Getting Clever About Readers: Coupons!

To summarize, I have published stories in Smashwords, one of which —Jane— is free.  I have sold a total of 8 books in my lifetime, all on Smashwords, and, let’s see: 866 copies of Jane have been downloaded, and a total of 6 books from all the other titles.  In other words, Jane is “selling” like crazy, and the others are not selling like crazy.

I don’t really worry about this, except that I’m not sure that all those millions who download Jane are actually reading it.  So I have decided to put a coupon at the end of Jane, offering 33% off Helen at Ballet Camp.  If I see a surge in Ballet sales, I can reasonably conclude that people are actually reading the free book Jane.

The next thing to do is to offer another coupon for another book, perhaps offering 90% off, to see whether there are those who will actually read a free book, in contrast to those who will download a free book, but not actually read it!  That seems like a mean trick, but I have to know!!  Are people just downloading the book, or are they also reading it?

While I’m at it, here’s a coupon for anyone who’s reading this!  It is for half off Sweet Hurricane, an important episode in the Helen saga in which I have succeeded in introducing some wonderful characters, and in which I might have made some horrible mistakes.  Still, Matt and Marissa are favorite characters of mine, even if they’re awkward.  You enter this code at checkout time.  I hope it works, or you’re stuck with a $2:00 purchase:  ZY24R

Kay