The stress and the joy of watching your book go for free on Kindle, by Claire Kinton

Hello again... I wanted to update you all on my experience of watching my book go for free on Kindle.  Just recently my publishers approached me and said they wanted to do a Dead Game promotion, by putting it on Kindle for free for a limited time.  Naturally I agreed and so, through experience, I have learned, it’s a nerve-wracking process.  

I thought I was well prepared by those at New Age Publishers, who had given me an in-depth run down as to what to expect; I had spoken to other authors within the publishing house, whose books have gone through the same process but none-the-less, no matter how much you prepare and market your work, you can never quite plan for the response you are going to get.  It’s a silent journey of discovery, where you sit motionless, barely breathing, for hours, staring at the screen, watching downloads as they happen and then every hour, re-shuffling the top 100 best-sellers... praying your book makes it on.  You discover who your hardcore fans are and have to deal with emotions of elation and disappointment, as you wait... hoping to hit the top 100 best-sellers list, whilst your position rises and falls like a bird swooping in flight.

The social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, have all been saving graces; a great distraction, as well as a brilliant place to connect and spread the word about the promotion.  There is so much support from fellow authors, which has been second-to-none, sometimes I really wish I could crawl into cyber space and shake each one of them by the hand and say ‘thank you’.  It really does make a huge difference to have other authors routing for you, which is I suppose is the real notion behind this Brit Writers Blog (brilliant idea).  As well as this, networking on-line has drawn a great amount of intrigue to my work from curious readers, which is, likewise, wonderful and really the main goal.

My debut novel Dead Game, released by New Age Publishers back in April this year, went on Amazon Kindle for free on Friday 7^th September and it is still free, for a limited time.  So far it is the number one bestseller for fairy-tales and has just hit the top ten for fantasy and the top hundred for fiction.  It is nearing impossible to drag myself away from the bestsellers list, so I fear I may be in quite a daze for the next few days.  It’s a good job it’s the weekend and the children have Gareth to entertain them.

I think if you take the time to look through the list of free Kindle books on Amazon, I’ve discovered you can find some real gems.  So, if you or your publisher is thinking about putting your work on for free and you can handle the tension, remember that Amazon has a dedicated page, listing all of your options.  It’s a brilliant opportunity to generate great exposure and to explore, not only established authors but find new authors to read yourself, some of whom don’t get the recognition from the big name publishers but certainly deserve to be read.  I’ll add a final thought at the end of Dead Game’s free spell as to how it’s all panned out.

You can download Dead Game here
You can follow Claire Kinton on Twitter