Free!

It’s about the half-way point on my second TimeSplash giveaway under the Kindle Select scheme and the result seems to be about the same as last time – thousands and thousands of books snatched up, mostly in the US. At the time of writing, a day and a half into the event, about 13,000 books have been given away. Last time, in January this year, I gave away nearly 20,000 in total over five days. So this time could be even bigger.

Of course, TimeSplash has rushed to the top of the free books charts. It went straight to number 1 in Technothrillers and quickly achieved number 1 in science fiction (on both Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk). And it has stayed there (give or take a position swap or two in the US technothriller chart) while it has slowly climbed the overall Kindle books chart (it is currently #19 in Kindle Fiction on Amazon.com). It’s a great feeling to see my book flying off the shelves like this and I’m very, very grateful to all the people who have grabbed a copy. I know that even making a book free doesn’t mean people will want it.

“And what’s the point of it all?” you ask. Well, last time this happened, once the free book giveaway was over, TimeSplash started selling. In the weeks that followed, it peaked at 400 sales a day and it stayed in the Amazon.com top 100 for ten weeks. It’s not likely to happen like that again because Amazon has changed its ranking algorithm to favour more expensive books – and I sell TimeSplash at a fairly low price. But I’d be very happy with half the success I had last time. A third, even.

And this is likely to be my last giveaway of TimeSplash for a very long time, so if you’d like a copy, you should grab one today. Or better still, wait a couple of days and buy one. Think of how virtuous you’ll feel, knowing you could have had it for free but hung on so you could put bread on a starving author’s table.