I recently experimented with putting up my first free story to Amazon, and am working on my second.
A caveat: I wouldn’t put stories up for free if they weren’t there to do more for you than just spread your name around. I think they should be there to lead people to specific stories–if you like this, then chances are you will like that, specifically. The story should be a short story; the thing you’re leading to should be a novel or novella. IMO.
Results to date: over 2000 copies of Miracle, Texas have been downloaded on Amazon US and over 100 on Amazon UK (which I did later but seems to be slower anyhow). (Not sure about B&N or other sites yet; they haven’t reported back to Smashwords). Additional sales at this point: THBBBBT. It’s been almost two weeks. I curse the need for patience, yet there it is.
The next story going up is Bunny Attack! (currently free on Smashwords) to advertise for the kids’ story collection. I sell way more stories for kids than I do for adults, so this might be interesting.
Steps:
- Publish the story for free at Smashwords.
- Push the story from Smashwords to B&N, even if you would normally post through PubIt.
- Publish the story for .99 or whatever at Amazon.com (you cannot set the price to free from Amazon.com).
- Wait for the story to show up as free on B&N (you cannot set the price to free from PubIt).
- Go to Amazon.com and report that the story is free at B&N: click the “tell us about a lower price” link under the sales rankings (they don’t seem to care about Smashwords rates).
- Enter the B&N web address (for the story, now free) and report the price as $0 with $0 shipping.
- Get 7-8 other people to do the same.
- Wait about 2 weeks for the story to go free on Smashwords.
You can also do this for Amazon.co.uk.
- Don’t use the US (B&N) link to report on your free story; it doesn’t seem to have any effect.
- When you publish the story on Smashwords (for free), be sure to push it through to Apple/iBooks.
- When the story flips free at Apple UK, then report on the link to Amazon UK.
- Get the Apple UK link at Russell Phillips’s website: http://www.russellphillipsbooks.co.uk/pages/tools.php
I think you can do the same thing for Amazon Germany, but I haven’t tried it yet.
The important thing here is to get a group of people to help you out and report, and to have patience.
@#$%^& patience.
Liz
I think my brain has finally absorbed that I can publish and sell my stories myself without waiting for an acceptance letter (even though I still totally want to be published by a magazine). How do you decide which stories to send out to magazines and which ones to self-publish on Smashwords/BN/Amazon?
De
Oooh, actually, that process might make a good blog post. One sec.
getting over your ex songs
I’m just wondering if it’s alright to copy some piece of this article to use for my powerpoint project.
De
I’ll contact you offline. – update, your email bounced. The answer is no until you contact me offline. Thanks.