(Read "My KDP Free Experience | PART 1" HERE)
So, it's been a little more than a week since my KDP free promotion for Inside the Outside ended and I figured it was about time I shared the aftermath. Here are my notes regarding the fifth and final day of the promotion:
DAY 5 | February 24
- 1:00am – 2000 downloads (#18 in Horror)
- 8:00am – 2046 downloads (#12 in Horror)
- 6:00pm – 2225 downloads (#20 in Horror)
- 11:00pm – 2275 downloads (#23 in Horror)
And that's where I left off. After a long and busy week promoting Inside the Outside, I was exhausted and couldn't stay awake until midnight to see what the final tally of free downloads was.
This is an important detail to have missed out on, because one of the stats I wanted to keep track of was how many books I sold (if any) after the promotion was over. Since KDP (as of this writing) doesn't differentiate between books downloaded for free and books paid for, I don't know the precise cutoff. But, what I do know is that there were more downloads after I fell asleep at 11:00pm.
February 25 | Post Promo Day 1
- 9:00am – 2083 downloads (#65,229 in Kindle Store)
Since I have no real way of knowing, I'll assume (for the sake of this post) that 2083 was the final tally of free kindle copies of Inside the Outside downloaded during the promotion; assuming this is true, there were 8 free downloads in the final hour.
One of my hopes with doing this promotion was that it would lead to book sales in the aftermath and, I'm happy to report, it did. Unfortunately, there weren't an avalanche of book sales. I kept notes for just a few days, as needed, and here is the final note I made through February:
February 29 | Post Promo Day 4
- 11:00pm – 2099 downloads (#23,067 in Kindle Store)
So, subtracting the presumed number of free downloads (2083), that means I sold 16 books at the end of the promotion through the end of February. I have mixed feelings about those 16 books sold.
On the one hand, I'm almost embarrassed to admit some disappointment; I'd hoped that maybe the momentum of the promotion would lead to book sales in the 100s. But, on the other hand, I'm quite grateful, because February had been a particularly slow month for Inside the Outside and, before the promotion, I'd sold only 3 copies in the Kindle Store. If my math is correct (and I'm sure it's not) that means I increased my book sales from the beginning of the month by 500%.
One promising thing about those book sales is, not long before I started the free promotion, I raised the price of Inside the Outside in the Kindle Store from $0.99 to $4.99. Along with the obvious advantage of earning more money per book, the price change also increases my royalties from 35% to 70%. This means that those folks who bought the book after the promotion ended weren't deterred by the $4.99 price tag, which, admittedly, I felt was something of a gamble (but that's a topic I'll save for another post).
But, more than the dollars and cents, I'm thrilled to know that there are now more than 3,000 copies of Inside the Outside living in Kindles throughout the U.S. and the U.K. (during the free promotion, Inside the Outside reached #38 in Amazon U.K.'s Top 100 free horror books).
How many of those folks will actually read Inside the Outside? I have no idea. I'm certain that a fair number of those readers, like so many of us, simply enjoy collecting free stuff, and likely will never read one page of my novel. But even if a quarter of those people who downloaded the book decide to read it, then that's roughly 750 new readers.
And that's a number that would make my KDP free experience an unqualified success.