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My research over the past few weeks seems to be producing contradictory results. Lots of people/blogs/sites say it's not really worth doing a Kindle freebie promotion until you have a decent number of reviews for your book on Amazon (that number seems to vary from 2-3 to 30-40). That seems fair enough, but then getting reviews seems to be impossible unless you do a freebie offer to persuade people to read and review the book.

So it's do a freebie to get reviews but don't do a freebie until you have reviews?! The old chicken and egg situation. However this is all mostly academic. I'm not sure what the usual rate of downloads to reviews is it's less than one review per thousand downloads for me.

What rate of book downloads to reviews does everyone else get?

Pretty low for me too. My last KDP free days for this book Gift Wrappedgarnered about your rate, but a book that is perpetually free (a short story) in the rest of the known universe has gotten two reviews with 750 downloads.

But I don't do freebies to get reviews. Although I am happy to get them, my intent is to hook readers and hope they would buy the other books I have out already and become anxious for the next one.

Hooking readers for the rest of the series is my aim too, but there are so many places I could use to promote my freebie offers on book 1 IF I had enough reviews.

So far, it seems that the vast majority of people who buy the first book go on to buy all the others. I must be doing something right, but getting reviews isn't it!

Paul wrote: "Hooking readers for the rest of the series is my aim too, but there are so many places I could use to promote my freebie offers on book 1 IF I had enough reviews.

So far, it seems that the vast ma..."

I know what you mean. I have been in touch with some of those sites because I wondered about the value of promoting books that are already getting reviews versus promoting new books. It seems that because of the Amazon rules they are cutting down on the number of freebies they promote and then offering paid promotion for those without reviews. Basically, they promote your book to get traffic for their sites, so it makes good business sense. The number of freebies is increasing daily. It you have gained readers for your series doing this, then I wouldn't worry much about reviews. Dollars in the bank beats words in a review any day! Good work.