Watching Myself Watch the Promotion

Doctor Luke's Assistant is now early in the second day of the five day promotion. As of 7:00 a.m. it had been downloaded 990 times between the USA and the UK. That placed it:

- 5th on the Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Religious > Historical free list, and
- 16th on the Kindle e-books > Fiction > Religious free list, and
- 323rd Free in Kindle Store list.

We'll see how this goes. With the Amazon Kindle Select program, you can have your book free for five days in the 90 day enrollment program. While most people do one and two day promotions and spread them out, I decided to go with all five days together. As I said, we'll have to see how this goes.

Yesterday I found myself frequently checking "sales" report for my Kindle books. On first check in the morning DLA had been downloaded 46 times. That quickly went up. In fact, from the time I started writing this post until now three more downloads have been recorded.

Then I saw it begin to show up on the lists. That was kind of a good feeling. At least people are seeing the book. I'm gaining readers if not royalties. Well, maybe some of these 993 people will read it. Some may just collect free downloads with the intent of reading they but never getting to most of them. Who knows?

Soon I should be getting some reviews—from people I don't know. That's going to be interesting. Some of those reviews will not be stellar, as someone will have downloaded the book, read part of it, realized it's not an action book, and be disappointed. How will I react to those 1- and 2-star reviews? In preparation, I've been looking at the negative reviews of some of the other books on these free download lists. Some of them surprised me. The most common negative reviews that I read are:

- book is boring
- book is religious but the description didn't "warn" about that
- characters are not well developed
- the pacing of the book isn't good
- book is too short
- book is too long; could have been told as a novella rather than a full length novel
- too much sex
- too little sex, or not realistically portrayed.

What kind of negative reviews will I get? I tried to work in what I learned of the Middle Eastern culture, translating it back 2,000 years. I could get dinged for too much of that. It's not an action book, so comments like "it's boring" are certainly possible.

The first two reviews of it are from advanced reader copy readers. I have one more of those that should be posted soon, hopefully today. Meanwhile, with two more downloads since the last report DLA has dropped to 6th place on the Religious > Historical free list. I can't keep checking this all day long. And I can't obsess over what place the book is in on what list.

It's going to be a long five days. And so far no sales of my other titles. Here's the link again:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007OP9ZN2