Yes, that's my short story, The Valentine's Day Curse, in the # 1 position on Amazon's Free Best Selling Short Stories chart, directly across from a book I've read and enjoyed very much, "A Visit from the Goon Squad," which, by the way, is not a short story. 'The Valentine's Day Curse" also was # 9 in Contemporary Fiction and #125 in the Kindle Store. Of course, it wasn't really a best "seller" as it was free, but let's not quibble about money.
The important thing is that my short story, between both promotions, is now on over 2,600 Kindles, iPads, Smartphones, computers, etc. in the U.S., England, Germany and yes, even France! How cool is that? I have to admit it was hard to pull myself away from the screen Saturday knowing the promotion was still going on for two more hours. And I was glad my daughter came home in time to capture that screen shot because when I awoke Sunday morning the bubble was burst. Back to the netherlands.
Well, that's not exactly accurate. Before the promotion I was in the 400,000 rankings. I found I actually had some paid sales afterwards, and one return. I hope the reader returned it because they thought it was still free, and not because they read it & didn't want to pay the 99 cents, or worse, hated it. So early Sunday morning the book's ranking was in the 70,000's. Okay, so it's pretty down there, but not as bad as 400,000! The hope now is that people will actually read it, and some must have because I did garner additional "likes." Hopefully they will review it and then seek out something else I wrote, which would be the novel that practically killed me, Fractured Facade, and then buy that.
Besides lucking out by being one of the books included in Ereader News Today's picks, I also received help from folks on Twitter and Facebook via retweets and reposts on their Facebook walls. A big thank you goes to everyone, especially the total strangers who opened their walls and hearts to my wee little story.
As Sunday went on I enjoyed the beautiful day, glad to be away from the computer screen, promoting is hard work! And after my walk along the Roanoke River I checked my stats again and was surprised, and thrilled, to find that The Valentine's Day Curse was actually selling! At 5:00 pm the book had moved to the left side of the screen into the # 7 position on Amazon's Paid Best Seller's Kindle list, and #12 on the Fiction Book list!
Yes, paid sales!
Now, what about the week long Read an eBook Smashwords promotion for Fractured Facade? One word...Blech! That my friends, I would consider a bust, except I did get one sample download which resulted in one paid sale. So, I am happy that my novel is in one new reader's hands. However, with the results of both promotions I am now convinced that I need to pull my novel from everywhere else and enroll it exclusively at Amazon. I know I said I wanted it available to the most people, and based on actual experiences, I think that would probably be if I put it into Amazon's KDP Select program. Gotta go where the action is.
One quick check this Monday morning before I post this shows The Valentine's Day Curse is still selling, but has moved down to the #12 paid position. I'll take it!
The most important lesson learned is that I need to get back to writing. You want to sell books? Write them...
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