free books

Free isn’t worth what it used to be

/ Scott Nagele / Leave a comment

It’s been two months since I ran the free ebook promotion I detailed in my last post. To summarize, I gave away about 3,400 Kindle copies of my latest book, The Other Place.

I had hoped that 1% of the people who downloaded the free copy would leave a review on Amazon.

Did I get those 34 reviews?

No. Not yet anyway.

I’ve received one review since the giveaway.

I did get about 15 ratings, but those are less useful than text reviews.

So I’ve been thinking about my lack of reviews. Is 1% too high a target? There was a time, I think, when 1% was a reasonable expectation, but I now believe that time is gone.

I can download 6 free books a day, but I can’t read 6 books a day.

When I purchased the Freebooksy promotion, I joined the email list that goes out to subscribers. An email appeared in my inbox every day with an average of six free ebooks featured per email (and this is just from one organization).

Personally, I don’t like clutter, real or virtual, so I am not inspired to download a book I’m unlikely to read, even if it is free. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I know there are lots of folks who will take free stuff on the chance it may someday be used.

I think it’s also human nature to be more careful to use something you paid for as opposed to something you grabbed on impulse because it was free.

In the days when free ebooks were less plentiful, a 1% review rate was probably reasonable. Now, free downloads come fast and furious, and it’s impossible for most readers to keep up with reading all, or perhaps even a fraction, of what they have collected for free.

Ratings make feedback quick and easy (and less meaningful)

Once upon a time, the only way for readers to submit feedback for books sold on Amazon was to leave a review. Now users can leave a star rating without a text review. This may lead to more ratings from readers who haven’t the time or disposition to write a review, but I think it also leads to fewer reviews now that one click is enough to register one’s opinion.

We must be mindful that Amazon reviews do not exist for authors. They are there as a guide to future customers. Authors are definitely more obsessed with them than customers are, but that doesn’t change their purpose.

Still, an author cannot help being disappointed at not having a more useful guide in place for potential customers. As a customer, I know that ratings are less meaningful information than reviews are.

Who is to blame?

Who is at fault for this disappointment? Not Freebooksy. They helped me give away as many copies as I could expect and more. Not the readers who downloaded the free copies. Those copies are theirs now and they are free to do, or not do, with them as they wish. They don’t owe me a review, a rating, or anything else.

I guess that leaves me. My expectations were not properly calibrated for the time and place in which I am doing business.

But now they are. You live and learn.

Selling it by giving it away

/ Scott Nagele / 4 Comments

The book has been published. All the hard work of editing, proofing, and layout is done. It’s time to take a break, sit back, and relax for a while.

Not.

Anyway, I can take a break from the completed book and turn my attention to my work in progress. Well . . . actually . . . I can’t do that either. The work in progress may have to stay on hold for a while longer.

A Housefly in Autumn may be published, but I’m hardly done with it. There’s promoting to be done.

Promoting can be a hard pill to swallow for someone who revels in the introverted nature of writing. Fortunately, this is not my first trip through the cycle, so I am somewhat prepared to face it. I’m never wholly prepared for promotion, but somewhat prepared is better than not prepared at all.

Promotion can be a slap in the face to the first-time author. It is tempting to think that once a book is released, people will naturally buy it. After three books, I am fully cured of this temptation.

I know how difficult it is to sell a book. That’s why I’m working so hard to give them away.

It may sound counter-productive to give books away, and maybe it is. There’s no guarantee it will result in eventual sales, but the idea is that people who might not have bought the book will be attracted to the giveaway. If they enjoy it, they may review it or tell their friends, or otherwise increase visibility, eventually making the book attractive enough to be worth actual money to the reading public.

Book giveaway

If not for the Internet, I’d be handing them out to passersby down at the docks.

The giveaways I’m working on right now are at Goodreads, for the print copy, and Amazon, for the Kindle version.

The Goodreads giveaway is running now. I am giving away six print copies of A Housefly in Autumn. The giveaway is open to US readers and runs through July 26, 2015, when six winners will be chosen.

The Kindle giveaway will run July 15-17. This is an unlimited giveaway. The Kindle version will be free to all who wish to download during that time. Amazon is in charge of the logistics, but from my experience, I expect this to be open to international readers as well.

Setting up the giveaways is not difficult nor time-consuming. But if you’re giving away your book, you want somebody to take it (if only for self-esteem purposes). The more difficult piece is drawing attention to your giveaway. This involves researching and registering your giveaway on blogs and web sites that advertise such things. All have different rules and requirements. Figuring out where to post and filling in required fields eats up time. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to eat up a lot of money, because it’s hard enough to give so much of your toil away; it would be far worse to have to pay to give it away.

Please take a moment to explore these giveaways and/or mention them to other readers.