So the results are in for SLIP DRIVE. Like HIROKO’S TALE, I put SLIP DRIVE up on Amazon and enrolled it into the KDP program provided by Amazon. A little recap on Hiroko. On Januray 19th Hiroko went free for five days. In the first day it had 260 downloads. This tapered off, ending at roughly 400 downloads. After that, for the rest of the month, it did not have a single purchase.

Jump to SLIP DRIVE.

I did one thing differently. I gave it only two free days, considering the bulk of the downloads for Hiroko happened on day one. But the rest was the same. Same amount of advertising to get the word out there.

Result? 84 downloads for US and 30 UK.

Why such a drastic difference?

Speculation.

What first jumps out to me is that Hiroko was placed in Art History: Asian. An extremely small category were it was #1 in the free downloads category. It was able to have a very large presence. SLIP DRIVE hit #13 in Science-Fiction: High-Tech. Pretty big difference considering.

But one other aspect concerns me more. Reviews.

I was fortunate to have three people–I knew them, but viewers don’t know that–drop reviews on the story. I honestly believe this made the biggest difference. I often read them before purchasing something myself. A review gives the work an amount of legitimacy. If someone spent the time to review it, it must be good.

SLIP DRIVE still has none. And I don’t expect anyone will give it a review either. Sure, I’ve had people tell me they enjoyed it. Even had people recommend it or tell me they downloaded it. Which I’m glad they did all this and as a writer I’m glad to entertain. But man, do I wish some people would leave reviews as well.

I say all this at the risk of sounding ungrateful, I know. But I want and like to be as transparent as possible with all this.

The Future.

Both stories are still enrolled in the Kindle Select Program until March. So I have to honor the deal and keep both of them on Amazon only. Once that is done however, I have a plan. First, I plan on putting them both on here for free. I’ll keep them up on Amazon as well. This is in case people would like to support me, this can be their contribution.

Second, I’ll also be adding them to Smashwords and the like. Just to widen the market a bit and see what may go down.

To all those that took the time to download and read SLIP DRIVE. Thank you. I honestly hope you enjoyed it.

And that is what matters, right? Write.