Thursday, June 30, 2011

Whoo hoo! From nothing to #8 in five hours!

Amazon made my mystery collection, Waiter There's a Clue In My Soup!, free this morning. I have sold almost 5000 copies already, and it's the top free short story for Kindle. It's number eight of all free Kindle titles. (I beat Dostoyevsky! I beat Charles Dickens!)

Since Amazon separates free and paid titles -- and places them side by side on the same page -- it's really cool to see it sitting there on the Kindle best sellers page right next to James Patterson and Janet Evanovich. (And Scrabble!)

I'm not getting paid for this, but freebies tend to boost sales over all. And this has sold in less than a day more copies than my previously free books sold combined, in a whole month.

I'm going to out for a celebratory dinner. I wanna see even better numbers when I get home.

5 comments:

Summer Ross said...

That is terrific! Do you have to pay a fee to post the short story there?

The Daring Novelist said...

No, you just self-publish through Kindle Direct Publishing. They don't allow YOU to set a price to free. The minimum price is 99 cents. At that price I feel a book should be at least 7000 words -- a novelette or a small collection.

However, Smashwords will let you set the price to free, and if you go for expanded distribution to B&N, Apple and Kobo, sometimes Amazon will match that "free" price. You don't get paid, but you do get exposure.

BTW, I've now had over 7000 downloads on this book, and it could reach 8000 before 24-hours is up. It is now the #5 Kindle freebie, and #1 in free mystery and thrillers.

It's sitting there on the Kindle mystery bestsellers page, right next to Janet Evanovich.

Unknown said...

Did you see you are now #3 on the Kindle Bestseller free list? Right across from he Help. Congratulations!

The Daring Novelist said...

Yeah. And apparently the #1 free book somehow got classified as non-fiction, because I'm top of the fiction list.

My sales are slightly slower today than yesterday, but still going strong. We'll see how long I can hold on to those "front pages" of the best seller lists.

The Daring Novelist said...

Whoops, "Virtual Strangers" is now smoking me, and has taken the number one fiction slot.