Yesterday was the first time I ever listed my book as a free Kindle book on Amazon.com and the response I got was insane and so unexpected. I began the night before, sending out a Facebook post letting my followers know that the e-book would be free on Sunday and asking them to share the post as much as they could. Then I started on my twitter followers.

With 1400+- followers, I knew sending each a direct message would be a daunting task, but should pay off with exposure for the book. I managed to write a DM that I could copy and paste for each of my followers. Using My Tweeple, I loaded a list of all followers, making it much easier to take breaks and not lose my place - and also make sure I did not send the same person too many of the same DM. It was also a good opportunity to lose the followers I had who were irrelevant to me such as those who did not speak English or I had no interest in what they had to tweet about. Harsh, but you just can't follow everyone, right?.

Wow. With 100 or so out of the way the night before, I started at 8:00am on Sunday, sending out my well crafted DM that not only had a link to my free e-book, but also a plea for re-tweets. I was not done until almost 6:00pm.

Sometime in the afternoon a Twitter follower sent me a message that he had received my DM and would certainly send out a re-tweet for me. He congratulated me on getting my book up to #2 in my category on Kindle. WHAT???? #2. Are you kidding me, I asked?? No, he responded - check it out - you are at #2.

I was stupefied.

I sent out a few Facebook posts thanking my friends for their help in achieving this wonderful status and also a thank you to my Twitter followers. Within the hour, My status had moved up to #1 in my category and #137 in ALL of Kindle for the day.

I gave away over 2000 e-books yesterday. That exposure was amazing for the book and today I have received many emails about the book from the press and from a couple of agents.

The craziest thing is the number of twitter followers I picked up. I jumped from 1400 followers to 7800 followers by this morning. Crazy, right?

The power of social media should never be underestimated. To all of my new followers, thank you. To my more long term followers, thank you and WAY TO GO! You made this all possible for me and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.