The Pressure Towards Free Books

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

This thing is starting to disturb me a little.  I'm just taking first baby steps into writing books, but I work pretty close with my publisher and am getting the skinny on how things are starting to work.

They hate amazon, but I wouldn't mind going on the Select program...and why?  Because they set it up as the only way to give books away for free. And I'm not a girl very fond of giving it up for free, let me tell you.

But then I asked them about getting on some of these email lists for Kindle books, because they did really good with that back in February.  Very powerful place to get sales.  But guess what, they're looking at how many reviews you got, and how many stars.

And the only way I can see to get that fast is giving away books to people who want to review.

So suddenly I'm seeing this kind of machine where the only way to get in front of mass ebook market is to give it away.  Like I say, I was already weighing that (Adoro will put me on that Select thing if I really want to)  but the idea of a big system forcing everybody to that and setting up a whole new tier system for writers is kind of troublesome.

I keep finding that whatever i come to about publishing, people come up with really good arguments for the other side of the issue, so I guess I'm wondering what y'all think of this?

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

That's the thing.  I scarf up free books, but it's not like I go back and buy the other ones.  At least I haven't yet.

It looks to me like book publishing has entered into an internet model, where everybody just expects everything for free.

What bugs me is setting up mechanisms that force you that way.

Though I suppose, if you're an email hotsheet for Kindle, you have to select some way, and setting the search for most reviews and stars is the easiest way to go.

It's kind of like writers swapped one pyramid of access for another.

[Benjamin Sobieck]

That's not the point of giving them away on Amazon. The "sold" freebies wind up in the "people also read" callout. It's this matrixing that sells e-books after the free period.

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

Yes, I see that, Benjamin.  But I think you mentioned that it doesn't work as well as you'd hoped?   It seems like a longshot to me.  

Good news is, is doesn't cost anything...except what you pay those hotsheets to feature it.

I have questions about the whole "lending" thing as well, but know little about it.

[Benjamin Sobieck]

Better than I hoped, actually. I sell 3-5 e-books a day now, up from 3-5 a week.

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

Great!

And maybe that's one answer to my question.

[I. J. Parker]

Arrgh!  I just checked and you're right.  I have this long list of titles that no one has ever heard of following my book.  I used to have my own books there, because the people who buy my books buy the others also or buy in the same subgenre.  Now I have something that looks like a distraction.  I don't want people to go there.  Besides, my e-sales have not improved that much.  Time to cut back on freebies significantly

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

Wow, I hadn't thought of the idea that more "also boughts" might not be a good thing.

Hmmmm

[John Schmierer]

I've been lurking here awhile and now feel compelled to join in and say a few things regarding free books. I recently gave away my first book on Kindle for three days. I had about 300 sales at the time but it had gone quiet. I had not done any marketing and didn't have a website up yet or even a Twitter account. Nevertheless, by just pressing the giveaway button on the book's Kindle account, 1500 people uploaded it over the weekend. But what's interesting is that I sold over 500 copies during the next week and the sales are still trickling in over a month later at one or two day.

Now I've just scheduled my second book's giveaway for this Fri-Sat. It's normally priced at 2.99, where the first one was only 99 cents. This might make a difference. I think people would be inclined to participate in relation to how much they are going to save if they take advantage of the free offer or choose to borrow the book.

This is all just experimental. It hasn't cost me anything to upload my books on Kindle so I don't mind sacrificing potential profits that don't really exist. For ebooks, I think establishing a web presence will pay off in the long run--as long as you keep writing more books.

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

Whoo,  John, that's great information!  Thank you for "un-lurking".   

So you're saying that volume of response came just from it being free, without you jumping around hollering and pointing at it?

Now that's interesting.

[John Schmierer]

That's exactly what I'm saying. When you go free, you're put on lists that are updated all the time and obviously read by a lot of people. At this point it's like impulse buying. If you have a decent cover and a good blurb, you'll get some hits. I'm not sure how your book gets legs after that. The lists matrix talked about earlier I'm sure has something to do with it.

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

Seems you have to qualify for that with stars on your chest.  Sounds like the thing is to pile some of that up to qualify for the lists, then jump off into freebieland.

So this has worked well for you.

Given that, what do you think of my original question about how good it is for everybody to be pushed willy-nilly towards free stuff?

[John Schmierer]

I don't think how many reviews or stars you have affects your initial exposure. I only had six reviews when I went live with the giveaway and haven't received any more since.