Results from One on One Free Days

So, last week I ran a special on "One on One" at Amazon.  It was free on Wednesday and Thursday.  I wanted to see what offering free days through KDP Select would do for my sales.  I'd heard some people say that free days are a great way to increase your visibility and get your name out there.

On Wednesday, "One on One" moved a little over 230 copies, which I thought was pretty cool.  But what really blew me away was what happened on Thursday, when over 1300 copies were downloaded.  It was very gratifying to watch "One on One" climbing the charts at Amazon, and it finally made it up to the #2 spot in free Urban Erotica.  Even though I didn't make any money off of those "sales," it was still definitely cool to think about 1500 people having access to my work.

It's a little too early to say what the permanent fallout from this special is, but I did definitely see a spike in sales immediately after listing the story for free.  Most of these were for "One on One," but I have seen sales for other stories as well.  Of course, it's hard to say whether those sales were directly caused by the free listing.

I've scheduled the remainder of my free days, and I'll be very interested to see what happens next time!

"One on One" and KDP Select

Hello, everyone.  I have a new story, "One on One," up on Amazon!  I'm still definitely experimenting when it comes to seeing where my stories sell and how, so I've decided to enroll this one in the KDP Select program, at least for the first 90 days.  I'm very interested to see what effect this has on my sales.

For those of you who don't know, KDP Select is an optional program that Amazon offers to authors who sell their ebooks on Kindle.  Books are enrolled for 90 days at a time.  In order for books to be eligible, they must not be available online anywhere else during those 90 days.  In return, the book gets to be part of the KDP Select lending library, which allows some people to read your story for free (while you still get paid), and it also allows you to pick 5 days per 90 day period to run specials where you either discount your book or give it away for free.

To a certain extent, programs like KDP Select make me a little nervous.  I'm never terribly happy about monopolies, and I've heard some very good arguments as to why one should avoid KDP Select.  Notably, Mark Coker, the head of Smashwords, has said "exclusivity is a devil's bargain.  When authors go exclusive with any retailer, they increase their dependence upon that single retailer, limit long-term platform building at other retailers, disappoint fans who shop at other stores, and hobble the development of a thriving and competitive ebook retailing ecosystem."

Yikes.  I totally understand where he's coming from, and I doubt that I will do much with KDP Select throughout my career as an author.  I do support the idea of competition without ebook retailing, and I really like the idea of having my stories out in front of as many people as possible.  However, I have heard some people say that KDP Select has been a huge boost for them, and I mostly just want some more data to help in making final decisions.  Besides, I figure that if Coker's right and I'll "disappoint fans who shop at other stores," I might as well do my experiment now, near the beginning.  I'm planning on just being involved for 90 days, although I might be willing to extend my trial longer if I see huge successes.

Proponents of KDP Select say that Amazon is the biggest seller by far among ebook retailers, and that exclusivity with them really doesn't hurt them as an author.  In my limited experience this has been true: I have yet to make a sale on Smashwords, but I have made about 6 on Amazon so far.  Proponents say that the 5 free days can make a big splash in terms of getting your books more visible.

So I guess we'll see whether KDP Select does a lot for my story, or not really!  I'll keep you posted.  For any other authors out there, what has your experience been?

And for anyone interested, you can buy "One on One" here.

Like any good couple, Bruce and Savannah have a lot in common: they both love sports, both are fitness nuts, and both hate to lose. But there’s one thing makes them a perfect couple: whenever Bruce is beaten on the court, he’s determined to win in bed--by making passionate, enthusiastic love to Savannah until she is dizzy with pleasure. When Savannah wins an especially hotly contested game of one on one basketball, she knows the sex will be hot, physical, aggressive. But what she doesn't know is exactly how it will happen . . .

Smashwords vs. Amazon

Well, "In a Stranger's Arms" has been up for a week now on both Smashwords and Amazon.  While it's certainly too early to tell which one will perform better in the long run, I want to take a little time to just update what my experience with both has been like so far.

On Smashwords, I have not yet received any sales.  I have had 10 downloads of my free sample and probably somewhere around 50 page views.  Both page views and downloads peaked on the first day (when my story was more visible due to its recent publication), and dropped significantly thereafter, but have continued to trickle in.

On Amazon, I can't tell how many page views I've gotten.  However, I have gotten three sales.  Two of these came through Amazon.com, and one through Amazon.uk.  Excitingly, these three sales were enough to push me up into the top 100 paid in the erotica<urban category.  When I looked last night, I was somewhere around #68.  I've since dropped back off (should have taken a picture when it was up), but I thought it was pretty darn exciting just to see something I'd written placing on a top sellers list, even if it was in a small niche and just for a moment.

As I said earlier, it's definitely too early to say whether one store is worthwhile and the other isn't, but I have definitely been having more success this past week at Amazon than at Smashwords.

I still don't have any reviews up on either site.  If anyone wants a free copy to review, feel free to drop me a line.

More Thoughts About Smashwords and Amazon

Well, "In a Stranger's Arms" is now up at both Smashwords and Amazon.  Of course, as soon as I submitted, I found a typo that I'd missed before.  It seems like no matter how carefully you proof-read, something will slip by.  Well, I guess that's the nice thing about e-publishing.

For Smashwords, fixing the typo was as simple as just making the change in the source file and re-uploading it.  The whole process probably took about two minutes.  On Amazon, it was a longer process.  I made the appropriate change and then uploaded it.  However, I again got the message saying that I needed to wait 12 hours for review.  Uploading a new version didn't take my old version down, so my book is still up.  When the 12 hours (or whatever it is) is over, the new version will slip into place.

One place where Amazon has been superior to Smashwords is in ease of formatting.  On Amazon, it really went very smoothly to take my .doc and change it into an e-book.  I ran into one small hitch when I accidentally had track changes on before I uploaded and ended up with a word crossed out.  Other than that, as far as I can tell, what I saw in my .doc is what I got.

With Smashwords it's a bit of a different story.  In my post about Surviving the Meat Grinder, I talked about how the Smashwords submissions process was relatively painless.  I recant.  I thought I understood everything as I initially went through it, and almost everything worked.  However, for some reason anytime I tried to use a style other than "Normal," the Meat Grinder would default my font to something like Arial or Calibri.  I tinkered and re-uploaded my file 5 or 10 times, but was never able to solve that problem.

As it stands, my section headings and front matter appear in a different font, which I don't think looks terrible, but I do wish that I could solve this.  I was using Word 2013, and I have absolutely no idea what is causing this problem.  If anyone reading has had this problem, or knows how to solve it, I'd love to hear what you have to say.

In a Stranger's Arms

Well, I finally did it.  "In a Stranger's Arms," my first erotica short story is out there.  I submitted it to Smashwords and also to KDP (Amazon).  I figure this will cover my bases as far as getting the most exposure.  With Smashwords, the process of submission was very fast.  After I'd put all of the information up, it was only a matter of minutes before my ebook was up and ready for downloads.  With Amazon, it looks like it's going to take a little longer.  On my author dashboard on Amazon, it says that it is "In Review" and will probably be up within 12 hours.

When I submitted to Amazon, I mostly used the same document as I'd prepared for Smashwords.  I changed my copyright notice and removed the references to my Smashwords profile page and interview, because I didn't know whether it was kosher to direct Amazon customers there.  Aside from that, things really were mostly the same, and it certainly wasn't much extra work to upload it in two places.  Going forward, I will be very interested to see how my story performs on Amazon and Smashwords.

I'm happy and proud to have my work online and available (and a little nervous too, if I'm being completely honest).  But it's a good feeling to have something that I've worked on actually be in a place where people can purchase and enjoy it.

I'm not planning on resting on my laurels, though.  I have complete drafts of two more stories at the moment, and I'm just planning on writing more!

If you'd like to purchase my book, it's up at Smashwords right now.  It's not up on on Amazon yet, but when it is, I'll post the link there as well.