Reader Question Day #53 – how to give away free ebooks
LJL asks, concerning self-publishing:
My main question is: You mention giving books away…where do you give them away? How do you let people know they are available?
Thanks for all your help!!
It is a multi-step process. Here’s what I do.
First, the actual mechanics.
Amazon and Barnes & Noble do not let you set the price of a book as free through Kindle Direct Publishing and PubIt. Smashwords and Kobo do, and if you make a free book on Smashwords and use all their distribution channels, eventually it will show up as a free book on Barnes & Noble and iTunes. Then you can use the price matching link on Amazon (where is says “let us know about a lower price”) to report the free price on Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, and iTunes. Amazon will usually, but not always, match the price to free.
Smashwords also lets you generate coupon codes for individual books. You can use this to keep the book as a paid book while giving a discount (or making it free entirely) for people who use the coupon code. When I released SOUL OF SKULLS, I also gave away to my newsletter subscribers a time-sensitive coupon code for a free tie-in short story on Smashwords. That worked really well, so I’m going to make it a regular practice.
Second, letting people know it is available. This is largely beyond your control, but you can do several things to make it easier.
The most important point is this: do not make a book free unless you have paid sequels ready! The only reason to make a book free is to get people interested in the series. So releasing one book and making it free is a waste of time for the writer – it’s like giving away free samples of cheese, and having no cheese available for sale. This annoys the reader who liked the sample, because he would like to purchase additional cheese, and this annoys the writer, who has no additional cheese for sale. So I would recommend not making the first book free until you have three or four books of the series up.
When you have a free book, it’s also a good idea to include the first chapter of the next book at the end of the book as a sample, along with a link to a place where people can purchase the book. It’s best to have the link go to your own website – Apple gets annoyed if you include links to Amazon pages, and vice versa.
Also, make sure the cover looks good. Generally, I’ve found there are two key rules of thumb for an ebook cover:
1.) The cover must feature attractive people doing something, however vaguely, related to the book’s contents. Note that by “attractive” I don’t mean “scantily dressed or sexually provocative” (though that is indeed an option) but people that are at least pleasant to look at it.
2.) The cover absolutely, positively has to look good as a thumbnail image, which means the book’s name should be big enough to be read as a thumbnail. This is especially important if the first book in the series is free.
Free books, generally, tend to do well, by which I mean a lot of people download them. The more attractive the cover, the more likely someone will download the book. Whether they read to the end, and like the book enough to buy the sequel, depends on the book. 🙂
But this strategy can work. In 2012, I gave away about 39,000 copies of CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, and sold just under 4,000 copies of its sequel, GHOST IN THE FLAMES. Additionally, I gave away about 36,000 copies of DEMONSOULED, and sold 5,976 of its sequel SOUL OF TYRANTS.
Also, I should mention Kindle Direct Publishing Select, which is another way to do a free ebook. The way it works is that you agree to put your book on Amazon, and no other retailer, for a period of 90 days. That gives you the ability to set five of those 90 days as free days, when your book will be available as a free book. Additionally, Amazon Prime members gain the ability to check out your book for free as a rental (you get paid for every rental), in much the same way that Prime members can watch Amazon Instant Videos for free. However, you cannot have your book available for sale at any other retailer for that 90-day period.
To be honest, I don’t think KDP Select is a useful tool for most writers. Granted, I think it can be useful in specific situations. For example, there’s a writer who apparently made a killing writing a book about Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD tablet, and in that case, it absolutely makes sense to turn it into a KDP Select book. How many people are going buy a book about the Kindle Fire HD and read it on a Nook or an iPad? Or I can see how it would be useful in other situations – like, you write a tie-in novella to your series, and release it as a KDP Select book as a bonus for your regular readers (whom you then notify of the free days via your newsletter).
However, I should point out that in 2012, fully 1/3 of my ebook sales came from places other than Amazon. Amazon is the big fish, but it’s not the only fish, and 1/3 of my 2012 book sales (which would be about 16,300 books out of 51,000) is quite a lot to leave on the table. I think a better long-term strategy is to have as many of your books available on as many platforms as possible.
-JM