I'm on Authorgraph, are you?

This morning I read an old blog post on writesexright.com about Authorgraph. I'd heard of it before but not really thought about joining. But then, over a steaming hot cup of tea this morning I figured it's free, let's give it a go.

In case you haven't heard of it yet, Authorgraph is a website that allows readers to request autographs from their favourite authors. It's free to join, and does look like loads of fun to me!

So I've added all my books. Not sure what, if anything, will come out of it. And I haven't got a clue what my autograph should look like either so I might have to do some quick thinking if someone actually requests one.

The Amazon Free Promotion Experiment; 2

Back in November I did a blog post about my first experience doing a free promotion with KDP Select on Amazon.

This initial free promotion was a bit of a failure considering I fell ill and didn't manage to tell a single person about my free book. However, the results were interesting, giving me a baseline for what to expect with zero promotion.

Just to recap, I managed to get a bunch of downloads;
Amazon.com - 87
Amazon.co.uk - 33 (one of these was me)
Amazon.de - 11
Amazon.fr - 1

And the book reached spot 98 in the Amazon UK Erotic Fiction Free Bestseller category.

This time, I'm giving away a different book, Just Another Day at the Office - I and I even have a bit of a cunning plan.

1. I'm spamming the hell out of Facebook especially and to a lesser extent Twitter and Google+. If you're my FB friend, you might want to ignore me during this period, after getting your free copy of course!
2. After reading the free book, readers who want to read more of my work can actually do so because I have more published (Last time the free book was my ONLY book). 
3. Just Another Day at the Office - I, obviously, is only the first part of a larger work. My free promo coincides with the launch of part two. Hopefully my free promo will hook readers into buying the next part.
4. Compared to last time, I have some lovely writer friends who are helping to put the word out about this promo, and I even have some reviews already up on the book I'm giving away which should make it more attractive.

I cannot wait to see how this promo will play out!

Check back later, when I'll update this post with the results.

Please note when comparing figures that the first giveaway lasted only one day, the current one will last two days.

The results are in!

Downloads; 2157 in total!
Amazon.com - 1887
Amazon.co.uk - 202 (one of these was me)
Amazon.de - 55
Amazon.fr - 2
Amazon.es - 2
Amazon.it - 1
Amazon.co.jp - 1
Amazon.ca - 7

Rankings:
#4 in Free Erotica on Amazon.com!

#9 in Free Erotica on Amazon.co.uk!

Reviews/Likes
I'll be honest, I am not sure how many likes I had before the promo so it would be hard to measure any effect. But on 6 and 7 February (while the book was free) I did manage to get two awesome reviews on Amazon.com and one on Goodreads. Also, a few people marked it as "to read" on Goodreads on the 6th.

Resulting sales
It's too early to tell if now that Just Another Day at the Office - I is no longer free, I might get sales based on how it performed in the rankings. I will post an update about this in a week or two. But, part two, which I launched at the same time as the free promo (with very limited marketing efforts comparatively) managed to achieve quite a few sales in these two days. Some will have been by readers who were already waiting for it to come out, but I suspect that a fair number were from people who may have wanted more of the same story after reading part one. I hope to see this trend continue in the coming weeks.


Verdict
This went way better than I expected! I never thought I'd get close to 1000 downloads, never mind exceeding 2100! And hopefully using the free giveaway as a hook to get readers to try out more of my work will pay off beyond these few days as well. I'll definitely do this again, whether with the same book or something new perhaps.
 

Just Another Day at the Office II Launch Party!

I've done it, around  month after publishing the first installment, Part two of Just Another Day at the Office is now live! And to celebrate this joyous milestone, I'm giving away part one free of charge for two days; today and tomorrow.

Buy part two now at:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Smashwords 

 

Download part one for FREE at:

Amazon US 

Amazon UK 

Just Another Day at the Office - II UPDATE!

Ever since I've published part one, the pressure has really been on to bring out part two within a reasonable timeframe. I'm not a hardened, pro writer who can churn out stories on a schedule, yet!

Actually, the idea of publishing this story in multiple parts seemed like a really brilliant one because I had quite a bit of the story already prepared. And I thought part one and two were practically ready, with part three needing a lot of additions to bring the story to a close. Since then, I've been thinking, and planning, and thinking some more. And lately I've been rewriting part two a bit to make it more fun.

I truly believe in the philosophy to write what I enjoy personally, so I know at least if I have a doppelganger out there somewhere, they'll like it too. Well, after receiving positive feedback and urging messages to hurry up and let people have part two already, I felt a hint of guilt. Like something is lacking in the story of part two. And I'm doing my best currently to do something about it.

So to all my readers who have read part one already and simply NEED to know how the story continues, I beg for patience. I wouldn't want to rush things now and then publish something which I know in my heart needs improvements. That being said, I'm positive I can manage to publish by Valentine's day! And I truly hope you'll agree that it was worth the wait.

Oh and in order to speed things up, I've already got the cover ready for the whole series anyway, in the same style as part one. Enjoy!