Well, the experiment in FREE goes on with volume one of the Epic Apples of Aeden
remaining free indefinitely on Smashwords (here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/243499) - AND via Smashwords, on Kobo and Apple among others. Now, yesterday I was looking up something on Kobo and decided to search for my volume one. To my surprise and joy, I found it under Free ebooks filtered by highest rating. There it was on page 2 of 33, with two 5-star ratings. I went back to the Smashwords sales stats and found Kobo had zero downloads of volume one recorded. I emailed Smashwords and they tell me Kobo quietly dropped reporting on downloads of free ebooks some time last year! And the APPLE never reports free ‘sales’ either.
So we are at sea with free, partly. Fortunately Barnes and Noble for example do report free sales. Thank you, B&N! Judging from my 700 or more free downloaded from B&N and the 2 reviews, I suspect Kobo must have quietly shipped a similar number of free volume ones…
So, the reported SALES number of $3.99 volumes 2 or 3 they have sold will presumably be a result of the other hidden FREE number…
Sigh. It’s still not easy to know exactly what’s going on, even in the web age. Bottom line: until they do start reporting free, I will have to guess based on the other retailers who do report free.
One thing’s for sure: I’d so rather have a sacrificial ‘trojan horse’ FREE ebook and see some exposure and some paid sales of the rest, than nothing selling, zip. which was the case with volume one when it was (years ago) $9.99, and even when it was 99c the sales were tiny. Not that sales of vol 2 and 3 are big, but there’s one or two most weeks. Now, how to get them telling other readers to read it…? 5 star ratings and even better, reviews, must start to help…
Oh yes and Kindle – of course volume one would be free there too if they allowed it on their non-exclusive option (KDP). It’s there at 99c. And selling a few, in spite of the fact it is free on every other platform! hmmm…
