KDP Select – The Aftershocks
I ran a five day freebie promo on my Vitalis Omnibus book last month. It’s been around two weeks since that happened so I feel I can talk a little more intelligently about the effects of that run. This particular is called an omnibus because it contains the 7 novellas (I call them episodes) that originally made up the Vitalis series. I have since expanded the series by adding a second (Vitalis: Resurrection) and third (Vitalis: Provenance) full length novels.
I gave away a little over 2000 books over that 5 day promo. Not so impressive, I know. Still, it rose to the top ranks of its genres on Amazon (hitting #1 in at least one of the categories, if my memory serves). I did not use Bookbub to advertise this promo, but I did try a couple of smaller services that, to be completely honest, I can’t even remember the name of. I also did some blog swapping to try and raise awareness.
I reported a day or so afterwards that I was disappointed with the results. Sales had not picked up hardly at all. That was day 1 after the promo. By the end of day 1 they had improved, although not in a big enough number to consider anything more than a fluke.
But as the days passed the fluke continued. It never climbed into anything resembling a runaway freight train though. It was more like one of those hand carts with the levers you have to pump to get it down the rail. Still, that beats walking. I’ll give some numbers starting from March since that did not include the promo. In it and the number won’t be skewed.
In March I sold 65 copies of Vitalis Omnibus and 49 copies of Vitalis: Resurrection (Vitalis: Provenance was released in April). In April (the promo month) I moved 105 copies of book 1, 82 copies of book 2, and 74 copies of book 3 – with close to half of book 2′s and book 3′s number coming after the promo.
In May so far after 5 days I’m forecasting (based on current sales) 167 copies of book 1, 136 copies of book 2, and 110 copies of book 3. Of course I hope I do better, but May has been a slower month than April so far. Feel free to help me fix that by picking up the books and spreading the word (shameless plug over).
So did KDP Select work? Yes, I suppose it did help out. I’ve also lowered the price on book 1 from $5.99 to $2.99, and the increased volume has cancelled out any revenue loss. Overall it helped, in fact, because it encouraged more people to read it, and more people then went on to buy books 2 and 3. As a series I’m looking at increasing sales by around $300 over the month. Not very substantial, but who among us is going to laugh in the face of $300? As a champion for indie authors I’m happy to say that every extra dollar earned is a victory.
So here’s to victories – however small they may be.
To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com .
