As of midnight, last night, the timeframe to download the Kindle version of Journey to Aztlan for free ended. Since announcing the free timeframe on last Wednesday, I posted one other new article promoting the download period. Between Thursday and Saturday, there were exactly one hundred (100) downloads. From my perspective, this promotion was a success.

I’m new to all this eBook business and quite frankly, new to the idea of Web-promotion activities. In the old days, like seven (7) years ago, we authors had to bounce between bookstores in order to promote our books. Nowadays, there are all sorts of ways to market our collection of words and, heck, even what constitutes a “book” anymore has changed.

Again, in the days of yore, the ballpark word-count for a book was around fifty thousand (50,000). Now, a Kindle version of a “book” can be as low as eight thousand (8,000).

With this low word count, books are exploding onto the Amazon marketplace. Getting anyone to pay attention to any one work seems to have a low probability of success. In my limited experience (Journey to Aztlan and my leadership model), it’s a matter of constant outreach and self-promotion. Because I know that people act from their own perceived best interests (the whole “what’s in it for me” thing), I recognize the need to sell people on the idea that there’s more value for them in downloading and reading my books than there is in not doing so. Still, with as crowded a market as Amazon is, one hundred (100) downloads is nothing short of a victory in my opinion.

I didn’t spend one dime on any promotional activities nor did I send dozens of email blasts or do anything other than re-blog a couple of older posts that contained an audio file and a link to a video of me reading from Journey to Aztlan. So, from a cost/benefit perspective, the benefits far outweighed the costs and really, that’s the most important measure of success there is in any undertaking.

So, to all of those who downloaded Journey to Aztlan over the last few days: THANK YOU! It may sound dumb, but just actively attempting to read the book speaks volumes about your interest in making a positive change in this world of negative energy. Again, thank you for our downloads and while other authors may see four (4), five (5) or even six (6) figure amounts of downloads, I’m certain that for me, an unknown Chicano nobody author, one hundred (100) downloads marks a successful Kindle free book promotion.