Alternate historical fantasy free promo

[skip.knox]

For five days only, May 20-24, my alternate history fantasy novel, Goblins at the Gates, will be on sale. As in free!
If you have not already got your copy of this story of how magic came to Altearth, now is your chance.

A quarter million goblins invade the Roman Empire. Civilization's best hope lies with a barbarian princess exiled as a magician, and a spoiled Roman aristocrat who hates the army but finds himself in command of a lone frontier legion. There's also a girl and her war dog.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Get in there!

Actually... is there a link?

 

[skip.knox]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075NN977Q/
I hesitated to include the link because I don't have any experience with this free promo business. I was going to wait to see what happens tomorrow, then post a link so I knew it was the same. I also thought maybe if I announced, someone would just follow the link--so eager would they be to get the book--and then see it was $2.99 and then hate me forever.

I probably just should have waited until tomorrow.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I'm quite confident the link will be the same. For pre-orders it's the same, and it looks like it's currently free. Sharing link.

 

[skip.knox]

Yup. Just checked. Thx!

 

[Svrtnsse]

Also, are you doing any additional promotion for this, or is it only that it's free for now?

 

[skip.knox]

That's it. As I said, I've never done one of these, so I'm just sort of seeing what kind of response I get. But also, it's in preparation for the launch of A Child of Great Promise. I'm thinking of doing a countdown on that one, but not until July. In June, I'm going to be gone for most of the month, including two weeks in Scotland!

 

[Svrtnsse]

Neither have I, that's why I'm asking. I was thinking of doing a few free days for my own book, but I wasn't in a spot to spend money on promotions, so i held back until I had another release coming up.

Let's hope it goes well.

 

[skip.knox]

I'm not spending any money. I'm just letting people know in the communities in which I hang out that the book is free for a few days.

Here's a tip. Be aware that Amazon's day begins at 8am Pacific Time. Keep that in mind when you announce your book is available for free. I already had someone say they clicked Buy without paying much attention and got charged 2.99 for it. *blush*

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Thank you for the head's up! Lovely cover, too. I'm looking forward to reading it.

 

[skip.knox]

Report
So, over the five days, 840 downloads. Given that I've sold fewer than a hundred copies of this book in seven months, that number seems absurdly high. My theory is a bot harvest. Bots get triggered on announcements of freebies, go out and scoop up copies, for purposes nefarious, benign, or merely lazy. That theory is borne out somewhat by the fact that the numbers on each successive day were halved, until reaching only about forty on the fifth day.

In addition, but akin, to bots would be those people who primarily use freebies for their reading material. These, as I picture them, load up their e-readers with hundreds and even thousands of books, in a kind of hoarding activity, promising themselves that they're going to read every one of them, one day.

If even ten percent of the 840 actually read Goblins at the Gates, though, I count that a major win. So far, I see no new subscribers to my newsletter, which is of course the ultimate win, but there's time yet for that.

I did not and do not view this as a tool for making sales. Those who get freebies aren't going to purchase, and bots don't buy. The only place I can see using a freebie promo with an aim to sales would be for a volume one in a series. One might get some buy-through there.

For me, this was primarily an experiment, to establish a baseline, should I choose to do an Amazon free promo in the future. The actual process was dead simple, with the only wrinkle being the timing of the beginning (Pacific Standard Time, which I think is -8, GMT). Keep that in mind for your readers across the pond.

Cheers.

 

[skip.knox]

UPDATE

So, it looks like there's at least a little benefit to having run the free promo. I released Goblins back in September and experienced the usual slow decline to zero for a noob. No sales in May, and almost no KENP reads. I announced the promo on May 19, and it ran May 20-24.

Since May 19 I've had nine sales (all ebook) and about 1200 KENP read. While I cannot draw a certain causal relation, it's hard to explain this sudden activity otherwise.

My theory: just the act of mentioning brings some benefit. There are probably a few who thought "oh, a promo; I was planning on buying that and clean forgot about it." That sort of thing. There's some sort of raised presence at Amazon when you run a promo. It's also possible there are third-party services who scrape what's free today at Amazon. In both cases, a book might get noticed that would otherwise be utterly buried.

Still no new subscriptions to the Altearth Chronicle, but that neither surprises nor disappoints me. Figure one percent who see the promo get the book. One percent of those make it to the call to action. One percent of those would be willing. I figure at that point I've got about 9% of a human being.

Costs you nothing, takes little effort, and brings some benefit. For us prawns, every sale looms large. So, if you're in Kindle Unlimited, take advantage of the free promo. If you are wide, this is only a tiny benefit, not worth shifting.