Free book results
A common marketing tactic for indie authors is to make the first book in the series free, and then write numerous sequels. The idea is that people will read the free book, and then continue on to the end of the series. I’ve used that tactic pretty much since I first started self-publishing all the way back in 2011, and I still use it.
But does it still work? A lot has changed in the last ten years. And the idea of giving away a book for free really vexes some writers. They put all this blood, sweat, toil, and tears into writing the book, why should they give it away for free? (Granted, once you have 128 of them, giving away, say, five for free isn’t really that painful.)
However. If you want a crop, you have to surrender the seed to the earth. Costco uses free samples and relatively low-cost hot dogs for a reason.
Conventional wisdom is that if you get a 5 to 8 percent conversion rate from a free first book to a paid second book, you’re doing well. So, in other worlds, if you give away 100 free copies of the first book, a good result is 5 to 8 sales of the paid second book in the series.
Starting in 2021, I’ve been using a tool call ScribeCount to keep track of ebook sales since my previous tool stopped working. ScribeCount makes it very easy to slice and dice ebook sales. For 2021, I decided to look at four series that had consistently offered a free first book in series for the entire year – FROSTBORN, SEVENFOLD SWORD, THE GHOSTS, SILENT ORDER, and CLOAK GAMES. I looked at the conversion percentage from the free first book to the paid second book, and then the percentage of people who downloaded the first book and read to the end of the series.
Frostborn – 15.7% conversion rate, 11.% to the end of the series.
Sevenfold Sword, 11.5%, 12.6% to the end of the series.
Ghosts, 14.4% conversion rate, 7.9% to the end of the series.
Cloak Games, 13.5% conversion rate, 8.4% to the end of the series.
Silent Order, 17.8% conversion rate, 23.3% to end of the series.
So that is pretty good! I should note that the SILENT ORDER percentage to the (current) end of the series is probably artificially high because SILENT ORDER: ROYAL HAND came out in the summer, but that’s still a good number.
This is also why I consistently advertise my free books across Facebook – if I know that for every 100 copies of FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT I give away, about 15 people will read to the second book and 11 will read all the way through, that allows the ads to turn a profit.
Speaking of that, here’s the results for my ad spending on free ebooks for January 2022. For every $1 I spent on advertising the series, this is what I got back.
Ad results:
Cloak Games/Cloak Mage – $3.31
Frostborn – $3.17
Ghost – $6.50
-JM
This is great information and very encouraging. All you have to do is write a great series!
Honestly, I became aware of your work on Reddit. People would solicit recommendations for good “sword and sorcery” books and your name kept on cropping up, so I started snooping around. Then I discovered all of your series, starting reading your blog, downloading the podcast, the whole bit.
I have to admit, I REALLY appreciate that your books are on Smashwords, as well. I can just download a freebie to sample and save it to my PC, very easy, back it up to my phone and go. And then I also go down the rabbit hole and buy the other books.
I know, I know, the Kindle app can do that, too, but I just love having a copy of the book on my device (in multiple formats like Epub and PDF) that I can backup if need be.
Thanks! I am glad you enjoyed all the stuff. I have noticed that the people who are REALLY into ebooks, people who sort their ebooks using elaborate folder hierarchies they started working on in the 90s, prefer Smashwords for their ebooks.