What are other people's experiences with free?

kiwiviktor81 said:

I'm thinking in particular with the KDP platform rather than any other distribution method, but any general tips welcome. It seems like a great way to build a word-of-mouth buzz and to get some positive reviews. I imagine that people are more willing to give a positive review for something they got for free than something they had to pay for (less chance of feeling ripped off).

However, I'm also aware that it's hard to make money giving stuff away, even if it is only a digital product. Do you guys feel that the sales lost by promoting the book as free is outweighed by the sales gained from the extra exposure?

Intuitively to me it seems like it should, because if you want to make a living in this game you need to shift a lot of copies, and if you have no name (like me) you need to get one before you die, and promoting the book as free seems like a good way to do this.

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I gotta tell you, when I started my FREE period i had 40 downloads in less than an hour. This has never been about money for me so I think its a fantastic way to get your book out there and see what people think. I am only a couple hours into my free two days and so far its pretty awesome.

By the time somebody figures out what works, everybody will be doing it, and it won't work anymore.

Al Stevens said:

By the time somebody figures out what works, everybody will be doing it, and it won't work anymore.

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Hah! Yerp.

I just have to add something here:

I am about 5 hours into my free promo now. I have 65 downloads so far and my sales rank has gone from #200,000 something to #8,077

That can't be a bad thing right?

Good lord....i just saw that its at #47 on the best sellers romantic suspense list right next to JD ROBB!!! I know this is premature because the real kicker is going to be if people who download it LIKE it but oh my goodness doing the free promo was probably the smartest thing I've done so far.

WackAMole said:

I just have to add something here:

I am about 5 hours into my free promo now. I have 65 downloads so far and my sales rank has gone from #200,000 something to #8,077

That can't be a bad thing right?

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With my first free short story I got nearly 800 downloads in 2 days which I was pretty thrilled with, considering I'd only managed to sell a handful prior to that. For building a reputation I can't think of a better approach. I've just put the same story up for free again and the results are dramatically lower, but I'm still happy that a few people out there are interested.

kiwiviktor81 said:

We must have started the promo at the same time. I'm now six hours in with 15 downloads, haven't checked the sales rank yet.

You wrote that your book will be free for two days, did you not take the whole five?

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Nah, i wanted to hold a couple of days for later also.

Other than choosing the Amazon Select free option, did either of you do anything else to get the word out that it was available for a free download?

Im at #40 for top free romantic suspense ebooks but i also realize this doesn't really mean a whole lot.

Where I think its great, is that it gets us out there to a few more people than we normally might reach. In that respect, I think its fantastic. Im not gonna start freaking out yet and think I have this hugely successful debut by any stretch of the imagination. It will be the longevity that determines this I think, and and future sales I make once my promote free period ends.

I still think its a fantastic way to get your stuff read. It costs people nothing to take a look and in the interim you might get to find out if you have what it takes or not.

Conventional wisdom says make the first in a series free to persuade readers to go for #2, #3, etc., and do it after the series is published.

But conventional wisdom in todays fluctuating marketplace typically lasts about a day and a half.

kiwiviktor81 said:

I'm thinking in particular with the KDP platform rather than any other distribution method, but any general tips welcome. It seems like a great way to build a word-of-mouth buzz and to get some positive reviews. I imagine that people are more willing to give a positive review for something they got for free than something they had to pay for (less chance of feeling ripped off).

However, I'm also aware that it's hard to make money giving stuff away, even if it is only a digital product. Do you guys feel that the sales lost by promoting the book as free is outweighed by the sales gained from the extra exposure?

Intuitively to me it seems like it should, because if you want to make a living in this game you need to shift a lot of copies, and if you have no name (like me) you need to get one before you die, and promoting the book as free seems like a good way to do this.

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Some randomish thoughts about free promos in no particular order....

The only place free seems to have an impact on future sales is Amazon (for items outside of series novels.) Amazon's discovery algorithms and traffic seem to be leaps and bounds better. Before/after free is identical for me on every other retailer.

If you aren't selling really well out of the gate, you have nothing to lose by trying a short free period at Amazon. Sales can't get much worse. I don't think the "lost sales" argument holds much water. The battle is with obscurity, not with missing a couple bucks here or there.

Lots of free downloads appear to be collectors. It's unlikely that the majority will even read what they downloaded. (ie. keep your expectations in check for what a free download actually means.)

Going free multiple times seems to suffer from diminishing returns. Seed the Amazon system through a free promo once, and be done with it until sales drop to near zero at which point you're at the "nothing to lose" stage again.

Reviews seem to come at a pace of about 1000 to 1. If you're looking to get reviews out of a free promo, you need to give away a LOT.

Don't assume reviews will be more lenient because of the price. Many free hoarders will download books out of their preferred reading genres and will ding you even if their preferences don't tend to match your target audience. Some authors advise waiting until you have a few good reviews before trying free just in case you lose review lotto and get dinged with a 1 or 2 star out of it. (As rare as reviews are for a newbie, I'd gamble, but its seems worth sharing the alternate viewpoint and the truth it is based on.)

Free tends to work better when you have a few very similar things to sell in addition to the freebie. Series best of all, other books in very similar genre, a free short story related to a book, etc.

On Amazon, one of my free short-fiction promos caught 1000+ downloads, a 5 star review and went from selling about a copy a month to close to a copy a day. It's still selling a copy or two a week a few months later. So lunch money, but in the realm of short fiction where typical results are 0-5 copies a month it's doing reasonably well thanks to that free promotion. I was unable to duplicate that level of success with another story even on Amazon. I'm now in the middle of trying it with a third but may not hit the 1000+ download goal before it goes back to paid.

The first book in my series is free on all eBook sites. It is now driving sales (in modest numbers but daily) to the next four that are currently available on the same sites.

For those who don't have a second book available or who aren't comfortable with free all the time, you might consider writing a short story to offer up instead. Tricerotops has done this, I know, and should be able to give you more advice on the short story concept.

Be prepared for returns from freebies, as well. I had received very few returns (folks have seven days to return an e-book purchased at Amazon), until I began offering free books. I offered the first book in a romance trilogy free and had around 15,000 downloads, followed by ten returns shortly thereafter. Good reviews followed, as well as bad ones and middle-of-the-road ones.

Offering the first book of a series or trilogy gives a nice kick-start. It can also help standalone books, although not to the same degree.

J. Tanner made some very good points.

Why would people even bother to return a free item?

I don't understand D:

Kriven said:

Why would people even bother to return a free item?

I don't understand D:

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I have no idea. I just delete a book I don't want. The only time I returned a book was when I accidentally managed to buy three copies of the same book from some error. Usually once you buy an e-book, you can't buy it again unless you delete the old copy from your Kindle Manager. For some reason, I ended up buying three copies of the same e-book. I contacted Amazon and they refunded the two extra copies (I wanted one copy).

My only thought about returns was that maybe the person returning the book either bought it by mistake (even at the free price), thought it was something different than what it was (bought a romance novel thinking it was a mystery or something) or people simply download the top 20 free books without even paying attention to what the books are. Amazon does pay attention to returns, although I don't know that they do anything about a book that receives hundreds of returns. I think that may be how they are alerted to some problems with books.

My experience with free through KDP could have been a lot better. I offered my book for free over two days but did very little in the way of advertisement. As a result, I only ended up giving away about 320 copies. Had I advertised the promotion earlier, perhaps I'd have given more away. Overall, I managed to crack the top 800 in the free store and made it to #15 on the Horror > Occult list. Not a terribly impressive run, but I learned a lot. Plus, it's just exciting to know that 300-or-so people out there downloaded my book.

My book has been off of free for a day, and I've received one review for it so far. I've also had two sales-- one in the U.S. and one in the U.K. so far.

Rome wasn't built in a day, I guess. I'll just have to prepare more for my next free promotion.

I think it has been mentioned before, but another benefit of offering a book free is that you normally will receive at least 100 downloads and the "also bought" feature kicks in. This brings your e-book exposure on other "also bought" lists.

OJ, it's hard to know what makes one freebie downloaded more than another. I've had everything from 15,000 downloads in a day to 124 in a day. It just depends on what other books are being offered that day and how many books are being offered. This is assuming the title has a good cover, an interesting description and the book is well-written and formatted.

That metric is generous, in my estimation. With 15,000 downloads, I received 5 reviews. That's about one review for every 3,000 downloads.

merrihiatt said:

That metric is generous, in my estimation. With 15,000 downloads, I received 5 reviews. That's about one review for every 3,000 downloads.

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That makes me feel better about getting so few reviews!

merrihiatt said:

That metric is generous, in my estimation. With 15,000 downloads, I received 5 reviews. That's about one review for every 3,000 downloads.

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Hehe. reality has to slap us in the face at some point! Regardless, this has been a great experience. I'm at 585 downloads on my second day in and I was absolutely thrilled to see i hit #25 today in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Romance > Romantic Suspense


I know this doesn't mean much but its fun to see. The real test is how well it continues to do once the free period is up. I realize also that it seems pretty important to follow up with another so that is my new summer project. To finish my second novel and get it going. I am also hoping for some honest reviews that might help me understand where i could improve.

All in all, free promo has been a great experience for me.

I know what you mean, WAM. I actually took the day off from work and checked the stats hourly. It was insane to hit refresh and see hundreds more downloads. I kept imagining how great it would be if those were paid downloads.

JustJas, getting reviews can be a challenge. I've noticed with my trilogies that people are more apt to leave a review on the first book, but not on subsequent books. That seems backward to me. I'd wait until I finished all three books, then write a review. More people see it on the first book, though.