Kindle Ebook Giveaways: Are They Worth It?

Are the Kindle ebook giveaways enabled by Amazon's Kindle Select program worth doing?

On May 8 and 9, 2012, Steve Miller offered his personal finance book, Enjoy the Money! How to Make It, Save It, Invest It and Give It, free for two days as a Kindle ebook.

According to Steve, he didn't really do anything else to promote the giveaway except for small mentions on a book marketing listserv and a book marketing forum.

Here are the results of Steve's Kindle ebook giveaway:

First day ebook downloads - 327 people downloaded his ebook on the first day.

Second day ebook downloads - Over 17,000 people downloaded the ebook on the second day.

Increased ebook sales - After the freebie promotion, he went from selling 1 ebook a day to 12 ebooks a day consistently.

Maintaining ebook sales ranks - 4 weeks after the ebook giveaway, Enjoy the Money! still ranks #1 or #2 in the Kindle ebook store for real estate ebooks. It also ranks #5 for career ebooks and #7 for investment ebooks.

Increased Amazon income - These sales increased his Amazon income by $500 per month.

Paperback book sales - He did not see any immediate increase in sales for the paperback edition of Enjoy the Money!

Long-term paperback sales - But, over time, he has seen sales of the paperback increase from 3 copies the week before the giveaway to 16 sales during the first week of June (which he attributed to the Kindle giveaway promotion in May).

If you'd like to read Steve's entire post on the Kindle ebook giveaway, check out http://kwmccabe.blogspot.com/2012/06/want-to-sell-more-books.html.

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Book Authors Perennial Question: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

One question authors get asked a lot is: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Well, here's where I got my idea for a new Kindle ebook, 101 Ways to Blog as an eBook Author. I got the idea earlier this evening while listening to Ty Cohen present his Kindle Cash Flow webinar.



I thought: Why not turn some of my blog posts into books? One of my longest blog posts is one I did on 101 Ways to Blog as a Book Author. That, in turn, was inspired by another blog post I did in response to something I saw on Ezine Articles: 45 Ways to Blog as a Novelist: Tips for Writers of Fiction.

I've been asked many times by ebook authors to write some books specifically on how to market ebooks. During Ty's webinar, I realized I should do that. I'll be writing several such books, but I thought I'd start with one that is half-written: 101 Ways to Blog as an eBook Author.

Of course, as is my usual pattern, I'm expanding the ebook to include tons of samples and some more ideas. It'll be done sometime this week or early next week.

So, I'll update the links on this page when the Kindle ebook, 101 Ways to Blog as an eBook Author, is available.