UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion
This topic is about
In the Blood
Author Zone - Readers Welcome!
>
My first KDP Select experience and results.
date
newest »
newest »
Wow! Those figures are fantastic, well done Steve :-)
I think the reviews must make a difference to how many downloads a book gets.
Thanks for sharing all that info, Steve. Much appreciated. After all the thought and effort you've put into marketing, weighing your options, you certainly deserve to succeed.
Thanks, Karen. Its been hard to resist doing it sooner. Bit of extra information. ITB is No.7 in the UK Kindle store list by popularity and it's around 130 in the US. I thought I'd add that so you can see how many downloads are now needed (since they did the 10 free = 1 paid algorithm change) to get to these numbers in the popularity rankings. I thought it would have been higher in the US with over 70,000 downloads and the increase in sales since, but I guess it's down to the size of the US market.
Yes it helps you have good reviews, of course. But I reckon the good reviews combined with the chat does more,Still totally gobsmacked you made it free..
Ah, but ouve got to speculate to accumulate, Patti. And ITB has accumulated lots more readers as a result. I'm up early for a day at the seaside today and just saw that ITB is at No.85 in the UK Kindle store. It's the first time it's been in the top 100 in the UK. I'm thrilled to bits.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing that. The ratio of USA to UK must make it tempting to focus all your promotional effort on USA I would have thought. In fact I have often wondered why authors bother with the UK at all considering the difference in market size.
Those numbers are mind-boggling, Steve! Congratulations!
Congratulations Steve, not a bad result for someone who said he'd never put his book FREE! lol Just teasing. :-)
Oh yeah!He did say that, didn't he? ;)
Congratulations Steve, I am smiling at the thought of how much enjoyment the books will bring to so many people!
M wrote: "Congratulations Steve, not a bad result for someone who said he'd never put his book FREE! lol Just teasing. :-)"Lol. Okay, perhaps there was a bit of back pedalling, but it took a long time to crack my resolve. :o)
I'm sure I didn't say I would never go free, though. I seem to recall saying that I was really against the exclusivity and wasn't jumping in. I still don't like that part of the deal. I've had a few emails asking why not on Nook etc and I feel bad about that. Still, maybe those emails are a sign that I might actually sell a few copies on those other formats now.
Simon (Highwayman) wrote: "Very interesting. Thanks for sharing that. The ratio of USA to UK must make it tempting to focus all your promotional effort on USA I would have thought. In fact I have often wondered why author..."
It's a good point, Simon. I'm not very active on US forums either. I tried a couple and do post a bit on Kindle Boards. It's very big and quite strict. I joined a Twitter #SampleSunday group - where I believe I met Mel - and point the odd promo notice, but I think you're only allowed to post one a week unless it's a response to someone else. Fair enough I thought, but unless someone talks to you there's less chance to promote directly. I think it would be a good group for anyone to join and chat on without promoting though, which as many know is the best way to get along with a group.
The biggest impact for me in terms of getting going in the US has been to let genealogists know about my books and there are a great many in America. If anyone's books have a niche market like that then they would do very well to focus on that rather than readers of a particular genre. Of course, having an American interest will help no end as well.
hehe! yeah, I told you to change your cover! lolIt's definitely hard to promo over there. Anywhere now actually, since Amazon have separated the authors from the readers. :-)
C'est la vie. Just keeping writing I say, I'm still making more money than when we first moved to France. :-)
Lol, I'd forgotten that about the book cover. You were very helpful though as I recall. ;o)Last time I looked you were also going great in the US, Mel. Any secret to that? Do you chat on many US forums?
I always try to be helpful where I can. :-)I'm scared to talk about sales Steve, in case it all goes belly up.
Yeah, the yanks love me apparently. Talk about the Justice series quite a bit on the forum thankfully.
The zon keeps featuring CJ in emails too. Maybe that's the key. ;-)
However did you get mentioned in Amazon emails? Bribes? Luck? Good sales figures (probable)?
Not sure. They seem to pick a few books that are selling well. I've had In The Blood mentioned to me a couple of times both as an ebook and a paperback. :-)
You're getting In the Blood in your emails? Oh, that's okay then. :o))
Oh yeah. Me too.But I also got a recommendation for Stephen L. That one made me throw up in my mouth a little...
LOL! Patti, you are funny. Have you seen that he's started writing erotica now too! Hmm... :-(
M wrote: "LOL! Patti, you are funny. Have you seen that he's started writing erotica now too! Hmm... :-("Again, a little bit of puke.
In the Blood was free from the 11th to the 15th of August. It was a last minute decision because I saw that my current three month term was nearly up and so I figured it was a good time to have a go and see what happened. I informed Pixle of Ink and Ereader News Today just after I set the promotion dates with less than 24 hours notice of the giveaway. Only one of them featured my book so very little prior advertising of the giveaway was done. The only other things I did was to Tweet it a few times over the promotion dates and update forum threads. I had very little idea what to expect as I've not seen many figures from other authors, and I remain surprised at the number of times In the Blood was downloaded during the promotion.
Here are the figures. I wish now that I'd kept a daily log, but I thought about it too late.
UK - 13,488
US - 70,246
FR - 00,048
DE - 00,412
ES - 00,006
IT - 00,003
Total - 84,203
That's 701.6 downloads per hour, or 11.69 per minute of the 120 hour promotion. In the Blood went to No.1 in the US on day 2 where it remained for just over two days before dropping back to No.4. In the UK it reached No.2 and stayed there until the promotion ended.
Something else that surprised me was that sales of the sequel picked up straight away. On day 2 of the promotion, sales were around five times their usual daily number. I had only thought that this might come about as a result of those who downloaded In the Blood then going onto to read To the Grave, but being so high in the free charts added instant visibility to the series and I suspect that previous readers of In the Blood suddenly saw the book again and from that realised that I had a sequel out. So I see this type of promotion as a good way to remind anyone who has read previous work to look you up again to see if you've published anything else.
I'm naturally very pleased with the promotion. ITB is now on a great many more Kindles than it was beforehand and both of my books are now in excellent chart positions in the UK and US. I know it won't last and I know that further promotions are unlikely to get anywhere close to these figures and so each subsequent free promotion will have less impact, but as yet I have no plans to do it again as I've never really liked being exclusive, although I will stay with Select for at least the next 3 months and see how things go. I wish everyone the best of success.