STEALTH PROMOTION

Last week I put a number of books up for free (it's near the end of the Select period, and I'm tidying up). I decided to skip the part where I send information about the giveaways to a half dozen Web sites dedicated to this activity. (The half dozen I use; there are many more, of course, but the others tend to demand lots of reviews before they'll list a book.)

Here's what happened:

For HOT STATUS (the techno thriller): the un-promoted giveaway resulted in only 12.7% of the action in the previous promoted session. Reversing that: promotion resulted in 7.85 times the activity.

For SALESMAN OF THE YEAR (police procedural): only 22.25% of the promoted session. Or: promoting the giveaway yielded 4.44 times the number of book grabs.

Clearly, a little promotion substantially beats letting people stumble upon a free book during the happy time.

By the way, one of the sites I used for listing giveaways (Sweety's Picks) no longer accepts listings of Kindle freebies. Might be related to the dust-up with Amazon over changes in policy about rewards.

One thing different this time: HOT STATUS lost ground to my middle grade fantasy (EXPLODING WIZARD'S RIGHT-HAND BOY). Back in November, STATUS dominated WIZARD by a factor of 4.38. This time, WIZARD was the big dog, doing 3.37 times the "business".

How come? Maybe most of people who wanted STATUS has already grabbed a copy. Or maybe more people prowl the children's fiction section than the thriller pile, resulting in more discoveries of free books. Don't know.

In the next Select period I'll try running the books head to head again, but with some promotion for both.

And now a special bulletin from the Department of Buried Leads: EXPLODING WIZARD will be free Friday and Saturday (Feb 14 - 15). This time I sent the info to five of the sites I use (minus Sweety's Picks). I'll let you know if the numbers pick up. They certainly should.