The American Game Will Be Free on Kindle

Beginning tomorrow, July 1, The American Game will be free on Amazon Kindle.  It will be free for 5 days, (July 1-5) to celebrate the 4th of July weekend.  You can download it at:  http://www.amazon.com/American-Game-Jeff-McArthur-ebook/dp/B00LJII7GG/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1&qid=1435710093

Why do we give away books for free when we worked so long and hard on them?  Well, there are a couple reasons, but I'm first going to explain a reason that's somewhat unique to me.

I first wanted to make this story into a movie, and I tried to get it made for 18 years.  A child could literally have been born and grown up to adulthood in the time it took me to get this story told.  (And one that I knew actually did.)  That would seem like all the more reason to charge a lot for the book and not give it away for free.  However, in my view, I spent so much time on this book that no matter how much I charge for it, I would never make enough money to equal the time I put into it.

But the main reason that people in general do the KDP Select free giveaway is because it generates interest, and helps them get noticed.  How does it do this?  Well, first of all, Amazon places listings based on the number of downloads a book has had so far, not only how much money it's made.  Therefore, if you get 10,000 downloads and make no money you're going to go further up the chart than the person who made $100 and had 500 downloads.  Authors who are further up the chart get noticed more by other readers and then get more sales.

A good way to describe it is to have you imagine one person in a park.  He's shouting out a message, and no one's listening to him because it's just a crazy guy in a park trying to get people's attention.  When three or four people join him, well, it becomes a small group, but it's still probably just a group of crazy people.  However, when a bigger and bigger crowd gathers, this starts to catch people's attention.  And then when this group turns into a crowd huddled around a large area of the park, it really gets other people's attention, and soon people are going to the park just to see what that crowd is all about.  That initial crowd is the people who downloaded your book for free, and the other people coming are those whose attention was grabbed because of that crowd.  The trick now is to get them to pay.

I'm going to report on this giveaway as I do it.  I've been preparing for this giveaway for a month now.  I'll describe how I prepared in another blog, and then report on the results as they come in.  Keep following to see how it goes.

The Great Heist Free on Kindle Until Tuesday

My book about the largest bank robbery in history is available for free from today until next Tuesday on Amazon. It's a very wild ride. Some of the gangsters who committed it were the same guys who pulled off the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the district attorney who went after them ran the gambling rackets in Nebraska, it was one of the first uses of the lie detector, the Secret Six were involved, and Al Capone helped get the money back along with the help of his long-lost brother who was a Prohibition officer.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=The+Great+Heist

The American Game Available for Free on Kindle This Weekend

The American Game will be available for free on Kindle this weekend as part of a KDP Select promotion.  It will be available for free on the Kindle from Friday, September 26, until Tuesday, September 30.  It can be found at:

http://www.amazon.com/American-Game-Jeff-McArthur-ebook/dp/B00LJII7GG/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1411618014&sr=8-1&keywords=The+American+Game+Jeff+McArthur

It may seem counter-intuitive to give away one's books for free, but each download counts as a sale, and if there are enough, it can get onto the best sellers list, at least in its category.  This helps with exposure, which leads to even more sales.  I will try to remember to post download results this weekend.

Doing a Free Kindle Promotion of The American Game in Two Weeks

The American Game will be free on Kindle for five days beginning on September 26 and running through September 30th.  To prepare for this, I'm alerting several sites, including:

Pixel of Ink

Kindle Nation Daily

Ereader News Today

Digital Book Today

Book Gorilla

I'm also posting it on all my social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google +.  I'll also be telling every Civil War, history, and baseball group I can find.

In the past, I've separated my free days, having 2 early in the 90 days of KDP Select, and 3 near the end.  That way I can learn from the first.  This time I wanted to make sure I got some reviews first, then just had them all at once.  I'm hoping it will build in numbers downloading it as I would like to get it into the hands of as many people as possible.

This is a story I have been more concerned gets out there to the public than on having a huge profit.  While I believe this is a story that will appeal toa  large audience, I spent so much time on it over 20 years that no amount of money can make up for it.  I'd like this to build my reputation, and just to be seen.  I love this story; I always have.  I'll update this page to say how well my efforts are going.

Relic Worlds: Lancaster James and the Search for the Promised World free on Kindle

It's that time; time to give away free promo copies of the book on the Kindle to give everyone a look.

I'm always wary of giving away my books for free.  After all, I spent months on them.  This particular Relic Worlds story has been in my mind since 1997.  So I'd rather get something for my efforts; after all, I promised my girlfriend a hammock and a lifetime supply of Bon Bons!

It is a bit frustrating to see mainstream books never having to go through this phase, but it's a necessity for independent books to get noticed.  I've made it a regular practice now to come out on the Kindle first, do the KDP Select program for 90 days to promote it with this free giveaway and other promotions, then do a wide release with other e-readers.

So today (May 29, 2014) to Saturday (May 31, 2014) Relic Worlds: Lancaster James and the Search for the Promised World, will be free on the Kindle at: http://www.amazon.com/Relic-Worlds-Lancaster-Search-Promised-ebook/dp/B00JSW7EBY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401383605&sr=8-1&keywords=Relic+Worlds

Relic Worlds Novel Free Today on Kindle through KDP Select

My latest novel, Relic Worlds: Lancaster James and theSearch for the Promised World, is now available for the Kindle on Amazon.  I had been releasing the series on Drivethru Fiction, and had even done this book as a serial there, releasing each chapter as I finished it.  As such, I was going to have the novel come out on Drivethru and all the other e-readers upon release.

However, I looked over the results of my last two books, Pro Bono and The Great Heist.  I released the former through the free on Kindle program, and even though I gave thousands of copies away for free, I sold thousands more after the promotion.  That book still sells better than any of my others.  Meanwhile, I put The Great Heist through Amazon’s other promotion program, Kindle Countdown Deal, where it is sold for a lower price for a limited time.  I had almost no luck with that, selling only a few copies during the promotion period, and it’s never taken off, despite the fact that the subject matter is even more appealing to the general public than Pro Bono.

Of course, none of the other major e-reader platforms have a good promotion program other than Drivethru, which, unfortunately, is not a site highly trafficked enough to get a huge amount of sales.  So as a result, I’m going exclusively with Amazon to give away those copies for free so hopefully those people will spread the word.

I am doing this promotion in two stages:

First promotion:  I’m making it free for two days over a weekend to give it away to all the fans of Relic Worlds and people who have been following me on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  It’s a bonus to them, and hopefully those people will begin spreading the word in time for the second promotion.

Second promotion:  About a month later, I’m making it free for three days.  I will be promoting this one far more widely.  Those areas include:  Book Bub, Pixel of Ink, Facebook sci fi sites, Google + sci fi sites, Kindle Daily, etc.  This is the one I’ll really be pushing, and trying to get people to purchase.

The intent is to generate interest while there’s still time left in the exclusive Kindle deal.  The reason this is helpful is because it maximizes the book’s exposure in one area, making it more likely to get on their top books list.  If people have multiple readers, they purchase it on Amazon, and that pushes me up the Amazon list higher.  If it was on multiple readers, the book would go more evenly up multiple lists, thus making it so the book never reaches bestseller status on any one site.

Since the other e-reader sites do not have promotions that support independent artists like Amazon does, I chose Amazon Kindle.  Simple as that.  They all bemoan Amazon for having unfair business practices, but they do that while not improving their own services for independent authors like myself; so I don’t feel too sorry for them.