Amazon's Staggering Market Share & Free eBook Promotion Ends

My free eBook roller-coaster ride finally ended yesterday. My short story is now back to 99 cents (but still selling fairly well).  The most interesting part of this whole adventure was the numbers. I've been giving away my short stories on my website, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords.com, Sony, and the Apple eBookstore. I would have given them away on Amazon as well, but they require a minimum price of 99 cents.

Over the last two months I sold about forty 99 cent copies on Amazon. But I had over 1,400 downloads between Smashwords, and Barnes and Noble (Apple hasn't reported and Sony has been about 4 copies). Not bad I thought. That was until Amazon lowered the price to free. In 5 days I had over 5,500 downloads. 

That's 1,400 in two months on all the other e-book sites combined and 5,500 on Amazon in 5 days--talk about market power!