Follow up - post Select statistics

In the UK, the first of April is generally filled with silliness and pranks, and in Cyprus it also happens to be a bank holiday.  So you might think I have traded in the jokes for a day off work.  However the national holiday is in fact a celebration of the successful struggle against the British over fifty years ago, so in many ways both April Fools' day and the national holiday of Cyprus are being celebrated, only now it seems the jokes are always sort of directed at me.

But there is another reason to celebrate this April 1st.  I have had what can only be described as the best writing month to date.

As those of you who saw the last post will know, I was almost done with the Amazon Select giveaways, never seeing much of a bump in sales afterwards, and not giving away many books either.  But I thought, on a whim, to give it one more chance.  Last time I reported about the giveaway, eventually giving almost 4000 books away over three days and making it into 11th position overall in the Amazon free chart in the UK.  'That's great,' I thought, but what next?  What should I expect?

Well next was better than I had hoped for.  

In total, up until the end of April I went on to sell 401 books.  I would say that about 90% of these were in the UK, with the remainder of the 400 in the UK, and the last 1 of the four hundred and 401 was in France.  Based on the fact that I was usually pretty chuffed if I sold 10 or 15 books a month, you can rest assured I was pretty happy with these results.  This action has all taken place in the last two weeks.

So why is this important?  It's important because I honestly attribute the success totally to Amazon's free giveaway program.  Without it I simply wouldn't have found these sales.  Through the giveaway my books suddenly found a place in the Amazon algorithms that gave them a chance to be seen.  Most sales were for the previously free book, but it has also had an impact on the sales of the other book in my library.

So my conclusion is, on the right day, under the right circumstances the use of Select can be beneficial and rewarding.  I have also received three new reviews since then.  I am now a convert to Select.  I have no doubt that potentially the next time may not yield the same wonderful results, but I certainly won't be worrying about taking the chance either.