October 07, 2010

The preliminary results are in

The free spree has ended. The Amazon Kindle store restored the original list price for A Man of Few Words and The Path of Dreams yesterday. Here's the download tally as of Wednesday morning:

A Man of Few Words (ASIN: B003X27P78) 1714   
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #150 Paid in Kindle Store

The Path of Dreams (ASIN: B001CGI1NY) 2059   
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #105 Paid in Kindle Store

Curiously enough, The Path of Dreams lagged the first four days and then pulled ahead. Perhaps because of the unique subject matter, when the list price was restored, sales fell off faster than for A Man of Few Words.

As Brian Lawrenson explains here, the discounting may have been in response to the B&N list price, which it pulled from Smashwords. I won't know if Amazon will pay on the list or sale price until I get the October sales report.

My raw website traffic for the first week of October almost matched that of an entire month, so people were clicking on the embedded links. Both of our books got Amazon reviews for the first time, and nice ones at that.

As indicated above, both are sliding back down the long tail, though holding onto higher positions than when they started. It'd be nice if Amazon could provide a way for indies to opt-in to occasional freebie offerings.

Reading the tea leaves in next month's sales report is sure going to be interesting.

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