I have a book for the Kindle called “Frogs in Aspic”. It is a collection of a dozen or so of my short stories. I collected all the “Weird Tales” type stories and bundled them up as a mobi file. They have been listed for sale on Amazom for about a year without one sale! I did not promote it at all, and I guess the name, “Frogs in Aspic”, is not compelling.
I decided to distribute free as a torrent. I packaged as though it were pirated and listed it on Pirate Bay. I put it out over Thanksgiving weekend. Since then it has been averaging 3 or 4 direct downloads a day (from my machine). I have seeded about 200 copies directly so far and there have always been about 8 to 10 other seeders. These are people who leave the torrent available on their machines so other people (peers or leeches) can download the files from any of about a dozen locations. If you guestimate it out, it looks like there have been as many as 1,000 downloads of the book.
Some people collect torrents, some people make the files available on pirate sites. Some people actually read the books. I am hoping that a hundred or so people will read the book and one or two even pay for “Error Message Eyes”. I think that is not all that likely as someone who downloads a torrent will not pay for a book.
I have four other books written, but not polished and converted. I have a collection of Hard SF stories. I have a collection of “Not Safe For Work” stories (not porn, but with adult content). I have a collection of Heroic Fantasy that I needs a lot of work. I have a book on Harmonica Music Theory that I have written mostly but needs much checking. I am in no rush to publish these because I don’t think they will sell well.