Final Results of the Trial

Kindleboards is down due to service provider issues, so I'll post the almost-final verdict on the free trial of The Hen Party here before sharing it there.

The Hen Party is my first published work, a 5,500 word story about Jen, a Christian wife who attends a bachelorette party with the girls from her Bible study group, and gets a little wild.  The story debuted in the Kindle Store on December 27th, but netted only a single sale prior to the free trial.

I ran a two-day free trial last Friday and Satuday.  The final figures are now in: 606 free downloads, 481 in the US, 102 in the UK, 10 in Germany and 3 in France.  I reached as high as #82 in the free Fiction>Erotica category, and around #784 in the overall Kindle Free store, getting into the top 30 in the free UK Fiction>Erotica category, and top 25 in both Germany and France for the free store.

Later on Sunday, "The Hen Party" had earned some linkages in the "Also Bought..." recommendations for other stories that had been offered for free, which produced some benefit in sales as the story returned to its $0.99 price.

My expectations from having read about the effect of other free trials is that my total sales would equate to around 2% of the free copies given away.  Based on the free numbers, I estimated I would have around 12 sales.  As it turned out, "The Hen Party" sold 17 copies this week, and had two borrows.  Of these sales, two-thirds of the sales came on the first two days after the trial.  By the end of the 5th day, additional sales had returned to the earlier rate.  But the two day boost put the story at around #22,000 in the paid store for a couple of days.

There was a small halo effect for the other works.  During the trial, I sold another copy of Remote Control: What You Want When You Say What You Want and one copy of March Madness: The Secret Sex Life of a Sideline Reporter.  That's close to what the baseline rate is for those stories, so I would say there's little effect, particularly since those stories have little in common with "The Hen Party".

The free downloads progressed at a rate of about 16 an hour on the first day, dropping to around 10 an hour by the end of the second day.  Most of the sales activity appeared to be between 6PM PST and 6AM PST.  Historically, I tend to see more sales on Sunday through Tuesday.

The free trial period produced no additional sales of anything in Europe, which is easy to explain.  First, the volume of free European downloads was very small (<20% of the total free sales), and while it produced reciprocal also bought recommendations, I'd maybe expect 20% of 2%, or perhaps one sale every two weeks.  Second, the subject matter (Christian wives gone wild) may be more popular in the US based on differences in religion in the culture.  Finally, I'm unclear as to who the 13 readers were in the foreign language stores who bought the book.  Bots?  Expats?  Students seeking to learn English?

No one has reviewed any of my stories yet.  Reviews offer social proof and create a visual enticement to purchase, and I suspect that a story or book that has favorable reviews that then goes on trial will see both more downloads as well as more sales following the end of the promotion.  Some authors appear to have learned this and are creating bogus reviews of their works (note when an author has single reviews on all of their works, each with five stars and the same reader reporting).  I refuse to do that, and would prefer to exist without reviews or accept my lumps rather than create a misrepresentation.

Overall, my expectations for the promotion weren't high, yet the KDP Select free promotion still performed better than I expected as an unknown author writing short stories.  Over 600 people have a copy of my story! Maybe some will read it!  Maybe one will review!

Stats update

Look for an update on the "week after" statistics and lessons learned on Sunday.  Until then, a few anecdotal data points to tide you over.

• A KDP Select free couple of days produces downloads in Europe, but apparently has little residual follow on.  The cause of this may simply be not enough free downloads to get onto the "also bought" lists, although Europe combined accounted for about 19% of my total free downloads.
• It appears to take about 48 hours to show up on the also bought lists in the US, although I didn't time it exactly.

A rough rule of thumb for translating Kindle Store rank into sales:

• Top 1000 free threshold seems to be about a sustained 15 downloads per hour.
• A 20,000-25,000 paid store ranking seems to correspond to around 5 purchases per day.
• Anything around 80,000 is probably doing about 1 purchase a day.
• Beyond 80,000, a book/story hasn't sold anything within the last 24 hours.  The farther down you go, the more days since the last sale.  No sales rank: no sales ever.

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.