The final tallies are in, and I have mixed feelings on my free promotion experiment for my novel.
Overall, I “sold” 596 free units of the book. Yes, 596 is an amazing number considering I’m an unknown author who just posted on Twitter and Instagram about the deal. But considering they were all free, there’s no royalties in it for me. So now I have to rely on my lame “marketing” until I learn proper marketing.
I know, I know, I should read some articles or take a class or something. I just don’t have the energy for all that. In the mornings it takes me a couple of hours to wake up enough to be able to comprehend the ins and outs of marketing techniques, and when I get home I just want to spend time with my husband.
Another side effect of the free promotional thing is that in order to be able to do a free promotional period I had to sign up for a Kindle program that allows for people with Kindle Unlimited to read the book for free as well. Soooo….that will cut into potential royalties.
Then again, if no one wants to pay for the book, the royalties will be zip.
I’m going to give this a month or so before I make a final decision on whether or not this was a success. Give the people who purchased the free copy time to read it, wait to see if reviews come in, etc. Then I’ll decide if I want to do a weekend promotion next time, or maybe a promotion where it goes down in price then increases by $1 increments each week until it’s back at regular price. I might even do another free promotion during my birthday weekend. Why not? If I’m not selling paid copies anyway, might as well give myself an ego boost by watching the numbers go up as people grab a free copy for themselves.