Free is Good, Right?

Tomorrow and Saturday Special Offers will be free on Amazon.

I know, I sold my author's soul to the corporate devil by making the book exclusive in order to be able to offer it for free.  I've read a lot about the topic and I concluded that this promotion will be a potential boost not only for future sales of the book, but also for the 2nd in the series (which will be out in another week or two).  And I hate to admit it, but Smashwords, B&N, etc didn't get me a lot of sales.  People downloaded about 130 copies from Smashwords when Special Offers was free, but over the last 9 months, there were only about 10 copies paid for.  B&N?  Two sales. Total.  Smashwords is great for sending copies (for free) to reviewers, but most folks apparently buy from Amazon.

Now that I have made myself feel better about succumbing to Amazon's diabolic Select program, I will add that I've done more than just set up the days for the freebie.  I upped the price of Special Offers to make "free" seem like a better deal.  Tomorrow there will be various sites that will post, tweet and/or generally shout out that the book is free.  Like ten or twelve.  I'm anxious to see how many books are downloaded.  Hopefully, lots.  Even if only a small percent actually end up reading Special Offers, a small percent of lots is better than selling a book or two a day.  And I've set up some additional promos for when the book isn't free.  That's called "layered" marketing.  It's supposed to be the thing to do. So I'm doing it.

I'll let you know how it goes.  Wish me luck!