Promoting Ebooks again and again!

          I think it was last weekend that I put all ten of my ebooks up for free, and I did a bit more this time to get them noticed. I put a message on Facebook and found out lots of other ways to spread the word that my ebooks were free for a couple of days. Whether this did any good or not is hard to say, but the amount of downloads is what I would have expected if I'd done nothing. I think there were about four hundred downloads in total, but about half of them were for Ancient Futures. I assume this is because of the lurid cover. I cannot think of any other reason. Bugtown  was second on downloads, but it has got two cracking reviews.

           So where are we now with the ebook selling game? It looks like you can hardly give them away!! There have been twelve sales since the start of the month and that was unaffected by the free promos. Somebody told me that perhaps they weren't selling because they were at rock bottom prices, so I have put all the prices up to $2.99, which is the minimum for 70% royalties, except for Bugtown and In the Land Of the Demon Masters, which are still at rock bottom prices because I wrote them for young people and they sometimes don't have much money!!

Free Ebook Promotions Again!

          Free Ebook Promotions Again!

          I tried to put my ten ebooks up for free as part of my cunning marketing strategy. In fact, it's just about all of my marketing strategy, but I tried a bit harder to get downloads this time. So I spread news of this fantastic offer around, using links I'd found out about from one of the Meet Our Author threads. I must have spent a good hour and a bit telling folk about this free download business. I think if you were interested in the links, they are all mentioned in previous posts. Maybe the Facebook one isn't. You search  FB for "free ebooks" and you can find places to leave messages (or warnings!) there.

          I do not know if going the extra mile made any difference, but it probably did. The downloads were as follows:

           USA - 440

            UK  - 150

    Other places - 17.

            So that's about six hundred downloads. The great thing about Kindle for me is that these books have some kind of life! Otherwise, nobody would get a chance to read them.

             And the most popular download by a mile and a half is Ancient Futures. The next favourite download was Bugtown. This is odd since it's a book for readers of about twelve, but it has had a couple of  five star reveiws!

Some money!

           Amazon sent me £11.64 yesterday; money from January and February! I'm going to be rich! Rich, I tell you! That's about £35 I've made from Kindle since the ten books started going up about this time last year. I've put the money aside and when I gets to about £100, I'll buy myself a guitar. Not a Kindle!

           Since spending the weekend at the Samye Ling, I've been able to sit in a half lotus meditating for two and a half hour sessions, and much enjoying it!! And all the aggravation about Kindle stuff has abated. The trick is not to go to the reports section, or go near Amazon to look if any new reviews have come in!!

Ancient Futures Republished (Almost)

          I got an email a couple of weeks ago telling me that someone had put in a review of Ancient Futures saying the proofreading was so bad, she couldn't read it, and gave up completely after ten pages! Dearie me!

          I had a friend who helped me with some proofreading and particularly uploading the books, so I thought maybe there had been an error and he'd uploaded the copy I got after scanning the original. The reviewer said that on one of  the pages all the Os had been replaced by As (or the other way around!). This is the kind of thing you have to correct after scanning, and sounded convincing.

           Ancient Futures sells way more than any other of my books and this made the information I received particularly distressing. Had I sold an unreadable book to these people?

          I know now what I should have done. I should have gone into my bookshelf on Kindle and found the book and checked the Preview section which gives you a look before you publish the book, and afterwards, as if turns out. Or I could have looked at the book on the Kindle thing I have on my computer.

           But I did instead was to unpublish the book i.e. take it off Kindle. Then I was faced with the daunting prospect of reading and re-editing an old book of mine, and in some ways I'd rather poke sticks into my eyes!

            I realised almost immediately that there was nothing wrong with the text. I found less then ten spelling or scanning errors in the whole book. So I don't know what was going on there since the reviewer had a real name and seemed genuine when I contacted her to apologise. A mystery.

             Today I tried to republish the book and I think I probably cocked it up! I am not calm when I do things on the computer with my books. At this moment, the book is in "review" by Kindle and won't appear in time for me to have another go before I go away to the Samye Ling for a long weekend.

              Trying to find something good about all this .... the book was alright. If sweeping heroic epics is what you like, you could read something a lot worse.

               This has really jaundiced me to this whole Kindle experience. Or my Kindle experience. I've just wasted hours and hours of my precious life for nothing. That's the end of me looking out for reviews!!!!