I’ve done a little digging on how to get people reading Blue Gentian, and it looks like I can’t offer a free promotion until the book is officially published on August 1st. Amazon also limits free books to 5 days, although I can do a “Kindle Countdown” deal for a low price for 7 days more.
So, the plan is to come right out the gate with a free title from August 1-5. I’ll remind you that it’s happening so you can pick up the book for free and see what you think. If you don’t manage to get the book within the 5 day window, don’t despair. I’ll be running it for 99 cents from the August 6-13. Only after the first two weeks will the price go up to the regular one of $6.99. If you’re interested in adding the book to your wish list or just checking out the fancy pre-order listing, it’s here.
Why free or cheap? First, I want to thank you all for following me and a free book seems like a good way to do that. Second, I’m hoping you’ll think about giving me a little review in return. The magic number to hit for Amazon to start promoting your book on it’s own is 50 reviews. I think that’s a little optimistic for my first week (or several months, even), but any dent in that number helps. And any quality of review helps (kinda). If you tell people you hated it, it still gets me closer to 50. Just saying…
I also had a great talk with a friend who helps his mom with her self-published stuff. He was amazed by Amazon ads, swears they’re the way to go, and gave me a couple of books to read on how to do it. I’ll undoubtedly be running some ads, too, once I figure out what I’m doing. I’ll report back and let you know how that went. All this is new and exciting, and hopefully the stuff I’m learning will come in handy to someone else.
Lastly, There was some confusion about Blatantly False in the first few days, so I want to clarify… if you’re keen on reading this thing but don’t have a Kindle, you still can without shelling out hundreds of dollars for the actual Kindle equipment. Kindle has an app that will go on any computing device you have (from laptop to tablet to smartphone) that you can download for free. I read most of my books with it on my phone and like it lots. Not thrilled with gunking up your devices with another app? There will also be a print version available at $9.99. Unfortunately, I can’t run this one under any of the Kindle sales, though, because of the cost to print.
Nano is still going well! I’ll be in touch…
Casey E. Hamilton 