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Swallow The Moon
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KDP Select - a 2nd Run
Great minds think alike, Kat. I'm set to let my new book go free tonight for two days. Good luck with it!
Mod
Remember, you must give a minimum of four hours notice either to add another day or to stop an already running freebie. But if you book three days, and you give the four hours notice, and they're slow about stopping it, you get a little something for free, whereas, no matter how much notice you give, if they're slow starting the extra day, you've lost something. Booking three and cancelling if the third day is not required is a win-win.
Whatever Andre said, yeah.I did five and don't regret it.
I didn't notice any build up on the second day before, Andre, but I'll take your advice. At least being in Australia, I can easily pull the last day with time to spare as it begins at 4pm our time. Thanks.
Mod
One hour into the 12th midnight Pacific time, and no sign of it going free. Or have I got it wrong and it's still the 11th Pacific time?No, just looked it up. It's 1am Pacific time and my book hasn't gone free. How long do I leave it before I start screaming?
Mod
I think they assume that if you don't complain, you're happy. I'd squeal now, if I were you. It's nearly four hours into the Pacific day.
In future I intend complaining after thirty minutes have elapsed. You'd think Amazon can afford a computer that can keeps better time than that.
It's just gone free, but it's actually been 'selling' well for about 3 hours, so obviously it was showing free somewhere!
I think it goes free at around 3:00am or 4:00am Pacific time, but leaves the free program at about one minute before midnight Pacific time on the final day.
StM hasn't hit yet...where is that list of freebie sites? I know I had it around here somewhere.Andre - this is just a teaser to get it noticed. I'm saving the big push until just before Valentine's Weekend. I haven't had a single sale or borrow, because the book is still in the mulch layer.
I can't get over the fact that LDL is still selling a copy or so a day.
As an aside - hubby and I renewed my military ID so I can access Ft. Knox for research purposes. I'm getting ready to contact both CID and the Warrior Transistion Unit for background information for the next contemporary romance.
I need to raise funds to go back to Ashtabula for a week or two for more research there as well. I've got a busy winter and summer planned.
The price has changed and there are downloads. 2 in DE, 27 in UK, and 110 in the US.NovelRank shows the book as 'inactive' and I can't get the damn thing to update. Same problem I had with "Let's Do Lunch."
I'd sit in front of the computer watching the ranking soar but I've got chores, dammit.
And she's off! US in the lead by a length, with UK giving it's all, DE showing some form...(Good luck, Kat!)
Thanks, Katie.I'm hoping this one hits big! I'm holding back some free day for when it launches back on Smashwords and B&N.
Worked on the proof for a couple hours yesterday. The paperback is my current project.
Then some smarty-pants are bugging me for another book in the series, so I have to get busy.
LOL
How is your sequel coming?
Mod
Hahaha - Andre, you have no idea. I had to take the truck out to get a round bale of hay (anywhere from 900 to 1100 lbs.) because there is an Alberta Clipper cold front coming in. Windchills in the 5f to 10f range. We've got an inch of snow on the ground already with more coming.
It's so cold the chickens wouldn't leave the barn. They played inside today. I closed off the outside coop so the barn will be warmer.
Give away update - US = 364, UK = 84, DE = 4
Mod
better on LUNCH by the comparable stage?
Yes, Lunch did much better: US = 1651, UK = 395Interesting isn't it? I don't think it's been picked up by the free sites yet.
But Paranormal and Urban Fantasy are MUCH harder to crack than Romantic Suspense.
Kat, the difference in your covers might also play a role in the comparative numbers. Moon is darker, and requires folks to kind of study it to make out what the image is. When readers are scrolling through hundreds of freebies, they may not pause long enough to study the cover. Lunch, on the other hand, is bright, cheery, open, inviting -- and it communicates immediately what type of story the reader can reasonably expect. I'd know at a glance that it's something I'd like. Remember: those freebie lists have all categories lumped together, so I don't think you can blame it on just the difficulty of breaking through those categories.Another thing to consider is reader burn out. With so many hundreds of freebies lately, they may be weary of going through the freebie lists, or overwhelmed by how much they already have waiting to be read.
Mod
And so, as we leave Mr & Mrs Naysayer to discuss the state of Kindledom... ;)Kat, your figures seem to be going much the same way as mine just did. Just don't do anything silly like me and presume that 4 hours notice to start also means 4 hours notice to cancel. Actually, your UK figures are much better than mine. I struggled to reach 98.
It's not really naysaying to bring up the loaded Kindles. This could work in our favor. Since we're all such swell authors (we are, aren't we?) we have a better chance of winning the competition because the downloads are fewer for everyone else. Us? We'll soar.Or (Mrs. Naysayer says) not.
I'm still pleased with the figures. The 'big push' for this novel is in Feburary when some of the early adopters will be out.I'm just trying to get it off the 'mulch layer' at the bottom of Amazon's charts.
DE = 6
UK = 110
US = 448
Which appears to be a good thing. I expected this book to out-sell 'Lunch' - how strange that it hasn't.
Hmmm...I've got too much work to do to mess around with marketing. I have to come back to this later.
Another weird thing - Novel Ranks is not picking the book up at all. Looks like I won't get any day to day statistics either.
Poo!
This has been a low key 'give away.'12:00 pm EST
DE = 6
UK = 139
US = 535
I think timing is the difference - when I did the first giveaway it was 'pre-Christmas' there weren't as many books out.
Hmmm - books still going out at the same clip. Lunch has picked up a bit as well.Nothing wrong with that. Ranks in the mulch layer, I don't expect that to stay the same.
DE
--------
StM = 6
UK
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StM = 144
LDL = 16
dig = 6
US
---------
STM = 550
LDL = 6/6 s/b
dig = 26
DoF = 1
I take it all back.'Swallow the Moon' has vanished back into the mulch layer, without a trace.
Do you fancy sharing a stiff whiskey with me, Kat? I've given up trying to work out what happened. It's like we never had a free promotion. Did your also boughts change?
Yes, there are now 'also boughts' which I didn't have, in the US site.I'll stick to my chocolate icecream - but you are welcome to your choice of poison. :-)
The timing was wrong. Too soon after the Holidays, I think. Andre mentioned how many people have filled up their Kindles. It will take some time to get them to start picking up books again.
Novel Rank completly failed to pick up the free 'sales' and still shows StM as inactive. So that tells me the 'freebie' sites never picked it up, either.
Not good.
If you do a search for it on Twitter, you'll be able to see if any of them picked it up. They all twitter what they've picked up - if you twittered that it was free?My also boughts are still only showing my other two books, so absolutely useless. I gather from KB that a few people have the same problem and KDP is not answering emails.
Hopefully you'll pick up a few sales from word of mouth now. Heck, I just sold one in Germany!
(I don't actually like whiskey. Chocolate icecream sounds much nicer.)
I'm showing a sale in the US, but no change in rank. That's a bad sign, but it might correct by morning. If this was enough to get me a sale every day or 2 I will be satisfied.
KB has a lot of complaints. LOL We are all in the same boat, I guess.
I noticed there was no change in the ranking for two of my trad pubbed books even though I knew of sales that were made, then something like 24 hours later, or maybe longer, the sales were reflected in a much improved ranking which then sank (or should I say climbed?) quite quickly. It's odd to see a couple of sales make a difference in the ranking to the tune of hundreds of thousands. I'd love to know Jeff's super-secret forumla for coming up with these numbers. All I know about it is that the long-term history of a title's sales plays a big role in determining the rankings soon after a sale. Even if a book hasn't sold for months, one sale can change the numbers quite a bit.KDP doesn't respond to inquires on weekends or holidays. At least that's been the case in my communications with them.
I'll be unleashing a new short story soon and will make it free, but you folks are giving me qualms. I still intend to go with a solid 5-day run and will report here how it goes.
Mod
Experience: Despite Amazon screwing up my test runs on the Select free promotion over Christmas and Boxing Day, I think we did relatively well with the two books I tested, The Meyersco Helix by Andrew McCoy and LE MANS a novel by Dakota franklin. Dakota, a brand new writer and not working in a distinct genre, gave away 700 copies, and Andrew gave away around 2200 copies in the 14 hours it was free (rather than 48, because of the Amazon screw-ups), so I concluded that in a full two days he would have made the target of about 7.5K, perhaps up to twice that.
However, Kat and Gordon and everyone else did so much better going early, before Christmas, that next year I'll go before Christmas too. Of course, it may be that the early adopters got the advantage of going first, that next year going early will give you no advantage...
Yer picks yer moment and yer takes yer chances.
The pre-Christmas buyers/uploaders may have ordered the Fire, which was still quite new in December. They may have been loading 'em.Think about that: soon after Mother's Day and Father's day might be a good time to get freebies out there, too. I recall seeing posts in the Kindle forum around both those days in the past where people announced what they were giving mom and dad, or what they were receiving.
I'm holding the last 3 days for just before Valentine's Day.I really thought StM would do better than Lunch. But it's off the US mulch layer in the mid-100k so I'm okay with the result.
So Katie - how did you do?Andre - I'm watching Dakota's rank. She's staying clear of the mulch-layer, too.
The fact that "Lunch" is doing so well in the UK still has me scratching my head. If I got some reviews back, maybe I'd understand it.
Not that I'm complaining. StM sold another book today in the US and Lunch in the UK. That's ALL good.
So Katie - how did you do?Did you not see my long list of complaints in my own thread? ;)
I am selling an occasional copy of MotDQ now, which I wasn't before, but not enough to get noticed and certainly not as many as I did with The Dragon Box. No answer from KDP as to why I still have no 'also boughts' (except to say that they will answer it in the order they received it - but it took them 48hrs to send that!).
On the good side, I have been selling a few copies of Treespeaker, too, so maybe there's a flow on from the freebies. Not a huge number (I can still count them on my fingers), but any number is better than before. MotDQ has been 'added' a few times on Goodreads, too.
Mod
I went a day or two with no sales or at least hardly any, then some sales dribbled in again. I think the number is 8 sales so far today. I have no way to account for that.The sales are spread over multiple titles and multiple pen names in genres that are unrelated to each other, so it isn't that my sales are stemming from earlier sales.
My borrows are increasing -- not hugely, but enough to keep me happy (I think I've had about 16 of those). Some borrowed titles were also purchased in the same period of time as others that had no new sales yet the borrows increased.
If I were a writer, I'd try to make the above sales report easier to grasp, but I'm just too tired at the moment. I think it's all that Marmite I'm eating. The salt is bogging me down, but happily so.
I used to have a theory that people have other things to do besides hanging out on the web on the weekends, but during typical US business hours they visit Amazon.com on their employer's time. That might be the effect I'm seeing. I'm also thinking that a good share of my sales come from West coasters because I'll see sales show up well after midnight my time, when most people around me are probably asleep. Or maybe it's people who share my affliction (getting up while still asleep and doing things like getting on the net, writing emails, making phone calls, and eating, then seeing the evidence the next day but not recalling a minute of it).
Andre Jute wrote: "What's the mulch layer?"I keep meaning to ask her the same thing. Those farm girls have a language all their own. At my house, the mulch is just part of the landscape, helping to keep the weeds from getting out of control and making the yard look halfway decent.
The mulch layer is the bottom of rankings. I think of it as 300,000 to 600,000 (and below). I just want to keep my books above that level.
Oh Katie - I found it. I don't know how I missed it. I'm SO blind.
The mulch layer is where my books live, then. You haven't lived till you've had a book in the millions. I saw one book at 4mil+ the other day. It'd be better to have no ranking rather than that ranking.
Exactly! These are just 2 of mine. LOL - right down in the mulch layer.LDL paperback = #1,925,022
Impressive Bravado = #600,834
The 4mil+ one I was looking at was a paperback, too -- through CreateSpace, I think.
Amazon reinstated my "also boughts" on Mark of the Dragon Queen about two hours ago. Since then I've sold 3 copies (and another copy of Treespeaker). Before that, I was selling one or two books (of anything) a day. No one can tell me that's a coincidence.
I wouldn't insult your intellegence. LOLI sold 2 more in the US over night. Looking good so far.
I'm in the final hours of my second run of a KDP Select free promotion. Right now, that short story (Cinderfella and the Flowered shoe) has had 1,477 downloads in its five-day run.In a few hours my third run will begin, with this short story offered free:
http://www.amazon.com/Self-Defense-a-...
P.S. I had a terrible time with the formatting on the above-mentioned story. @*&!%$ Word has hidden glitches that I could do nothing about. I gave up and let the story go as is because the glitches are few, just a matter of spaces. I'd love to know what invisible gremlins Microsoft is creating and sending into my manuscripts.
Unfortunately, there is no way to see them. You can only nuke the format and start over.
Books mentioned in this topic
The Meyersco Helix (other topics)LE MANS a novel (other topics)
Getting my nerves ready for my second run at KDP select - this time with 'Swallow the Moon.'
I've got 2 FREE days scheduled, Friday and Saturday. I don't know if I'll use both days. (I scheduled 2 because of the screw-up Andre experienced.)
The first time I didn't know what to expect. This time is different. I know what happened with "Let's Do Lunch" which makes it more nerve-wracking.