The Free Book Experiment

Dear Internet,
(I wish I had something cool to open with like King's "constant reader".  Is that copyrighted?)

I published Breed last week and put the book on Amazon's Free Book Promotion for the maximum allowed five days.  So far it has been an interesting little experiment even if it has produced some mixed feelings for me.
Over the course of the five days Breed was downloaded almost 500 times.  I know these are not staggering numbers for a free book but I find it kind of daunting to think that 500 people out there might actually be reading Breed.  The book reached the top page on Genetically Engineered Category and the third page of Horror.
The most interesting, and incredible part of the experiment, has been the feedback.  I will tell the truth; I tried to give the book five stars myself.  I was sort of priming the pump, if you will, in the same manner as a street performer drops a few coins in his hat himself to get the ball rolling.  Amazon of course did away with my deception in short order.  The next day I was checking the books page on Amazon.com and saw a five-star review.  'Nice one,' thinks me, 'they put it back.  I got away with it.'  Then I looked a little more closely and the bottom kind of fell out of my stomach.  It wasn't my review.  Someone had read the book and liked it.  She hadn't just liked it, she really liked it!
Since then I have picked up a half dozen reviews, all but one of them are 5 star reviews.  The only one that was not was a four star review and was still a very constructive commentary.
It's a very strange thing to actually know that other people have read this book.  It's even stranger still that they haven't been outright disgusted by it.  It almost boggles my mind that the book has been enjoyed.  Seeing reviewers talk about characters, making them real in a mind other than my own, has been incredible.  It has been oddly emotive as well.  When I read the first five star review it took me on quite the emotional roller coaster.
I know the advice.  Every one from Stephen King to J.A. Konrath will say not to read your critics.  And I know the bad reviews are just around the corner (if I even get any more reviews).  But I can't help it.  We have to learn from our own mistakes and I guess I will keep reading reviews, and learning from them, until someone finally breaks my heart.
So that's that.  This post has also been a sort of priming the pump experiment.  Nobody reads this blog but if someone decides to pay a visit there should at least be something here for them to read.  This social media stuff completely escapes me so I really don't know what I am doing writing to the Internet in general.  Hi Internet!
With that I must get back to task at hand and make another story to put out there so I can once more go through the torturous highs and lows of obsessively tracking downloads and waiting for that inevitable awful review.

Bye for now Internet,

J.T.