The Reckoning – Free for a limited period. Why?

I had been thinking about my little collection recently, mouldering away in the basement of amazon, read as far as I was aware by only 1 or 2 others (the lovely Sal Page being one, who tweets quotes from it on twitter in support – go and read her blog, http://sal-cobbledtogether.blogspot.com/) and a couple of beta readers. To try and gain some sort of response, ie get others to read my work and tell me what they think of it – which is what all readers want to know – I decided to offer the kindle version for free for a short period, and to also use this promotion to highlight DeadCades which was released last week and Horror Tree’s Trembling With Fear 2017 anthology whose release is almost upon us.

There is this argument about offering work freely, especially when it’s something you have slaved over and in a field from which you would like to earn a living, which conflicts with all of us. Yes, I want to earn a living, but I have to get people reading my work first and seeing if the standard I am putting out is enough to warrant me continuing on this path. The comments and support of people I know is valuable but so too are the opinions of others, strangers who can be dispassionate and objective. I figured a few days of offering the book freely on Kindle might possibly increase my readership and so I felt as though I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

The result was that at the end of the first day of sales, my book stood at number 3 in the free chart for ‘Horror/Short Stories’. People had been taking a risk and choosing to download my book and for that I thank them. I hope they enjoy the read, I hope they leave a review or two and I hope that above all, they look at anything else I do in the future more favourably and come back to me again. Alternatively, they might hate my style and steer clear of anything bearing my name – but that is their right and something I support wholeheartedly.

The Kindle version of The Reckoning is still free today and for 3 more days, so grab a copy here https://amzn.to/2yhcefL and let me know what you think.