ROBUST discussion

Help! Because I got a few extra days of KDP promotion in my last KDP enrollment period, I did not use any of the days for the latest one, which expires on Sept. 6.

Storyteller languishes in the mulch layer. I'm trying to decide if it would be beneficial if I put it on FREE for 5 consecutive days.

Didn't Sierra have some success with 5-day free periods?

I take the view that, if you have unused free days, any number, you can't lose anything by using them.

Just make sure you write to as many promotional sites as you can about it beforehand. Most say that you need to give 2-3 weeks notice, but I've had success with ENT and PoI with only a day's notice.

Thanks Andre. Patricia had suggested the same thing a while ago. I decided to just go for it over the weekend. Not sure that was a good choice as kids are just now going back to school in the Northern hemisphere and there's always a big flurry of retail activity around that, but I have no idea who my demographic really might be (I expected middle-aged women initially). I've had a few sales (big deal, just got me slightly up in the slush pile) in August from the US and UK which I didn't notice until yesterday, kench.

On the other hand, perhaps many authors are planning on going FREE after the kids go back and I will have less 'competition'.

Katie, I didn't want to post the free days until I was sure Zon did not mess up, but I only enrolled the book yesterday for beginning today and they actually got it right this time, so will start some promotion now. I think I might look into promoting on a different site each day to keep it fresh. Not sure how much time I will have, as it turns out I have a few social events beginning this afternoon (probably a good thing, will keep me away from looking at the stats too often, grin).

Will keep you posted anon...

Write a tweet or two for us to use, and make sure you put the freebie on your Facebook pages directly (not through Twitter). Dakota had complaints when she used Twitter and thought the Facebook job was done too. People complained that they couldn't share unless she put it on Facebook herself. I tried it; they were right.

I often use free days without any promo at all. I'm going on the theory that people who find it on their own are more apt to read it. I base that on absolutely no evidence.

Patricia wrote: "I often use free days without any promo at all. I'm going on the theory that people who find it on their own are more apt to read it. I base that on absolutely no evidence."

Kench, Patricia. I'm not entirely sure I don't agree with you...

All done, Andre. And I never use Twitter to 'share' on FB - or any other automatic feed. I prefer the personal touch.

So far doing okay in the UK, but pathetic in the US. Hoping that just means their bots are slow there...

Every time I do a FREE promotion, the number of free sales seem to fall. But I had the 5 free days available and no time to split them up, so it was a good exercise.

US - Had a very slow start the first day, last Thursday Aug.30th. (I checked and it did go free early in the morning), which picked up substantially between 7 & 9 pm PST. Second day, Friday, was the best for sales. Saturday died right off, but it was a long weekend in the US - called a holiday wkd in the UK & Ozz I believe?, Sunday was about the same and Monday, still the long weekend, about doubled the previous two.

UK - First day (Fri in Ozz) by far the best. Second day fewer, a handful on the 3rd day, and from that point on no new sales listed (again I checked to be sure it was still being offered free) until after the promo was over when 10 were added - which accounts for the fluctuation in rankings, both up and down, in the same time frame.

Which was all especially weird as no rankings whatsoever showed up on the US site until 9 pm the first day, when sales were finally showing, though rankings were showing in the UK. So it looks as if the bots did not pick up sales in the US at the beginning of the promo and in the UK at the end.

This time for the first time all the other sites remained in the brown bar of sludge...

I suspect some of this was that there were tons of FREE books that weekend. Interestingly though, the rankings were similar to other results I have had. In the US the best I did (though I only looked every few hours, usually 4 or 5) was #1751 free, #22 historical (don't ask), & #43 lit fic; best I did for the UK was #1030, #22 lit fic.

My total for the 5 days was 208, by far the worst result I have had. Still, it is 208 more copies downloaded. Traditionally in biz a 10% return on promotions such as this would be considered very good, so even if I got, say, 5 readers, I would be happy. Thus far I have only had one review (the most recent on GR) that possibly came from a free promo. I did better with Library Thing early on, but again only stars (and those 2) and no written review.

Getting under 2000 in the overall rankings and down near a 1000 seems to me exceptionally good for a such a niche book. And numbers like 22 in litfic are extremely impressive.

I too have noticed a big falloff in free giveaway numbers.

Thanks Andre. I will take them for sure! (though I'm not certain that's the category in which I belong).

But it's all such a conundrum and impossible to quantify...

I saw something from Amazon saying the lending library now features 180,000 titles. I'd guess that most of those are KDP Select titles, which gives you an idea of what we're up against on giveaway days. Lots of authors are participating. Free promotions have been available for almost a year (I think it was December when it started). Every 90 days, authors are likely recycling the same giveaways they offered earlier. Readers may be growing tired of seeing the same old titles again and again, so they just stop looking.

A big factor is the Kindle's indexing algorithm. Once you get past a few dozen books, the thing can take days to reindex every word, which happens after the slightest glitch. Meanwhile it locks out the user. So freebies, at least on a Kindle, have a natural limit.

But the Kindle library is limitless. I store almost all my books there instead of on the device.

That may work if you never go out of range of wifi. I'm constantly out of range of wifi, in the countryside, for instance.

The only advantage of Bluetooth is security, that it doesn't blast your secrets into the city and the countryside around you, like Wifi does.

The Kindle is just a crude little single-purpose CPU, vastly overmatched by the amount of space for books. The bottleneck was predictable but Amazon probably didn't expect people to buy more than a hundred books at most. When they load up thousands of free books, of course it grinds to a halt. It's expensively packaged crap. Ferry says it is like a Sinclair ZX81, which was a cheap computer c1978, with a rubber keyboard and just about zero computing power.

The Nook on the other hand, is a tablet computer with the capability of being 'rooted' into an Android tablet with the insertion of a chip.

):-P

Duh, my smartphone is a mini-Android tablet. It's a passable copy of an Apple iPad or iPhone (as a US court decided recently, ordering Samsung to pay Apple a billion dollars for stealing their innovations). Better for someone who earns his living from copyright to get the real thing. I don't mind reading on mine, but next time I'll get the real thing, an Apple iPhone.

The Fire, the Nook, whatever Kobo has, are even paler third-rate copies of the iPad, cut down from the Android, which is already not good enough.

I'm bored with these barrow boys who want to be in an ideas business without ever having any idea of their own except to copy Apple.

Billion dollar US court rulings are never going to convince me of Apple's technical superiority (it just shows to go how billion dollar pockets can bully their way into winning any fight, fair or not (as I suspect the earlier UK judge saw through readily)) - but it's all good for the US economoy and I'm all for getting that major economy going again.

That said, I will buy the iPhone 5. One of these days when I get around to it I intend to publish on iBooks and want to be sure to have an Apple product - even though my dd grumbles all the time how slow her iphone 4S is compared to her old Blackberry...

Sharon wrote: "Billion dollar US court rulings are never going to convince me of Apple's technical superiority (it just shows to go how billion dollar pockets can bully their way into winning any fight, fair or n..."

And Samsung doesn't have billion dollar pockets? Or Google, whom Apple are going to take on next for being thieves?

In any event, this isn't about the technology, but about Google and Samsung stealing a user interface Apple developed for themselves and their customers. The technology is, while not trivial, is incidental.

This is a let's agree to disagree thing, which is good because I am off to the hot sunny BC Interior on an annual (stretched) weekend with six of my good buddies...

Enjoy.

Hope you have a wonderful time, Sharon. I wonder what it's like to live your life -- with non-virtual friends to hang out with, and so many places to go. My world consists of my house and my Robust pals.

Well, I did venture out for lobster last night. That's all the excitement I can take for the next half-year.

I used to own the southernmost house in Africa, at Hout Bay, right on the tip of Cape Agulhas, where the indian and Atlantic Oceans meet.

At dawn, after a party, I would kick everyone awake for an invigorating dip into the sea (freezing). If the lobster didn't get your fingers first, you got the lobster. I had a four gallon parafin tin cut open at the top in which the servants would boil seawater while we caught breakfast, and we'd cook the lobsters in this and eat them out of the shells with mayonnaise I would knock up on the spot with eggs and olive oil brought down from the house.

Those were the days.

I never would have thought to put mayonnaise on lobster.

Now I'm hungry all over again for it.

Now I'm hungry. Lobster. Homemade mayo. Mmm.

Patricia, I would love to hang out with you 'for real' sometime. If I were Andre I'd find a way to fly in on a private jet the next time you are venturing out for a lobster dinner, and join you.

Now you've all got me salivating for lobster and... homemade mayo?

I'll make the mayo fresh at the table.

I'm in...

But we better wait six months, we don't want Patricia to keel over on us for the excitement.

Maybe we could all meet, but I'd sit at the next table and send you texts. I could handle that.

Fresh mayo, six months later? It's made with egg yolks. Be solid sulphur six months later.

(sgnd) Mr Literal

Tee hee, great laughs to start my day...

Patricia wrote: "Maybe we could all meet, but I'd sit at the next table and send you texts. I could handle that."

Kench, Patricia! I've a feeling if I got to know you in real life we could be pals...

Ditto.