It was fun while it lasted! Irid, as of today, is no longer free on Amazon and has returned to its original price. I quite enjoyed the six(6)-week run (Starting somewhere around Aug 10 or 11th and ending Sept 23). Now the real test will come.
Here’s where word-of-mouth really comes in. My book is now sitting in thousands of people’s Kindles and most will never read it. But for those who do…. let’s see.
Until Next time 
In the KindleForums, I always see these HUGE numbers quoted of books being sold, and then I see my small potatoes of sells, and… I’m Happy! Thought I would say I was NOT happy? Huh? Huh? Nope.
I’ve set my prices free on Smashwords, to make it free on Barnes and Noble some months back. I didn’t upload to PubIt only because I didn’t know about it until I found the KindleBoards forum, but I do like the coupon option and multiple eBook formats given by Smashwords (I might mess around with PubIt sometime later). I didn’t get any sells on my one (1) book that was not free on Smashwords (The Made). But I did get a few reviews on Barnes and Noble and a few ranks (about seven people marked the stars).
Then one of my books went free on Amazon. I didn’t do anything to get it free. The one thing I did do was connect my books with Shelfari, and as soon as I did that, one went free. Not sure if it was related, but that’s what happened (See What the Heck).
I’m small potatoes in sells, not anything that’s been listed on forums, which are hundreds of sales in days and week, but I’ve let you know that I’ve only sold about 7 books a months since this March 2011 (I’ve had the books out since 2009–things changed when I put the books for free on Smashwords/B&N earlier this year and sells trickled then to Amazon). Now that I’ve had one book Free on Amazon (my book IRID), I’ve sold 40 of my other three books. I did set two of my books to .99 for a week (The 9th Symbol and Ruby, Flesh and Heart), and that’s when it really sold. Next week, they’re going back up to 2.99…just to see what happens.
So, since IRID went free on Amazon sometime around Aug 10 or 11, 2011, I’ve had almost 8,000 downloads (over 14-15 days), and I’ve gotten three more reviews added to my one review that’s sat lonely since March 2010. I had about 3,000 downloads on my two free books on Smashwords over a period of 5 months. In the forums, people quote these numbers happen to them in just over a period of days, but mine took a week. Why is that? I don’t know. It might be the genre and my subject matter–the mixture of the two is pretty rare. However, what has happened for me for this month is better than the entire 2009 year! So, that’s why I’m
.
I’ve since changed the pricing on Smashword and the downloads stopped. It took almost 2 weeks for the Free status to change on Barnes & Noble. Now…I’m going to do the waiting game and see what happens.
On Amazon, it was fun being #1 in a genre for a week!!
I’m currently writing about my new opinion on how to get readers, which includes a area about Book Reviews. It will be posted at a later date. It also includes my new opinion on not soliciting for Book Reviews. But for now, I wanted to say that because of the free books, I’ve managed to get a trickle of reviews on Amazon, as I said earlier. Then, when I registered with GoodReads, LibraryThing, and Shelfari, I saw who had it marked to read my book, who had read them, and saw a few more reviews–just little numbers:
GoodReads – 1 two-stars with a written review, 2 three-stars (1 star is “I didn’t like it” 2 stars is “OK”, 3 Stars is “I liked it”, 4 stars I really liked it and 5 stars is “Amazing”.)
Amazon - 2 two-stars and 2 five-stars (1 star is Awful, 2 stars is Poor, 3 stars Neutral, 4 stars is Good and 5 stars is Excellent).
LibraryThing - no ratings, but a few people have IRID in their queue (Star rating can include 1/2 stars, so it’s like movie ratings)
Shelfari - no ratings but 18 people have it on their shelf (1 star is “I hated it” 2 stars is “I didn’t like it”, 3 Stars is “I liked it”, 4 stars “I really liked it” and 5 stars is “I loved it”)
Barnes and Noble – about 7 ratings averaging 4 1/2 stars–no ratings on The Made (not loaded yet) and The 9th Symbol. (1 star is Poor, 2 stars is Disappointing, 3 stars is “Okay, but not great”, 4 stars is Recommended, 5 stars is “Outstanding”)
When looking at the different rating stars, you have to remember the differences. A 2-star on Goodreads is a 3-Star on Amazon.
There you have it for today. My Book Reviews without soliciting for them. So far, they are pretty neutral. I can’t wait to see more in a few months, once those who have downloaded the free versions start posting their opinions.
From an advice on the forums that I’ve been reading, an author should NEVER, never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever… comment on a negative review. Ever. I read how some authors who have commented, and things got really nasty, and really bad…really fast. Some authors just gave up and pulled all their books off the shelf, just because of this. Just remember to wear your thick skin. People are entitled to their opinions. What one reviewer might not like, another might. Some negative reviews even bring on more readers!
Example, I got two negative reviews (they at least gave me 2-stars and not 1-star), but then a 5-star came around after those and, to me, that blew the other 2-star reviews away by reading like a very thoughtful and in-depth review, in just a few short sentences! I thought, at first, that my story telling wasn’t getting across correctly, and I was discouraged and down for a few days. THEN this review came in (and my down emotions went up and skyrocketed! Thank goodness it came soon), and now I know I’ve reached at least one person on why I write what I do. I also had to remember that at the other book store, I got more 5-stars than not. See what I’m saying?
You’re going to get bad reviews. The only time to start worrying about them is if you KEEP getting bad reviews. And remember there’s different cultures and different types of readers. You’re a reader, right? There are some things you like and some things you don’t like. You might see at one store that a particular item has 5 stars and at another it just has 3 stars.
You must form your own opinion based on everything provided. Let time let you know the overall results, and don’t give up! And keep reaching for those stars!
Until next time!
Yeah! What the Heck?!! I kept reading how HARD it was to get your book free on Amazon and that the only way to do it is to use the area where it states: Would you like to give feedback on images or tell us about a lower price?, and then and only THEN, and only SOMETIMES and RARELY would your book become free on Amazon Kindle.
SOOoooooo… why the heck is my book Free ALL OF A SUDDEN!??!!
Hey, I’m not complaining…not in the least, but it surprised the heck out of me! I checked my KDP sales reporting everyday (I know, I’m obsessed with my little small potatoes of sales) and I see that IRID has 1975 sales. I was like, “there’s a mistake somewhere.” So, I went to the book’s site on Amazon to see if there were any book reviews. Nope. Still just the one. But then I saw the ranking and it was number 65 for Free books.
Yeah. I’m scratching my head. Then, I looked at my book’s pricing and … $0.00 is what I see.
What the Heck??!!
I went to my Author Central page and took a look at my book, and sure enough, it states:
This format of “Irid” is currently ranked #65 out of over 15,000 free books in the Kindle Store. (updated hourly)
I look over to my hubby and tell and show him what’s on my laptop. “How the world did this happen?” I ask him. Then I answer my own question. The only thing I did differently was connect my Author Central Page to Shelfari (just learned that it had that capability) on Aug 10th and now one of my books is Free, and that happened somewhere around Aug 11 (my other free book didn’t get “un-freed”…hmmmm). I’m guessing someone must have flagged IRID because it was free on Smashwords and Barnes & Noble? OR the Amazon Bots found out? I don’t know how it happened. I don’t care how it happened. I’M JUST SO DARN HAPPY IT DID!
I’ve gone and “un-freed” my books on Smashwords, which will take a bit to update to Barnes & Noble, so when I do get IRID back to being a paid Kindle book, the “bots” or whatever will know the pricing is the same. So, no more Free books for right now…well, on Barnes and Noble, the two books are free until it updates. I still have the Smashword’s coupon option if I want to give away any free eBooks.
What was really shocking was that after all this researching for answers, I went back and my ranking jumped from 65 to 57, AND I became #2 ranking in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Romance > Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost. AND the books jumped from 1975 downloads to 2048 to 2090 to 2111 to 2122 to…. And my ranking went from 57 to 54…. I had to get my excited butt to sleep. I had things to do in the morning. So, you know it was the first thing I checked when I woke back up, right? IT WAS LIKE CHRISTMAS!!! What’s inside that beautifully packaged, bowed present….??!!!! The rank went to 52 with 2580 downloads at 8:30AM to 3242 downloads by 5PM (That’s Central Time)!
Every time I refreshed my webpage, the numbers kept going. And, of course, that’s what I did for the rest of the night, and the next day, watching the numbers grow…and my ranking go down in the overall free books for Kindle (not for the genre–it stayed at #2). But hey, the numbers of downloads kept growing and, about the rank,…that’s just how it goes. The most uplifting part for me is that I had wanted One book to be downloaded by 5,000 people in Smashwords, but the number of downloads was just getting slower and slower. At the rate that it was going, it was going to take TWO YEARS to reach 5,000 downloads. NOW! NOW! Now, I’ve reached that number with Kindle in just FOUR DAYS!!
HURRAY!!! Another goal accomplished!
On Aug 14, by 10:20pm, the count was at 3683.
On Aug 15, by 5:40pm, the count was at 4670 and by 10:25 it reached 5,044!!
Some people might think, heck, the book is Free, why wouldn’t anyone download it?
Just because it is free, doesn’t mean it’s something someone would want to read. Think about how you would want to spend your time? You want to read something you would enjoy…free or not.
And what’s great about FREE books?
FANS!!!!!
I got a few more purchases of my other books because of the free IRID sales on Kindle. COOL BEANS!
Now….now I sit back and wait for those people who’ve downloaded my book to start posting reviews. It might take a few months, since people download FREE books and have a large collection of books on their Kindles. It will take some time before they get to actually reading my book. Until then, as of the night of Aug 15, 2011…I became #1 Free book, of the Top 100, in the genre.
I’m scared…
