Kindle Select

I've always been skeptical of get rich quick schemes, and when Amazon announced its Kindle Select program with a $6 million bounty for those of us willing to give Amazon exclusive rights to our books for 90 days for their book loaning program I was more than a little hesitant. Then, someone sabotaged three of my books on Barnes and Noble's Nook Books and I decided to give it a try, although my novels were selling better on Nook than Kindle.

So, I offered up my latest mystery novel, Murder on the Interstate. You're allowed five days during the 90 to allow potential readers a free download. I selected last Sunday and Monday as my first free days and promoted the downloads ad nauseam. I didn't expect much because the book was ranked   345,639. But guess what? Here are the results of  my first two free days:

2,174 copies of Murder on the Interstate were downloaded. Of those:

206 were in the UK

22 were downlaoded from Germany

and one from Spain.

Not only that, my other two books in the series, A Village Shattered and Diary of Murder tripled in sales and Murder was down to #147 on the bestseller list and #3 in women female sleuths.

But, the best news was that my print edition, which was embarrasingly sales rated at 5,345,632, came down today to 232,457. I could not believe my eyes and thought Amazon had made a mistake. I still do because although my ebooks have been selling fairly well, print copies have remained stagnant.

So, if you've been wondering whether you should join the program, maybe you should take a second look.