HOT STATUS REPORT

Earlier this week I gave away my techno thriller (HOT STATUS) for two days. I can now report the results:

Seventy-one downloads, mostly from Amazon.com (61), but also from UK, DE, and Japan (7, 2, 1).

Last time, in three days, I had 70 downloads. Last time, the vast majority came on the first day, with just a handful on the other two. I wondered if it was some sort of weekend pattern.

This time, giving the book away in the middle of the week, over 89% of the hits came on the first day.

Conclusion: Do your giveaways one day at a time to maximize the number of responses. I know, it's a lot more work to schedule the giveaway and submit time after time to the book promotion sites, but you'll get more hits this way.

Last time I wondered if giving away HOT STATUS would result in sales of the sequel (MAD MINUTE). It did not.

But back then, the sequel was on sale at $2.99.

This time I lowered the price on the sequel to 99 cents.

I had four downloads.

My next experiment is to give MAD MINUTE away and see if I can generate sales for the prequel—at 99 cents.

Should work.

In the meantime, I got my first review for HOT STATUS. (First review for any of my books, really.) It came in just a few days before the freebie period. It wasn't mentioned on the promo sites, but maybe some folks went to Amazon and saw it—and it had some beneficial effect.

Maybe if I give away enough copies of MAD MINUTE I can get a review for that guy, too. I hope so.

Not only is it hard to sell books that have no reviews, most of the promo sites won't even list your book when it goes free if it doesn't have a load of reviews. And mostly five-star reviews, at that.

Last time I submitted my book to fifteen sites, and five published the promotion.

This time, I only submitted to the five that published the first time—three of them went for it the second time.

Generally, they want you to rest your book for a month before going again. I was right on the bubble, timing wise. I don't know if that was a factor or not.

More stuff coming up: Stay tuned.