Just a quick note that The Man on the Bench is now available on NOOK for all you ePubbers out there.
What's notable about this is that it was my last ebook title that was a Kindle exclusive. My experience with the Kindle Select Program was mixed. I had some great results and some not so great results. It can definitely help breath new life into a book that is lagging, but it can also do nothing for the book at all except tie it up on Amazon exclusively for three months. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing -- the bulk of the my sales are through Amazon, but the truth is if the book isn't selling well to begin with, then there won't be many units borrowed, so you have to wonder if the cost of keeping it on only one platform is worth it. Again, the only reason I think it is worth it is the ability to make a title for free for up to five days, though I have begun to worry that this is training a select number of readers to simply wait for when an author makes the book free. Is this a bad thing? Well, that depends on your point of view. I never have a problem giving away my work, but in exchange I'd at least like the reader to help spread the word or review the book. But to give your work away for the sake of giving your work away? That doesn't interest me much. Does this mean I'm completely done with the Kindle Select Program? I wouldn't say that, because, again, if I need to help breath new life into a lagging book, I might give it a try. But it's a gamble, just like everything else. For now, I want to make my work available on as many platforms as possible, even if for right now most of my sales come from Amazon.
Also, going back to The Man on the Bench, I should note that my experiment of pricing it at $2.99 is having great results. You see, I didn't think 99 cents was a fair price, and while $1.99 might be better, I would still only be making 70 cents per unit sold. So I figured, what difference is there really between $1.99 and $2.99? Not much, so I decided to price the novella at $2.99 (earning me two bucks per unit sold), and guess what -- it's selling pretty well. In fact, it outsells the rest of my 99 cent short stories and novellas, and it's making me a hell of a lot more money than them too. Not only that, readers seem to really like the story, which is even better. I'd worried that because it was a novella, some would balk at the price point, but so far so good. Now, of course, having just said that, I no doubt jinxed myself, but what are you going to do?