Unintended Consequences

I wrote a little book a while ago. Okay, it's not little. It's honkin' huge; over 90,000 words. It took me less than a year to write it, and four more to re-write, cut, edit, re-re-write, search for an agent, be told that a heroine with disabilities is a "hard sell" so no thank you and finally decide, "Screw it, I have KDP and Createspace. If I break even, I'll be happy."

Last year I published The Carriage Trade. Sales were okay, nothing spectacular. But the reviews I got (and no, not all of them were from my friends. Some were from people I know from the internet who have no vested interest in writing a good review for me) were good.

I finally finished the follow up to The Carriage Trade: It's called The Re-Education of the One Trick Pony. I published that on May 1, and to help publicize it, I decided to give away downloads of The Carriage Trade and my short story, Splitting the Difference.

When I left for work on Thursday, my numbers were respectable. At 1:00pm over 850 copies of TheCarriage Trade and 140 copies of Splitting the Difference had been downloaded.  I was satisfied with those numbers. The last time I gave away Splitting the Difference, a rough total of 850 were snagged.

I got to work, chatted with barn manager Kar for a while, then opened the browser on my phone to take a peek. I just about passed out.

In less than an hour, I went from 850 to 1250 in downloads. And the numbers shot up from there. With the amount of downloads per minute, I prognosticated that I'd reach 4000 by the time I left work for home, about 11:30pm.

I reached 4000 at 9:18pm.

As of this writing, 11:30 am on Friday May 3, I've surpassed the 5200 mark.

Needless to say I've been in a constant state of humble shock since yesterday afternoon. All I can figure out is one of the free eBook sites must have picked up on my offer and promoted it. Whoever you are, thank you so much! And if you arrived here because you muddled your way through the internet maze and found my blog after downloading a copy of The Carriage Trade, thank you, also.

And if you haven't, go get one now. The offer ends at 11:59 on Sunday, May 5, 2013.

If you enjoy The Carriage Trade, and want to read more about the exploits of the carriage tribe, pick up a copy of The Re-Education of the One Trick Pony. 

*If you purchase a copy of The Re-Education of the One Trick Pony, make sure to enter the contest for the coffee mugs. The details are available here.