Optimism

My book reached number 34 in the top 100 paid in the occult horror section and number 59 in the horror thrillers section yesterday. Today it fell back out of the top 100 but I still have a smile on my face, because to many people it may mean nothing, but to me, it means my book is selling. It may be selling slowly, but I am getting there.

My biggest thrill about it is that I didn't have to give away thousands and thousands of my book to achieve the top 100. It may have only been in a sub-genre, but its still 'real' sales.

And yes, I do still distinguish between 'real' sales and 'free' sales. Not sure why because a few authors friends are doing well with their 'real' sales after their 'freebie' week has ended.

A little secret for you though, for those who are interested. Some of the authors in the kindle authors forum are starting to moan about how 'free' books are clugging up the system and they are losing 'real' sales in the process. Some are now questioning how enlightened kindle were when they introducd the KDP select programme.

I'm sure that a lot of authors are still selling their books after free weeks, because some of them are awesome writers. The majority however, are not, and their free books are littered with grammar, punctuation, spelling, continuity and formatting errors. As an avid reader myself, I relented and finally downloaded onto my kindle a couple of 'free' books the other day. I won't be doing that again, and will stick to buying what I am willing to pay good money for, because 'free' isn't all it's cracked up to be, and certainly didn't lead me off to buy the authors other titles.

An author friend is doing an experiment with KDP and his books. Well, he claims it's an experiment, but I suspect that he has been forced onto the freebie bandwagon to simply compete with all the free books out there. Anyway, whatever his real reasons for doing it, we, in our writers group, are eagerly awaiting the outcome of whether the sales of his other books jump up the ranks for a longer period of time than during the 'free' week. We are eagerly awaiting the details of just how many books he had to give away, and whether it was worth it for the 'real' sales of his other books. I hope it was worth it for him and that when he reports back in a couple of weeks or months time, that he is a bestseller and his 'real' sales dwarved his 'free' ones.

In the meantime, I will continue to plod along, slowly but surely, with the smile still on my face, because we never know what tomorrow may bring.

Now there's optimism for you.

If you want to check out my book, or even buy it (as I won't stop you doing that), then you can find it here: www.amazon.co.uk/Stealth-ebook/dp/B00796MU10/