Promoting ebooks: After the five free days, what price?

          I had some free book days left from the fifty free days I got on my ten books at the end of January, but I've decided to hold off with them till the end of February. There's a couple of reasons for this.

          I found it impossible to see if I was actually selling any books during January since the figures were muddled in with the "sales" you get accredited when a free download happens. So from the start of February the statistics are coming up clean since they start at nothing at the beginning of  the month. This month so far I have sold seven  books. So I'm selling just about a book a day.

          So far I don't see any affects from the five day free book promotions. I haven't had any new reviews from it. I guess I can judge the results of that at the end of February as well.  The only marketing I was doing before this free book day promotion involved leaving links to the books in the Meet Our Authors forums, and I assumed that was how I was getting sales, but I'm not going to do that this month.

          To market ebooks properly would take all day. It's a job in itself. What I'd like to do this month is nothing at all and see how many books get sold. My assumption was that the links in the forums were providing sales, but the books might have been bought for other reasons.

          If the continue to sell at about a book a day, I'd like to find out with the optimum selling price would be. My assumption was that books would sell more at the lowest price, which is why the books are at 77p, but the royalty cheque I got on 25th November last year was payment for books sold before the end of September when the books were about £2. That puts you in the 70% royalty band, which is where I'd rather be. It may be that selling them at the cheapest price might put folk off!

          So I'll just keep my eye on the sales this month and come up with a pricing strategy then.