Are You Tempted by Cheap Books …?

When Choc Lit wanted to put All That Mullarkey on special offer as a Kindle download to celebrate National Chocolate Week at the beginning of October, I was all for it.

I knew, from other writers, that to have one book at a superduperspecial offer could improve rankings all round. So All That Mullarkey went on sale for the princely sum of £0.86, and, to be honest, I went to Malta on holiday, and forgot about it.

Although I’d meant to stay off the Internet during my week away (! yes, really!), it turned out that the hotel had free Internet access in the lobby and so I found myself checking my emails after breakfast, as you do. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a couple congratulating me that All That Mullarkey was in the top 200 of the Kindle Paid chart. Whoop!

Back to work, azure seas and fabby snorkelling a thing of the past, I found All That Mullarkey just outside the top 100 and Choc Lit of a mind to keep the superduperspecial offer on for another week or so. And we made that decision again. And again. And All That Mullarkey continued a slow and graceful slide up the charts until, as I write, it’s at number 50. (By the time I check again it could be different, but, hey. Right here, right now, I can claim to be in the top 50.)

As Amazon provides a whole slew of charts, this makes the same book number 3 in Women Writers & Fiction, 4 in Romance Contemporary and 6 in Adult & Contemporary.

Now, you can say that it’s easy to sell a book so cheaply, and ask whether it’s worth it, and I’ll tell you more about that when I get royalties for this period. But some facts can’t be argued with. Not only is All That Mullarkey selling well, but all of my other Choc Lit books, Starting Over, Want to Know a Secret and Love & Freedom, have gone up the rankings, too. Not so far as All That Mullarkey, but, still. It was a marketing decision to put one book out on superduperspecial offer to increase interest in the rest, and it’s working. Amazon reviewers are saying so! It’s even affecting my backlist title, which I put out as an ebook myself (with a lot of help from somebody whose support I much value), Uphill All the Way.

I think that today’s audiences are prepared to be tempted by a cheap book and willing to be converted into regular readers. I’m one of those, myself. If you fall into this category, it’s great to have you reading my books. And I hope you continue to enjoy reading them.

And now I have to go back to the writing of the current one …