Reflections on a 5 day Amazon Kindle promotion.

First of all, the figures:
85 total downloads.
56 for Sovereign Nation.
29 for Second Time Lucky?
66 downloads in the USA, 14 in the UK and 5 in Germany.

I have run two previous free promotions on Amazon, one when I launched Sovereign Nation where there were 174 downloads and one for both titles which had a total of 73. I think the first one got a boost as the book was new. If so, why has the latest one done better than the previous one? Promotion, pure and simple. For the previous one I just put them down as free and hoped for the best, other factors meant I could not do much more.

Pushing the books through Facebook groups has really made the difference this time. Ok, the figures may not look much higher but there were two days of the five where I did no promotion and got download figures of 7 and 6. If I had got similar download numbers to the days where I did promote the freeness you could add a dozen downloads to each day – that would put my overall total at around 110.

However, the more I read about this from other authors across the internet the more I am convinced the 5 day promotion may not be the way to go. It seems like running a couple of shorter promotions is the way to go, promote it free on Wednesday and Thursday so you get up the ranks ready for the higher selling days on Friday and the weekend. It makes sense and maybe it is what I will try next time around.

All in all, a fairly successful promotion – for me anyway. The figures may not be big but it means my books have now been downloaded by upwards of 330 people (there have been a few sales too) and I have got a few decent reviews (I need more, please review my books). Given that when I set out my ambition was to write something and get one person I didn’t know to download it I think I am doing ok. Sure, it would be great to be a big selling writer and earn millions but I am satisfied just to be able to say I am now a writer and my audience is bigger than my friends and family. Besides, I’ve had two royalty cheques from Amazon now so I can say I am a professional writer, I have now been paid for writing after all. Ok, the two cheques together wouldn’t pay for the tea and biscuits I’ve had writing this post but I can legitimately say I have been paid for my writing!