To free or not to free? - Part 3

Two weeks have passed since the free promotion of my novel "Teaching Tori". Time to re-read my previous post and reflect on this experience.
Before launching into this post, I need to clarify the purpose of this promotion, which was...

1. to increase my audience
2. to gain new reviews
3. to try something new in promotion my book
4. to get myself out of a "help, nobody's buying my book!" mindset

So here are my thoughts...

1. My audience has increased, but I have no idea by how much. By the end of the promotion, I had 660 downloads of my book. How many people actually read the book will remain unknown. Haven't we all done it, downloaded a free ebook, only to never read it because we forgot about it, or we had other books to read?

2. I've had one review out of 660 downloads. Needless to say that I am disappointed with this result. Is it too early to make a call on this part of the promotion? Are people just super-busy, only just now remembering that they've read my book, but not posted a review? (Yes, off you go now, and don't come back to this blog until you've posted your review....)

From my own experience, it's easy to forget to review a book. I don't always do it, but I try to make time to write a review for the free downloads, at least.

3. I've enjoyed the excitement of the two day promotion. To see the number of downloads go up minute by minute was very rewarding, even if they weren't paid units. 

The thought that some authors have the same amount of downloads for paid books was mindboggling to me. I was tempted to start dreaming, to work out how much money I would be making if they were paid units, but forced myself to stop thinking like that - it's like imagining how you're going to spend your big lotto win. (I actually rate the chances of me making money through my writing as higher than winning a large amount of money in Lotto!)

4. Did I get myself out of a negative mindset? Yes, and no. I've had a few downloads from the Kindle lending library which I hadn't seen before, so that was a good thing. And I sold some books after the promotion had finished that I might not have sold otherwise. But the downside of the free promotion is/was the disappointment about the lack of reviews. 

Overall, the experience was interesting and new to me. I thought I didn't have many expectations going into this, but it turned out I had - more reviews.

But the best thing by far that came out from this experience is that it reinforced what I already knew - my precious and limited time that I can devote to this insanely rewarding hobby is best spent writing my next book, not fretting over number of reviews and downloads. 

So that's what I'm doing. Watch this space.