Bean Counter came off of its free promotion last night.  The free period was originally scheduled to end on Monday, but the numbers were still good, so I let it run until I was out of days.  Altogether, I gave away a total of 6,515 copies of the book, which is better than I had hoped.

If you look at my post from last March, you’ll see that I did a similar promotion back then, and gave away about 5,100 copies.  I tried something a little different this time, and if you aren’t into book promotion, I doubt that any of this will be interesting to you.  But, if you’re like me, an independent author trying to figure this gig out, you might get something out of it.

Back in March, when I ran my first free promotion, I advertised it through Ereadernewstoday.com, hereinafter and forever to be referred to as ENT.  I ran just the one ad, and 5,100 books flowed out into the world over a couple of days.  The immediate return was a bump in pages read on Amazon.  I also attribute about 20 to 25 reviews that drifted in over the next few months to that give-away, and given that I only had 12 at the time, it seemed worth it.  Also, the book sold steadily (3 to 4 per day), if unspectacularly, through the summer until September, when it seemed to fall off a cliff.

I tried to get on to BookBub for this promotion, but was denied, twice.  So, I planned to use ENT again, but I was concerned that advertising the book to the same group as last time might be less effective.  And the numbers (broken down below) seemed to bear this out.  So, I also arranged for an ad through Freebooksy, to run the day after the ENT ad.  I think it was a good move.

Here are the results:

At 12:01 am, Friday, December 2^nd, Bean Counter’s ebook price dropped to $0 with no advertisement at all.  Twenty-four hours later I had given away a grand total of 38 copies.  That’s it.  That’s what went out the door with no effort.  Not too encouraging, but it served to give me a baseline.  I now knew that anything in excess of 38 could probably be attributed to ads.

On Saturday morning at about 10:30 am, the ENT newsletter went out and the books started moving.  For someone that sells as few books as I do, it’s a little intoxicating to watch the green “Free Units” line on the Amazon KDP page move so far and so fast.  If only they were paid units!

Anyway, with the help of the ENT email, I gave away 961 units on Saturday.  A lot better than 38, but nowhere near the number I did back in March.  I have to assume that ENT still has many of the same subscribers they did eight months ago, and how many times can you give away the same book to the same people?  By about 6:00 Saturday evening, the book was #150 on Amazon free list overall, and #10 in free Mystery & Suspense.

On Sunday, the Freebooksy email went out, and the units started to fly.  Every time I checked the green line on Amazon (and I was checking it fairly obsessively) another 50 to 100 books had gone out.  Sunday’s total was 2,944 units, and by the end of the day my book was #30 overall (Free) and #1 in Mystery & Suspense.

I think that ranking made a huge difference to the book’s visibility, because they continued to flow on Monday, with another 1,346 going out the door.  This may partly be attributed to a website called eBookDaily.com.  I got an email from them during that day that they had featured my book on their website and daily “newsletter mailed to 23,000 subscribers.”  They are apparently trying to build their subscriber base, and asked that I mention them in a blog post.  Well, I just did.

By the end of Monday, my overall rank was still top 50 (free) overall and top 10 (free) in Mystery and suspense, so I let the promotion ride one more day, with 1,221 more books going out the door on Tuesday with no further promotion.

So, my conclusions are as follows:  If I want to maximize the number of books being given out for free, there’s no question that BookBub is the way to go, if they’ll accept me.  Failing that, I think having multiple promotions on consecutive days seemed to really help build the momentum.  From 38 copies with no ads, to an average of 1,600 per day after the ads, they were totally worth it.

As a side note, it was fascinating (for me, at least) to see where the books were downloaded.  I now have an international audience (assuming anybody ever actually reads the books they download for free), with books downloaded in India, Brazil, France, Spain, Germany, and The Netherlands.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up to a PAID sales rank of about 16,400, which is about as good as it has ever been for Bean Counter, and far, far better than it was before this promotion.  Next, I will be looking to see if this helps the sales or pages read of either Bean Counter or Dead Loss.  I will follow up soon with an update.