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Now that it’s all over, here are the results of the Origins free weekend on Amazon.  I broke the top 10 in two genre categories!

The first Origins free promotion weekend is now over.  Here’s where its final rankings ended up:

#2,064 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Fantasy

#9 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > New Adult & College

I gave away 138 copies of the book as free downloads, and sold 15 copies of the other books in the series, including someone who bought the entire series all at once.  So whoever did that, thanks!  I hope you enjoy it. 🙂

I’ll run another free promo weekend the second weekend in July.

If you’d like to purchase any of the books in the series, you can head on over to my author page on Amazon here, where they’re all listed in reverse order by publication date.

The Origins free weekend has officially begun!  Head on over to Amazon to pick yourself up a copy of the first book in the Unseen Things series.

The first book of the Unseen Things series, Origins, will be available for free all this weekend (June 7/8) on Amazon!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GVAR1LE

Here are some more links for you as well so you can keep up with the series…

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnseenThingsSeries
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/duaners
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7427926.Duane_L_Martin

So what does this mean?  Well, it’s available exclusively through Amazon for at least the next 90 days, and every so often I’ll be running a free promo of the first book and doing countdown deals on the rest of the series.  These will be announced well in advance.

I’ll be running the first free promo on the first book of the series on Sunday the 8th for anyone who wants to head on over and pick it up.

Also, just as a reminder, I will be offering the books in other formats if you need them.  The books are natively written in the .epub format and often have minor formatting errors when converted by Amazon to the .mobi format.  So if you see any small formatting issues in the books, that’s why.  If you do want the books in any other format, just send me a copy of your Amazon receipt and I’d be happy to e-mail you whatever format you require.

Amazon’s e-book format is .mobi, which is the Kindle format.  Once I’ve moved all of my sales strictly to Amazon through their KDP Select program, that’s the only format the book will be available in, which is fine if you’re using a Kindle or the Kindle app to download and read the books.  However, I know this isn’t a good solution for everyone, so here’s what I’m going to do.  Since the book will only be for sale on Amazon, if you buy the books through Amazon and you’d rather have them in Epub or PDF format, just forward me a copy of your Amazon receipt and I’d be happy to send you a copy of the books you’ve purchased in whatever format you desire.  That way you’re not limited to just the .mobi format.

While I’m not happy about the exclusive nature of Amazon’s KDP Select program, I can at least make it better for my readers by offering alternative formats.  If I’d have had any luck getting the sales going the way I had things set up before, I wouldn’t have even considered KDP Select, but I didn’t, so I think this may be the step I need to take to jump start my sales, and then in 90 days when the select period is up, I may switch back to multiple distribution sites depending on the results I get.  We’ll just have to see what happens.

Ok, I’ve decided to go with Amazon KDP Select instead of publishing through Smashwords distribution channels and Google Play.  I was getting no sales whatsoever from the other retail sites and Google Play was just a joke.  I have to have the books enrolled for 90 days, so after that I’ll decide what I want to do from there.  Unfortunately, I can’t have the books for sale here on the website either as long as I’m enrolled in the program, but since I haven’t sold anything from here other than a few free copies, I don’t think that’ll matter too much.  I need to get the series out there and this seems like about the best way to do it, for right now anyway.

So that’s what’s going on at the moment.  If you still want to take advantage of the free copy of the first book after they’re no longer available here or on any of the other sites, I will be running a three day freebie after I get everything into select.  Aside from that you can simply contact me through the contact page here if you want a free copy and I’d be happy to mail it to you.

Yes it’s a hassle and no I’m not sure it’s the right move, but I’ve read enough positive results that people have had that I’m willing to give it a shot.  Like I said, I can always re-evaluate the situation in 90 days time.