I have a book on Amazon for Kindle that has never sold. The name, perhaps, does not grab. It is “Frogs in Aspic” and it is a collection of short stories that don’t fit well into a genre niche. The best way to explain it is that I sometimes try to write stories like the ones Ray Bradbury wrote early in his career for the 1930s and 1940s pulp markets. These are strange stories, but may not have clear Science Fiction or Fantasy elements.

It has been up on the Kindle store for a year and did not sell one copy. The blame is mine. The description of the book is short and uninteresting. The title sucks. I never advertised it the way I did Error Message Eyes. I was never able to get anyone to review it, and I ignored it.

I decided to try a Kindle promotion and give it away for a few days. At the same time I will push it on Reddit, and Facebook. The goal here is to get enough “sales” of the free version to rise to the top of its category in Amazon and when the promotion ends, have it be at the top of the list so that it generates real sales. To do this I would need about 500 sales in the next few days.

So far about 70 people have bought the book, but that is not nearly enough. I am stuck at about #70 in Amazon’s kindle short stories list. This is many pages in, so that no one will ever see it.

Since there is no way anyone would have bought the book, giving it away for free for a few days is not a gamble at all. I risk nothing. I have a reasonable chance of the book hitting the top of the list and then sustaining some sales for a while, but I would make 38¢ per sale so it’s not like I will get rich on it.

Some of these stories are my best, I think. If you have an account with Amazon click here and purchase the book – it’s free for the next day or so; 99¢ after that.