I had an Amazon best-seller. Well, it was a best-seller on the chart of books about music, but that’s still saying something. This was back in the glory days of the Kindle Select program, when authors could give away copies of their books to increase their visibility and, hopefully, boost paid sales. Sadly, Amazon’s algorithms have changed since then, and giving away free books doesn’t seem to give a sales boost anymore.
This success was a result of giving away 9000 copies of my book, ‘Band On The Run’, over a three day weekend. After the free promotion ended, I sold about 250 copies a week for the next six weeks or so and peaked at #3 on the ‘Music’ chart. I got a real kick out of watching my book climb the ranks next to autobiographies by Sammy Hagar and Keith Richards.
As the book’s reviews show, ‘Band On The Run’ is either loved or hated, and despite the many warnings I put in place to ward off the easily offended, the drug-related humor is just too much for some people, and many of them feel the need to voice that with a one-star review. I heard on a podcast the other day that the best way to get bad reviews is to give your book away or sell it for ninety-nine cents, and I have to agree.
Another funny thing is that ‘Band On The Run’ sells about twenty ebooks for every one of my other book, ‘Black Dog’, which sells about twenty hard copies for every paperback of ‘Band On The Run’. I guess books are like children, and you don’t really know what they are going to do out in the real world.
As always, best of luck in your own artistic endeavors.
Backstage Pass 