I'm rounding out the remainder of my KDP Select free promotion days for both The Five Elements and The Hall of the Wood this week. If you're one of my two blog readers, then get your trigger finger ready, cause it's almost time to download.

Unlike some other promotional runs, I'm not going to go crazy promoting this one. This post will go up, then get syndicated over to Amazon and Goodreads and that's it. Alright, so I'll put it up on Twitter, too, but that's really it. This promotional stuff wears you out after a while. I'm also trying to keep my focus on the next book in The Alchemancer series which follows The Five Elements. It's going to be good, and that's all I'll say.

As for the free promotions, here's how it's going to go down:

4/10 – 4/11 (Tue-Wed): The Hall of the Wood goes free.

4/12 (Thur): For 1 day only, The Five Elements goes free.

The Five Elements for whatever reason always does well with these things. Thousands of downloads which then translate into hundreds of sa... [More]

Right now, you can download both of my eBooks on Amazon for free.

This is an experiment to see if "free" works. I won't know the results (results being measured in real $$$ sales) until after the free period ends (tonight at midnight), so I'll have another post to discuss that.

What I do know at this point is that The Five Elements, which was not selling well even at $0.99, has gotten nearly 1,000 downloads in just 1 1/2 days of being free. The Hall of the Wood, which is free only for today, has racked up a couple of hundred downloads.

I don't know yet if free will actually translate into sales, but it sure seems to be working for getting readers, or at least downloaders. The key metric I'm really looking to get out of this is reviews. In theory, the more people who download the eBook, the more people who read it. I don't expect everyone who downloads either eBook will... [More]

The Hall of the Wood is free on Kindle today. This is a 1 day deal, so get it while you can.

My other novel, The Five Elements, is also free just for today. I decided to extend the 1 day freebie on that one into a second day because it was gaining so much momentum I didn't want to stop it. Right now, The Five Elements is sitting at #5 Epic Fantasy and has gotten over 500 downloads.

But this post is supposed to be about The Hall of the Wood.

The Hall of the Wood went free for most of the month of December and it "sold" (downloads, really) like crazy. Around 200 downloads/day, and never really showed signs of slowing. I'm hoping some small fraction of those thousands of potential readers will like it and leave a review. The jury is still out on that.

In the meanwhile, go download The Hall of the Wood.

I'm getting such awesome results out of my 1 day KDP Select free promotion that I've decided to extend the promotion one more day. That's right: Get the The Five Elements, now ranked Top 10 in the Epic Fantasy (free) category, for $0.99 free!

How good is the promotion going so far?

How about:

• over 400 downloads and counting as I type this
• ranked Top 10 in the Epic Fantasy (free) category
• ranked #693 in the "Free in Kindle Store" category

Free doesn't put any money in my pocket, but it gets my eBook onto people's Kindles. My hope is that some of those downloads will turn into reviews. Reviews are invaluable; they're our validation as indie writers, IMO.

I'll post up again about final results of this (now) 2 day experiment.

Oh, and watch for The Hall of the Wood. It goes free tonight just after midnight. That price is good all day tomorrow.

The Five Elements is free today only! Go download! It's a fun read with plenty of alchemy, sorcery, and what I like to call "pseudo-science" (which basically means I read scientific articles and journals, and then take those ideas into the fantastic).

This is a bit of an experiment. When The Hall of the Wood went free, it "sold" like hotcakes. I think the new cover had something to do with it, as well. Since going back to $0.99, it's actually selling OK—a handful of sales per day. Nothing to get excited about, but better than it was doing before the month-long free period.

I'd like to--or hoping to, anyway--see the same results with The Five Elements, especially if I can get some reviews out of it. Reviews are hard to get, or have been so far. I'll continue on, though, running promotions, giving away free books, and blogging about the whole thing.

Now, go download The Five Elements for free. You've got nothing to lose and might even like it.

I've enrolled both of my eBooks in Amazon's KDP Select program.

A lot of people have been talking about the pro's and con's; I've mostly stayed out of such discussions. Maybe I'll weigh in on why I decided to sign-up at some point in the near future. But that's a discussion for another day.

Right now, I want to highlight one of the neat features of KDP Select: For 5 days during the 90 day enrollment period, an author can choose to make his or her Kindle eBook free for everyone. The normal deal is that Amazon Prime members can borrow your title for free (authors get paid for that borrow out of the monthly KDP Select fund; January's pot is $700,000). Ordinary shoppers can purchase the eBook as usual.

I'm giving this free promotion tool a try starting tomorrow when The Five Elements gets reduced to free for all buyers.

Then, the next day, The Hall of the Wood goes free.

Both deals las... [More]