March Madness (of a Different Sort)

I've been taking advantage of Amazon's free giveaways ever since I first published (Amazon's Kindle Select program always you to give away your published work for free for 5 days in a 90-day period). I see it as an opportunity to have people read my story who would have otherwise passed on spending money on an unknown author. 

I do it all wrong. I don't bother to advertise at all ... so I truly have no idea how people discover my book is available for free. Sometimes they don't -- I've had giveaways where I don't think I had more than 20 downloads. But this last time, for whatever reason, my book caught the attention of almost a thousand people.  It was my own crazy March Madness, and at one point I was ranked as high as #5 in the Free Epic Fantasy category, and #470 in the All Free books category.

Granted, most of the people who downloaded my book will never read it -- it will be lost amongst the hundreds of other books on their "to read" shelves -- but a handful already have, and I'm reaping the benefits (and consequences) of a successful giveaway.

I've seen a nice post-giveaway bounce in sales and another 5-star rating, which is always good for my ego :)  Unfortunately, I've also received my very first one-star rating. As one-star ratings go, it's actually not that bad ... especially since the review starts out with "The story is a good one..."

They say that you should never look at reviews, but they are hard to ignore. I know how much I rely upon reviews when making a decision to purchase something -- and I often wonder how much the reviews on my books influence the decision making of others.  Right now, my two worst reviews are the very first things people see when going to Amazon or Goodreads, and I know that has probably affected my sales, but there is nothing I can do about it. Those reviewers are entitled to their opinions, and in the case of the Amazon review, apparently several others agree. Oh well, c'est la vie.

On the bright side, the increase in sales and the 5-star reviews have been a great motivator for me to get the third volume done.  The audience for my story might be a small one, but they are definitely out there, and I don't want to leave them hanging :)

I'm not quite half-way done with the third installment of the series.  I'm taking a few days off from work this week (my kids have spring break), so I'm hoping that I'll make some good progress. I'm still committed to having this published this year (fingers crossed).