I began offering selections from my library for sale on Amazon with the intent of testing the waters… to see if it was worth my time to write new stories. From the start, I knew I couldn’t base any conclusions on just a few books; I’d need to see results from five to ten books before I could make any kind of decision. I’ve only got three books for sale now, but I figure some people might be interested in what I’ve seen so far. If you’re one of those people, then read on.

My first two books, The Iron Dead and Court of The Abominatrix went absolutely nowhere. Less than ten people bought each of those books to date. I also got a couple of “free” reads per book from Kindle Unlimited. That may sound disappointing, but that’s pretty much what I expected. In fact, considering that I did negligible advertising for Iron Dead and zero advertising for CotA, it’s about five more purchases than I thought I would get. Would I like to have seen more sales? Yes. Was I expecting to? No. I want those books to be available for new fans to buy once one of the later, more popular books catches their interest. I’d say mission accomplished for those two.

Things are a bit different for my horror anthology, The Henry County Horror. This book also has very low sales, but it got a LOT (compared to the other books) of free reads from Kindle Unlimited subscribers, and the sales are not only much higher than the other books combined, but HCH is continuing to sell a few books a week whereas the first to haven’t sold a copy beyond the launch week. And this is despite the book having mediocre reviews.

I’d definitely call that ‘interesting’.

I wish I could point my finger at what I did differently so that I could do it again, but I actually did a few things for HCH that didn’t apply to the Iron Dead or Abominatrix, so I can’t easily identify what is causing the results I’m seeing.

The first thing that’s different about HCH is the category. So far, all of my books are horror, but HCH is also listed under “anthologies”, where there seems to be much less competition for attention. I’ve even spotted my own anthology in the list of “recommended titles” while I’m browsing horror books. I’ve never seen my other two releases featured. How/Why did that happen, and can I make that happen again? My gut is telling me that this is the main driver in the sales, but it could also be…

Amazon will let me make any of my books free for up to 5 days per quarter, but HCH is the only book that I’ve chosen to do that with. I’m not a big fan of free giveaways, but I intended the Henry County Horror to be a Halloween gift (i.e. a way to cash in on the season). As you might expect, I got a lot of free downloads during those five days. Those downloads tapered off significantly after that… but they didn’t taper all the way down to zero. Two or three people a week still buy this book at 99 cents, whereas the other two books were making no sales at all when they were at the same price? Did the free giveaway put me on some kind of “map” or something? Well, yes, Probably because…

I submitted the Henry County Horror to several sites that list free or bargain ebooks. None of these listings give me the huge “explosion” of free downloads I was hoping for. In fact, I can honestly say that most of my time and money was wasted… at least it was at the time. Those links are still out there, and some of them may be giving me the small trickle of traffic that I’m seeing. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is something that I can repeat for every book unless I can identify exactly which website or list is giving me the results. I like shotguns in video games, but for spending my time and money I prefer to target my efforts on what works. And I have no idea what worked here.

That last sentence pretty much applies to the HCH as a whole. Is it the fact that it’s an anthology? Did the advertising that didn’t work when the book was free suddenly start working? Did the free promotion do “something” that I’m unaware of?

The only thing I can do is experiment a bit with my next few releases and see if I can improve on the slightly positive results I’m seeing with the Henry County Horror.

My next book is yet another horror anthology, and it should be out in December.