I Know It Sounds Anti-Intuitive

The other day I was talking with my in-person BFF and I told her about putting Blink of an I up for free.  She was aghast.  "Free?" she asked in disbelief.  As in 'why would anyone ever offer their stuff for free?'  And I said "Well, I know it sounds anti-intuitive, but sometimes it helps with sales."  Then I explained about Page Reads, and the potential for people buying others of my books, etc.  All good things to be sure.

But there's on other potential goodie from having a FREE that I neglected to mention because it so rarely ever happens for me - that it will be boosted in the rankings and perhaps gain sales that way.

I had scheduled Blink to be free from January 29st through January 31st.  Some time on Friday, I checked the rankings and Blink had made it into the free top 100s in Post Apocalyptic and in Dystopian.  And I remembered something I'd read a while ago about 4 days being the magic number for getting a book noticed in Kindle Unlimited.  I went right back into my Amazon Bookshelf and added two more days to the freebie.

And it stayed in the top 100s during those two days.  (Without any extra FB push, I might add.) 

This morning, I woke up and checked the rankings - hoping it would at least be in the hundred thousands on overall Paid in Amazon.  (Which is better than the 7 figure ranking it had.)  Except it almost never happens that a free push does anything with the rankings in Paid. 

Imagine my surprise when I saw this...

That's paid ranking, folks.  #6895 overall and #119 and #126 respectively in Paid.  :jaw drops:  I can only assume I picked up a bunch KU downloads to make that happen because there are no actual sales associated with that.  Just 89 free books downloaded. 

I still haven't seen any money from any of this, but there's hope.  And it's nice to see one of my books rise so far up in the rankings.  I hope the people who downloaded my book enjoy it.

In other noteworthy news, I sold a paperback yesterday for the first time in over a year.  And for the first time sans Createspace.  So that was pretty neat for me. 

Now to convert that positive news into gumption to get some writing done.  :fingers crossed:

Pondering the Rankings

Amazon rankings...  There's a love/hate relationship going on there.  But what does it even mean?

If I sell one book, that book's ranking jumps from somewhere in the millions to somewhere in the hundred thousands.  The higher the ranking obviously means better exposure and thus better sales, but only when you get in the top 100 on the narrower genre listings.  Does it really make a difference to readers if the book is in the overall 6 digits rather than 7? 

For that matter, does a higher ranking mean a better book?  I've read some highly ranked books that were total dogs and some lowly ranked books I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Is it a matter of following the herd?  Oh, look how many people bought this book, it must be a good one? 

I can get my books to jump by offering them at a steep discount and advertising the hell out of them, but that only means people were looking for a deal and something about my ad sparked their interest.  Whether the jump in ranking equals a jump in sales?  No clue.  Generally, once the ad gets shuffled to the back of everyone's inboxes and the new ads for the day come out, my sales tank. 

How often does anyone really look at the lists?  I mean if you manage to get on one of the Top 100 lists, that is.  Beyond that, you can't look at anything. Wonder what #102 is?  Too bad.

Last month, I actually took the time to find new books on the Top 100 lists in political thriller and suspense.  I found two books I actually wanted to read.  (New to me, and underappreciated, of course.)  One of them was a dog.  I haven't started the other yet, because I got burned on the last one.  If the other one sucks, too, I'm done trying to find books on those lists.  I ain't got time for that shit.

So, how does the book buying public make heads or tails out of any of this ranking stuff?

:shrug:

Just pondering.

Do you look at rankings when you're trying to find a new book?  Can you make any sense of this stuff?

Charting Sales, Rankings, Marketing, etc.

This is going to be a boring post.  Unless you're a nerd like me. 

Okay, so I'm doing a sale this week for Accidental Death.  And I thought it would be a good time to try and track the advertising I'm doing along with sales and rankings. 

Yep, I built a spreadsheet.

On one tab, I'm noting when I did a markety thing - date and time, who it was with, and the results as I see them.  On another tab, I'm tracking rankings and how they fluctuate with time and sales.  On the third tab, I'm keeping track of the time of each sale.

This is not scientific.  There's no consistency with when I'm checking sales and rankings, so the times may be off depending on how busy I got doing something else. 

One thing I've learned so far is it takes about 8 hours from the time I get a sale until when it impacts my rankings in the US.  The UK rankings change after about 6-7 hours.  Not nearly quick enough to jump my ranking for boosting sales in the eight hour period, but further sales should help sustain it. 

And it doesn't take long for the rankings to start dropping again if there are no further sales. 

I had one sale Monday morning.  At the time, AD's ranking was around 943,000 in the US.  Eight hours later, the ranking rose to about 159,000.  It dropped throughout the day yesterday with no more sales in the US.  Yesterday, the ranking in the UK was around 920,000.  I got one sale early afternoon here (early evening there) that upped my ranking to 53K.

This morning, the rankings are at around 400K in the US and 81K in the UK. 

Now, I'm not sure how Kindle Unlimited downloads impact rankings and in what timeframe.  I read something the other day that made it seem like it would take 4 days to show up, but I think that might've been for some other bestselling list thing.  I'm unclear.  Fingers crossed I am getting some KU interest that will show up in later days.

Thus far, I have only been doing free advertising - blog, Facebook (groups and pages), and Twitter.  This blog netted me my first sale.  I have no way of knowing which post got me the UK sale, since I had completed three different types of advertising that day before the sale, and five different types the day before. 

Today, a paid ad goes out to the populace.  It's the only advertising I'm doing today, so I can chart it better.  Not sure if the Wednesday before TGD is the best time to put out an ad, but it was all they had open for this week, so I took a chance.  Might be a total waste of $55.  Might be awesome.  Who knows.  Thursday through Sunday I will continue with the free stuff and see what happens.

Poor planning on my part means the sale will end before Cyber Monday.  Derp.

I probably couldn't do this if Accidental Death was selling like hotcakes.  Not at this level anyway. 

Anyway, I hope I haven't bored the hell out of you with my nerdy numbers thing. 

Any questions?

Oh, and have a Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow.  (If you're here in the states.  If not, just have a happy day.)