Happy Birthday, Dusted! (Freebie Event!)

Dusted was published on June 22nd, 2012. Let's look at some statistics for fun.

Statistics? I'm so excited...

After an hour's work I was able to crunch the numbers provided to me by Amazon. Even though technically some of the money is in Euros and Yen and all that fun currency, I lumped it together because it would take much longer than an hour to figure out conversion rates. So, here they are, over the entire year I have come up with these three numbers.

Copies Sold: 92

Freebie Copies sold: 1,818

Money Made: $47.92

That's it. That's what has been said to me and what I have been passing along to other writers. That is the reality of income you should expect from writing. I bet lemonade stands make more money than that.

Those  little twerps...

Granted, sales of Dusted have slowly been gaining steam as the year has rolled along. For example, I made absolutely no sales in August 2012, whereas in February 2013 I sold 15 copies (and 3 Lender's Library Copies) and made $12.18. That's more than a fourth of my entire sales for the entire year that I made in a single month.

Here are some things I learned:

Cheap is Good

I used to sell Dusted for $1.99 and barely got any sales. Then I lowered it to $1.29. It wasn't until I started selling it for $.99 that I started to get a somewhat steady trickle of sales. One at a time. No one is going to want to pay more than $.99 for an indie author. Why should they? There are a ton of books out there just as indie as yours for only $.99, and they won't give yours a second look if its a penny more.


Free is Better

Every time I gave Dusted away for free I would suddenly get a rise in sales. I would get one or two for a week and, after a freebie event, they would rise up into the tens. If giving it away for free gets me more copies sold, so be it. Not only does it cause an initial rise, ever since my first freebie event, the steady trickle of sales have actually increased.

Set Freebie Events for Weekends

My first freebie event was over the course of 5 days, passing through a weekend. People got about as many freebie copies as the times I have had freebie events for only 2 or 3 days Friday through Sunday. Why? Because people are more likely to have time off on the weekend and that's when they will want to pick up a book, or even just "window shop" on the Internet.

When thinking about Weekends, consider holidays, too. If your book is of a certain genre that can be geared toward a specific holiday, use that to your advantage. I set Dusted to have a freebie event during Halloween last year because it was a paranormal book, and people tend to get in the mood to read certain genres at certain times of the year. You don't see people reading a Christmas Romance on the Fourth of July. However, if your book manages to hold its own without being holiday dependent, you can consider making a freebie event on any holiday. Dusted would work just as well during Thanksgiving weekend as it would on Easter.

So here's to some good luck, and continued sales, for another year, and to celebrate, Dusted will be free today and Saturday (June 22 - 23) Enjoy!