[Becca Mills]

So, I ran a Select giveaway January 1-5 because Select was up for renewal on January 6 and I'd decided to leave the program. The giveaway went well. The book came off free the morning of the 6th and started selling right away. Amazon didn't get around to actually taking it out of Select until the next morning, so it was also getting borrowed. It had 41 sales and 10 borrows on the 6th. When I woke up this morning, it was up to 54 sales and 16 borrows, and it was still in Select. At about 5:30 a.m. ET, it came out of Select. At that point, it had 57 sales and 16 borrows ... and it hasn't gotten another sale since. It's been six hours.

I'm being paranoid to worry about this, right? It's on a few best-seller lists, and its ranking on those lists hasn't changed. Its overall ranking in the store hasn't changed since earlier this morning. So there's just no reporting happening, right?

Right?

Thing is, I didn't expect to get a sales bump, since so many people haven't been. I was mostly hoping to build my mailing list for Book 2. But now that I'm getting a bump, I find I'd like to keep getting it.

 

[JRTomlin]

Yes, Amazon is out to get you for leaving Select. 

Or else KDP is updating sales a bit slowly and won't catch up until tonight. 

 

[Becca Mills]

Yes, Amazon is out to get you for leaving Select.

Or else KDP is updating sales a bit slowly and won't catch up until tonight.

Yes! Yes! That's what I'm talking about! Keep it coming!

 

[ElHawk]

You're paranoid.  It's only been six hours. 

Set a single time during the day to check your sales, and whenever you are tempted to peek at any other time of the day, go write something instead.    It'll cure that post-Select paranoia fast!

 

[Becca Mills]

Set a single time during the day to check your sales, and whenever you are tempted to peek at any other time of the day, go write something instead. It'll cure that post-Select paranoia fast!

Hmmm ... the above words appear to be in English, but I just can't seem to comprehend them ... concept too alien ... Erk! "Internal Server Error!"

Er, sorry, have spent too much time on Smashwords today.

 

[ElHawk]

Hahaha! 

Believe me, it works.  I've become so bored with checking my sales that I forget to do it most days.

 

[vrabinec]

You're paranoid. You've always been paranoid. I bet you're even paranoid about being paranoid, you know, kinda like everything I say is true...I am lying.

 

[Quiss]

I'll see your paranoid and give you just plain crazy.

I've now convinced myself that every time I whine about sales being slow, they pick up. And as soon as I gloat about how spiffy it all is, they tank.
So I'm just going to shut up about numbers.

 

[Becca Mills]

Okay, okay, y'all're convincing me.

(But still no sales!) 

 

[Guest]

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean everyone isn't out to get you.

Seriously, a part of me wonders if your sales are dropping off because of some Amazon algorithm that favors Select books over non-Select books, if only in a marginal way. I wouldn't put it past them.

But ultimately, you've got to take the long-term view and ask yourself "what am I going to regret more in five years: pulling my books from Select or not getting out?"

 

[Becca Mills]

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean everyone isn't out to get you.

Seriously, a part of me wonders if your sales are dropping off because of some Amazon algorithm that favors Select books over non-Select books, if only in a marginal way. I wouldn't put it past them.

But ultimately, you've got to take the long-term view and ask yourself "what am I going to regret more in five years: pulling my books from Select or not getting out?"

Not really interested in debating the Select/anti-Select question, Joe -- I know you're firmly against it, but I believe it's served me well so far and serves many authors well.

I wasn't worried that Amazon had suddenly stacked the deck against my book b/c it left Select, but rather that the transition might've caused some kind of glitch in KDP for that book. If there were an algorithm that favored Select books over non-Select books, I wouldn't expect it to cause a 54-sales-to-0 -in-one-day kind of difference. Something that extreme would've been apparent to everyone ages ago.

Plus, I can look at the popularity and best-seller lists and see the book there, which means readers can too. That's how they'd be finding the book, mainly.

 

[Edward W. Robertson]

You're paranoid.

But if you're not, please continue to feed us all the numbers.

 

[Guest]

Not really interested in debating the Select/anti-Select question, Joe -- I know you're firmly against it, but I believe it's served me well so far and serves many authors well.

I wasn't worried that Amazon had suddenly stacked the deck against my book b/c it left Select, but rather that the transition might've caused some kind of glitch in KDP for that book. If there were an algorithm that favored Select books over non-Select books, I wouldn't expect it to cause a 54-sales-to-0 -in-one-day kind of difference. Something that extreme would've been apparent to everyone ages ago.

Plus, I can look at the popularity and best-seller lists and see the book there, which means readers can too. That's how they'd be finding the book, mainly.

In that case, you're not nearly as paranoid as I am.

 

[JonDavis1]

You're paranoid. But that's okay. The people running the KDP software are out to get you. They are because they're secretly failed writers who couldn't sell even through the self-publish program...
KIDDING.
Seriously, I had it going slow for me all weekend, and suddenly I sold 4 in one click. Amazingly coincidental, or something was slow to update.

 

[TexasGirl]

Traditionally, coming off free days you have a sharp rise for one day, then a decline, then another sharp rise.

If you don't improve on the third day, then you can stop being paranoid and try to figure out what happened to your visibility. Defnitely you lose some coming out of Select, because you are no longer in the Lending Library also-boughts, and your borrows are no longer feeding into your overall popularity because you can't get borrows anymore.

But it shouldn't go from 50 to 0. If I had to guess, though, I'd say coming out caused a reporting lag, not an actual end to your sales.

 

[dalya]

It's Monday.

 

[Quiss]

Traditionally, coming off free days you have a sharp rise for one day, then a decline, then another sharp rise.

I don't think there is anything "traditional" any more. Or perhaps we all have a different definition of "sharp rise"

 

[TexasGirl]

Sharp rise is definitely in the eye of the riser.

Based on the mega thread, books with 2K or so freeloads will sell about 10 copies if you were well-placed based on genre, and it goes up from there. Only the 30K or more freeloaders will see triple digit sales. I had several friends free. One had 4K freeloads and 17 sales/17 borrows in three days. One had 30K downloads and had 179 sales/200 borrows.

Since most books sell 1-2 copies a day, 10 is usually as spike.

 

[Becca Mills]

It's Monday.

Dalya has it. *This* is the explanation for everything!

No, actually, I was being paranoid. I got a sale a few minutes ago, which means the reporting is working. And it's not like a whole slew of sales showed up at once, so I suspect it was never glitched.

So how's that for a post-free drop-off:

Hours 1-29: 54 sales
Hours 30-41: 1 sale

It's bizarre, but there you go.

Ed & TexasGirl, I gave away about 13K on .com this time around. The initial bump was markedly bigger than what I got back in May after giving away 18K. "I really have the meta-data nailed, this time!" I was thinking to myself yesterday. Or, you know, maybe not.

I'll put the details on the mega-thread once it all shakes out.

 

[AmberC]

I could be totally wrong but I experienced something like this when I rolled out of select after a decent promo. I think that you come off of the Kindle Fire lists and the sales drop off from that.