Once I got the cover finished I was ready to send my book out into the world. I don't know yet who I'm writing this blog for, but right now since it's mainly for me to help me remember how Outage came about, let me share a few numbers about the free preview. It was distributed for 5 weeks before I published the full length novel. Here are my results from that:

Free downloads after 3 weeks: 627 // After 5 weeks: ~1500
Facebook likes after 3 weeks: 1 // After 5 weeks: 5
Mailing list signups after 3 weeks: 9 // After 5 weeks: 92
Visitors to my website after 3 weeks: 118 unique visitors // After 5 weeks: over 500 unique visitors
Amazon reviews after 3 weeks: 4 // After 5 weeks: 7

A couple of notable things happened to give those numbers a boost - a link to the preview was distributed in a free book newsletter. That generated about 700 free downloads in one day. I didn't know what had happened at first, it was like Christmas. :) Second, I won a raffle for a really neat fireproof bag/cover on a popular survival blog, and both the blogger and the owner of the fireproof company mentioned my website. This boosted my mailing list sign-ups like crazy.

I mentioned in a previous post that the lessons I learned from creating and publishing the free preview were absolutely priceless. Even if I hadn't gotten so many mailing list sign-ups and free downloads, it would have been worth it, just for the experience I gained.