Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Where are my Kindle millions?

Well, my goal to give away a million Kindle books may be running on fumes, as two not-unexpected developments have me bogged down past the three-quarters-million mark. (There was an old running joke spawned by Lee Goldberg riffing J.A. Konrath about "Kindle millions" until people actually started becoming Kindle millionaires...)

First, the KDP Select program of Amazon has gone through its natural cycle--early pioneers get great results, word gets back to the others, the Gold Rush turns into a stampede, and the hills are prospected into tiny mounds of pebbles Part of it is Amazon's ever-changing algorithms that no longer give a huge rankings bounce to indies, and part is the sheer glut of free books that results when authors are repeatedly making 130,000 books free. This has all been written about far more ably and in depth by others (Kindleboards is a great resource if you're interested), but I figured the jig would be up by summer one way or another.

The second challenge is also fairly obvious: most of the people interested in my free books got them the first second, and sometimes third times I made them temporarily free for Kindle. So I will be leaving a lot of free days unused , and some books will no longer be free even if they still have some promo days left. I already have all my short story collections and some other properties out of Select and back in Nook, iTunes, Kobo, etc.

BUT....

I still want to reach the million-copy goal, so feel free to share my current roster of upcoming freebies! And if you read any of my free books and liked them, please leave a review to help both me and future readers. And if you hated them, why are you reading my blog? Heh.


Scott Nicholson free books

May 29-May 30
The Dead Love Longer
Paranormal mystery

May 30-June 1
October Girls
(YA paranormal)

May 31-June 2:
Speed Dating with the Dead

June 2-June 4
Burial to Follow
(supernatural horror)

June 2-June 4
Creative Spirit
(supernatural thriller)

June 8-10
Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 4
Thriller/horror box set

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4 comments:

Brenda Wallace said...

The tiny mounds of pebbles piled up much faster than I expected, but I'm always excited to see what happens next in the writing world. I greatly appreciate you and your blog for your astute observations. I always read your blog at work, too, but have been unable to leave my comments when using my work computer. Much thanks, Scott, for sharing.

MMI said...

Thanks, Brenda, it's a great time to be a writer, isn't it?

John Wiswell said...

The mound of pebbles is a good comparison. One hopes you can game the tweak Amazon makes...

Ursula said...

Sorry, I just had to buy a few, they looked too good to have for a limited time only.