I wrote a post for today’s blog yesterday and remembered, this morning, that I’d failed to do the marketing thing I meant to do earlier. Instead of trying to sell one of my books in last week’s blog, I was blowing air kisses to my Eufy RoboVac 30C. Promoting someone else’s product is not gonna pay for my ongoing manga addiction, if you get what I mean.
The blog I’ve written but can’t yet use is riddled with almost-obscenities. The words aren’t real obscenities, but close enough for guessing purposes. Why would I want to put such words in a PG-rated blog? I have my reasons. Just know that it’s not because I hope to be seen as edgy and cool or, as a younger friend told me, sick and dope.
When I grew up, no one wanted to be sick or a dope. But I digress. Come by in seven days, and you’ll hopefully see why I wrote what I wrote. H*ll, yeah!
All of which brings me to where we are at this moment. A couple of weeks ago, a woman in my local writer’s group asked me what I knew about Kindle Countdown Deals. Being edgy and cool, I replied, “Huh?”
Later that night, after I returned home, I did some studying. According to the Amazonians, a Countdown Deal “lets authors… run limited-time discounts for eBooks available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Customers will see both the regular price and the promotional price on the eBook's detail page, as well as a countdown clock.”
I have a few novels that would benefit from a little promotion. The Runaway Mail-Order Bride is one of them. Once upon a time, it had done nicely. On the Amazon charts, it went to #2 in Victorian Historical Romance, #1 in Western Romance, and the resulting royalties kept the manga pages turning for more than a couple of months. However, that was seven years ago, a lengthy passage of time in the eBook biz. When I peeked in on the novel last Thursday, the numbers told a much sadder tale:
Best Sellers Rank: #1,352,074 in Kindle store
Let’s not pretend this is anyone’s idea of a “best seller.” I imagine the rank would be even worse if Runaway wasn’t in Kindle Unlimited, where KU members can download it for free.
I wondered how many eBooks are in the Kindle Store, but Amazon won’t tell. Author Derek Haines estimates there are between 6 and 9 million stories currently available, with another million being added every year. I’ve seen some other guesses at other 10 million available reads, with guestimations of over 30,000 new eBooks hitting Amazon every day. No wonder Derek tells writers that they’d better be prepared to do some marketing if they don’t want their words to vanish from sight.
The Kindle Countdown was easy to join and free when I did, so I dropped Runaway into the system and forgot to share the news until this morning.
Let me give you the scoop. From last Sunday until next Sunday, the price for Runaway Bride has been dropped from $4.99 to 99-cents. On the back of the paperback, the pitch goes like this:
She’d thought she’d met the man of her dreams. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Donald’s letters had won her heart. Leaving everything behind, Lisa Hanlon is ready to start her new life as a sheriff’s wife. Her fiancé is attractive, influential, and eager to wed his mail-order bride. When she discovers that he’s also short-tempered, violent, and possessive, she flees for California, desperate to escape the man she’s promised to marry.
Arriving at a broken-down ranch in the middle of nowhere, Lisa is only seeking a place to hide. She’s dismayed to discover a rugged drifter, Pearce Folsom, in one of the outbuildings. Burdened with secrets of his own, Pearce hides the truth of his past, but he can’t hide his attraction to Lisa. When he steals a burning kiss in the middle of a midnight storm, Lisa knows this handsome cowboy wants more from her than she’s able to give. She can’t truly offer her love until she is finally and forever free from Donald.
And then, one terrible day. a telegram arrives: FOUND YOU.
Will this cost in price lift the book out of the million-plus sales ranks? I hope so.
How depressing will it be if it falls even further?
The blog I’ve written but can’t yet use is riddled with almost-obscenities. The words aren’t real obscenities, but close enough for guessing purposes. Why would I want to put such words in a PG-rated blog? I have my reasons. Just know that it’s not because I hope to be seen as edgy and cool or, as a younger friend told me, sick and dope.
When I grew up, no one wanted to be sick or a dope. But I digress. Come by in seven days, and you’ll hopefully see why I wrote what I wrote. H*ll, yeah!
All of which brings me to where we are at this moment. A couple of weeks ago, a woman in my local writer’s group asked me what I knew about Kindle Countdown Deals. Being edgy and cool, I replied, “Huh?”
Later that night, after I returned home, I did some studying. According to the Amazonians, a Countdown Deal “lets authors… run limited-time discounts for eBooks available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Customers will see both the regular price and the promotional price on the eBook's detail page, as well as a countdown clock.”
I have a few novels that would benefit from a little promotion. The Runaway Mail-Order Bride is one of them. Once upon a time, it had done nicely. On the Amazon charts, it went to #2 in Victorian Historical Romance, #1 in Western Romance, and the resulting royalties kept the manga pages turning for more than a couple of months. However, that was seven years ago, a lengthy passage of time in the eBook biz. When I peeked in on the novel last Thursday, the numbers told a much sadder tale:
Best Sellers Rank: #1,352,074 in Kindle store
- #10,787 in Victorian Historian Romance (eBooks)
- #16,202 in Western Romance (eBooks)
Let’s not pretend this is anyone’s idea of a “best seller.” I imagine the rank would be even worse if Runaway wasn’t in Kindle Unlimited, where KU members can download it for free.
I wondered how many eBooks are in the Kindle Store, but Amazon won’t tell. Author Derek Haines estimates there are between 6 and 9 million stories currently available, with another million being added every year. I’ve seen some other guesses at other 10 million available reads, with guestimations of over 30,000 new eBooks hitting Amazon every day. No wonder Derek tells writers that they’d better be prepared to do some marketing if they don’t want their words to vanish from sight.
The Kindle Countdown was easy to join and free when I did, so I dropped Runaway into the system and forgot to share the news until this morning.
Let me give you the scoop. From last Sunday until next Sunday, the price for Runaway Bride has been dropped from $4.99 to 99-cents. On the back of the paperback, the pitch goes like this:
She’d thought she’d met the man of her dreams. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Donald’s letters had won her heart. Leaving everything behind, Lisa Hanlon is ready to start her new life as a sheriff’s wife. Her fiancé is attractive, influential, and eager to wed his mail-order bride. When she discovers that he’s also short-tempered, violent, and possessive, she flees for California, desperate to escape the man she’s promised to marry.
Arriving at a broken-down ranch in the middle of nowhere, Lisa is only seeking a place to hide. She’s dismayed to discover a rugged drifter, Pearce Folsom, in one of the outbuildings. Burdened with secrets of his own, Pearce hides the truth of his past, but he can’t hide his attraction to Lisa. When he steals a burning kiss in the middle of a midnight storm, Lisa knows this handsome cowboy wants more from her than she’s able to give. She can’t truly offer her love until she is finally and forever free from Donald.
And then, one terrible day. a telegram arrives: FOUND YOU.
Will this cost in price lift the book out of the million-plus sales ranks? I hope so.
How depressing will it be if it falls even further?
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