The Experiment with Cheap E-books Continues

[I. J. Parker]

We have some other threads on pricing.  It's a controversial subject.  The idea of offering 99 c. novels or freebies to get high "sales" stats started more than a year ago.  Joe Konrath made that work for him.  He was very good about sharing his story and his income, and a multitude of previously unpublished folk threw their work up on Kindle etc.  Amazon started listing sales and freebies separately.  Since then the playing field has changed.  Kindleboards is full of very hostile posts about the trash people publish and try to sell for 99 c.  Or give it away.  Low prices and freebies have gotten a bad name and readers are being warned away.

Then came Amazon Select.  Amazon Select lets Amazon Prime subscribers borrow titles for free.  The author who makes titles available gets a single 5-day promotion when one of the titles will be free to everyone.  We don't know yet if that promotion will pay off.

 

For what it's worth:  DREAM OF A SPRING NIGHT , Book One of the HOLLOW REED trilogy

(Historical fiction set in 12th c. Japan) will be free, starting today.  I'll report on how that worked out.

 

If anyone else has subscribed to the Amazon Select deal, please share your results.

[Christopher Valen]

Thank you for your willingness to share your results, I.J. I'll be interested in hearing what happens.

[J W Nelson]

Yes, thank you for sharing your experiences with those of us who plan to make that voyage in the very near future. Luck!

[I. J. Parker]

Thanks.  This morning, the book is number 11 for historical fiction.  I can't access the number of downloads unfortunately.  And the numbers of sales for the next two books aren't in yet.  The big question is, of course, what the impact of the give-away is on subsequent sales.

 

Keep in mind that many people just get freebies and have no intention of buying anything.  Reports from others (not in a niche field) are excellent.  Thriller writers see huge download numbers and subsequent sales.  It may be wise not to use up all 5 days in a block, as I have done.

[Eric Christopherson]

Good luck, I.J.! FYI, I don't write serial novels, they are all stand-alones, but the initial bump for sales of one's other books based on my own experience with going free is modest. Perhaps down the road when readers actually read the book they got for free they'll come back for some of my other stuff. (Of course I wonder what percentage of the free downloaders ever will read the book.)

[I. J. Parker]

Thanks, Eric.  We can but hope and experiment.  :)

[Eric Christopherson]

I've had great results with using one free day at a time as opposed to all five at once.

On the third of January, for example, my co-authored thriller, Frame-Up, normally $2.99, went free. The trick is to promote your freebie a bit so as to reach the top 100 free list on Amazon.

Frame-Up did that, with the result being 11,300 downloads. Here it is four days later and the bump in sales after returning to the "paid" column continues.

Before going free the ebook was ranked on Amazon at about 30,000 and yesterday it reached the low 300s; it's still in the mid 300s now with nearly 600 sales over the last three plus days. And in addition 135 people have borrowed the book (Amazon hasn't released the info yet on how much they'll pay per borrow from their Kindle library).

[I. J. Parker]

Novelrank doesn't show rankings and downloads for free books.  I assume you access this information via your personal author page.  My books were uploaded by my agency.  Another reason why I should handle e-books myself.

[Eric Christopherson]

Yes, you have to go through Amazon's KDP dashboard to obtain # downloads. Rankings you can get on the ebook's product page on Amazon. They're usually updated hourly.

[I. J. Parker]

Thanks.  I guessed as much.  What I have to figure out next is how to make deals with Amazon, such as getting promotion for one-year exclusives.  This has been done by the agency, and it has produced some nice sales spikes in the first month.  It seems impossible to communicate via e-mail with an actual contact person there.

[Christopher Valen]

Just so I understand this correctly, I.J., when you decided to try Amazon Select and list your books for free for 5 days, did you then have to remove your books from Nook as part of the agreement?

[I. J. Parker]

Yes, that's the deal.  But I have a Kindle exclusive on the books anyway, so no loss.

 

How much I gain by including Nook, and Smashwords, I still have to find out.  They don't pay promptly like Amazon. Smashwords does some promotion.  I don't think Nook does anything.

[Phillip Thomas Duck]

I'm in day two of a similar promotion for my thriller novella, DISTRACTED. So far there have been quite a few downloads. I'm very interested in seeing what the sales look like once the promotion period ends. The potential exposure to new readers is great, and I wasn't at all hesitant to give up the Nook sales to try it.