Sunday, January 22, 2012

Early Report

Early report on the two-day free trial of The Hen Party.

Had a little over 600 free "sales". Sold a couple of copies of my other stories, although based on their normal rate of sales, I think this was in line with what would normally be expected.

I sold copies in the US, UK, DE and FR stores. The numbers from Germany were surprising to me. I actually reached a pretty high category-specific ranking in both the French and German stores.

I was briefly in the top 100 for Fiction-->Erotica, topping out at around #82.

After the sale ended, I had several more sales, enough to take an unranked story and move it to around #30,000 in the paid store.

What I've learned about the distribution of sales and titles:


  • A single short story sale is usually enough to get you into the high five-figures in rank.  If there are no new sales, this ranking drops about 40K spots per day.
  • A sustained rate of around 15 to 16 sales per hour is enough to get you into the top 1,000 in Kindle-->Free, and into the 80s in Fiction-->Erotica.
  • For the erotic story, the US is anywhere from 80% to 85% of total sales. I was surprised, thinking that the rate would be higher for an English language title.
  • The first day of the free trial produced the highest rate of sales.  Performance tapers off after day 1.
  • There may be a residual effect for purchases of other works in your catalogue, but I didn't see a strong correlation.
  • Most of the benefit appears to accrue to the story given away, after it comes off free.
  • All of this is subject to change--I have to wait a week to get the actual post-free sales figures.

Overall, I'm happy.  Coming from nowhere, this managed to take a title that hadn't sold anything and turned it into a profitable title.

Stay tuned for more details as the aftermath becomes clearer.

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