The Amazon KDP Select Free Promotion of JCGOH is Live Now — and it’s Working
The Amazon KDP Select Free Promotion of John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood went live at midnight and it’s been a pretty fascinating ride already. The theory is that you offer the book for free for a two day period, and prime the pump by making sure that websites and Facebook groups who promote free Kindle books are alerted, then do your own social media thing — and the result is supposed to be that you get a surge in free downloads during the two day promotion period, and then a surge in sales afterwards. All of that is theory, of course.
Our promotion went live at 12:30 AM and we did all the prep you’re supposed to do — getting it listed on the sites that promote free books, sending an email blast to our own list, etc. I’ve been keeping a live blog with updates at www.MichaelDSellers.com, mostly to just document the experience so I can share later with other authors contemplating doing this. I’ll paste the updates in here. Bottom line is that it’s WORKING better than I could have expected. I would have been happy with 1000 downloads over the course of the 48 hours but it’s currently running at a rate of 1000 per HOUR . . . . Don’t know if it will continue like that, but that’s where it is now.
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UPDATES
11:30 PM Feb 5 (30 minutes before launch): We’ve laid as much groundwork as possible. My son and biz partner Patrick Sellers is helping me. We’ve signed up at all the major sites, set up Tweets with all the relevant hashtags to go out regularly; we have an email blast ready to go out to my list as soon as the promo goes live; and done pretty much all the things we have been able to figure out to do.
12:05 AM: Well, it’s supposed to be live now but it isn’t. Amazon says it can take up to half an hour or even longer.
12:30 AM: It finally kicked in. We’re live now. So we have just sent out the email blast and the tweets have started, etc. We are also patrolling Facebook and putting posts up on all the free Kindle book pages, and other pages that are relevant to the book. We’ve had 15 downloads in the first 10 minutes. It’s a start.
1:45 AM: Okay, I’m gong to turn in. Patrick will keep at it a while longer. Downloads are at 119 now.
7:32 AM: Back up. Downloads are at 448
8:32 AM: Downloads are 552. That’s 102 in the last hour. It’s up on Digital Book Today, one of the big three Free eBook promoters. Will check and see if we are up on all three, but I’ve got a bunch of other things I need to do first.
8:46 AM: We are
- #18 in Kindle Free Bestsellers in the category Nonfiction/Arts and Entertainment.
- #1 in Kindle Free Bestsellers in the category Nonfiction/Arts and Entertainment/Movies
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Thanks, Patrick. We’re at 16,000 US downloads and 1,500 or so overseas . . . at least we know we got the case for John Carter in front a good number of eyeballs and that’s really something. It will be icing on the cake if it sparks paid sales like it’s supposed to. We shall see.
Amazing, Michael. Congratulations.
Well done Michael. This will put the record straight re John Carter.
It looks impressive. Congratulations!