Now that the Amazon.com exclusivity period has expired, my second author-published short story is also available on iBooks, Kobo, Nook, and via direct sale. You can also find it still on Amazon.com.
Here’s the description:
Amelia and Robert Burke are traveling along a lonely stretch of highway in the Australian Outback, in search of the mysterious Min Min lights.
Their progress is halted by a blinding dust storm. Then Robert goes missing.
Trapped in their car and with little hope of survival, Amelia begins documenting their investigation and the horrors that lurk beyond the windscreen.
Night Lights joins my other recently author-published story, Back Again, which I talk more about in my earlier post.
You might be wondering how the Amazon exclusivity worked out? Not so great, actually. It was enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (KU), where readers who signed up for a KU subscription could read it for free. The theory was that for short stories, the current economics of the program mean it’s possible to earn substantially more per download from a KU borrow ($1 or more) vs direct purchase at 99 cents (35 cents or so), provided the reader gets through more than 10% of the eBook.
Well, there were zero borrows throughout the 3 month exclusivity period! The five free days had okay results, but those aren’t much of a drawcard since you can set the price to free on other eBook sites.
I’m not precisely sure why readers were happy to download it for free on the free days, yet not borrow when it was in KU. I suspect it’s a combination of it being a short story (gotta get your money’s worth with novel borrows!), visibility issues, and perhaps KU readers being a small percentage of the total pool of readers.
I’m curious if anyone else has had better results with short horror enrolled in KU? I certainly won’t be trying the experiment again.
Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the story, and look for more soon!
