seen any author whose sales have risen and then gained momentum. All of them have dwindled. Why? Is this built into Amazon's mysterious algorithm? Is there anything that can be done to help the book's momentum continue to grow? Authors, if you've had any experience with this, please share!

So my newest experiment was to lower the price of the book when I saw my sales begin to slow at the initial post-promo price. In theory, that will maximize the income from the first few days after the promo, and it is my hope that a lower price will keep its visibility high and attract even more readers instead of dwindling. We shall see how that works.