Well, this was kind of disturbing.
I checked my The Uninvited numbers for the first time, since release, and found that through Amazon.com, for the month of June, there are a couple hundred downloads sold for free…when, in fact, they were not supposed to be free. So, I contacted Amazon, and asked. I kinda figured that there must have been a time lag of some kind, and expected that answer back from them. I didn’t get that. What I got were various iterations of the same response, in that what was shown was correct, and that the report time periods are what’s at issue. That I needed to look at and analyze all said info.
Well, I did that before even contacting them.
So…I looked around some more, checked with Smashwords, and, yup, found out on their FAQs, a little line, that reads: “Please allow anywhere from two days to two weeks for price updates to reflect at retailers (usually it’s about a week or less).” Yeah, I’d read that months ago, that’s why I thought there might have been a delay in changing the price between Smashwords and a retailer.
But…I had another really cool takeaway…
There are several hundred downloads of The Uninvited out there!
How cool! Thanks, folks, free or not, I appreciate your taking a chance on my work! Please, write a review, however short!
Happy writing!
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That’s good and bad news, but at least there’s some good. One strategy I’ve seen that appeals is listing three or more books for sale and making one free. The idea is that the free one will get the majority of downloads, but if people like it, they’ll come back for the pay volumes. It seems to work for some writers. I may give it a try.
Yes, that is a technique I’ve heard about. A present I’m readying my next work, ERO (“Exoatmospheric Reconnaissance Organization”), to be released about mid-month,this month, and am not sure how I’m going to do that right now. I am considering it. Once I get this and my 4th book out, I may do something like that….