MRS. LIEUTENANT Free on Kindle: What I Am Learning

Today is the second of two days of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) being FREE on Kindle via the KDP Select option — click here to download it.

I have been tracking the number of downloads as well as the ranking of the book on Amazon. And while this is not definitive, I do see the same pattern on the second day that I saw when my thriller
CIA FALL GUY was free on Kindle for two days in July:

Through the first day and early on the second day the book continues to do better and better in the free Amazon list. Then in early afternoon of the second day the book’s ranking starts to go back the other way.

CIA FALL GUY did not break into the top 100 free on Kindle books. The book’s best ranking was 135.

MRS. LIEUTENANT did break into the top 100 free on Kindle books. In fact, its best ranking was 21! (As I write this it is now at 24.)

Plus for a while MRS. LIEUTENANT was the “#1 Bestseller on Amazon’s Free War Fiction.” (Last time I looked MRS. LIEUTENANT had dropped to second, although that is still great!)

What I have seen this second time around is partly the obvious — the more effort you put into promoting the free days the more likely your book is to do well.

Last time I paired CIA FALL GUY with one of my nonfiction books — TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK. I thought that it made sense, as long as I was putting in the effort, to promote a fiction and nonfiction book at the same time.

In retrospect I think that was a mistake. When you are promoting your book for free on Kindle, it is probably better to have a single focus. You need to concentrate on promoting one book rather than dividing your focus.

And I plan to continue my experimentation with KDP Select by offering LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS for free on Kindle on September 3rd (Labor Day) and September 4th. Mark your calendars if you enjoy technothrillers.

If you are reading this post soon after I publish it, you still have time to get MRS. LIEUTENANT for free. Who knows? Perhaps with your help the novel will return to #21 in free Kindle books.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller CIA FALL GUY.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com