#FREE days. Worth it? Yes or no?

Sunday wishes to you! 

Whatever you're doing today, the very best is wished for you. My day is mainly devoted to new writing but this is a good time to take a break and update my promotion of last week.

Being signed up to Kindle Direct Publishing for The Taexali Game, there is the opportunity to set the novel FREE for up to 5 days within a 90 day period. So far, I've not taken up Amazon's official opportunity though on a few occasions I have set the price Zero. Since first published in 2015, those few FREE days have not made any impact on my sales, and indeed not many copies were downloaded. For those previous promotional days I was only promoting via Facebook and a few Tweets so, I admit, there was a lacklustre attempt to promote. 

This time I decided to run an experiment. I organised a 3 day FREE opportunity via KDP ( 23rd, 24th and 25th Jan) and simultaneously paid for promotion during the middle day (24th). The FreeBooksy promo cost about £45- money I really cannot afford, but I feel the need to try more promotional avenues. Paying for a promotion to tell potential readers that a book is available FREE, with no royalties coming to me as the author, seemed an insane thing to do and that's why I've avoided that tactic in the past.

However, this time my aim was not for royalties but for visibility. And that did happen!

Tuesday 23rd I logged in to The Taexali Game Amazon page expecting to note an Amazon.com rank of around 700,000 - not uncommon - and UK much the same - but to my surprise at 10 a.m. Tuesday the ranks were at

• U.S> #76,805 ( #39 Greek and Roman; #121 Time Travel; #108 Historical Fiction) on the FREE charts. 
• UK>#38,446 (#83 Time Travel; #126 Hist fiction; #18358 Lit & Fict) 

N.B.Amazon manipulates the Genre categories after my initial setting of Fiction/ Historical/Time Travel/ Fantasy

Now all that meant was that a few FREE copies had already been downloaded that day.

At the end of my Tuesday (GMT)

• US ># 5,678(#10 G&R; #22 Fantasy Time Tr; #38 Hist Fic) 
• UK> 2,216 (#10 T Travel; #18 Hist Fic; #1753 Lit & Fic)

Over the 3 days promotion, as far as I can tell, there were the following downloads for a novel that had mostly been ignored on Amazon. 

• Tues 101
• Wed 1510
• Thurs 226

It's clear to see that the paid FreeBooksy promo had some noticeable effect. When I logged on to the Goodreads site on Friday 26th it tells me that a few people are currently reading it and at lest 15 have added it to their 'To Be Read pile. 

Now I wait and hope for lots of lovely reviews. It may be an unrealistic outcome but it's more positive than the hole in my bank balance! And I now have a January poster for using on Facebook and Twitter.

Happy Sunday reading to you.

Slainthe!