robertbevan
Troubadour
just a heads up to let you guys know that i'm seeing some results from this little exercise. i published a little short story a few weeks ago with a couple of the characters from my novel. just a little side adventure with no real effect on the overall plot of the series. just a bit of fun. the idea was that people would download that because it's free, and then enjoy it so much that they go on to buy the book from there.
only problem was that i couldn't make it free on amazon. but i put it up for free on smashwords and set it at $0.99 on amazon.
in the almost-a-month that followed, one person in the UK bought the story from amazon, and 39 people downloaded it free from smashwords. but then i woke up this morning to find that someone had finally reported me, and amazon price matched the story down to free. it's four o'clock in the afternoon now, and i've had 49 people download the free story from amazon. so far it hasn't led to any sales of my "real" book, but i'm confident that it will, and it's giving me some much needed exposure.
even weirder... all day today i had only gotten one download of the story on smashwords, which is about par for the course, so i didn't think anything of it. then i went outside to take out the recycling, and when i came back, about ten minutes later, i found that seven more people had downloaded it. that's far beyond anything i've had in a single day. i can't account for what the reason why might be. like i said, it's been free on smashwords since the beginning.
anyway... this might be premature, but i'm going on record right now as saying that this has been a successful marketing strategy.
good luck, fellow scribes!
only problem was that i couldn't make it free on amazon. but i put it up for free on smashwords and set it at $0.99 on amazon.
in the almost-a-month that followed, one person in the UK bought the story from amazon, and 39 people downloaded it free from smashwords. but then i woke up this morning to find that someone had finally reported me, and amazon price matched the story down to free. it's four o'clock in the afternoon now, and i've had 49 people download the free story from amazon. so far it hasn't led to any sales of my "real" book, but i'm confident that it will, and it's giving me some much needed exposure.
even weirder... all day today i had only gotten one download of the story on smashwords, which is about par for the course, so i didn't think anything of it. then i went outside to take out the recycling, and when i came back, about ten minutes later, i found that seven more people had downloaded it. that's far beyond anything i've had in a single day. i can't account for what the reason why might be. like i said, it's been free on smashwords since the beginning.
anyway... this might be premature, but i'm going on record right now as saying that this has been a successful marketing strategy.
good luck, fellow scribes!
Auror
