Should I make my first ebook free?

Why not try it, it can't hurt. If you don't like the results, you can always change it back. You might want to also stop writing series unless book #1 in it takes off. But mostly, you know how it is, just keep going. Keep building that backlist! Good luck.

efreysson said:

I'm afraid that's not an option. I can't walk away from a series until I'm done with it.

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Well, that's fine, it's all up to you. Just pointing out that if people aren't buying the first book in the series, there's probably not a good chance they'll buy the second or third. However, if you get that lucky break one day on one of your books, the backlist will still all be there ready to ride the tide.

Here's another idea... How about making the free book be #2 in your series of three? Not sure what difference it will make so just a thought.

ETA: I notice the same thing with the freebies. Hundreds of downloads, then nothing. I think there are a lot of people out there who just snap up anything that's free then forget about it. On the other hand, my sales have seen a steady upward climb over time so who really knows what's contributed to it and what hasn't.

Fruitbat said:

ETA: I notice the same thing with the freebies. Hundreds of downloads, then nothing. I think there are a lot of people out there who just snap up anything that's free then forget about it.

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Bingo!

It's definitely worse today than it was a few years ago. The market is flooded with free books in just about every genre that a reader could want.

Hi
In the retail business you can improve sales , by selling at a loss. Your web sit looks good , your books look good . I have not read any of your books , so can't comment there , but your books receive good reviews . It is likely that if you offer your fist book for free some will buy a second . Give it try .
If there was a path you could take to success, it would be log jammed with other writers . Persevering is the only thing you can do .

If you do this, make sure you have absolutely no errors in the book you are giving away. No misspellings, grammar issues, nothing that would cause the reader pause. I have read a few free books by authors who had other books available. My interest in purchasing a book sharply declines when I run across errors that could have been caught by a proofreader or editor. It is my opinion that if you are offering a free book to garner interest in your writing and to get followers, it needs to be the best it can be.

You need better covers, and you need better blurbs. Fantasy is the most competitive genre with covers. Go look at the top 20 covers in your subgenre. Linsey Hall's, the Queen's Poisoner series, Bella Forest's books. That's what you're competing with. These are forms of advertisement that will work every single day for you, and without special effort.

I don't do free books in my business. I believe that attracts people who only want free books, not people willing to spend money. Once every three months for two days, boosted by several ads? That might convert into 1 of 200 sell-throughs. But even then, will it have paid for the ads? Perhaps if you got a Bookbub, but to be blunt, you're not going to with that cover and blurb.

I actually like your covers, but eh, it's a matter of taste. Your blurbs do need a little more... punch.

Perma-free is a gamble, but if sales have been flatlined for a while, it might be worth a shot. In today's market it's not the silver bullet that it was a few years ago.

Maybe combine perma-free with some promo? A few Amazon ads, or something of that nature?

efreysson said:

I now have four self-published ebooks on Amazon, and my sales are still basically flatlining. I have tried bloggers, ad campaigns, Facebook, Twitter, review copies, a Reddit AMA, Kindle Countdown, Kindle Free Promotion, and now a Goodreads Giveaways.

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This may be an entirely unhelpful suggestion, but it could be worth having a think about why those things haven't worked, rather than just saying you've tried them and you're now moving on to the next thing.

I'm curious particularly about the Facebook thing. I just jumped on yours and seen you haven't posted anything since February, and you've only for 47 people following you. Have you been strategic with your Facebooking, or just been posting stuff? I notice as well that you've got really quite minimal engagement - most posts don't have any likes or comments or anything. So that's clearly not going to drive much traffic.

From what I've read, the people who have success with Facebook use it as an advertising platform instead of trying to build an organic audience from the ground up. They advertise a free reader magnet, and gather that data for their newsletter and future launches. I think what you need to do is pick one thing that you've heard people have had success with, a really try and replicate what they've done to be successful. Having a FB page by itself isn't going to do anything.

I do not mean for this to sound like a pile on... it's just something that's been on my mind lately. Recently I read a blog post about an author who tried Facebook ads and then basically concluded that they were expensive and it didn't work. She had a lot of back end data to support her claim. It sounded like a pretty compelling argument against them... until I saw the ad. I'm hesitant to post whose ad it was, because that would be unfair. But suffice to say it was basically a generic stock photo, the name of the book, it's genre, and nothing else. No wonder it didn't work. And to use such a bad ad and then conclude that the platform didn't work is silly.

Anyway, sorry if I've been too harsh, but what I would do is interrogate why nothing has worked so far. Pick one thing and learn exactly what you need to do to make it work. Your books do have good reviews and I think the covers and cool, so you're already ahead of heaps of people.