Okay, the trumpets sounded and my first free promotion is
over. I broke through my arbitrary goal of 100 downloads over 5 days, reaching
114. I celebrated by eating a donut. Though if I had failed to reach my goal, I
would have consoled myself by eating a donut, so I win either way.
The daily download breakdown was as follows:
Day 1: 43
downloads
Day 2: 30
Day 3: 18
Day 4: 13
Day 5: 6
So a pretty consistent ~40% decline each day until the
last, where it dropped 60%. Barbarian fatigue at the end? Or maybe it was just Sunday.
How did I do in the rankings? Amazon separates the charts
for free books and paid books. At the peak, A Barbarian for Dinner reached
number 83 on the Swords and Sorcery chart, and 48 on the General Humor chart. It
was the 4,504 ‘bestselling’ free book at its height.
A number of downloads came from non-US markets: 32
UK led the way with 20. (I wonder if my mention of the
popular Brit-show One Foot in the Grave in the summary had anything to do with
it).
Germany came in with 9.
Canada had 3.
So the effect? I now have some nice reviews that resulted
from the promotion, and spread my memes all over the world.
I did not pay to advertise the promotion, but did list it
on a number of free sites and forums, and a few kind peers in my writing group
spread the word. Thanks everyone for buying, plugging, and/or reading the book.
I appreciate it.
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