The Free Experiment: Day Two

I awoke this morning at 6AM and logged right in.  That's an early start for me, but I was anxious to see if my numbers had started slipping during the night or had they improved.  I had set up a number of Tweets to go out between midnight and 4AM.  I don't usually Tweet at that hour, but hey, people are up and I wanted to tell them about my free book offer.

I was pleased to discover that during the night Boyfriend From Hell had improved its ranking to #198 overall, down from #242 when I went to bed.  And remember the lower your ranking the better.  Day one was a success as far a giving books away goes, and day two was starting out on the right foot.

My publisher wrote me at 11:35 to say we had given away 1760 books.  Up from 1102 at bed time.  He has constantly told me 2000 free downloads was the magic number where things start happening for you sales-wise.  My ranking had also dropped again to #152.  I was heading toward the Kindle Top 100.

He wrote me again an hour later to say I had made it--2380 downloads.  Now I want you to stop for a minute and consider that while these are not sales, I have just been introduced to 2380 people I might never have met.  2380 new opportunities to find life-long fans.  If you've read my post on impressions, The Way I See It: Impressions you will remember I said before you can have sales you must have impressions.  I just made an impression on 2380 people.  Some of these will definitely result in sales.

Once I reached that magic threshold something good happened.  The Boyfriend From Hell sequel, Earth Angel, began selling as well.  It was around 67,000 when I woke up this morning.  By 3pm it was at 14,163.  At 5pm it was 10,846, and now Earth Angel was starting to appear on some of the important lists I mentioned yesterday.  I don't have exact sales figures.  I will have to get those from my publisher.  But I am definitely selling far more books today because of the BFH freebie.

It's 10:20 PM on Friday and EA is currently ranked 9272 and in the top 100 on 5 lists.  By the way, my UK numbers have improved as well.  So I am selling books on two continents at their regular price all because I gave Boyfriend From Hell away.  Here is my end of day tally for BFH  day two:

Not sure on downloads (over 2500)
#48 Overall Kindle Store
#1 Children's Spine-Chilling Horror
#1 Girls & Women
#1 People & Places
#2 Children's Sci-Fi Fantasy & Horror
#3 Children's Fiction
#4 Children's ebooks
#43 Fiction (this is all fiction books in any genre offered for free)

I consider day two a rousing success.  Not only have I cracked the vaunted Kindle 100--and yes, I understand it's the free store and not the overall store, but that's still an accomplishment--but I have two books on a number of lists--lists readers use in making their reading selections.  I'm not sure what Day Three has in store, but Day Two has already proven that if you give books away you will sell more books.  Stay tuned.

Peace.