The Free Weekend is Over

It’s been exciting to see how many free copies of Star Riders were downloaded for free during the first four days.

According to my Amazon author dashboard, there were 56 copies “sold” on Friday, then an amazing 121 on Saturday, 77 on Sunday, and 52 on Monday, for a total of 306 copies.

So we didn’t quite crack the top 10 in the free store, but we came awfully close. On Sunday, it got to #11 in the Space Opera and First Contact categories (it did actually get #9 in the Alien Invasion category, but that was a mistake, since the book isn’t really about an alien invasion).

One thing that really surprised me was that the number of free copies far exceeded the number of people I told about it. Between the emails I sent out to friends and supporters, the number of followers on this blog, and the number of Facebook  friends that would have seen my posts, I would confidently guess that’s less than a hundred.  So some of them probably passed the info along, but where did the rest come from?  I’m guessing some were just people trolling Amazon for free books, and picked it up despite the lack of reviews.

And reviews is the reason I put it out there for free.  I heard from several people who told me they would definitely put in a review after they read it.  I did get one review from a friend who finished it quickly (I assume he liked it to read it so quickly, and his 5-star review concurs).  I’m hoping the Beta Readers will also review it quickly, as they read the early version, and I gave them a summary of the updates, as well as four suggested chapters to read to see the biggest changes.  More should trickle in as people finish reading it.

The price is now back to $3.99, so we’ll see how it goes next.  The paperback is still $11.99, and I saw three orders logged on Monday. They’re labelled on the dashboard as “3 paid units shipped”, so I’m wondering if there are more orders than that (I’ve certainly heard of more people ordering than that), and Amazon waits to notify me until they actually print it and ship it.  I’ve heard that the reports can be very delayed, so I’m not worried about that.

I’ll post later and let you know how the paid sales go!

Author: RickAAllenSF

Semi-retired engineer, now a SF author. Recently moved to Colorado Springs, where I work in front of a window looking out at Pikes Peak. View all posts by RickAAllenSF