Without further ado, here are the results from the Causal Nexus launch week! As a reminder, the launch plan was essentially this:

On launch day, make Ascension Point free for 5 days, run a concurrent 99¢ Countdown deal on Venus Rising, and advertise both on Ereader News Today.

So how did we do? Here are the results–courtesy of the wonderful BookReport app–for August 31st through September 7th, i.e. Launch Week™:

Highlights:

• A whopping 1,500+ giveaways of Ascension Point! I’m delighted by this. That’s a huge number of potential new readers for the series, who will (artistic hat) have a chance to fall in love with the story and (business hat) potentially buy Venus Rising and Causal Nexus.
• I’m slightly disappointed by the number of sales of Venus Rising, but there are a few mitigating factors that I can learn from in future:
  • It’s the awkward middle child in the series, and these are always tougher to promote than a book one with no barrier to entry, or a shiny new launch to existing fans.
  • The promo was priced at $0.99 rather than free, as KDP Select only allows one free promo per 90-day period and I was using that on Ascension Point. Any price is more of a hurdle compared to a freebie.
  • I didn’t realize when I booked the promo that it would run on Labor Day. Oops! Fewer book buyers are online on holidays (other than Christmas), so fewer eyeballs on my ad. Lesson learned.
• I don’t have much of a mailing list at present, so most sales of Causal Nexus would be to friends and family. Given that, 24 sales ain’t bad.

More interesting in some ways is the period after the promo, where I’m seeing a steady, albeit low-level, stream of continuing borrows and page reads for not just Ascension Point–courtesy of its ranking boost–but the later books in the series. Encouraging stuff!

What’s next? Well, back to writing. Book four isn’t going to outline itself, and the sooner I get it done the sooner I can get back to the really fun part of being an author–marketing!

I kid.

Take it easy, folks.