On December 26th, I released the second book (Red Asphalt) in my three book series, The Raptor Apocalypse. To help kick things off, I did a KDP promo of book one in the series and put it on a free run for the weekend. Following, are the results.

The free lists on Amazon are populated by a combination of perma-free (books always at $0.00) and promotional books that are temporarily priced at $0.00. That meant the book would be up against books that had been on the list for some time, along with others that were offering a similar promotion.

My expectations, based on a previous free run of my Short Tales collection, was to give out 100-200 or so free copies and maybe get it onto one of the best seller lists at Amazon at some level. I also did not do any advertising aside from a Facebook and Twitter post.

I’m not a well-known author. I’m probably less than well known, if there is such a classification. So, I had zero name recognition going for me. What I did have: a recently updated sales blurb, a re-edited first chapter, and a new cover that more clearly expressed the theme of the book. I also have both books in KDP at the moment, which means I’m exclusive to Amazon.

The results?

First off, they wildly exceeded my expectations.

Things started slowly, but gained momentum. The book went on sale Saturday at 12:01am, and by 1:30pm (a little more than 12 hours later), it had made it to #1,528 on Amazon and #4 on the Genetic Engineering bestseller list, and number #15 on Post Apocalypse. That was when I started paying attention to the numbers.

By 3:30pm, #866 in store, #2 GE, #3 PA.

By 5pm, #654 in store, #2 GE, #3 PA

By 7pm, #523 in store, #1 GE, #2 PA

By 9pm, #456 in store, #1 GE, #1 PA

Then it stayed #1 on both lists until about noon on Sunday when the Bookbub advertisement came out. A Post-Apocalypse book was in the ad and rocketed to #12 on Amazon in about 2 hours, knocking me out of #1. So, the lesson here: Bookbub really can push a free book up the charts quickly.

But Raptor Apocalypse kept selling. At 4:40pm on Sunday, it was #1 in GE, #2 in PA, and for some odd reason started showing up in Literature & Fiction/Action & Adventure/Science Fiction… at #2. The overall sale’s rank at the time was #229. Then suddenly the link to that list disappeared from the book’s product page; although, I did still see the book at #2 in that list through Sunday night. I guess that was some weird quirk of Amazon.

I checked one last time, and around 7pm, the book was #204 on Amazon, #1, #2, #2 respectively.

The total number of copies sold during the promotion was: 2321 worldwide.

Now, a free promotion doesn’t mean jack if it doesn’t help promote another book. Well, since the promotion, I’ve sold a couple of copies of the Raptor Apocalypse book. The second book sold a dozen or so copies (Sat/Sun) and has shown up on the GE list at #56. So, the results have not been stellar in terms of helping with book two’s sales, but the first book does have links to the new book, and I’m hoping that some of those people who downloaded the first book for free enjoy it enough to buy the next one when they finish.

There are lessons to be learned here. I thought of sharing those lessons as I saw them, but will refrain from doing so and let you draw your own conclusions from the results. Although, if you have any, please feel free to share. There might be some lurking negative lessons coming, too. But that will take days, if not weeks, to fully understand the impact.

All in all, it was a pretty amazing experience. I started writing more for fun than profit, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an exciting weekend spent watching something I wrote (and did the covers for) rocket up to #1 for a little while.