Pat's Convention Note #9 of 100 things I learned from attending FIVE LITERARY CONFERENCES in 2014

#9. Free means $$. I decided after some recent announcements from KDP (Kindle), I should discuss FREE TIPS before I tackle PRE-ORDER TIPS. So here we go. I’ve been hearing the word “FREE” for years and until I attended Romcon in Denver, I really didn’t know how to go about it without enrolling in KDP Select—again, which I tried years ago without any success. I don’t like the idea of Amazon having exclusive rights to my book and lose $$ by removing them on other sites. However, the author at Romcon shared how I could get around it by using Smashwords to offer the first eBook in my Guilty series to all channels. I groaned. Not that dreaded Smashwords formatting—no! So I turned to Bookaholic on www.Fiveer.com, and my problem was solved!! Thanks to author Tiffany Warren who reminded me about Fiveer.com for covers.

I think this is Bookaholic’s direct link: http://www.fiverr.com/bookaholic/format-your-ebook-for-smashwords-to-pass-autovetter?funnel=201408151242529417459640. She’s done 1722 formats.

Thanks to her, I uploaded GUILTY OF LOVE to Smashwords with ease. Within minutes, readers began to download it before I could even announce it on social media. So to date, here are my stats now after 10 days of being FREE on Smashwords, I had 600+ DOWNLOADS from readers and 27 DOWNLOADS from the library. I thought that was decent, considering those were 600 readers, giving me a try.

Next, I notified Amazon that GUILTY OF LOVE was FREE through Smashwords and could they match it. I was told they would look into it. After about a week of “looking into it”, GUILTY OF LOVE was available on Kindle for FREE. Look at my stats in just 5 days: More than 4200 FREE DOWNLOADS---wow. That’s 4200 readers that have never read me before. GUILTY OF LOVE will be Free until 8/24/2014. I’m hoping to get to 10,000 readers before then. Although it is slowing up.

Okay, I’m sure you’re wondering about how my other books in the series are doing. After all, that is why I’m doing this promotion.

·         Here is GUILTY OF LOVE:  Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

o    #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > African American > Christian

o    #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > United States

·         NOT GUILTY OF LOVE: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #45,294 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

o    #64 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > African American > Christian

o    #65 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Literature & Fiction > African American

·         STILL GUILTY: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,792 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

o    #18 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Parenting & Relationships > Adoption

o    #35 in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Adoption

·         THE ACQUITTAL: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #105,367 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

o    #84 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Women's Fiction > Christian

Thanks to different keywords (from one of my earlier TIPS), I ranked in different categories.

Not only that, Digitalbooktoday.com contacted me and advised that GUILTY OF LOVE was on their website and invited me to be a featured author because of my ranking on Amazon. Free eBookDaily.com also had me listed. Wow, now that’s more FREE promotion that I didn’t count on. Look at Jesus as my church folks say.

I’m watching to see in my sales will go into triple digits on each one and earn more reviews. I’ll keep you posted.

In case you want to download GUILTY OF LOVE while it’s free, here’s the LINK: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L9EGLEA?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B00L9EGLEA&linkCode=xm2&tag=autpatsim-20.

So, as you can see, FREE has exposed me to new readers, only time will tell if those readers will become fans who buy the rest of my books. I hope this post has helped to bless someone’s business.

Stay tuned, in Tip #10, I will talk about my experience with pre-orders.