Sunday, June 19, 2011

I am an Ant

For all of my marketing and promotion, I could not touch the toenails of what Amazon.com has done. Since We are the Monsters became free, the book has been downloaded 6,418* times in less than two days.

My best month for any book, even at 99 cents, was 37 sales.

37. If I wait a half-hour, I'll have 37 more "sales" at the free price. Probably more.

We are the Monsters is now #1 in Kindle Store>Kindle eBooks>Fiction>Genre Fiction>Horror>Ghosts and #23 in the Free Store.

Talk about scary. It's even bumped sales of my other books (The House Eaters in particular--24 copies in two days). I couldn't pay for this kind of advertising, but I guess I am, in a way. The book is FREE. It's a good little book. I thought about sending it out on submission, but went the Kindle route instead. Glad I did. I'll speak about "writing magic" in another post; for now, just believe this little ebook is special. I need special right now.**

* 6450 by the time I finished the post.***
** Not only is our house in pieces on purpose (remodeling), we lost our phone, my computer (hands cramping on the netbook right now), and the fan on our furnace/air conditioner due to last night's thunderstorm/too close for comfort lightning strike. Not good. Not good at all.
***6456. Scary.

15 comments:

Anthony Rapino said...

Holy cow, that is Awesome! Congrats on the sales and the bump in sales for your other books.

Question. You said, "I could not touch the toenails of what Amazon.com has done." Do you mean to say Amazon.com dropped your book price to free, or did you simply mean that by your making it free Amazon.com became a form of marketing?

Anthony Rapino said...

Also, another update to your book's rank. You're now #20 in free, #15 in free fiction, and #1 in free horror.

Plus you're up to 3 reviews.

Sweet!

Robert said...

Sweet! This will definitely boost your sales. Plus, once Amazon reverts it back to 99 cents, you'll keep selling more.

Alan W. Davidson said...

Fantastic news, my friend. I'm thinking that you've crossed that 'hump' and your name is now out there in a big way (perhaps from the freebies you've given away this past year).

Yeah, perhaps you've worked a bit of magic there...

Aaron Polson said...

Anthony - A writer can't set a book for free on Amazon. I did set it as free via Smashwords, which Amazon noticed and "price matched".

Robert - I've been plodding along at the same level for some time--it's kind of a shock to my system. Definitely a positive shock.

Alan - If this is magic, I like it.

Unknown said...

I've got a copy and as soon as I get around to reading it, I'll be sure to throw up a review on Amazon and elsewhere.

Glad to hear the free downloads are working a little in boosting sales. Good stuff, man.

Cate Gardner said...

Awesome news, and yes, folk will pick up your other books after reading We are the Monsters. Let us know how many go in all.

Barry Napier said...

Hooray for price matching!

Once I get up the cajones to try (priced "free" still scares me), I might just have to try this with 13 Broken Nightlights.

Awesome progress. Rock on!

Simon Kewin said...

That's great stuff! I'm kinda behind the times, here - I didn't know you could set the price to 0. My KDP says 99c is the minimum. Am I missing something, I wonder?

Daniel Powell said...

Hi Aaron,

Congratulations! That's a good story, and I'm glad it's out there resonating. Your anthill just got a lot larger, brother!

Sorry to hear about the misfortune on the utilities and appliances. When it rains, it pours with that stuff (we did the drier, front door, washing machine in the last few months)...

Anonymous said...

Alls I can say is: WOW. To have that many readers? To dream the impossible dream...

Katey said...

How about a hearty F#%K YEAH from me? Cuz dude. F#%K YEAH!

Lee Thompson/Thomas Morgan/James Logan/Julian Vaughn said...

Nice! That's a sweet cover too. Reminds me of camp.

Danielle Birch said...

Very impressive download figures. Of course, who wouldn't want to read it :)

Unknown said...

You did a ton of work to be ready to capitalize on your lucky moment. Big congrats!!!