The Early Numbers are In--Kindle Select Free Books

I promised to return here to talk more about my experience with the new Kindle Select Lending program where authors can make their books free a few days every 90 days. Joe Konrath just made his numbers public yesterday so he beat me to it, but now...

The Numbers are in on the Mosiman Experiment...

And the Numbers slay me...

I'll give you a total number of downloads of my books on Kindle since January 1. 8073. Eight thousand and seventy-three. I like it! That does not include books not in the program. It also doesn't include books that had good downloads between Dec. 28-31, and those included the first books I put up for free, two short stories.

Here are how the numbers came out on each title.

WIREMAN-4272
BAD TRIP SOUTH-1454
UNIDENTIFIED-1049
HORROR TALES-676
HORROR TALES 2-662
                             ----------
                              8073
It's maybe one-fourth, total, of the downloads Konrath had, but it ain't chopped liver, baby. Especially since I've been putting up Kindle books for a year, compared to Konrath's three years, and considering he is Kindle's darling, which he richly deserves and I mean that sincerely, and right now I am not on Kindle's radar. Also, I don't have nearly as many titles up in the program as our good guru. So I think this was a very respectable showing of just five titles over11 days. (What would have happened if I'd had 27? Woohoo.)

Yes, I know I gave more than eight thousand books away. And I expect to get eight thousand in good will, if not in money, but I'll take the money, and I trust that audience I just reached for free is going to come back to buy. I'm already getting sales I wouldn't have otherwise gotten from people who might not have known about my work before. Is it translating into money, yes, it is. Can I brag about how much money? No, I can't, because this experiment is something that will have repercussions a month from now, two months, three months from now. I'll know then what these free giveaways have wrought. Do I think it is going to translate into more money and more readers? You betcha. Oh, you betcha, Grasshopper.

I am working harder than I have worked in years on my writing and my career. I am compiling new short story collections, (LIFE NEAR THE BONE). I am doing some edits on formatting and scanning and doing OCR work on my novel, NIGHT CRUISING, one of my important back list titles I want available as an e-book on Kindle.

However, I am not too crazy busy to bring you some blog interviews here from a few great, interesting writers. The first one is scheduled for January 28 with James Robert Smith. We hope to interview Rick Hautala in February. I'll have a guest blog post here for you every month, sometimes more than one a month, we'll see how my schedule works out. So don't go away. Put this page as a Favorite, come and see me, leave a comment, Google + me, or whatever--you know, just come on back when you can. I think we're going to have some good times.

And I tell you what. If I start making bags of money on e-books, you'll be the first to know, because I want this blog to be informational and EVERYONE wants to know how the Kindle Select Program is doing.