Authors & Readers Unite discussion

This is a section for General Chat about anything else other than Books. Let off steam and have a rant, do what you wish, but just be nice.

Do you prefer fiction or memoir? And why?

My question was triggered by Pamela Haag’s article, Death by Treacle, chosen by David Brooks for one of his 2012 Sidney Awards (http://nyti.ms/12SoSKE).

For my thoughts, see http://marycgottschalk.com/?p=790

Not sure where this belongs, but, does anyone here have any experience with Kindle Direct Publishing 'Select' program? If nothing else it seems beneficial to be able to promote your work as free for a day or two. Good way to get your name out there. And, if I'm not mistaken, that's the only way to do it? You'll have to excuse me, this is all a brave new world to me =D

Thanks in advance!
Matt

Matt wrote: "Not sure where this belongs, but, does anyone here have any experience with Kindle Direct Publishing 'Select' program? If nothing else it seems beneficial to be able to promote your work as free f..."

There's a huge discussion on KDP select here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/7...

We've also ran two sales with Teaching Kids to Be Good People: Progressive Parenting for the 21st Century - first sale was for 2 days (a Thursday-Friday) and we had 4500 downloads. Second was a 3-day sale starting Friday Dec 28 through Sunday Dec 30 and we had 3300 downloads. For the second sale, we did a lot of pre-promotion, getting the book listed on a bunch of Kindle Free websites. We're guessing that the second sale seemed lower because it was held over the holidays and apparently all Internet traffic was lower. We did get a small bump each time.

I think the biggest payoff may be increasing the chance that the book will appear in the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" lists that's on every book's page... so essentially free advertising after the fact.