About a month ago I created the "Athemon and the Infernal Voice" ebook, and wrote about it here on this blog. Basically, "Infernal Voice" is the second chapter of Blood Brothers, in which the Athemon character is introduced. Although it's technically an excerpt of a larger piece, "Infernal Voice" works as a short story, with a beginning and a middle and an end. My plan was to make "Infernal Voice" available for free in as many places as possible, in hopes that people would download the story and then go on to purchase Blood Brothers, in order to see how Athemon's story progresses beyond his introduction. Creating and posting the book to Amazon and Smashwords was the first step. Getting it to price-match as free was the second step.
As far as I can tell, the second step was accomplished today. I checked my KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) account, and saw that 18 "free (pricematched)" copies of "Infernal Voice" had been downloaded. When I looked at the Amazon page for "Infernal Voice," it ranked #6,576 in the Free store, #39 in the Free Fantasy Coming of Age, and #41 in the Free Dark Fantasy list. I also noticed that one copy of Blood Brothers had been bought on Amazon today--possibly as a result of someone wanting more after finishing "Infernal Voice."
On a whim, I went to the Barnes and Noble website, to see if "Infernal Voice" was finally showing up as a free download there. It is. I'm guessing that its appearance at Barnes and Noble is what finally prompted Amazon's price match. I put "Infernal Voice" up on Amazon a month ago, but the cheapest price you can select for a book on Amazon is 99 cents. In order to get it to show up for free, on a permanent basis, you have to make the book available for free elsewhere, and then Amazon's bots find out and price match it as free on Amazon, too. The book has been available for free since the first day I put it on Smashwords, which was August 26th, but it didn't get price-matched at Amazon until today. I'm guessing that means Amazon's bots don't check Smashwords, but they do check B&N.
Anyway, here's hoping this free-excerpt technique helps Blood Brothers find some new readers.
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