Remember that promotion that Night Shade set up for Barnes & Noble? The Free ebook download? Well, I just found out how many copies were downloaded.
77,229.
Wow. I'm stunned. I knew from previous promotions that it was going to be in the tens of thousands, but 77k? I had no idea. That's pretty damn awesome, says I. I'm sure that a bunch of those are never going to read it, and for others, it won't be their cup of tea, but for a new author, it's just great and gratifying to get this into the hands of people that might never have heard of me otherwise. Plus, I've already heard from many readers that they plan to pick up the next novel, so all in all, this was a great and successful promotion.
Whoa dude! That's incredible!
No kidding!
That's outstanding, Brad! I hope it translates into lots of success for you.
Thanks a lot, Doug! I think this is largely a "long tail" type of promotion, but I think it can have some short term gains as well. I feel fortunate they did that for me.
I know there's no direct way to track things like this, but I'll be interested to get your impressions on how this may or may not effect your numbers when your next book comes out. Since it's often guess-work for us in terms of how things are moving, this ought to provide yet one more non-data point to drive you insane for a while.
Yeah, thanks. I'm already obsessing over numbers that are so difficult to read that they're essentially meaningless. Now I can add one more to the pile.
Jeez, if I had a dollar for every one of those free downloads….Hey! I just had an idea!
Well, that'd be, like, selling a book! I'm calling my publisher right now…
… 5 minutes later …
As it turns out, they thought of that. They said to get my ass back to writing the second book…
Holy cow. That's a whole lot of kilobytes being downloaded, Brad…congratulations!
Thanks, Greg!
Mine was one of the many downloads. Given the usual quality of B&N's free e-book offerings, imagine my surprise when The Winds of Khalakovo turns out to be a) not an urban paranormal romance and b) really, really good. I've thought for a while that fantasy was an essentially dead genre; you are one of a small but talented group of authors that are making me revisit that opinion.
Also count me in with those who will be picking up The Straits of Galahesh as soon as it's released.
Thanks so much, Ethan. I really appreciate the note, and I'm very gratified that you enjoyed Winds!
OH MY GOD!!! That's so fabulous! You are such a rock star.
Thanks, Kelly! I'll have to bring my cool shades to the workshop now, hey?
Most definitely.