So about 24h hours ago, Amazon noticed that I was giving “From the Ice Incarnate” away on a number of other sites, and decided to drop the price down to free. What happened next was INSANE.
Almost immediately, the downloads started pouring in. Within a matter of hours, it cracked the #1,000 spot in the Kindle Store rankings, breaking into the top 100 for horror. By noon today, it was at the #14 spot for Horror and #256 overall.
Holy crap! That’s a jump of three orders of magnitude from where it was in the rankings before–more ebooks downloaded in just a matter of hours than I’ve sold across all platforms since April! The really cool part is that it’s driving some interest in my other stuff. Not a whole lot at this point, which is fine, but more than I was expecting, especially in my other short stories.
One thing I’m a little worried about, though, is that it seems to be selling with a different crowd than my target audience. “From the Ice Incarnate” definitely has some prominent horror elements, but it’s essentially a science fiction story.
I changed the category in KDP and republished the ebook, but I’m worried that the act of republishing will set the price back to $.99. I like having it free; I’m hoping it will generate more interest in my novels, which is where I hope to make my bread and butter. To jump off the free train right now, just as things are starting to take off…
…well, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Still, holy cow! It’s a wild and crazy ride!
In other news, I recently did an interview over at my cousin Angela’s blog. Angela is a mom, a writer, and an all-around awesome person, and she publishes a bunch of poetry on her blog, both her own and by others. The interview covers why I feel drawn to science fiction, themes in Genesis Earth, and how studying political science influenced my writing. Good stuff; check it out!
Cool. I’m beginning my e journey, too. I’m not up on Amazon yet tho. Didn’t want to have to put a price on my short stories. Nice bumping into you, Joe.
Yeah, for short stories it’s probably better to try and get them published in a traditional venue first. I put “From the Ice Incarnate” up for free because 1) it’s based on a scene from Genesis Earth, so giving it away will hopefully drive interest in the novel, 2) I want to experiment with price points and see whether free is all it’s cracked up to be, and 3) I originally published it more for the learning experience than anything else.
Wow! Hey that’s great. I am surprised it got put in Horror though.
Yeah, I had the option to choose two categories, so I chose science fiction short story and horror (there were no sub-horror categories). The high ranking on the horror charts is probably why it took off so much–I just hope they don’t get disappointed when they find out it’s science fiction. But they’re both speculative, so hopefully there’s a lot of crossover.