Kindle giveaway - ends tonight

My publisher, Mike O’Mary of Dream of Things put Leaving the Hall Light On back in the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program. He has also decided to give the Kindle version away for two days – yesterday and today, hopefully to kick start sales again. As of today – the second morning – it looks like the giveaway is going well though I won’t know the actual count of books downloaded for free until tomorrow morning.

Other book sales are going on too. It looks like I sold a few paperbacks in the last couple of days, and surprise, surprise, a hardback sold through my Amazon seller’s account yesterday as well. Go there is you want a signed first edition.

Of course the question still is: does a giveaway promote more sales once the giveaway is over? The last giveaways my publisher held did. According the webinar I heard yesterday by Howard VanEs through SheWrites on the subject of Cashing in with Kindle Books, a book giveaway should show up positively in the ranks for a few days afterward with 50% more sales in the next three weeks. If it gets to the top 100 in Kindle books the sky is the limit in sales in the next week or so.

The key is promotion. I posted about the giveaway on all my networks yesterday: the Independent Author Network, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, and all my FB groups, and I need to go back and do it all again today. However, that’s what I’m doing anyway – my goal is to go by and post something in all those places every day. Not a small task.

And, I’m always happy to give books away – especially to the grief and survival groups that I belong to.  I'd like those folks to read it whether or not I make a dime in sales. Also, I suspect if they like it they will refer the book to others. A person in one of the grief groups left a nice comment yesterday. I’d have never known she even read the book if I hadn’t posted about the giveaway on that page.

That’s the point. Word of mouth. I still think that’s the best way to increase sales – whether in actual or in virtual conversations. So if you like a book, let others know. Even post a comment on the book’s sales site.