Tuesday, January 18, 2011

A Free Book Experiment

I understand Barnes & Noble is having such a rush of sales that they have a hard time reporting the sales to their publishers. Since I publish to them through Smashwords, I get an even longer delay...

So I decided to start recording my rankings to see if I can get an indication of how much I'm selling, and I discovered something. Last October I made my mystery short story collection, Waiter There's a Clue In My Soup, free for a month. It didn't sell that many on Smashwords, but after a short lag, it started selling like hot cakes on B&N. And now that the price has gone back to 99 cents, the ranking has stayed high.

And sales on my other books appear to have increased. So......

I decided to see if I can recreate the experience. I have lowered the prices on both The Enchanted Tree and Harsh Climate to FREE on Smashwords for a short time. It will take a while for that to trickle through to Barnes and Noble's Nook store. We'll see what happens there.

NOTE: Sale Postponed! I just learned that Smashwords is taking a lot longer to prepare new files and it could take months to ship to B&N (which then takes months to get it up on the site) so I need to postpone the sale on Harsh Climate. I will leave the price at free until Thursday, Jan 20. At midnight EST I'll put it back to 1.99 until Smashwords finishes the process. THEN I'll announce a new sale.

The Enchanted Tree will remain on sale. Sorry for any confusion.

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