A Select Affair

December 30, 2012 Promotion, Select

I’ve put my first title into Amazon Select.

Usually when I release a story it goes to Amazon and Smashwords to get full distribution. However thanks to a computer issue I can’t generate .doc files for Smashwords at the moment and I’m writing everything in .rtf,  so Standing Guard went onto Amazon only.  So this gives me a chance to try out Select.

Select offers authors two things:  money for borrows,  and the ability to offer their book for free on certain days. For me, the second is the larger advantage. The ability to give away titles through Amazon free is something I usually can’t do since Kindle Gifting is unavailable to authors outside the US. So I’m trying it out.

The Day:  New Years Day
The Title:  Standing Guard
The Place:  Amazon Worldwide
The Price:  FREE!

I will be interested to see how this turns out.  Regarding publicity, I’ve contacted the various sites that cover free ebooks, but as it is a new release many of them aren’t interested, requiring a fixed number of reviews above a certain star ranking.  Tweets are set up and scheduled.  There are a lot of places that request you post there only when the book is actually free, so I have a hit list for the day. My fallback is Project Wonderful which has an ad campaign ready to go, and slowly gearing up over the next few days to end on the 2nd.

I’ll report on it afterwards, here and on Kindleboards, and see what I can do about analysing te success of various promotional methods.

And I am still writing.  I’m close to the end of a crime novella, and once that ones with the editor I’ll be finishing the new Brooke’s Vale story, covering Grace’s introduction to the valley.