Promotion wrap-up

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.