An opinion on KDP Select

So as a lot of you know, we had a free promotional eBook run last week. We had some great success and have seen some flow on sales over the days after the promotion finished.

I've (Garrett) read a lot about the advantages/disadvantages of the free book promos that Amazon offers. Some people really hate the idea of allowing someone to get something for free that you've worked hard for. Others think that there is benefits if you have other books in the same series. And almost no one recommends doing it if you've only published a sole novel.

Well, I think we can act as the proof in a pudding. We have certainly noticed flow on effects of the two day deal. I'm not some Amazon fan boy, so I'll put this into some hard number perspectives so you can understand what I'm saying.

Before our KDP Select adventure we were ranked as the #250,000 best seller. We ran the free book promotion for two days and had a total of 1,594 eBooks find their way out to people on the internet. We shot up the free ranks, and after a day, were sitting as the #2 book in the Fantasy genre, and just outside the top 300 overall. We were happy.

Well, our goal was to gain more reviews, not to gain sales, but getting up the next day and opening the computer to see 26 eBooks sold! Yew. We sold just as many in that one day as we had in the previous few months. The next day saw a drop, but we still sold four books and that trend has continued over the week (similar volumes). We also noticed a spike in the amount of people visiting our blog and that seems to be rather consistent with the rising sales.

We did hit our goal and gained an extra three reviews and four Goodreads ratings! The flow on effects have been dramatic for us. Maybe we got lucky, maybe we didn't. But for all those authors out there wondering if its worth a shot - I'd say you don't have much to lose if you aren't setting the world on fire in terms of book sales!