How an eBook Shot to the Kindle Bestseller Top 10 List in One Day

I was minding my own business the other day when I received this cryptic email from the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing team. It said:

Dear Publisher,

We wanted to let you know that we have matched a free promotion on another sales channel for the following ASIN(s):

B003B656DG

Please allow up to 24 hours for the price change to reflect on the Kindle store. Note that as provided on our Pricing Page, you will not earn royalties for free copies of this book during the free promotion.

If you have questions, please reply to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Thank you,

Amazon KDP Team

Now, I thought this was kind of strange because I cannot set the prices for my eBooks as FREE in the KDP control panel. The lowest price I can set is 99 cents. For a long time, I felt 99 cents was a good price for my eBooks that were short stories. I set my novels and other longer books at $2.99 but 99 cents made sense for short stories, kind of like 99 cents for a song but a higher price for an album. Anyway, I didn't know what eBook they were referring to by that weird ASIN code so I had to go research it.

Turns out that particular ASIN number is for The Butterfly Effect, a fictional short story about my daughters and I. It is one of the few short stories I have for sale for the Kindle that has consistently sold at least a few copies a month for the past year or so. Since it is also a short story that is included in my book Modicum, I have set its price as FREE through my other eBook distributors in hopes of getting some sales for Modicum. But since Amazon wouldn't let me set its price at FREE, it remained at 99 cents in the Kindle Store until May 10th. And then… WHAMMO! It hit the Bestseller Lists in 2 categories! HOLY SHIT! As of this writing, it is #6 in Kindle eBooks Humor and #7 in Kindle eBooks Literary Fiction. I have proof, check it! In one day, this eBook went from an overall Kindle rank of #202,265 to #233. Amazing!

What does this mean to me? I had a few responses from friends that were happy for me but disappointed that I wasn't making any money from it. But here's the thing: that kind of ranking in their bestseller list is PRICELESS to me. It is the best kind of publicity. I have links in that eBook to my book Modicum as well as to my novel The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood as well as to my Amazon Author Page. Will these links translate to sales for me? We'll see. I'll definitely keep you posted as to the effects of all of this.

In the meantime, I get to gloat a little bit. I'm sorry if this offends anybody reading this blog post. But, in the almost 20 years I've been writing fiction, I have never been able to call myself a bestseller… until now. So, for today May 11, 2011, you are reading the blog of Bestselling Literary Fiction author Scott Semegran i.e. a very happy writer boy. Time to celebrate! Where's my beer? If you haven't read that short story, then go get it. It's FREE! And share it with your friends.

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