Sale Time Again!

All of my currently released work is once again available for free over at Amazon, and will be available until midnight tonight. Head on over and download some books already.

First Sale of the Year!

After a bit of oddness and waiting with Amazon, I’m happy to announce that we’re (read: I’m) having our first sale of the year. What exactly is available? Absolutely stonking everything, thanks for asking.

Head on over to my author page at Amazon, and you should find five titles all free for the taking. If you don’t find that, either I’ve broken the hyperlink or Amazon is having some kind of problem. Both have been known to happen.

Be sure to tell your sister, tell your friends, and tell that weird guy at the gas station who always stares at your kneecaps with lusty eyes. Of course, this sale can’t come at a better time, as my sales have been slowly circling the toilet since the start of the year. With a little luck, this will make me a little more visible again.

Stars Rain Down will also be dropping back down to it’s earlier, more sane price once the sale is over. While I’ve got you here, I’d like to take a moment to thank the kind soul who bought a copy for 10 bones. Thank you! If I ever run into you on the street, I’ll buy you a beer. One that’s worth less than $7 (my inner businessman informs me), but a beer nonetheless.

Also, I’ll be launching a new running column called Odds Without Ends right here at the Oktopod Blog. That should be starting around Wednesday of next week, so stay tuned!

Cheers, and have a great weekend!
~Chris

What? There’s More?!

In honor of the giant, jagged freaking stones currently crawling through my nether-anatomy, we’re having another sale! Starting at midnight tonight and running through Saturday, you can head on over to Amazon and grab a free copy of Stars Rain Down! Take one. Take two. Send one to a friend. Send another to an enemy. Send it to dozens of sherpas in Tibet!

Seriously… just download a copy. I’m hurtin’ over here.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go hydrate and cry in the bathroom (not really[but yeah]).

Free Promotion — (nearly) Everything Must Go!

It’s that time again, true believers. Starting around 12:00am PDT, it’s another big sale here at Oktopod Digital Press! Stars Rain Down, The Salvaged Sword of Vengar, & both episodes of Arcana Universalis will be available for the bargain price of abso-bloody-lutely nada, so hop on over to my author page at Amazon, grab some books, and read until your eyeballs explode! And remember: it’s all CC licensed, so give a copy to a friend when you’re done.

Cheers!

Free Promotion — Stars Rain Down

That’s right! Stars Rain Down is once again free through the Amazon Kindle store! You have until 11:59PM PDT tonight, Tuesday the 24th to grab a copy. When will it come up for sale again? I’m aiming to be a bit more cunning with these promotions, and will be hosting a free day every three weeks, so if you miss this one, you only have to wait until half-way through May. If you miss that one, you could always pester someone who already has a copy.

Download a copy! Tell a friend! Eat something delicious and take a nap!

Mission: Accomplished

The sale is now officially over and I’m gonna go ahead and call this mighty darn successful. As you may remember from last month, my first free promotion moved just over 1,800 copies of Stars Rain Down over the course of 4 days. In comparison, this one day sale moved 1,545 copies of SRD, plus another 876 copies of Arcana Universalis: Terminus, and 734 copies of The Salvaged Sword of Vengar. That’s a grand total of 3,125 books given away! I’m stunned.

If that weren’t enough, the original Vengar story–which has been in a state of suspended animation since time immemorial–actually sold a hundred copies yesterday, and managed to hang-out comfortably at the #1 spot in Fantasy Anthologies… for some reason I can’t quite fathom. Oh Amazon, what funny monkeys you are sometimes.

So, that’s just about that. The price on Stars Rain Down will be dropping back down to something more reasonable later today (I raised it during the free promotion as a [slightly underhanded] sales gimmick), and life should return to normal-ish. Stars is all out of free days, and the other two are short works which don’t move all that well on their own, so there probably won’t be any more of this excitement until late April.

As for the impact on sales, I’m still waiting to see.

A big thanks to the kind folks over at deals.woot who were gracious enough to vote up my little promotion, and were no doubt responsible for >95% of my traffic. Y’all should be cautious, though; if word gets out that you’re okay with writers doing self-promotion, you’ll soon be awash in a flood of bozos like me.

They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!

Over at the Amazon Kindle Store, I’m burning up the last day of Free Promotion for Stars Rain Down, and I’ve made The Salvaged Sword of Vengar and Arcana Universalis: Terminus free today as well. If you’re missing copies of any of the above, I should be swatting you in the nose with a newspaper… oh, and you should totally hop on over and grab one!

As always, these releases are Creative Commons licensed, meaning you’re free to read, enjoy, and pass them along to friends. I think it’s a pretty generous deal, if I do say so myself. And I do. That felt oddly recursive.

Oh, and if you happen to be a Woot user, could I possibly ask you to vote up my listing? I’d be forever in your debt… for approximately one click at the time and place of your choosing. My generosity truly knows no bounds.

In tangentially related news, the second part of Arcana Universalis is (finally!) done, and is currently in editing. I also need to design a cover, but I don’t anticipate either taking very long, so be on the look-out for a release next week! Exciting times, aren’t they?

…

Well, I think so, so nyah-nyah. :p

I Might Frame This…

Tonight’s best sellers in Space Opera for Amazon’s Kindle store.

And That Concludes Our Fire Sale

With just over 1,800 copies of Stars Rain Down released into the wild, our brief free promotion comes to an end. The experiment seems fairly successful, though I suppose it could’ve been better (I mean, I’ve heard of some books moving more than 14,000 copies in 2 days), but it ranked well among Science-Fiction during the entire run, and there are now nearly 2,000 more people who’ve heard of me.

I didn’t keep particularly rigorous records of the downloads, but I can say the traffic defied my expectations (as it always seems to do). There were roughly 900 downloads on the first day (Thursday), and roughly 300 each day afterward. I’d be tempted to assume the initial spike was because the book was fresh to the list, and thus more interesting to new readers, but it actually climbed in the charts for the next two days which would seem to indicate that traffic overall had decreased after Thursday. Strange. It’s some interesting data to puzzle over.

Anyway, Stars is now back on sale… like, for money, and stuff… and I’ll be eagerly watching to see what effect this promotion had. With any luck, some of those 1,800 people will actually read the book, like it, and maybe even tell a friend or two. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Stars Rain Down Free On Kindle

Just like it says on the tin…

From now through Sunday, Stars Rain Down is free as part of the Kindle Select Program. The book has already been downloaded about 450 times today, and is now #5 in Science-Fiction/Adventure. We’ve come a long way since Vengar was ranking in Single Women’s Fiction back in 2010, eh?

Anyway, you should hop on over and grab a copy. Send one to a friend. We don’t mind. I promise.

Stay tuned, true believers. I think this is going to be a big year for us, and things are already starting to warm up.