Rashima's Writing Blog: My First Free Promotion

My first free promotion started yesterday. I'm running it for The Dumb Bitch, making the book free until October 19.

For those who don't know, book marketing and promotion is a necessity of life for most self-published authors. In most companies and corporations (McDonald's, Coke, etc.), you generally have to advertise your product to make potential consumers aware of it. Books are no different.

In this instance, I feel like I've been having success with my Ratchet City series, but I'm always eager to find new fans. A free book promotion seemed like a an excellent way to do that, as it would [hopefully] put the first book in the series into the hands of a wide swath of readers.

It's only been a day, but I feel like the promo is going very well. I gave away over 400 books yesterday. That means - potentially - over 400 new fans! Even better, I got to see this on Amazon:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #461 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > African American > Urban
#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Urban

Of course, I also had to get a screen grab as well:

Needless to say, I'm giddy with excitement. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it does just as well today.

*Update (10/26/16): As luck would have it, I actually managed to grab the #1 spot for a little while in the Free Store while my promo was going on.