Transparency Part II

In keeping with the last post's stated goal of transparency, I'm back to give you another update on how my story "A Gunshot" has been faring on the Kindle platform.

As of my last post, I had sold a grand total of... 14 copies of the story at $0.99/each. Since then, I managed to sell a further five copies at the same rate, giving me an estimated total royalty of $6.65 from those sales. Again, this is hardly great, but I do suppose it's better than I would have done trying to sell that story to a magazine or journal and getting rejection letters months down the line. Still, one would always like to do better.

But not all hope is lost! As I mentioned last time, I took advantage of Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)'s new Select program, whereby you make a story/book exclusive to the Kindle platform for 90 days and get five "Free Promo" days on which you can give your content away for free. I used one of these promo days yesterday, and these were the results:

After selling a total of 19 units over the story's first three-plus days of availability, the day of free "sales" resulted in an additional 73 units being "sold." This is a HUGE increase, but I can't expect it to continue once the "free" tag disappears. Of those units, 4 were sold via Amazon.co.uk and one through Amazon.fr, which is pretty neat when you think about it. So far, Amazon.de, Amazon.es, and Amazon.it are slacking, but any European presence is impressive to me.

What do these numbers mean? Not much, in the grand scheme of things. However, my story rose to (roughly) #2200 amongst ALL free books on Amazon.com, and as high as #62 on the Kindle Top 100 Free short story list. These are modest numbers but still rather cool considering that I'm an unknown writer with no other content available on Amazon and not much in the way of a fan base who knows my real name. A total of 92 copies sold, paid and free? Color me impressed.

So impressed, in fact, that I have extended my FREE sale through today. Consider it a Leap Day present from me to you! As of this post, nine further copies of "A Gunshot"—including two more from the UK—have been "purchased" on this second day of the promo. I hope this keeps up a bit, though I am extremely skeptical that this free deal will ever translate to an increase in paid sales. And, even if the 82 free copies had all been paid for, that would still work out to only an additional $28.70 in royalties—scarcely enough to quit my day job, if I actually had one.

That said, I now understand that these free promos are best deployed when you have other work simultaneously available for purchase. The free copies work as a loss-leader, hopefully attracting people to your Amazon Author Profile and/or back catalog. For this reason, I don't think I'll use my remaining three promo days until I've got at least one other piece available for purchase. I'm not sure what that piece will be (don't count on seeing A Horse of Ill Repute on there anytime soon) but I will try to edit and convert another piece or write something entirely new in the near future.

But, once again in the spirit of transparency, I have to admit that there's one thing I don't relish: the notion of self-promoting is still awkward and abhorrent to me. I know it's a necessary evil, as I'd scarcely have sold 100 copies if no-one knew the story was available, but I do hate posting and re-posting the same link over and over. I fear my friends and followers must be running low on patience already, and I'd hate to do the whole thing over again when I finish whatever I do next. So while I've had a fair amount of cooperation in terms of sharing, retweeting, and all the rest, I would always love to see more of that going on, as not only does it increase my potential audience, it also takes away some of the "STOP SPAMMING" pressure I place on myself.

And, additionally, I'd love to see a few more reviews/ratings/Likes on the story's page. I know most people—myself included—don't review or rate ANYTHING they buy on Amazon, but I think it would certainly make the story a bit more appealing to people who may be trawling the charts in search of something new. Still, because of the ickiness of self-promotion, I doubt I'll be begging for ratings/reviews in the near future.

Oh, and one more thing: I applied to have my story considered for the Kindle Singles section. This is a specialty division of the Kindle Store wherein short stories, novellas, and stand-alone tales not exceeding a certain word count can be marketed and sold to consumers looking for such things. These stories are NOT barred from the 70% royalty option if they fall below the normal $2.99 price point cutoff. My story probably will not get in, as it's too short even for this section, but it would be nice if it did! The extra royalty would help, and being in the Singles section would also boost my story's profile. So... fingers crossed!

I'll probably be back soon with another update about how this second free day went. Hopefully some of you find the process interesting!