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I currently have 4 very short stories available - a couple are free at smashwords (and its partners)
and one is free on amazon this week

I'd love any feedback and/or reviews. The brief details are-

Resolution - musings on time, space and music
Drowndog - an experimental more magi-realism story about a dog lost in a pond on the South Downs
Bust - a story about a man who is accused of defrauding his company
Drive - a family story about a boy asking to borrow his father's precious car.

Thank you all! Jon

Well a week of free kdp promotion now over bar the shouting. Results, lessons?



The week yielded 83 free downloads. At the start of the week I thought 100 made a good target but really I had no idea. I had 30 on day 1 so am slightly disappointed this rate wasn't maintained but if any of those 83 lead to some good longer term results then that's fine. Would I split the 5 days next time? Probably.

2 reviews. Again this is pretty low I think considering I was asking for them. The two that came were nice and 5* but I hope the ones that didn't come just mean the book hasn't been read yet rather than readers were sparing me a 2*!

Facebook? 40 page likes, 5 shop now clicks. Again a bit disappointing as I targetted genuine friends and asked for a favour which was pretty free! But writing, even short reviews, is a challenge to many, and a facebook post is so fleeting. I'm very unconvinced of the value of a FB business page.

Twitter? Lots of posts and retweets. I gained alot of followers in the week with now around 250. It's easy and fast. Some retweet accounts did a good job. The best I'd say was askdavid.com which you can use free and I expect most of my amazon.com sales came through them. Next time I'll consider some paid promotions. Some of their tweets which reach 40k followers were retweeted 6 or 7 times by other users who in turn had 20k followers so I reckon tweets could have reached potentially 100k followers! Having realised that 83 downloads is fairly modest again indicating the transitory nature of a tweet. Timing is everything. On day 1 Stephen Hawking was trending so I tagged him as a relevant reference to my story.

Google +   I found this very frustrating. It takes an age to find your way around and hook up with conversations, and I don't think I'll be using it much in future. There are some writers' communities with tens of thousands of members but the downside of this is it's hard to find your way through the forest of information. However I did make 3 meaningful connections including one review swap and a potential blog mention.

Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ - a great platform which links well with your website/facebook/blogger etc but no interest generated directly.

Authors pages on amazon. Again impressive webpages - I particularly like the twitter feeds. Can't tell how much engagement there was through these but I suspect what there was would have been positive. Would definately recommend indie authors set these up.

Discussions instigated on goodreads/amazon etc - no interest.

Blogger - initially impressive page views (near 100 day 1) but now insignificant.

Amazon bestsellers lists -  enjoyed checking my movement in these and reached respectively no. 4 and no. 6 in the UK and US in suitably obscure categories at various times in the week. It evidently doesn't take alot of sales to make these charts. As a buyer I think this is potentially useful as I found myself browsing the free charts and downloading stuff willy nilly (mostly based on the cover). It can be difficult to choose the categories for your book if it spans a few genres. I would imagine being high (ie. on the front page) of an obscure chart is better than being pages down a more mainstream chart.

Emails? They say an email list is more valuable than all the social networking you can do. I emailed about 300 contacts. I had about 10 replies and only 1 disgruntled person accusing me of spam (which I was) - I had the impression not many sales came through this. The offer was free and easy but it just shows most emails of this type are ignored even if from a friend you know.

Will the free kdp week and associated marketing lead to any real long term sales? I doubt it, but certainly not doing it would not have helped.

Anyway an excellent experience overall and one I will learn from before next time. But that's enough of that for a while, time for some writing now!

Well as my week of free promotion ends I am nearing 100 free downloads which was my very rough finger in the air guess. So overall pleased although it's been slow since the first day when I had 30 sales. I'll write in more detail on the lessons of this free kdp campaign later.

My short e-book story available free on amazon just today - would love you to try it and let me have any feedback or a review! (apologies to those of you who've seen this a few times already this week!). Thank you!

Well, earlier this week I joked that my book wasn't yet no. 7 in the bestsellers' chart. But yesterday I found an obscure chart where it actually exceed no. 7 and became no. 6 ! This was in the "Very Short (Under 30 Minute) sci fi Free reads (written on a Sunday?:)) on Amazon.com.



Incidentally later that evening I also noted it was sandwiched nicely at no. 55 in what appeared to be a very adult Japanese chart!

My short story Resolution is now available free at Amazon here


I'd be very grateful if you download it - even better if you can give it a read and then leave me some feedback with a review - there is a link in the book or you can go to ....


The story can be read in 5 minutes.

Any genuine feedback (positive or luke warm) welcome!

Many thanks,
Jon

Like alot of dreams I couldn't remember it in the morning but then it came to me later in the day again : - I read the news today, oh boy. Sounds familiar of course and I'll have to use it as an accredited opening quote. I also heard today that Van Gogh dreamt his paintings (not meaning to compare my modest scribblings with the great artist of course but just two things that happened within a few hours of each other today).

Racing up the charts at #102053 on amazon.co.uk    Now my friend Fleur Borelli has written a diet book and that is no. 7 !  Indeed cook books and diet books seem to dominate the bestsellers lists constantly. To be fair Fleur's book is a bit different but many aren't - how many recipe books do we need in our kitchen? How many different ways can Jamie Oliver rewrite his recipes?

A fantastic read. Beautifully written and succinct. If I had to sum it up I'd say it was sharp, witty, profound and intriguing.

Been up all (well at least 1/2) the night setting up my socials. I had no idea there was so much - fb, goodreads, amazon, and now google + (luckily alot is becoming integrated now but not everything by all means!). We just need google to buy facebook and we should be there (and one step nearer to 1984!).