Free Book Promo Today (Aka, don’t argue with the data)

by Records of the Ohanzee

 

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First of all, I’m excited to announce that the ebook version of Reflection: The Stranger in the Mirror (Records of the Ohanzee Book 1) is available for free today and tomorrow (10/18 and 10/19 until midnight PDT) through Amazon. If you’ve been wanting to try out the series, click here to go to Amazon and get your copy!

Some of my readers may recall I made the decision a few months back to change over from running free book promotions to $0.99 promotions. So why am I switching back? As my fellow authors can attest, the purpose of running a book promotion is not to make money on the sales generated (you’re doing well to break even on the cost of advertising). The purpose is to increase the visibility of your book so that you can reach even more readers. My hope was that $0.99 promos would be more effective in improving the book’s sales ranking–since free sales do not count toward paid sales rankings on Amazon.

Well, the results of this experiment over recent months proved that theory to be incorrect. As it turns out, the difference in volume of downloads between a free promo and a $0.99 promo vary by orders of magnitude, severely decreasing the amount of visibility gained as a result.

My years spent working in science taught me many things, and one of the foremost ones was to never, ever argue with the data. You can argue interpretation, you can question the method, but when you’ve done your experiment right you have to accept the results as they are–not as you wish they would be. And so, I have decided stick with what works and go back to running free promos. Seems like a win-win all around. ^_-

14 Comments

  2. Hi Rachel,

    I stopped by to see what your site is like, since you visited mine and liked one of my posts. This is my first visit, but I love the picture of the display of the first book of this series that you use at the beginning of this post, and I immediately clicked the link and downloaded the free book to read. It may be two weeks or so until I get to it, but when I finish, I will write a review and post it on my blog, on Amazon and on Goodreads. As someone who is working on her first novel and hoping to self-publish, I know how important it is to make valuable connections with other writers and to help each other out.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by, Kelly! I really liked your Top 10 Tuesday post–it stood out to me since you had choices from such a wide array of genres! I actually took the picture with this post to share on my Instagram account, but it turned out so well I wanted to use it here too. ^_^ Thank you so much for checking out my book! I hope you’ll enjoy it, and I look forward to seeing your thoughts on it afterward! And you’re right about authors supporting each other–there is so much more that goes into self publishing than you (or at least *I*) realize ahead of time. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the support of both my readers and fellow authors. Best of luck in your writing! (I’ve just followed your blog too and look forward to seeing your future posts. ^_^)

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      1. I periodically make Book 1 available for free, but it is not free all the time. ^_^ The next free day is coming up on November 16, which is only a couple days from now! I’m planning to make a post announcing it on the day of the sale. (Thank you for following my blog by the way! ^_^)

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