Andy Holloman – Dad, Writer, Goofball

Doug was gracious enough to share his insight and REAL numbers from his recent “freebie” days with KDP Select.  (this is a re-post from his blog, yeah, I know, I’m lazy this week.)   Doug’s info is packed with great data that will help other writers.

I read his novel and it is excellent.  Fast, exciting, and a GREAT “bad” guy.  (Hey, I love villains)    Click Here to get his book.

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In this post I’m sharing the results of my second round of free days I used in my first 90 days in Kindle Select.

My second round of KDP Select I used my remaining 3 days of my 5. My first round or two free days was in January and had some modest success. I decided to wait two months to use my remaining free days to give readers a little break and to get them in in time for me to decide if I wanted to renew in Select for another 90 days.

Round 2 resulted in a minor lightning strike. Not to the extent of the authors who got promoted by Amazon, but I have to say that any doubts I had about KDP Select back in December are gone and I would recommend any author to sign up for 90 days and see what it can do for you.

I did a little more promotion for round 2 then I did in round 1. I pre-signed up for Pixel of Ink, but don’t believe they posted me, I signed up for WLC mid-month promotion for free books, I used Goodreads Event, and I was posted onKindle Author as well as a couple of other sites as well as twitter support from groups I’m a part of (World Literary Cafe, Epic Kindle Giveaway and Independent Author Network) and my twitter friends.

I can’t point at one thing that I did differently this time, so I’ll say LUCK also played a part. I think once your book gets high enough in a category that it’s self-promoting itself as readers see you on the top ten or top 20 list and click to add it to their library.  I also had enough upward traction that I made the Amazon “Movers & Shakers” list.

THE FACTS

KDP Select days FREE: March 14-16
Free downloads = 21,400

Post Free Results:
Top #1 Police Procedural; 4 days
Top #10 Suspense & Thriller
Top #20 Mystery/Thriller
Best kindle rank = #56

Peak download rate = 68 per hour

A week later, sales are still strong, greatly exceeding sales I’ve had before, but they are down from the first three days after free.

My peak download day after the Jan. promotion was 54, after the March promotion was 900.

Conclusion:

KDP Select makes a difference

Two days Free minimum, day 3 doesn’t add a lot.

Leverage promotion for Free days because rankings reached while Free will impact ranking and exposure when you come off of Free.

Post free impact is felt for 3 day and then sales start to slide.

There are a lot of Kindles on the West coast. Downloads peaked at 11:00 pm on the second day after I came off of Free.

The same impact was seen from January compared to March, but the March Free ranking was much better then January’s and the sales impact is much greater in March then in January. Borrow impact was way up as well.

What’s next? Now, I need to decide if I’m going to re-up in April. My borrows are now back down so I’ll probably opt out of Select for a month or two and re-offer my book on Nook and see what sales I can pick up there.

The question is, what is Amazon going to come up with next?    Click here for Doug’s Great Thriller – The Ninth District