Should You Give Away Free Books?

Should you give away free books? There is a lot of advice out there discussing this very subject. Some authors swear by it. Then again, they are basing their opinions on results they received over the past five or more years. The self-publishing market today is much different than where it was five years ago.

Market Testing

New authors will want to see how readers feel about their book. Offering your book for free to readers will help a new author test the market and determine whether changes are required for the book to be truly marketable. If your beta readers love it, as them to give you good reviews and to share the book with others.

Set a Limited Time Offer

The purpose of selling a book is to earn an income doing so. You can’t earn any income giving your book away for free. Set a limited time offer for your free book. Promote the offer heavily in advance of the promo date and review the results after the offer expires. Did it increase volume of your book? It likely did, and hopefully you captured a repeat customer and their email address. You don’t want to give away your book for free forever unless it is a “bait” book to encourage the sales of another book.

Bait and Hook

Many authors use a prologue bait book with an offer to continue reading the story by purchasing your other book. The bait book might even be a financial report on how widgets can greatly improve a person’s life, and then offer them the hook of buying your book which is a step-by-step account of how to use widgets to be successful. A number of serials use cliffhangers as bait to encourage readers to buy the next book. Remember the soap opera that had the phrase, “Just like the sands of an hourglass…”? Your book should encourage readers to want more. This is how authors become successful with repeat customers.

Build an Email List

Make sure you collect the names and email addresses of everyone who downloads or purchases your free book. Most web storefronts like Amazon enable you to do this. Email lists enable authors to stay in touch with their fans. Remember to not bombard them with spam or junk mail. Keep it personal and valuable for customers. Use the email list to offer subscribers loyalty discounts to purchase your other books.

Challenges

Today’s market is not the same as it was five years ago. The number of authors giving away free books has grown exponentially over the past few years. However, the number of readers has not grown in kind.

Some authors such as Mateja Klaric have reported mixed results from giving away free books. On one hand, they received good rankings on Amazon, good reviews and social media promotion by influencers. On the other hand, they received a low number of book reviews and a additional few mail list subscribers.

A lot of this will depend on the genre of book you are offering and the price you sell at. For example, eroticism and romance tend to have better results than books on plate tectonics. Furthermore, choosing the right price for your book is critical to increased sales. You want to find the sweet spot. Here’s an article on pricing your book.

Conclusion

Giving away your book for free will not bring you instant success. With time, as more readers download the free book, it could lead to more subscribers and contacts for future book sales. However, you will still need to invest in promotions in order to get readers to download your book. If they don’t know about it, they won’t know to look for it. Just giving your book away for free is not enough these days. You will need to promote it, and that costs money. Money that you are not earning because you are giving your book away for free. If you do decide to give away a free book, use it to promote your other books that are available for purchase.

Have you given away a free book and would like to share your experience? Comment below!