It looks like free-as-a-marketing-strategy works: since Coffin Dodgers’ price tag reappeared, it’s sold enough copies to crack the Kindle top 100 in the UK. It’s currently sitting there at 91, and it’s number 1 in technothrillers and number 3 in humorous fiction.
I’m quite pleased about that.
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0 responses to “Cracking Amazon UK’s top 100”
You’re on the rise… 82 in the main chart now.
So how many since the price went back up?
It’s at 72 in the overall (non-kindle) fiction chart too.
About 450 in three days.
Wow.
Right now you’re no 1 in the overall fiction humour chart and in the top 40 overall fiction. Thirty something in kindle only.
Dropped from 38 to 39 in the Kindle chart this morning. It’s downhill all the way from here :)
Incidentally, when you’re doing quite a lot of sales you see quite a lot of refunds: people are clearly just buying the book without reading the look inside intro or the sample chapter and then going “aagh, don’t like this”. Quite annoying, that.
Better to sell 11 and refund 10 than sell 0 though :)
Not such good news if you sell 10 and refund 11 – that way penury lies…
Heh. True.
Does the fact that you’ve done this indicate that various publishers were wrong to turn you down? Surely, if you can crack Amazon’s top 100 by yourself with sod-all marketing and largely for free, they could have used their marketing budgets and other resources to wangle some profit out of the book?
I don’t think so, no. Agents don’t necessarily reject because they don’t think you’re any good; they often reject because for whatever reason they don’t think you’re right for their portfolio. Sales are part of that, certainly, but often it’s just that they have limited resources and won’t represent a book they don’t absolutely love.
This is still small potatoes too: while I can legitimately call it a top 40 bestseller now, or a number 1 humour bestseller or whatever, the actual sums are very small: three and a half grand gross and about one grand net over six months. If the book continues to sell at the current rate that’ll change somewhat, but it’s still very little return.
Do people really ask for a refund for a *99p* book? I didn’t even know you could do that.
*wanders off, shaking head sadly*
Yep, 26 people this month. To be fair, sometimes it’s because people hit the buy button when they mean to hit the sample button or wish list one.