A week or so ago, I enrolled my e-books in Amazon’s KDP Select program. Long story short, it allows Amazon Prime users to borrow my books for free and (supposedly) results in more sales. It also lets me give my books away for free for five days every three months. The logic is simple: give your books away for free, get higher sales ratings, more reviews, and so on, and after the giveaway ends, your book will start making you a lot more money. Also, fame and/or glory. Maybe. Who knows.

Aaaanyway, I decided to give away my “Go to college without going broke” book today and tomorrow just to see what would happen. I just woke up and logged it into my KDP menu to see what the sales are like and, well, let’s say it’s a good thing I wasn’t drinking my morning tea because HOLY COW, 614 DOWNLOADS!!!! The number grows every time I click “Refresh,” so it’s probably a safe bet that it will reach several thousand by tomorrow midnight. Just to give you a rough idea, my other book, “Atheism-101,” never sold more than 320 copies a month. And the truth is, whatever happens after the sale ends, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t care if “Go to college” will plunge back into the depths of Amazon’s ratings, with hardly any sales save for on occasional bored reader. Sure, the money would be great, but what matters the most is that 639 people (just got 25 new downloads in the past two minutes!) will have read my book and learned my money-saving secrets.

Even if only 10% of them actually follow up on my advice, that’s still 64 people that will end up saving time and money and beating the system. It’s such an odd feeling – knowing that right now, over 600 people are reading something I wrote months ago, essentially tapping into my mind and learning about the college shortcuts I’d come up with years ago. It’s an odd feeling – odd but not unpleasant. I wonder what will happen next. Right now, at 8:04am Pacific Time, there have been 681 downloads, and the book is currently ranked #3,195 Free in Kindle Store. Eight hours down, 40 more to go!

And to all those who found my site from the blurb at the end of the book – welcome! Leave a comment, say hello, and I hope all that atheism-related stuff doesn’t scare you away. *g*