An Amazon Adventure (Part 5)

Well I can't claim that as an unqualified success!

First, some figures: Over the entire promotional 48 hour period about fifty copies of The Testing of Archie Rathbone were downloaded (free of charge). Of those, eighty percent were downloaded in the USA, the remaining twenty percent downloaded by Amazon's UK customers. Unfortunately I didn't have access to the internet over the weekend so I couldn't check to see what the book's rating was as a result of these downloads. At the end of the promotional period the price returns to what it was prior to it starting, so it's only possible to see its paid ranking (currently about eighty-nine thousandth).

So what conclusions do I draw from this exercise?

Well, for starters, I hadn't realised that any improvement in ranking would only apply to the 'free of charge' league table, so in terms of improving the book's standing in the paid list this has been a fruitless exercise. That said, there are other potential benefits, and they are ones that may take a little time to materialise (if indeed they do):

Firstly, any Amazon customers who have downloaded my book, and also download other books, may contribute to the 'customers who bought this also bought...' information. As a result, The Testing of Archie Rathbone may appear on people's searches as an incidental by-product.

Secondly, there are now over fifty more copies of The Testing of Archie Rathbone out there than there were a few days ago. Hopefully some of the people who downloaded the book will read it, and some of those who read it will write a review. I realise that I'm piling up the 'hopefully's but hopefully any reviews will be positive, and these in turn may entice potential customers to buy the book.

Coming back to the low number of downloads; I can't pretend I wasn't disappointed at the level of interest shown, particularly as I've heard of other similar promotions resulting in thousands of downloads. Unfortunately I'm not sufficiently well-informed to be able to judge whether this poor showing was as a result of the quality of the book, the cover, the blurb, or perhaps just poor marketing on my part. Worse still, I don't suppose I shall ever know.

Anyway, the next step in this process is to see if any of the potential benefits do materialise. How long that might take, I just don't know, but I'll share the results (and my reactions to them) with you.

In the meantime, I can at least report a very small trickle of new sales since the promotion ended. Whether or not that will be sustained, only time will tell...