Can I Achieve Fame and Glory by Giving Away an Angel? Or––Does Amazon's KDP Giveaway Program Work?

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy--The story's even better than the cover. Really.

I am the only person I know who spent more than a month working beyond reasonable limits, especially reasonable limits for someone recovering from surgery, on an Amazon Bestseller Launch Day only to sell a lousy 13 books.  It’s written about here.  The idea for this now archaic practice was to pick a particular day on which to launch your book and bribe your friends, or anybody, into buying it on that day by offering downloadable prizes. This would cause the Amazon book counters to go crazy and you’d get a best seller and lots of money. No one’s doing Amazon Bestseller Days anymore because so many people did them that the system broke. Doesn’t work any more.

OK. The bestseller launch I did was a failure on almost every count. (Documented in the link above.) It was horrible. I vowed never to do anything so stupid again. (This is always a dumb vow, since the human capacity to do stupid things is well documented by history and the tabloids.)  Not only that, my family has a history of not doing well on gambling type, or just winning type, activities. (My father was very successful, but he died young. And my grandmother once won a mink stole at a church raffle.) Other than that, and a few hundred horse show ribbons and a few championships, The Secret eludes us. Or maybe just me.

I say this to introduce my first KDP free-download program, which is starting this Saturday, July 21, 2012, and ending Sunday, July 22, 2012. At some point. (Amazon is a little vague about when these things begin and end.) If you sign up your Kindle book for Amazon’s KDP program (which you do by hitting a button on your Kindle dashboard), you get to pick 5 days in a 90 period during which Amazon will give your book away for you. People––real people that I know––have made tons of money on this and created gygundous careers and written books about their success. See my friend Cheryl Kaye Tardif’s book, How I Made $42,000 in One Month Selling my Kindle eBooks, for instance. I am launching into this endeavor based on my faith in Cheryl’s result. Hopefully it wasn’t just for Cheryl.

I have the horrible feeling that I’m walking into another Amazon Bestseller Day, but this time one where I don’t sell a lousy 13 books, I give them away. I also scheduled (inadvertently) the free days right when we’re leaving for vacation, so I’ll be traveling and packing and so on, instead of stomping the internet letting people know about my giveaway. And I’m right in the middle of a rewrite of my monster novel, the sequel to Numenon. I’d rather be writing than trying to figure out Hoottweeter, or whatever it’s called.

So, with that auspicious intro, I’m letting you know that: 

(1) I’m going to write up this KDP thing. I’ll tell you the real skinny as it plays out. This series is going to be really great, because unlike some people who write books about this kind of thing and make tons of money, I have no skills or inclination to market and a track record to match. If I can do it, you definitely can.

(2) YOU can get a Kindle of my multi-award winning, super-well reviewed, knock your socks off sci-fi/visionary fiction book, The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy, this Saturday & Sunday, July 21 & 22 for free! Just click that link, check to make sure the price is actually $0.00, and download away.

Now I’m going to go learn Hootwinger and bombard the world with the good news of the free The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy every hour.

And I’ll let you know how the free The Angel  bit works out!

Sandy Nathan

Sandy Nathan is the winner of twenty-two national awards for her writing. She’s won in categories from memoir, to visionary fiction, to children’s nonfiction. And more.

Sandy’s  books are: (Click link to the left for more information on each book. All links below go to Kindle sale pages.)
Sam & Emily: A Love Story from the Underground (paperback. Kindle coming)
Lady Grace: A Thrilling Adventure Wrapped in the Embrace of Epic Love (paperback. Kindle coming)
The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy
Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money
Tecolote: The Little Horse That Could
Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice