After reading a gargantuan number of blogs about marketing, advertising and general other book selling ideas, I’d realised a few months ago that it was probably best to make Inside Evil free at some point. I’m not in Amazon’s KDP Select so I have no way of taking advantage of free days. However, taking point from the lovely Lindsay Buroker, I thought that I’d make Inside Evil free when Spirits of the Middlelands was published at the end of March…thereby encouraging people to try out the series without having to make a financial commitment.
So, a few weeks ago I ran a tester, reducing my Kobo price to zero. Any sales? Fat chance. Kobo really is a non-starter for me, but the fact that I had a free book there and got not downloads demoralised me – A LOT. I decided that if I was going to give this a proper crack, then I’d have to take a stab at price-matching on Amazon. There’s no clear deadline for this to occur…it’s down to the Amazon gods.
Yesterday morning I logged into Amazon and found, to my absolute shock, there were 89 price-matched downloads. 89 people saw my book and wanted to try it out. WOW. Then figures started to climb, and climb, and climb. As of this minute, I’m #1 in free horror/occult and #330 in the overall Amazon free store. I’ve had 900 downloads (I’ve just checked – exactly 900) and I’ve sold 4 of my other books. Wow. WOW. This is on NO promotion as I didn’t have a clue when Amazon would price-match…it’s just spiralled.
I’m keeping track of my statistics and will write a more in-depth piece after a few days have run their course and things have settled down a bit. Unfortunately, at this juncture, only Amazon.com has the free listing as I didn’t know that I had to price-match across channels. I’m also not sure whether this will be a perma-free or a month’s promotion before the release of book three. But, for someone who has been selling only tens of books per month, and was seriously wondering whether people were even interested in trying out my work, this has been a huge motivator. I KNOW that there are a lot of freebie grabbers out there, and that lots of people won’t even read it, but the fact that over 900 people (I just checked again) have downloaded it, AND book two, The Tower of Souls
Anyway, if you want to try Inside Evil out for FREE, head to Amazon. I’ll report back soon with more results.
Geoff Wakeling 
Geoff, a really interesting post. I would really like to know how this works. I too have not enrolled for select. Do you just reduce your price at one of the other outlets and hope that Amazon will price match and how long will Inside Evil be free before Amazon move the price again, any idea?
I use Kobo Writing Life so set the price to zero there. You can do the same with Smashwords…but it takes longer for the price to filter through. Then, you just go to your Amazon book page and scroll down and click the ‘tell us about a lower price’ option. Input the Kobo (or other link) and voila, you’re done.
As far as I’m aware, it’ll stay free until I put the price back up at other outlets and then contact Amazon to say that it’s no longer free at other places. I’ve never tried that option, however, so I’m not certain. Hence, it doesn’t matter so much on IE because I was tempted to run a perma-free all along.
Ah! Thanks for that. When Beneathwood is published I am tempted to try this with The Palaver Tree. very good luck with your free promotion , hope it brings you lots of sales. I will look forward to your follow -up post
-Wendy
So pleased for you Geoff. You’re becoming the master of promotion, and I’m glad its paying off. I think one of the biggest factors to doing a free promo is the fact you have more than one book out there. A fellow author promo’ed her book and got about 8000 free downloads, then shot to No 1 in Amazon’s supernatural book category. But when she stopped the promo, that was it. She didn’t have another book for anyone to go out and buy having liked her first one and since then her sales have been dismal.So I think this is a factor in something like this and its great people read your book then go and buy your other ones. Great way to do it.
I’m far from being a master, Sue!!!
You’re right about the book numbers though…..having a backlist is, I think, crucial. I’m hoping that’ll it lead to people buying book 2 and then signing up for the newsletter to ensure when book 3 comes out, they’re there waiting.