Innocence Abroad

            Nobody knows me personally in England, Scotland or Wales. The same is true for Germany. Ditto Japan, India and Australia. And I think I know one person in Canada, though it’s been a while since we’ve been in touch.

            Yet in all those countries, I have, or might have, people who know me through my mystery novels. Or so Amazon tells me. Digital copies of The McHenry Inheritance and WashHer Guilt Away have been downloaded in those countries, and I’ve even sold a couple of print books in the UK.

            Not bad for a little-known author.

            The ability to sell books worldwide in modest (all right, very modest) numbers is one of the few unqualified good things about the internet. And since those books are downloaded, I don’t even have to mess with lugging copies to the post office and calculating overseas shipment and customs declarations.

Inventory in the Car Trunk

            In the bad old days, like 10 to 15 years ago, a self-published author had to print up a bunch of copies of his book and try to unload them himself. In practice, this meant a lot of driving around to bookstores, practically begging them to take a few copies on consignment. Even when you live, as I do, at the periphery of a large metropolitan area, that’s a daunting task.

            The rule of thumb used to be that a self-published author typically sold 150 copies of his or her book. There’s a basis for that number. It’s estimated that the average person in America knows about 150 people reasonably well through friendships, work, neighborhood, and religious and affinity groups. Self-published books were sold mostly to friends and acquaintances, with a few being picked up by browsers at the handful of bookstores that carried them.

            Although I’ve had paid sales outside the U.S., most of my foreign downloads have been on days when I did a free promotion on one book or another. One day I had a huge response in Germany; on another, India; and yet another in Australia. Why the books go out the door in a country one day and not another is yet another Amazon mystery.

The Joy of Connecting

            I have some reservations about Amazon, but one thing I can’t kick about is the way they let me put my books in front of the whole world and possibly connect with readers all around the globe. It’s my hope that the numbers will grow as the years pass and more books come out.

            From time to time, well-meaning friends will make suggestions, such as trying to get my books into sporting goods stores, because there are fishing scenes in them. I am dubious. My experience so far has indicated that people who fish don’t necessarily read mystery novels, and someone who doesn’t read fiction is unlikely to read it because it contains scenes about their hobbies.

            No, I think mysteries are read by mystery readers, and my books are out there now for them to see and discover. There’s so much competition it’s not easy to reach an audience, but some people are finding me. If it isn’t as many people as I’d like, it’s still much better than all the years when the manuscripts sat inside my computer, out of the world’s view.

Watching the Numbers All Day Long

            A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about giving away copies of my mystery novel, The McHenry Inheritance, as a Kindle promotion to build readership. That blog got an uncommonly high number of page views, leading me to follow up here with additional thoughts and details on the practice.

            Wednesday was my birthday, and believing that I shouldn’t be the only one getting presents, I scheduled a free giveaway on Kindle that day. On giveaway days, I check every few hours (no point being obsessive about it) to see where I stand on Amazon’s free book sales list.

            The morning of the 27^th dawned bright and clear in coastal California, and at 6:15 a.m., Linda picked up her iPad and did the first check. She yelled out the number, and I forgot to write it down, but it was 21 thousand and something. It gives you a scary idea of how many books and authors are out there that on a weekday, there would be at least 21 thousand books being given away on Kindle.

Cresting, Like Obama

            At that time of day, of course, the West Coast is just getting up, the East Coast is going to or arriving at work, and Europe is still at work in the afternoon. The people buying books at those hours are probably in India, Australia and New Zealand.

            By 8:48 a.m., I had climbed 11,000 places on the list, to number 11,092. At 10:33 a.m., I had soared to 6,648^th place, a climb of 14,000 places since the day began. I tweeted about it. At 1:45 p.m., I was up to 5,010^th place.

            Clearly, like Barack Obama in a presidential election, I do better as the results start coming in from the west. The book continued to creep up the charts for the rest of the day, and when I checked at 10:07 p.m., before turning in, it was number 3,460 on the Amazon free book hit parade.

            How does that translate into actual sales? Amazon tells me that 64 people “bought” the book that day. What an author hopes for in this situation is that at least a few of them will read it, like it, and tell their friends in some way. Maybe they’ll even post a review on Kindle.

Weekdays Versus  Weekends

            One thing this tells me (and it reinforces earlier data, so I should have thought of it sooner) is that weekdays generally don’t seem to be too good for giveaways. Earlier in the month I gave the book away on Saturday the 16^th, the first day of a three-day weekend in America, and it moved more than 150 copies, or twice as many as on the weekday. Stands to reason, since that’s when more people are likely to be looking for something to read.

            Nobody knows how Amazon’s algorithm works in terms of generating referrals for a book, but anecdotally, it seems mine has gotten some mention after a good giveaway day, so I want to be trying to maximize that.

            Accordingly, my next big idea is to use my three remaining free promotion days on weekends in March, clustering more giveaways closer together than I’ve done up to this point. The questions should be, first, are more people snapping up the book when there’s a free offer, and second, are the ones I’m giving away generating any increase in paid sales of the book. Trial and error, but I’ll let you know how it turns out.