Selling books on Amazon is all about visibility. There are millions of books for sale on Amazon, probably tens of millions. Anything that kicks in Amazon’s algorithms to display your book in front of potential buyers is going to help.
It’s like trying to do SEO to get a better Google rank on the search results. People try to do the equivalent to get their books to display when someone searches in Amazon for “fantasy” or whatever subcategory you might put his books in.
I believe I got the first book for $.99, then splurged on the next two at $1.99 each. Pretty sure I got all the rest at $2.99, which I feel is an exceptional value.
If I didn’t have a huge backlog on my Kindle already I’d absolutely pick the newest one up at $6.99.
geewhiz
1747
The Cradle books are also on Unlimited. The author may know that it is saturated and not a big deal to give away free to promote the latest book.
He knows what he’s doing. When he has everyone hooked, he will release his masterpiece and charge $49.99 for it and everyone will buy it and he’ll laugh all the way to the bank finally break even.
I mean, as strategies go, it’s not without its successes:
When people buy it at $6.99 he’s getting about $4.20 of that sale. So if he sells 10,000 copies, which is a modest number since he’s at #1 now, he will make over $400,000.
Did you mean 100,000? Because otherwise you are talking about 40.
Will is amazing people and his publishing company is basically a family business. They do a lot of things just because it feels right to them, and it makes me very happy how well things are working out for them.
This makes me happy as well. Looks like I’ll be buying the new book for full price.
Thanks for sharing this!
habibi
1754
I got Will’s other series, The Elder Empire, for free due to his giveaway early this year and enjoyed those books very much. They are surprisingly easy to read, very creative and the world he crafted is unique, nothing I have experienced before. I’ve been meaning to pick up his more popular Cradle series, so this giveaway was really generous of him! I feel bad that he has not earned a cent from me and so, I picked up Book 8 for $6.99. It’s a bargain considering the amount of his free books in my library and he definitely deserve the $6.99 and the boostt this will give him in the charts. I wish him more success and to write more books. Hope he gets a TV series/movie deals!
Narrating them has been the coolest thing.
My fingers are crossed for the anime animated by Madhouse. (I wish)
As long as they let me do the Orthos voice.
I am out of the loop, but I’ll bite on 7 free books given the good vibes and see if my skirt is gently wafted.
Certainly the way he does business (and the way he writes, and the general sense I get of him from his blog etc) has gotten him a mountain of goodwill from me. I tend to buy anything he writes on day 1 (or before, if preorders are available) and talk him up to everyone I know that likes fantasy.
This might be an oddball choice, but I wanted to call it out because it’s been on my wishlist forever and I notice it’s on sale today for $2.99:
edit: OK, I see my link went all goofy but the book is titled ‘We the Drowned’ and it’s a story about a Danish coastal town and its inhabitants who mainly took to the seas for the fortune and very rarely found it.
double edit: I guess the link is ok now! Huzzah!
Thank you, that does look interesting!
Diddums
1760
Thanks! That looks great! I’ll add it to the backlog.
Amazon knows what they are doing with the $2.99 price point. That makes it the literary equivalent of the gum at the checkout aisle.
habibi
1761
ok, you all know that Lord of The Rings (the whole 3 books in 1 volume) is US$1.99, right?
One download to rule them all.
Wow thanks. I borrowed my flatmate’s copy of the books after I saw the first movie, so I never owned them.
Yes indeed thanks for the link. Only two bucks makes it a no brained to pick them up.
