I’ve been doing a lot of reading, research, study, surfing… you name it – into self-publishing novels and the benefits to be had. I’m more than happy with my “traditional” publishers, Momentum Books (Pan Macmillan) and – well, the damned bankrupt Weltbild in Germany are in my bad books at the moment, but I’m guessing that’ll sort itself out. However, these publishers are limited in what they can do each year, they can’t put out everything I write, and I’ve got stories and manuscripts that simply won’t fit the picture anyway. Self-publishing these is the option, risking only my own time and, I suppose, reputation if these books completely suck.

Actually, publishing these books is relatively easy. Getting them noticed among the daily deluge of books that hit Amazon every hour is the real challenge. This needs self-promotion, which isn’t easy. 

With this in mind I’ve enrolled one of my books, called “Ghost Tales, Four Stories Of The Dead Among Us” in the Amazon KDP Select program. In a nutshell, in return for various advantages, I get to give away completely free this book for five days during a ninety day exclusive contract with Amazon – the free ebook market being particularly voracious with a much higher profile. I don’t have to use all five days in one go. I can select five different days over that ninety day period. The idea isn’t so much to sell “Ghost Tales…”, but to attract readers to my other published books, which they’ll pay for.

The jury is kind of out on whether KDP Select works, but I can say that I’m in the bracket to see some level of success, because I have other titles to sell. If you’re a new author with only one book, it may not be so good.

So if you’re into writing, self-publishing and self-promoting I’ll be more than happy to share how this experiment goes. I expect in this first instance – meaning the first free day – not much will happen, because I’ll need to do other things to make the world aware the free promotion is available, but you never know… In fact, I don’t know exactly what Amazon will do.

Interesting times ahead. “Ghost Tales, Four Stories Of The Dead Among Us” will be available as a free download from Amazon for approximately 24 hours on March 12th – and if that makes you think “crap, I’m too late”,  don’t forget Amazon is on Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) and a full 15 hours behind us here in Western Australia. Wherever you are, just Google PDT Time and you’ll find out the time of day according to Amazon.

Wish me luck. Get in touch or leave a comment, if you want to know more.