"Selling" free ebooks

Do you have books you still offer at a price, and are they selling more? Because that would be the way to get some idea.

Yes, time will tell. Give it a month, then look at the data.

IMHO it is good to have some free and some paid content. Free ones is to get them hooked, the others to make money

One of the things I read on Smashwords' Marketing Suggestions was to give someone who bought a paperback a coupon to get another of your books free at Smashwords.

I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like a great idea.

I'm also tempted to do what you did, Kingson, so please come back and let us know what's happening now you're back to charging for the download.

What it does prove is that those who surf the net still feel free is better than paying even a meager $2.99 for something. That is part of the problem with the Internet culture.

Still, this can be a good thing if you have seduced a reader to return and purchase your other book at $2.99. This would translate to $1.99 per book, and if they tell a friend and that friend buys both book, now your sales margin is rising. Only time will tell...

I tend to use reprints as the free content.

I think that by giving people a chance to sample your writing you are giving them a chance to fall in love with your writing. It's sort of like planting a seed and watching it grow. If they like it, they will come back for more. But you have to give it quite awhile to see results.

thothguard51 said:

What it does prove is that those who surf the net still feel free is better than paying even a meager $2.99 for something. That is part of the problem with the Internet culture...

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This has nothing to do with the internet culture.


Every consumer everywhere thinks free is better.

veinglory said:

IMHO it is good to have some free and some paid content. Free ones is to get them hooked, the others to make money

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The magic number I see listed places is "5." Once you have 5 works available for purchase, free content can really drive the backlist and increase sales.

I write serial fiction for the web, so I have seven books that I previously serialized and which are free to read on my website.

I'm selling those, in addition to two for-pay-only books, on Amazon right now. The weird thing is that the free books sell better than the books that are only for sale. I don't know why this is. Part of me thinks it's got to be because people don't know the book are on the web for free. The only other thing I can think is that people really want to read on their ereaders, not from a computer screen, and so that's why they buy the other books.

Of course, it could just be that the books that are free are better than the other books, or that they've been out longer and had more time to generate word of mouth traffic or... I don't know, a host of other things. Still, I'm keeping my eye on this, because right now, I think it's super strange.

I do know that free books work for me as a selling tool. I mean they work for me as a consumer. I've tried authors on the free download and I've found a couple I really like this way. If I like them, I'll nom their whole backlist. I found Kelley Armstrong this way. Read one book and loved it so I bought the rest of hers one at a time, something like 11 books. So she gave me one book and I bought 11 more in her Women of the Otherwold series. Pretty good return for her free content.

I've also found some I wouldn't touch with a 30 foot pole including one highly touted, best-seller with a major publisher. Glad I found that out for free.

thothguard51 said:

What it does prove is that those who surf the net still feel free is better than paying even a meager $2.99 for something. That is part of the problem with the Internet culture.

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Free is better than paying even a meager $2.99 for a self-published or epublished-only book. I've paid up to $15 for an ebook, so I'm not one of those "ebooks should automatically be free/really cheap" people. But no way would I fork over cash for something self-published/epublished-only unless I know it will be worth paying for. Any unknown author trying to sell his/her books online had better have free samples (preferably a free book, at the very least a bunch of chapters available so I know if I want to read the whole book). Since professional authors are now routinely putting the first few chapters of their books online for free, there's not much excuse for the self-publishing crowd to expect someone to fork over 2 or 3 bucks with no idea of what they're paying for.

Amadan said:

Since professional authors are now routinely putting the first few chapters of their books online for free, there's not much excuse for the self-publishing crowd to expect someone to fork over 2 or 3 bucks with no idea of what they're paying for.

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Not offering a sample is one of my big warning flags. In fact, these days, if a pro publishing house doesn't offer a sample, I'm less likely to buy it. Not unless I know the author or their work.

Currently, I have two free ebook short stories up on Smashwords. The first one has been up for three weeks and the second one for less than a week. Free downloads have been very brisk, but so far this has not resulted in any new sales. I have no idea how this is going to turn out, but it's fun to tract the visits and downloads on the Smashwords site.

The level of sales after doesn't mean much if we don't know the level of sales before and the number of free copies downloaded.

Kingson said:

5 copies sold from publishing date of October 2010 to the event. 68 sold as free during the event.

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It sounds like your sales improved, then, if you sold 5 afterward. Did you do a lot of promotion during the event?

I am a firm believer in Freebies. I give stuff away (brand new stuff) every month to my newsletter list (which is about 5000 now). Freebies are also free advertising for the author and I regularly "sell" thousands of freebies at the store I use to sell my products. In fact, I gave a way one of my books for Read an E-Book Week as well. I never checked the numbers for that one - but it was regularly a $10 workbook. Since the store I give free stuff away at gets 10,000+ visitors a day, I can count on at least a 1% download rate for those and I make 4 figures each month in sales.

The one thing I have learned from freebies though is that you don't want to waste your time on people who are ONLY looking for handouts, but you do want to keep in mind that every freebie taker is a potential customer.

But the thing is, it is MUCH harder to create a NEW customer than it is to KEEP an old one. You should try and find a way to offer your best free content to those who have already purchased from you - and the professional newsletter is the best way to do that. It collects e-mails and e-mails are the golden ticket.

Thankfully, the store I sell my e-books at let's you send out e-mails that target your customer base. Since they get 45% of my sales, it is a win-win for them.

Last year I spent a couple thousand dollars on regular advertising and this year I spent zip and made almost twice as much...so it works. Additionally, I push other products on the first and last page of each e-book via hyperlink. Often I put something like "Did you know you could have gotten this book for free just by signing up for our newsletter?"

Gets them every time. Get the e-mail and you 're one step closer to getting a new customer AND you have a way to contact them with promotions.

Freebies can be bad, neutral or good. It depends on the context and how you use them. I would consider a bump of maybe four sales at a ratio of over 15 freebies per sale to be pretty close to neutral. In the future I would suggest running a freebie and a priced book in parallel.

veinglory said:

Freebies can be bad, neutral of good. It depends on the context and how you use them. I would consider a bump of maybe four sales at a ratio of over 15 freebies per sale to be pretty close to neutral. In the future I would suggest running a freebie and a priced book in parallel.

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No, not really. It all depends on how you MARKET them. If you're just giving stuff away and not asking for anything in return and you don't make any money, (and your freebie doesn't SUCK) then you don't understand marketing and business. It might have nothing to do with your free book.

Let me offer some free advice to anyone who wants to make money in e-publishing, not to blow my own horn but I'm a pretty damn good e-book marketer and I make enough to pay the mortgage every month from e-books, so lesson number one is that you have to GIVE people something in order to get something.

Lesson number two is you must ALWAYS give them MORE than they expect.


Lesson number three is you have to ask for something in return - whether it be an e-mail address for your newsletter list, to follow you on Twitter, to like you on Facebook, to comment on your blog, give a product testimonial (I probably have almost a thousand testimonials from this strategy - see them here) or to purchase another product. YOU MUST ASK or you'll never get anywhere.

If you're just Joe Shmo who wrote an e-book but have no fan base, no platform, and no reputation then how do you think you GET those things?

If you're lucky you know someone who can help you with name recognition but most people don't have that. So the easiest way to get that name recognition is to create your reputation and fan base by giving stuff away. Sure, you're going to work your ass off for nothing for a while but if you're playing the game for real, this will pay off.

Now, the icing on top of that advice is that if you can create something that is unique, you’re going to do even better. So be creative in what you offer and how you offer it.

A few months ago I posted a thread about Nathan Lowell - if you've never heard of him I suggest you Google it, read up on who he is and what he did, and then copy his strategy for creating fans by giving stuff away.

And edit to say - I bought BOTH of Nathan Lowell's e-books on Kindle (They sell for $4.95 each BTW) and will buy all the rest of them on Kindle when they are released. I'm not a freebie hoarder.

That's one approach. But I am also paying some bills, and for years had no free primary content (fiction) at all. There is more than one way to skin a customer.