Free Promotion results & thanks - and Kindle Countdown!

As anyone who uses Twitter alot may well have grown sick of seeing over the past week, I have just had a five day promotion for my new short story collection, Nine Lives (I'm so fed up with the sight of it I can hardly bear to type that!).

I know that the free promotion is, like, SO last year, and these days it's no guarantee of anything other than making sure that 500 people have yet another book on their Kindle that they'll never read, but I wanted to do the short stories as a chance for some people to try out the way I write without having to commit to a novel - and, much to my delight, I have already had some new people saying that they loved them and now want to read more, which is what it is all about, is it not!  Also, I had far more downloads than I expected; I had only anticipated about 500, but got 1541, which is not half bad for these days, considering it's without advertising on any other sites apart from Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads - not even all the Facebook/Twitter free pages, for the simple reason that I couldn't be bothered. 

However!! I would not have had half so much success without the help of so many lovely people - a big thank you to all the people who retweeted for me, some many, many times, and I'd like to just mention a few people here who really 'went the extra mile' for me, by putting it on blog posts, reviewing, downloading and telling the (Twitter) world about it, scheduling tweets, sharing Facebook posts, and all the rest. Big, big thanks to: Sonya Kemp, Susan Buchanan, Bodicia (and her apple), Deena Rae, Maria Savva, Rosie Amber, Julie Ryan, David Njoku, Darcia Helle, Geoff West, Jack Croxall, Alice Huskisson, Jan Ruth, Ro Jordan, Jenny Twist, Neel Kay, Sharon Roberts, KJ Waters, Lizzie Lamb, Claire Hill, Joanne Phillips, Hache Jones, Mack Brown, Carol Hedges, Francis "Mr Lover Man" Potts, Dylan Morgan, Molly Greene, Andrea Williams, John Donoghue, Alex Martin, Dave Perlmutter, Wendy Proof, Cathy Lynn, Judee Ann, Colette Thompson Pam Howes, Foggy Tewsday, Jane Sleuth, Roberta Goodman, Carrie Bookworm, John Hudspith and anyone else on the #wkb group who tweeted for me, Kitty Bittersplit, Jeanette Christie, Amy Good, Peter "Awesome lol hugz" Davey,  and I'm really sorry if I've forgotten anyone, my head's a bit full at the moment!

Kindle Countdown
(This bit mostly just of interest to other writers!!! Sorry for boring non-writer readers!!!)
At the end of the book is the first chapter of my latest novel, What It Takes. To tie in with the free promotion, I thought I'd reduce the price of this one. Earlier in the week I had heard that the new Amazon Kindle Countdown promotions are the absolute cojones del perro; two friends who normally sell roughly the same as I do (or a bit more or a bit less!) reported sales in their hundreds.  Daily.  Gosh, thought I, I iz gittin' me a piece o' that mo'fo, innit.  So, I put What It Takes on a Kindle Countdown deal for half price yesterday. What happened?  Bugger all. Sure, I've sold a fair few, but no more than I would expect on a normal reduced price weekend.  

I was beginning to think I had a problem that my best friend hadn't told me about.  Where were the 500 sales of which my friends spoke?  Then, a writer friend solved the mystery for me.  She told me that Kindle Countdown deals are no longer advertised on the home page of the Amazon Kindle Store (as they had been until the day before mine started), but have been tucked away somewhere else.  In other words, they have been taken out of the shop window.  Chaps, we've missed the boat.  Whereas the Countdown deals are good royalty-wise, the initial boost is all over.  

An example of shop window benefit: eighteen months ago, my first book, You Wish, was number one in Kindle 'Movers and Shakers', which was, at the time, also on the home page of the Amazon Kindle Store.  It was selling every five minutes.  That's literally, by the way - it really was.  The minute it stopped being at number one, though, and slid down to number 4 or 5, you could no longer see it on the front page - and sales went back to normal.  

Conclusion ~ Amazon visibility is all.  With it, you don't have to do anything to promote at all.  You can just sit back and watch those sales roll in.  Without it, it's a hard road out there - but one I shall keep travelling, nevertheless! 


Thank y'all again!! 


Please note:   What It Takes continues to be on offer for the whole of this week.... see the top right hand corner for the link to my Amazon UK page, or the Amazon.com link is here:


http://www.amazon.com/What-It-Takes-Terry-Tyler-ebook/dp/B00EZV832M/ref=pd_sim_b_1