# No Free eBooks



## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

http://jasonzchristie.blogspot.com/2012/04/october-surprise-no-free-books.html

If we can start a quiet campaign now and generally agree not to give any books away during the month of October (especially Halloween-themed books!), we can see if we can positively affect the bank accounts of struggling authors.

Do your part to spread the word. A book worth reading is worth paying for. You've stopped deforestation (Okay, not really, but, you know. It's a start.) Now let's stop literary devaluation.

Or perhaps come up with a catchier slogan. But let's stand together and sell some books, indie authors. Stop cannibalizing your sales, just for the month of October.

Heh, okay, I like that one.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Yer preachin' to the choir, but so far I'm singing solo here 

Clearly, though, there is a difference between running a few days' worth of freebies via the KDP Select promo and just throwing books out by the double-handful at the multitudes of new sites popping up everywhere.


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## Lissie (May 26, 2011)

Why in Whatever's name would how I approach my marketing have anything to do with, or any impact on how you do your marketing?


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## John H. Carroll (Nov 26, 2010)

Thhhbbttt.  You don't know me like that.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

No Way.

I have a series. I just loaded _Angel in the Shadows, Book 1_ up on Smashwords so I could set it free to everyone in the world. My goal is to give Book 1 away free, then if the reader likes my story they will be willing to pay for the rest.

I flip open books and start to read and decide not to buy them all the time. It has everything to do with quality.
Supermarkets give away free samples and so do most manufacturers. It's a valid form of building up a customer/fan base.

Yes, I believe my books are worth buying, which is why I so strongly believe by giving them a free one, my sales on the others will increase.

My sales have nothing to do with your sales. _Fifty Shades of Grey_ has nothing to do with my sales. It could be free or $50. We're not in the same genre and won't have much cross over.


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## righterman (Jul 27, 2012)

I'm in.  I am sooooo done with free.  I admit it, I used KDP select and had many books "hit" on POI and ENT -- but I am DONE!  This free mentality is killing us.  Amazon should remove all free books from their site.  .99 isn't even worth it unless your book is less than 5,000 words -- sell your 8,000 - 20,000 word books for at least $2.99!  Get that 70%!!  

Occupy Amazon!  NO MORE FREE BOOKS!!!!!  

In 2010 we had the "gold rush"  -- JUST two years later in 2012, you can see the slow death of prosperity via Amazon for the mid-level writer.  I know, there are the Bella Andres, the TR Ragans, the Hugh Howeys, etc. who aren't subject to these types of slowdowns.  But the rest of us are -- so stop giving your books away!  

Get paid!  YOU are worth it!  

Don't tell me its "not about money" blah blah, its about gaining readers, blah blah blah -- that ship has sailed.


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

My sarcasm detector must be broken. I'm having a hard time telling who in this thread is serious, and who is not.


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## righterman (Jul 27, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> No Way.
> 
> I have a series. I just loaded _Angel in the Shadows, Book 1_ up on Smashwords so I could set it free to everyone in the world. My goal is to give Book 1 away free, then if the reader likes my story they will be willing to pay for the rest.
> 
> ...


A "free sample" is a small piece of cheese on a toothpick. The sampler person is not handing out entire blocks of cheese. If they did, the cheese company would go out of business after a few months of sampling. If the portion of your book that can be seen in the "Read a sample" section is enticing enough, the customer should buy, or not buy your book from that sample. No one needs more that 1-2 chapters to figure out if they like the writing style or the initial "hook" of the story.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

smreine said:


> My sarcasm detector must be broken. I'm having a hard time telling who in this thread is serious, and who is not.


I think everyone should stop giving their books away free, except for me. Then my book can have the top 100 spots on the free best seller lists. So yeah, I'm all in. NO MORE FREE EBOOKS!


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

> In 2010 we had the "gold rush" -- JUST two years later in 2012, you can see the slow death of prosperity via Amazon for the mid-level writer.


Assuming this is true, how do you KNOW this is due to free books? Could it be due to a growing number of indie books on the market instead? Too many shoddily edited products out there causing readers to be shy of indie books? Lower prices for traditionally published books?

It's tempting to blame fluctuations in the market on one issue, but the truth is generally more complex.



> My sarcasm detector must be broken. I'm having a hard time telling who in this thread is serious, and who is not.


Upon reflection... me too. If the person I was responding to was being facetious, my apologies. It's late at night and my brain has gone offline before the rest of me.


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## Lissie (May 26, 2011)

Just to clarify -the OP hasn't bothered to fill out his authorcentral page and claim his books and his rankings are in the 400,000's and higher - and he's handing out marketing advice


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Tee hee hee "occupy amazon"

Sarcasm or not, the math is pretty clear.  If 1000 free books are read, those 1000 people aren't reading 1000 books that they're paid someone for. 
At issue is that when someone gives away 1000 and gets five sales out of it, they only look at those five sales and think it's a success. No further thought given to the 1000 sales someone else didn't get. It's the Wild West of publishing!

I can't count the number of books I've read and enjoyed that never once made me dig around to look for more by the same author. 
I don't read series. I like NEW stuff. 
I don't read free books. You get what you paid for.  
Yeah, maybe not a popular attitude, but we all got one


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

righterman said:


> A "free sample" is a small piece of cheese on a toothpick. The sampler person is not handing out entire blocks of cheese. If they did, the cheese company would go out of business after a few months of sampling. If the portion of your book that can be seen in the "Read a sample" section is enticing enough, the customer should buy, or not buy your book from that sample. No one needs more that 1-2 chapters to figure out if they like the writing style or the initial "hook" of the story.


wrongerman (pun intended  )
Who are you to judge what a sample is? The sample police? A sample of a novel can be a novel. A beginning, middle, and end. Some authors start out great, but then the book fizzzles. 
I plan on putting out four novels a year minimum. Giving away one whole book (approximately one fifth of my series, 20%, which by the way is the sample size at Smashwords-is indeed a sample.)

P.S. I've gotten whole candybars, whole packs of gum, free restaurant meals, free full size bottles of detergent, salad dressing, etc. from manufacturers to try their products. I've also gotten free paperback books directly from the publishers (ARC copies). None of these fine folks were worried about what it would do to their industry by giving out a free whole product!


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

I would contend that books barely selling at all contribute more to literary devaluation, than books being given away for promotional benefit of the author.

If one is using Select to get more readers from the free ebooks given out, you're doing it wrong.

If one is using Select to give away ebooks, in order to affect the algorithms so that your book is on lists, in front of people who do pay for books, then you're doing it right.

Is Select (and non-Select freebies) the only tool in the promotional toolbox? Absolutely not. To rely solely on that tool is silly. To think others should completely neglect that tool is equally silly.



> we can see if we can positively affect the bank accounts of struggling authors.


Why don't those authors take the promotion of their own books into their own hands, which will most likely have a positive effect on their bank accounts if done right, instead of relying on others to stop marketing so that you can hypothetically sell more. Promote a good book and it will sell. If you take the "Field of Dreams" approach of "If I build it, they will come," well.... sweet dreams!



> Get paid! YOU are worth it!


I have been paid after my successful free ebook promotions... to the tune of thousands (and thousands) of dollars. Much better than the 2 books/day I was selling before the free promotions. And even the 2/day I had from some other promotional techniques I implemented before the free promo, is more than some are earning from their books.

But once again, I don't care if the people downloading my book ever read it and become a fan. Sure, I would love them to. I don't need them to. By catering to their desire for free stuff, their download gets me that much closer to moving up in the rankings on Amazon, to where people who do buy ebooks will see me.


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## sarracannon (Apr 19, 2011)

I completely agree. I also think that Google should stop giving out free information. I mean, they are totally devaluing the internet by providing a free search. They devalue email by providing free accounts. Seriously, if they would simply CHARGE people for all of their services, they might actually start making money and become a successful, multi-billion dollar business....

Oh wait...


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

When I had no free books, my income was around $1000 per month. With the first in a series free, my income's around $5000 per month. I'm gaining traction at B&N, too, for once in my life. My sales from B&N this year alone will match what I made in my first full year at Amazon.

Is there to be a fund that pays me for my loss in income in order to support the No Free Books movement? Like any other tool, free must be used appropriately to garner any results.



righterman said:


> Don't tell me its "not about money" blah blah, its about gaining readers, blah blah blah -- that ship has sailed.


Gaining readers = gaining money. One does not exclude the other.



righterman said:


> A "free sample" is a small piece of cheese on a toothpick. The sampler person is not handing out entire blocks of cheese. If they did, the cheese company would go out of business after a few months of sampling. If the portion of your book that can be seen in the "Read a sample" section is enticing enough, the customer should buy, or not buy your book from that sample. No one needs more that 1-2 chapters to figure out if they like the writing style or the initial "hook" of the story.


Cheese is both a bad metaphor and a good metaphor for ebooks.

Bad metaphor: First, it costs nothing to handle, store, manage, ship, and deliver an ebook--it's not a physical product. Second, ebooks--by the pound--are far cheaper than cheese, by and far. Third, an author is risking his time investment in writing the book in exchange for a reader's time in reading the book. If the risk vs. reward checks out, it's a win. If not, it's a loss.

Good metaphor: People don't only eat one block of cheese. If they get a whole block of cheese and like it (and appreciate the company's generosity for allowing them a sizable sample of the cheese), the company may have gained a permanent customer. It's the same with ebooks. For those who create more than one block of cheese (or book), the potential benefit is huge. Likewise, if a company creates 10,000 blocks of cheese and gives them all away as samples (and doesn't make any more cheese), well, that's not a very good business decision.



smreine said:


> My sarcasm detector must be broken. I'm having a hard time telling who in this thread is serious, and who is not.


And so the Cafe continues spinning.


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## Bec (Aug 24, 2012)

> My goal is to give Book 1 away free, then if the reader likes my story they will be willing to pay for the rest.


Personally, I figure that's what the sample is for.

Unknown (or semi-known) author... I read the sample. If I like, I buy. If not... next. It being free will not sway me one way or the other. But that's just me.

I have about 20 books that I downloaded for free when I first got my kindle 3 years ago. I don't think I've read any of them yet.

Sometimes when I see good books for free or $0.99 I think the author is selling themselves short, because I definitely would have paid more for it.

Again. That's just me. A reader and wannabe writer.

Obviously free works for some people.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

jasonzc said:


> http://jasonzchristie.blogspot.com/2012/04/october-surprise-no-free-books.html
> 
> If we can start a quiet campaign now and generally agree not to give any books away during the month of October (especially Halloween-themed books!), we can see if we can positively affect the bank accounts of struggling authors.
> 
> ...


Since no free eBooks would NOT "positively affect the bank accounts of struggling authors", not me anyway, I certainly would not join such a campaign.


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## righterman (Jul 27, 2012)

editing-- schmediting!  It's the free books that are taking down the ship!  You don't look at the gaping hole in the Titanic filling with water and say "hey, maybe the problem is the dual rudders in the rear."   We can all see the water rising and the lifeboats are full of "big sixers" with thier bellies full and their warm blanket wrapped over their life jacket.  The rest of the indies can head back inside the ship, into the lower cabins.  You can call out into the cold blackness for a smaller Smashwords rescue boat, but chances are, you'll be dead by the time Mark paddles his way over to you in three weeks.

Now is the time to PANIC!!!


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

The only struggling author I'm responsible for is me. And as I've said a score of times, I can't control what anyone else does, only what I do. My marketing strategy cannot depend on everyone else deciding to eschew free for the month, because frankly, that's never gonna happen. I can't control anyone's pricing but my own.



> Now is the time to PANIC!!!


Heh heh. You're not getting me this time.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

righterman said:


> editing-- schmediting! It's the free books that are taking down the ship! You don't look at the gaping hole in the Titanic filling with water and say "hey, maybe the problem is the dual rudders in the rear." We can all see the water rising and the lifeboats are full of "big sixers" with thier bellies full and their warm blanket wrapped over their life jacket. The rest of the indies can head back inside the ship, into the lower cabins. You can call out into the cold blackness for a smaller Smashwords rescue boat, but chances are, you'll be dead by the time Mark paddles his way over to you in three weeks.
> 
> Now is the time to PANIC!!!


You just go on believing you're not in charge of your own ship. You just believe other people are why your ebooks aren't selling.

Those of us who have seen our sales _increase_ because we are willing to give away a free book, (then some of those people do _read it_, and go on to *buy* our other books, so *we build a fan base*) aren't going to be inclined to go back. 
You can sink with your ship and we'll keep cashing our checks.


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## righterman (Jul 27, 2012)

Oh,and I am the sample police.  In fact, I am the Axel Foley of the Detroit division of book sampling.  

But I thought all samples were the same?  Amazon gives a sneak peek at a certain percentage of the beginning of your book?  No?  I thought that was pretty much a level playing field.

FYI -- I am 35 minutes into my nightly Ambien and I did have a beer and a melatonin pill.  So when I wake up (if I wake up) I may be reading my annoying posts in horror.  But luckily, no one knows who I am.  

Wrongerman


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## Guest (Oct 4, 2012)

One way to look at this is that writing a free book is the price of admission.  Do I wish I got paid big on all my books?  Yeah.  But instead of trying to stop others from acting in their own interests (a losing and IMHO selfish game to play), I suck it up and give away books.  And my earnings go way up when I do.  

But I am not displacing as many paid sales as you might think.  1000 free downloads do not equate to anywhere near 1000 lost paid sales. Most people will not read it after downloading, and of those who do, most would not have had enough money to buy so many as they downloaded.  They would instead spend much of that time shopping and agonizing over which few books to buy.  (I do that myself.)  I am totally cool with the fact that they are reading my book for free rather than agonzing over where to put their money.  In addition to making me more money, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy.  Maybe that free entertainment will help them with that decision of what to buy next, or maybe our interaction ends with their having enjoyed my work and my having a warm fuzzy feeling.  Okay either way.  

People's time is still valuable to them, and those with enough money to just buy what they feel like reading right now will do so rather than cruising the free lists.  Even those with less wealth will tend to feel like buying a copy to support an author they enjoy.  I have bought copies of books that I also read for free for just that reason.

Please be patient and keep working hard and be ready when Luck smiles on you.


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## Guest (Oct 4, 2012)

righterman said:


> Oh,and I am the sample police. In fact, I am the Axel Foley of the Detroit division of book sampling.


Mr. Foley, I just want to say that I love your theme song. One of my all time favorites.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

righterman said:


> Oh,and I am the sample police. In fact, I am the Axel Foley of the Detroit division of book sampling.
> 
> But I thought all samples were the same? Amazon gives a sneak peek at a certain percentage of the beginning of your book? No? I thought that was pretty much a level playing field.
> 
> ...


Not everyone shops on their Kindles. Most shop on their laptops or PCs then read on the Kindles. They don't want to sit in front of the screen long enough to read a whole sample. It's just as easy to hit one click and dl the book. I've had wonderful results from my free runs on my first book and have built up some loyal fans. It works for me. I've got a lifetime to build up a huge reader base and I don't mind giving my book away for free.

For me, the only thing that matters is reaching my potential readers.

My daughter dl's free game apps everyday from the itune stores. The games she really loves, she goes on to buy the next level.

Ditto with books.


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

> Mr. Foley, I just want to say that I love your theme song.


Oh, and now I have that song in my head just as I'm going to bed. I bet it haunts my dreams. _Doot, doot, doot-do-de-doot-doot..._

Sigh.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Lisa nailed it... we're not all in the same boat.

I look over at your boat from my ship that is sailing just fine, and I find myself wondering why he is not fixing that big hole in his marketing plan boat. I go turn on the radio to let him know he should probably fix that hole, and sure enough, he's blaming the other boats around him for the hole in his boat! Some people just can't be helped. I turn off the radio.



> But luckily, no one knows who I am.


That's what happens when you don't market your books... just sayin'.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

My book happens to be off "free" right now. But that's because I just had a new release, and I'm testing things out. But you can be darn sure if I see a drop in sales, it's going right back to free.

Like Brian, my income skyrocketed after I set book one in my series free. It's a promotional tool I will definitely be keeping my my toolbox. If you think your sales are bad because other people are giving away a product, I suggest you check out all the "free" book threads and what the rest of us have been saying all year. 

My fan base due to book 1 being free put my third book 2nd and 3rd on the Hot New Releases list right after Debora Geary and JR Rain in my genre chart. If you don't know who those authors are, you should. They are indie superstars.


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## Guest (Oct 4, 2012)

EllenFisher said:


> Oh, and now I have that song in my head just as I'm going to bed. I bet it haunts my dreams. _Doot, doot, doot-do-de-doot-doot..._
> 
> Sigh.


Sorry. I am actually typing in bed on my laptop and have the exact same problem now. I should have thought of others before commenting.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

*reader wandering in*

i don't download amazon's 10% samples.  i don't find it a productive use of my time.  

BUT, i "buy" free books and then go on to buy more books in a series.  

but remember, what works for one person may not work for someone else.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

telracs said:


> *reader wandering in*
> 
> i don't download amazon's 10% samples. i don't find it a productive use of my time.
> 
> ...


The "what works for one person may not for someone else" is quite true. I don't even download free novels without first looking at the sample. The biggest cost to me of a novel is not what I pay for it (although with as much as I spend on books, it's getting to be a consideration lol). The biggest cost is the time to read them and I don't want to bother with something that doesn't have at least a minimum level of competency. I find a sample the best way to judge.

I have also bought books in a series that I found from a free download.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

The lure of a free e-book has enticed me to try genres I would not normally purchase, or authors I do not know.  I have also gone on to purchase entire series after reading the free book.  Those authors would likely never have seen a dime of my money without the first offer of the free book.  Others mileage may vary...


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

Oh, that reminds me. I should write that short story I'm planning to give away perma-free as promo for my other books ...


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## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

Quiss said:


> Yer preachin' to the choir, but so far I'm singing solo here
> 
> Clearly, though, there is a difference between running a few days' worth of freebies via the KDP Select promo and just throwing books out by the double-handful at the multitudes of new sites popping up everywhere.


And writers have about as much unity as...

Unitarians on acid?


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## philstern (Mar 14, 2011)

I've also questioned the long-term effects of offering free ebooks. However, I also recognize that free has been a valuable tool for many authors (including myself) in terms of simply getting recognized by the kindle reading public, as a first step towards forming a fan base.

Free obviously works very well for authors of series, probably less so for authors of stand-alone books. 

I would agree with the general sentiment that free, to the extent it's practiced on kindle, may be diluting the long-term value of our products. However, I don't think it's fair for authors who are struggling to blame free for their lack of success. Like anything else, free is a tool that's worked better for some people and worse for others.


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## Guest (Oct 4, 2012)

eBooksHabit said:


> If one is using Select to get more readers from the free ebooks given out, you're doing it wrong.


We are in agreement overall, but I would urge you to reconsider your logic on this part. I sell approximately 10% as many as I give away in a 2 book series. (I give away books 1 and 2 alternatingly) I think that is a much better percentage than I could get from a single book relying on the visibility bump. Of course, I cannot rigorously separate the two effects, but when I give away book 1, book 2 soars shortly afterward, and vice versa. If the visibility effect were dominant, then I would think book X would soar after a giveaway of book X. But it doesn't really except for a short period of a week or so and then not at all after 30 days. I think people lately have been seeing much less than a 10% bump after a giveaway. Many seem to report less than 1 sale per 100 freeloads, or worse.

The most surprising thing to me is that the strongest coupling seems to be the boost in sales of book 1 while (not after) book 2 is free. I guess they grab book 2, read enough to decide they like it but then decide to stop and go back and see what happened first? I dunno. I always thought book 1 would drag book 2 up more. But no. Anyway, to me that strong coupling is the best proof that getting free books out the door is the key for some rather than the boost in ranking of a particular book. Your milage may vary. But don't knock the power of having a ton of free books floating around. My totals for books 1 and 2 are almost identical, so I think people pretty much read them both if they read one. So I want to get as many out as possible. (Though not necessarily to the same people twice.


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## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

Lissie said:


> Just to clarify -the OP hasn't bothered to fill out his authorcentral page and claim his books and his rankings are in the 400,000's and higher - and he's handing out marketing advice


Of course I have an Author Central page. Not that it's germane.

Yes, I'm not having great sales. Few of us are. That was sort of...the point.

But I will say this: Any one of my books blows all of yours away. Point blank. And that's what it's really about as an author.

_edited. no personal attacks --Betsy_


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## Andykay (May 10, 2012)

As I said in a post a month or so back, this is why a 'lets agree to remove our free books' campaign will never work. Free works great for the people doing it, to the detriment of people who aren't. A free book read is a paid book that isn't read. Like JR said, books are a time investment, and the time people invest in free books is time they aren't reading books that would have injected more money into the author pool.

Of course free works great for good writers, since you give people a free peek at how you write and a certain number will stick around. So those writers see no reason to stop. Even if the overall net result is less books are bought, for those writers it means more of THEIR books are bought. And the more writers quit using free promotions, the more effective it will be for those that still do, so any campaign to get people to stop won't do anything unfortunately. Something needs to be done at a root level (ie: Amazon) for things to change.


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## Guest (Oct 4, 2012)

jasonzc said:


> And writers have about as much unity as...
> 
> Unitarians on acid?


I have found writers to be very unified and supportive of others who are also working their hind ends off. But with respect, let's all unite around what works. Your plan sounds to me like it is, at its heart, an attempt to artificially enforce scarcity. Ask the Big 6 how that's working out for them. I just don't think you can do it. If you try hard, pirates will just undermine your plans anyway, I think.

ETA: You know, thinking more about the lendink fiasco, I'm gonna have to give you the fact that writers aren't overly unified. I guess a lot of helpful people is not the same as unity.


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)




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## aaronoverfield (Sep 17, 2012)

I suppose I look at sales differently or something. Is it really about how much money trickles into the bank over time, or is it about getting your story out there, getting it distributed, and hopefully getting it to either reach critical mass or land in the "right" hands? 

Maybe I'm too all-or-nothing about it but if we're going to go, shouldn't we go all out? Shouldn't we have enough confidence in our story that our goal is to get it in as many hands as possible as quickly as possible and as smartly as possible, so that not only can we "make it" but so that our story can make it as well? 

Sure, along the way we need to make money so we can pay bills and eat and buy our significant other bright shiny things, but why shoot ourselves in the foot? I want as many copies of my book out there as possible. I want to flood the world with it. Sometimes all it takes is that one person to read it and *poof* magic can happen. Are you really willing to gamble that person is simply going to happen to stumble across you without you doing everything in your power to put yourself out there as much as possible? 

At the end of the day, it's my story that sells my book, not me. Until I've "made it," profit isn't in dollars, it's in readership.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

Alrighty now ... the OP did ask if we wanted to form some sort of union type thingie. I don't think he was out of line at all. 

I'm going to have to keep running free books, though, because it is the only thing that has worked for me.

FOR EXAMPLE, I ran an advertisement (KFD) today. It cost $75. My book that had been consistently selling between 5-12 copies a day for the last two weeks suddenly took a staggering leap up the chart and sold 11 copies today. I only had a net increase of six sales (being generous about the ad) and thus only lost $63.00. Today alone.

Giving away books for free does not cost me $63.00. It only hurts ... my competitors. Uh, I mean my friends the other writers. No, dammit, I mean my competitors.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

I just don't agree that giving away free books hurts other authors. I have two author friends that posted about my free book. Their fans didn't go "buy" my free book over those other two author's new books. They got both. How do I know? Both author's books showed up in my also boughts on Amazon. Then when book 3 came out, both authors posted about it. Many of their fans commented on how they had been waiting and ran off to buy book 3.  We are now sharing a fan base. 

I have tons of authors I buy from regularly and am always looking for more. So are my readers. Every week I get messages asking what books do I recommend while my readers are waiting for the next book.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

I've only been publishing since summer 2011, but my understanding is that Select was a real game-changer. It seemed, and I may be wrong, that the 99-cent books used to be a big deal and could really move books.

I think there are ways indies can cooperate. We share info here. And we have access to each other for cross-promotions. There are opportunities, but I don't think we're powerful enough to do any sort of price monopolies or market manipulation.


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## Andykay (May 10, 2012)

Deanna Chase said:


> I just don't agree that giving away free books hurts other authors. I have two author friends that posted about my free book. Their fans didn't go "buy" my free book over those other two author's new books. They got both. How do I know? Both author's books showed up in my also boughts on Amazon. Then when book 3 came out, both authors posted about it. Many of their fans commented on how they had been waiting and ran off to buy book 3. We are now sharing a fan base.
> 
> I have tons of authors I buy from regularly and am always looking for more. So are my readers. Every week I get messages asking what books do I recommend while my readers are waiting for the next book.


That's just an annecdote though. Do you agree most people's reading is constrained by time rather than money? I know for me, switching to ebooks which are notably cheaper than paperbacks, hasn't really increased the number of hours I actually spend reading. I have a certain amount of leisure time that I can read in, and that's that. With that in mind, those fans of your friends who got your book, if they now choose to read it, that's X number of reading hours they're spending on your book that they likely would have spent reading a paid book if they hadn't gotten yours. Just because they got your book and your friend's books, doesn't mean it's not hurting anyone else. People constantly use the argument "books aren't a zero sum game, just because someone reads my book doesn't mean they can't read yours too," and that's true, but it is certainly also true that if someone reads twenty free books in a year, they're buying less other books.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

GuyF said:


> We are in agreement overall, but I would urge you to reconsider your logic on this part. I sell approximately 10% as many as I give away in a 2 book series. (I give away books 1 and 2 alternatingly) I think that is a much better percentage than I could get from a single book relying on the visibility bump. Of course, I cannot rigorously separate the two effects, but when I give away book 1, book 2 soars shortly afterward, and vice versa. If the visibility effect were dominant, then I would think book X would soar after a giveaway of book X. But it doesn't really except for a short period of a week or so and then not at all after 30 days. I think people lately have been seeing much less than a 10% bump after a giveaway. Many seem to report less than 1 sale per 100 freeloads, or worse.
> 
> The most surprising thing to me is that the strongest coupling seems to be the boost in sales of book 1 while (not after) book 2 is free. I guess they grab book 2, read enough to decide they like it but then decide to stop and go back and see what happened first? I dunno. I always thought book 1 would drag book 2 up more. But no. Anyway, to me that strong coupling is the best proof that getting free books out the door is the key for some rather than the boost in ranking of a particular book. Your milage may vary. But don't knock the power of having a ton of free books floating around. My totals for books 1 and 2 are almost identical, so I think people pretty much read them both if they read one. So I want to get as many out as possible. (Though not necessarily to the same people twice.


I see people, both those for and against Select (and free ebooks in general), use the free downloads to sales ratio as a metric for some how gauging the worthiness of using Select or not. This is absolutely silly to me, because the %'s are going to be wildly different depending on many different factors.

Someone who gives away a couple hundred free ebooks will probably only get a few sales. A couple hundred downloads is not enough to move you in the algorithms, to increase your exposure. Even a couple thousands free ebooks won't drive a bunch more sales. It takes 10k+ free ebooks given away in a short period of time to really drive a ton of sales. Even then, it may not be a good downloads:sales ratio, but they still have driven a ton more exposure and sales to their books, even if their downloads:sales ratio sucks compared to yours.

With a product that costs you money when given away, then yes, keeping track of how much you had to give away in order to drive X amount of sales, makes complete sense. If I give away 100 blocks of cheese, but sales don't increase, then I have lost money on the raw cost for me to produce that cheese. When it's a digital product such as an ebook that has zero measurable cost to you when given away, the downloads:sales metric has zero value for making decisions about the worthiness of setting a book for free. There is zero way to know how many of those people who downloaded your ebook for free would have even found your book, let alone even take the chance to buy it, had it not been for the free promo. One of the only solid metrics you can track is sales/day increase from before the free promo to after the free promo. Did your increase in sales due to a free promo more than cover what you spent to advertise the free promo and the time cost spent marketing the free promo? If so, then the promotion is a success.

---

I did mention people becoming readers is a nice side benefit, but the overarching goal of free should be to drive exposure to your book (whether temporarily, or book 1, 2, whatever in a series). By driving exposure to your book, you will increase in the rankings. Your book will be seen by more people. Then you will sell more, either other books in a series or more of that book if free is just temporary.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

jasonzc said:


> Yes, I'm not having great sales. Few of us are. That was sort of...the point.
> 
> But I will say this: Any one of my books blows all of yours away. Point blank. And that's what it's really about as an author.


ROFLOL followed by 

Keep improving your novel writing skills by writing even better books, build your fan base, and don't worry about how much others are selling or giving away free.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Andykay said:


> That's just an annecdote though. Do you agree most people's reading is constrained by time rather than money? I know for me, switching to ebooks which are notably cheaper than paperbacks, hasn't really increased the number of hours I actually spend reading. I have a certain amount of leisure time that I can read in, and that's that. With that in mind, those fans of your friends who got your book, if they now choose to read it, that's X number of reading hours they're spending on your book that they likely would have spent reading a paid book if they hadn't gotten yours. Just because they got your book and your friend's books, doesn't mean it's not hurting anyone else. People constantly use the argument "books aren't a zero sum game, just because someone reads my book doesn't mean they can't read yours too," and that's true, but it is certainly also true that if someone reads twenty free books in a year, they're buying less other books.


It's as much anecdotal as you saying you haven't increased your reading time. I know plenty of people who have read a lot more books since going digital. It may be that my free book took away from someone else getting a paid sale. It may also be that my free book was downloaded in addition to a paid book. We have no way of knowing. What we do know is that a free book helps sell the rest of the books in a series.


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## A. Rosaria (Sep 12, 2010)

eBooksHabit said:


> But once again, I don't care if the people downloading my book ever read it and become a fan. Sure, I would love them to. I don't need them to. By catering to their desire for free stuff, their download gets me that much closer to moving up in the rankings on Amazon, to where people who do buy ebooks will see me.


With amazon recent new change of not putting the paid and free bestsellers next to each other but hiding the free list you won't have as much paying customers viewing your books. This is one reason why from now on I'll not put any new titles in select.

(Still keeping my last free runs end of this month and these will be the one on Amazon, I'll use smaswords from now on to give away freebies.)


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Andykay said:


> That's just an annecdote though. Do you agree most people's reading is constrained by time rather than money? I know for me, switching to ebooks which are notably cheaper than paperbacks, hasn't really increased the number of hours I actually spend reading. I have a certain amount of leisure time that I can read in, and that's that. With that in mind, those fans of your friends who got your book, if they now choose to read it, that's X number of reading hours they're spending on your book that they likely would have spent reading a paid book if they hadn't gotten yours. Just because they got your book and your friend's books, doesn't mean it's not hurting anyone else. People constantly use the argument "books aren't a zero sum game, just because someone reads my book doesn't mean they can't read yours too," and that's true, but it is certainly also true that if someone reads twenty free books in a year, they're buying less other books.


Combat an anecdote with an anecdote... nice.

You make the assumption that they are reading the free ebooks they get. That is definitely not true. People talk about their 1000's of free ebooks on their Kindles.

You also make the assumption, "but it is certainly also true that if someone reads twenty free books in a year, they're buying less other books." I'm not so certain.

You make the assumption that they would buy other books, and it's just that, an assumption. And what free books are we talking about? Select free ebooks? Used books which don't add to the author's pot, library books? A book they've already read before that was on their shelf? A book they borrowed from a friend? All of these methods of acquiring stuff to read do not add to the author's pot, yet why is there no tirade, no thread after thread about how _____________ (use any one of those options) is going to be the downfall of my books, because people only have so much time to read. They shouldn't be allowed to read at the library because it cuts into their X number of hours each year they have to read. Let's not stop there. Blogs are really cutting into people's yearly reading hours. Let's stop blogs. Magazines? Most are not a literary masterpiece. They must be removed as they cut into people's yearly reading hours.

And what is the deal with meals? Do people really need to eat? If they didn't eat, they would have more time to read books, and with no free sources for reading anywhere anymore, then people will be able to increase their yearly paid book reading hours if they aren't eating, so let's cut out meals. Snacks are okay because they can eat Cheetos while reading, but no meals.

And babies! Women have tons of time to read before they have babies! After they have babies, when they do have free time (which is not often, especially early in the child's life), the mom takes naps. This is severely cutting into the yearly paid books reading time, and severely cutting into my profits. Something needs to be done at a root level (ie: mandatory birth control) for things to change, and women's yearly paid book reading hours to remain at higher level.

This is why the whole "reading hours" argument is silliness. There are hundreds of things in life that cut into reading hours. Somehow trying to exert control on them is silly. yet, it's easier for authors to do try to do that, than to write good stuff and to promote it so that the people who do have limited reading hours, make the choice to read YOUR book with those limited hours.

By me promoting my book, it can cut into other author's profits from the yearly paid reading time available. Will you try to remove those promotional methods as well? You make the case that it is not a zero sum game, so by the fact of my promoting my book, I take away someone else's book being purchased. Fifty Shades of gray cut into many people's yearly paid book reading hours... I don't think that's fair. Hopefully Amazon will do something at the root level to remove FSoG...

You can't control any of those things that eat into the available yearly paid book reading hours. What you can control is how YOU are going to get YOUR books in front of readers who pay for books, and want to spend however many yearly paid book reading hours they have set aside, on YOUR books.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

A. Rosaria said:


> With amazon recent new change of not putting the paid and free bestsellers next to each other but hiding the free list you won't have as much paying customers viewing your books. This is one reason why from now on I'll not put any new titles in select.
> 
> (Still keeping my last free runs end of this month and these will be the one on Amazon, I'll use smaswords from now on to give away freebies.)


You completely misunderstand what I am trying to say, which is along the same lines as the general misunderstanding about how Select and the algorithms work.

Amazon calculates free downloads as sales for their popularity ranks at a rate of about 10 free downloads to 1 sale. The popularity ranking is based on # of sales in a roughly 30 day period. The more sales (including free downloads converted as sales for the popularity ranking algoithm), the higher you are, and the more exposure you have. The books on the popularity lists for the various categories are all paid ebooks. People browsing these lists are looking to buy. If you are on these lists, there's an increased chance people are going to buy your book (obviously other marketing signals play a factor... the cover, blurb, sample, reviews, etc). But, by having more free downloads, you increase your rankings (and visibility) on these lists. then, people who buy books, browse those lists, and may buy your book. *THAT is the goal of a free promotion, via Select anyway.* Once you go back to paid after a free promotion, if you gave away enough downloads, you catapult yourself in the popularity lists, you usually make more sales, bumping you in the bestseller rankings, leading to more sales, etc...

If anything, this change by Amazon is going to make it EVEN better for people who promote their free ebook promotions well, who have a little luck being picked up by the big guys (POI and ENT), and who re able to drive up the amount of free downloads by thinking outside of the box and promoting their free promotion in places that most writers do not.

Then, when they are higher on the PAID listings, because of a successful free promotion, they will be seen by more people, and those paying people will be less distracted by the free ebooks list, thereby increasing the chances that they buy your book.

It blows me away how many people fail to see the true power of Select. It's not for everyone, and I am a firm believer in each author needing to do what they need to do for their own business, and if Select free promotion isn't part of that plan, more power to them (and I will want to pick the brain of the successful ones to see what they are doing). But, if you don't even understand the power of Select, how the free downloads count as partial sales for boosting you higher in the popularity rankings so the people actually buying books can find you, then there's not much I can do for you except to tell you that you are dismissing something that you don't even truly understand, and what a shame that is for your business.


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## Andykay (May 10, 2012)

eBooksHabit said:


> Combat an anecdote with an anecdote... nice.
> 
> You make the assumption that they are reading the free ebooks they get. That is definitely not true. People talk about their 1000's of free ebooks on their Kindles.
> 
> ...


Heh, I think that's a bit much. You're getting incredibly specific, which is pointless since specifics are different for everyone. What we can discuss with some merit is general trends. There are obviously individuals and circumstances that defy any generalisation any of us could make. Just because they exist doesn't mean the trend isn't valid.

Do you honestly believe if 100% of books today were free, the average person with their nine to five, family, social lives etc, would read a great deal more than before? Some might, sure, but many more would stay around the same level. Obviously that's just conjecture from me, but since there's no public studies I'm aware of on this topic, all we have to go on is the balance of probabilities. And when you consider how much free time the average person has, it seems unlikely their reading hours increase dramatically just because their books cost less. Again, I'm not denying that there are a great many people for whom that isn't true, millions most likely, but that doesn't mean the overall majority doesn't lean a different way. If you disagree with that, then agree to disagree I guess.

Free is a type of promotion, I agree with you completely. But your example of FSOG stealing authors sales due to promotion isn't the same thing, since that's a sale that gets made either way. If someone buys FSOG instead of another book, that's the same amount of money to the overall author pool. With a free book, it's not. I'm all for competitive promotion; may the best marketed book win. But once that promotion starts taking money out of the hands of the larger pool of authors, that's where I draw the line.

I don't blame authors for using free at all, since it's a great tool that works effectively to gain them exposure. And like I said in my first post, stopping is actually probably a bad idea, since it just increases the power of free for those still using it. But I do think it's detrimental overall. I don't know exactly how much, it's not an easily definable figure, since as you said it effects everybody differently, but it seems pretty clear to me that the number of free books people are reading are resulting in at least some drop in overall book sales.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Andykay said:


> I don't blame authors for using free at all, since it's a great tool that works effectively to gain them exposure. And like I said in my first post, stopping is actually probably a bad idea, since it just increases the power of free for those still using it. But I do think it's detrimental overall. I don't know exactly how much, it's not an easily definable figure, since as you said it effects everybody differently, but it seems pretty clear to me that the number of free books people are reading are resulting in at least some drop in overall book sales.



One scenario:
People load up on a thousand freebies and that's all they read


Second scenario:
People load up on freebies and don't read any of them


Third scenario:
People load up on freebies and read your book

*One of two outcomes on the third scenario:*

1) They liked it or didn't like it, but the end result is they never buy a book from you

*Second outcome on scenario number three:*

2) They like your book and go on to buy a book from you

I'm not here to ensure all authors make a living from their writing. I'm not a socialist and I'm not a god, so it's pretty much out of my control anyway.

I like helping other authors which is why I come here to the Writers' Cafe to share my experiences and what has worked for me marketing and publicity wise.

I'm only interested in the outcome of scenario number three. 
With a million books or more available all I care about is potential readers *finding* my books. Discoverability is key, if you write the kind of books your readers would enjoy. It's all I care about. I'm not here to falsely try and prop up every author in the world's sales and neither is anyone else here.

I write books. I want readers who would enjoy my books to have at least the opportunity to read them. That's it.

Once you have a fan/reader, it's up to you to provide them with more enjoyable reads. I can't "steal" a fan/reader away from anyone else, but you can lose them by putting out a book they don't enjoy.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Andykay said:


> But I do think it's detrimental overall. I don't know exactly how much, it's not an easily definable figure, since as you said it effects everybody differently, but it seems pretty clear to me that the number of free books people are reading are resulting in at least some drop in overall book sales.


Based on a "What if?" statement if all book were free?

On the flip side, what if no books were free? Would everyone who currently consumes any amount of free books, automatically consume the same amount of paid books? I highly doubt it. You completely neglect the facts that your yearly reading hours stat, has a relation to available budget to spend on reading materials.

And if free books, no matter what the source, are indeed harming the overall author pool, we can't single out one source of free books, that being free ebooks. Obviously, the FSoG example, the babies example, etc. were hyperbole. But free ebooks do include the library, borrowed books, books someone read again, when only paying for it once, etc. All of these types of free cut into the "author pool" as well.

If it seems pretty clear, please show me facts and studies that show that paid sales of ebooks are down, since the introduction of, and more importantly, because of, free ebooks on a mass scale. Until then, it's simply conjecture based on the made up limited yearly reading hours stat, based directly on your anecdote. You use units of measurement, even made up ones, to make a point, yet you say that it's not definable.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> One scenario:
> People load up on a thousand freebies and that's all they read
> 
> 
> ...


Even if outcome #1 happens, the act of them downloading the book, in the current Amazon climate, helps to boost your book in the rankings, aiding in the extremely important discoverability. Many, many authors with opinions on either side of the fence about Select, seem to miss this point completely.

And like you said, it's not socialism, trying to boost the overall author pot isn't my goal, and doesn't have to be.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

eBooksHabit said:


> Even if outcome #1 happens, the act of them downloading the book, in the current Amazon climate, helps to boost your book in the rankings, aiding in the extremely important discoverability. Many, many authors with opinions on either side of the fence about Select, seem to miss this point completely.
> 
> And like you said, it's not socialism, trying to boost the overall author pot isn't my goal, and doesn't have to be.


True. I have two books currently in Select and plan on rolling out first books in series and stand alones into the Select program for the first ninety days. It really raises the discoverability factor for unknown indies.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> I ... plan on rolling out first books in series... into the Select program for the first ninety days. It really raises the discoverability factor for unknown indies.


At what point in the 90 days do you plan on making first books in series free? Immediately, or at the end of the 90 days, when they hopefully have a few reviews and perhaps you even have the next book in the series out?

I will be releasing my first fiction book ever December 1. It is the first in a planned series. I am debating with myself on if I should put it in Select for its first 90 days or not. I go back and forth on this.

Is there something algorithmic about Select that makes it better than free through price matching?

Or, is it simply that Select gives you more precision in when your book goes free on Amazon?


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## DCP (Mar 5, 2012)

Ultimately writing is a business if she makes more money than you then I would say point blank you are wrong.



jasonzc said:


> But I will say this: Any one of my books blows all of yours away. Point blank. And that's what it's really about as an author.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Send some of that popcorn over here, Brian.

Interesting use of Colbert, btw.
This discussion seems to mirror certain views of the American political landscape (this is what I get for watching the debates)

There is the camp that says "Heck, it's working for me, the rest of you can go pound sand" and then there is the camp that says "We're in this together, to sink or swim, so lets work it out".

It is unlikely that we'll ever see common ground on this. 

At this point, I daresay that the Big Six aren't worried. They're hanging back until we've dissolved into little more than a library where people get their reads for free.
Evidence of that is the new Harper Collins eBook imprint. If they do it right, people will go there to buy their eBooks, knowing they have been vetted, edited and packaged. The cost, if reasonable, won't matter to people looking for good stories.

Like someone else here said: it's not the cost of the book - it's cost of my time wasted on a bad book thrown into the fray by someone churning out six titles a year.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Cherise Kelley said:


> At what point in the 90 days do you plan on making first books in series free? Immediately, or at the end of the 90 days, when they hopefully have a few reviews and perhaps you even have the next book in the series out?
> 
> I will be releasing my first fiction book ever December 1. It is the first in a planned series. I am debating with myself on if I should put it in Select for its first 90 days or not. I go back and forth on this.
> 
> ...


Well, if you send out arc copies while you are releasing you might get some reviews right away. I used my free days on Book 1 during the first 30 days of my other books being launched (which were never free or in Select). People bought those books, and this helped them make the 30 days hot new release lists in their genre, which helped put them on a variety of best seller lists. 
I'm getting ready to release my fourth in the series, and I just enrolled book 1 for perma-free at Smashwords, which should have it showing up in all their premium catalog stores shortly.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Quiss said:


> At this point, I daresay that the Big Six aren't worried.


I get the exact opposite impression.

All I have heard is how self-published ebooks are hurting traditional publishers' revenues.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

eBooksHabit said:


> I get the exact opposite impression.
> 
> All I have heard is how self-published ebooks are hurting traditional publishers' revenues.


How so? Reading this thread, the overall and general consensus seems to be that the freebies aren't hurting anybody that charges for their books. Why would they hurt the big six, then?


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

> Quote from: jasonzc on Yesterday at 10:10:47 PM
> Yes, I'm not having great sales. Few of us are. That was sort of...the point.
> 
> But I will say this: Any one of my books blows all of yours away. Point blank. And that's what it's really about as an author.





> by lisagracebooks:
> ROFLOL followed by
> 
> Keep improving your novel writing skills by writing even better books, build your fan base, and don't worry about how much others are selling or giving away free.





DCP said:


> Ultimately writing is a business if she makes more money than you then I would say point blank you are wrong.


Yes, I'm making more money than him. I've had several four figure months. But if you read his posts, the "your" wasn't directed at me personally, it was aimed at all the writers in the cafe. That's why the eye rolling.

We all know appealing to individual readers is subjective. What one reader finds stimulating another finds boring. MY YA series is aimed at 12 to 15 year old girls. What they like to read is going to be very different than the market Jason is going for. Same with my adult historicals which appeal to, well, those who like to read historical novels.

I don't write for the Dr. Who, and _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ crowd, and he apparently does. I'd have to say we're going to have very little cross over when it comes to readers. So I'm not sinking his ship at all. He's doing it all by himself.


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## A. Rosaria (Sep 12, 2010)

eBooksHabit said:


> You completely misunderstand what I am trying to say, which is along the same lines as the general misunderstanding about how Select and the algorithms work.


Where are these algorithms documented? I've not seen them, never heard Amazon state what they are, maybe I missed this and they did, if so enlighten me.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

righterman said:


> A "free sample" is a small piece of cheese on a toothpick. The sampler person is not handing out entire blocks of cheese. If they did, the cheese company would go out of business after a few months of sampling. If the portion of your book that can be seen in the "Read a sample" section is enticing enough, the customer should buy, or not buy your book from that sample. No one needs more that 1-2 chapters to figure out if they like the writing style or the initial "hook" of the story.


Except that when you have a series, or other books in a similar genre, giving away one book is exactly like giving out a free sample of cheese. If you gave all of your books away free would be like giving away the whole block of cheese.

I have a new book for my series coming out this month. I'm not making it free right away, but I will at some point. It is a prequel and one of the reasons I wrote it (in addition to wanting to tell the story) was because I wanted to have it for marketing purposes. I could have written the fourth book instead, but my marketing options for that are limited to hoping people who read book three will go on to book four.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

righterman said:


> A "free sample" is a small piece of cheese on a toothpick. The sampler person is not handing out entire blocks of cheese. If they did, the cheese company would go out of business after a few months of sampling. If the portion of your book that can be seen in the "Read a sample" section is enticing enough, the customer should buy, or not buy your book from that sample. No one needs more that 1-2 chapters to figure out if they like the writing style or the initial "hook" of the story.


No, they hand out full samples. I just got a coupon via my cell phone while shopping the other day. After buying lactaid cottage cheese, my phone chimed with a coupon for a free lactose free full size yogurt from yoplait....promoting their new lactose line.

That's smart marketing.

Same as a free book for first in a series.

Interestingly, I ignore free books for the most part, unless they are first in a series. I still buy plenty of books!


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## sbaum4853 (May 3, 2010)

Here's the deal. Supply is growing faster than demand in the eBook market. This is driving the price down. High school economics. 

Free is here to stay. More and more, it will become the expectation. On my Facebook author page I got a comment last week that my new book (a sequel to a book that most people read for free) is the first book this woman will read that she's paid for all year. 

It's life. The heady days of 2010 when lots of people were striking it rich out of the blue are over. It took only a few years for eBooks to become a mature market. Now there are only two ways to make a living at this.

1) get lucky (will happen to a tiny fraction of us)
2) work hard for years to build customer loyalty, and spend much of that time making very little money (the more viable path to success for most of us)

Sometimes I remind myself that Amazon, who founded this feast for us, spent a decade in the red. For its first ten years, Amazon lost money. It was a business decision to do so. They were focused on market share.

That's what free is all about. People will give their books away to get market share. Retailers will let them because they want market share too. Free ebooks are a part of life now. Get used to them.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Quiss said:


> How so? Reading this thread, the overall and general consensus seems to be that the freebies aren't hurting anybody that charges for their books. Why would they hurt the big six, then?


The freebies aren't hurting them, what is is the fact that we can roll out the same quality of ebook (actually better on the formatting end) faster and for cheaper. If there are two mystery suspense thrillers in the top 100 ebook best sellers list, and one is selling for 6.99 and the other is 14.99, the one at 6.99 is the one most readers are choosing.

This is one reason publishers were so convinced ebooks weren't worth selling or pursuing was because they sell so few at the high prices. It took a few indie breakouts to show them how wrong they were. Then they said "ebooks are a fad." _Then_ Amazon lowered prices to $9.99. _Then_ the publishers boycotted, which didn't last long. _Then_ they trash talked Amazon. *Now they're starting ebook only publishing arms.* See? They're coming around to reality.
At a few of the big conferences the smart ones said they are unloading a lot of their dead weight old school employees, and hiring those who know marketing, editing, formatting, and creating covers for ebooks.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

sbaum4853 said:


> 2) work hard for years to build customer loyalty, and spend much of that time making very little money (the more viable path to success for most of us)


I disagree with most of what you said. It seems you only have one book out and that you are selling it at .99 cents. This is not a wise decision if you want to make money selling eBooks. You need to get more books out for your fans to buy and price them higher.

I am making _more_ money as time goes on, because I'm putting out _more_ books and all of my novels are priced 2.99 - 5.99. (My 30 Minutes of Flash is only 99 cents.)

You can afford to give a book away for free if you have others out there for people to buy for decent money. You have to sell six books to my one to make the lowest commission on my books. On the high end, you need to sell 13! On top of that you have nothing to sell to repeat buyers.


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## Danielle Kazemi (Apr 2, 2011)

Chillax.

Free will be around forever. Since the first cavemen said to the second, "Hey, you want this?" and he took it. It's a proven marketing plank for authors. It brings in more readers and people are willing to take a chance reading something for free as opposed to paying for somethng they might not like. I love freebie. I get them from everywhere. Shampoo especially.

Free romance, scifi, epic fantasy, non-fiction, anything and everything else does not bother my sales. It might actually help. Maybe someone loads up on romance novels for a while then gets burnt out so they decide to branch out and try something new. They see my freebie, download it, and think "Hey, this isn't so bad." They'll buy more or even if they don't but just tell their friends they found something new, that's great. 

What everyone seems to be complaining about is lack of sales which is due to this period in the year being the worse selling for everyone. Only textbooks do great and that's because people have to buy them. Now is an excellent time to keep writing and have a few more titles available when the Christmas rush kicks in.

(And I'm not touching the writing for money discussion because I price mine too cheap and everyone I talk to agrees. But I want the fans. I'm needy like that. lol)


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## Rachel Hanna (May 7, 2012)

Yes, let's all stop giving anything away for free. Those 22,000 downloads and new fans of my writing weren't worth it. Oh, wait... that resulted in 600 sales on one book last month. Scratch that...

But those 15,000 downloads of my new book this month must have been hurting my bank balance... oh, wait, those 300+ downloads in the last 4 days weren't worth it, right?

It's called PROMOTION. You aren't seeing the forest for the trees. Select as provided a huge burst in my income this year, but if you simply think of it as giving away books then you are coming from a mentality of LACK. There is enough to go around, but you have to promote. You can't just run random free days and call it promotion. It's about having a plan that includes Select, but doesn't depend on it completely.


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## AmberC (Mar 28, 2012)

Turn off the radio too!! Musicians are giving away all of their music for free!!!!!


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Cherise Kelley said:


> At what point in the 90 days do you plan on making first books in series free? Immediately, or at the end of the 90 days, when they hopefully have a few reviews and perhaps you even have the next book in the series out?
> 
> I will be releasing my first fiction book ever December 1. It is the first in a planned series. I am debating with myself on if I should put it in Select for its first 90 days or not. I go back and forth on this.
> 
> ...


Select gives you control and certainty that at a certain time you book will be free. What happened to me this week is not all that unusual for people using the price matching method.

I withdrew my historical novels from Select and made the first one free on various other retailers. After a about a week, Amazon price matched it. I did a fair amount of promotion reflecting the free.

Two days later, the free on Amazon stopped and it went back to its regular price.

Now, two days later, I'm still fighting to get it free on Amazon again and, needless to say, a lot of promotion has totally gone to waste. I have never been a fan of price matching, although I"m going to stick with trying it for a while. But it is a fair example of the problems with price matching. I don't think the algorithms are different, but the added exposure of being in the KOLL probably helps at least some.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Amazon has all the stats. They know how much they are selling right now, with the current free book market. They know how much they were selling before they allowed books to go free. 

If free is hurting sales, Amazon will do something different. 

If free is helping sales, Amazon will keep giving away ebooks.

That is all.

Going free helps me sell my books. I've seen it over and over, to the tune of thousands of dollars. I'm not stopping if it's giving me sales and income. If it ever stops selling my books, I'll stop giving books away. It's that simple.


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## ML Hamilton (Feb 21, 2011)

Look, I don't want to make anyone feel upset, but I really don't understand why we constantly devalue ourselves as writers. I understand coupons, I understand samples, I even understand giving away a book or two as a prize in a contest, but I do object to giving away entire books for days at a time or keeping a title free forever.

I'm not going to say it hasn't worked for some of you, because clearly it has, but there is such a glut of free books now, no one would have to pay for a book ever again. Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it certainly can't be helping that there are hundreds of books out there being offered every single day for free.

I did not mean to offend anyone in my previous thread, but I really feel that we offer the public an important product and I really wish authors would give this just a bit of thought We need to value ourselves or our readers won't.

Again, that's all I meant. Please understand I believe indie writers are vitally important to the literature community and I want us to value ourselves as much as we deserve to be valued.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I'm a fairly voracious reader (300-400 books a year, mostly SF/F, Mystery, Romance, and some non-fiction).  I have actually stopped looking at the free lists, because I realized that I almost never read the free books I grabbed.  Now the only free books I put on my kindle are ones from authors I already like when I happen to notice (usually through a blog post or something) that they are offering something free.  If I want a free book, I go to the library, because getting a book out of the library means I'll read it before it is due.  

So this is one reader who doesn't fill her Kindle with freebies and instead chooses to pay for books, because books I pay for actually get read.

As a writer? I'm not even worrying about it.  I'd much rather focus on writing another great book.


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

righterman said:


> A "free sample" is a small piece of cheese on a toothpick. The sampler person is not handing out entire blocks of cheese.


Lisa (as do many of us) has a series. Therefore, even if she gives away an entire first book for free, she's hardly giving everything away, so the analogy to cheese doesn't work. The first book of a series is the small piece of cheese on a toothpick, but if her books were not connected, then giving away a full book could be considered an entire block of cheese.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've bought the rest of an author's backlist or frontlist simply because I picked up one of their books for free -- either from the library, a conference, an advanced reading copy, or downloaded it for free on Amazon. Once you hook me, I glom on and NEED to buy the rest of your stuff. Simply reading the first 2 chapters doesn't cut it.

I go to a lot of writers' conferences. Sometimes I walk out with over a $1000 worth of free books. Does that mean those authors and publishers have lost $1000 worth from me? Heck no. It's possible that I won't like several of the books, but those that I do, I end up spending beaucoup bucks buying the rest of the series or backlist. Trust me, they MADE money off of me.


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## DCP (Mar 5, 2012)

That algorithms are what determine book rankings. Amazon doesn't want to tell you how the algorithm works, that would lead to people gaming it.



A. Rosaria said:


> Where are these algorithms documented? I've not seen them, never heard Amazon state what they are, maybe I missed this and they did, if so enlighten me.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Last I heard schools were giving at least twelve years of education away for free. UGGGHHH! What were they thinking? That knowledge is valuable! Stop giving it away for free!!!!


And the classics on Amazon...giving the best stuff away for free? What are they thinking

Libraries, you mean people can read anything they want for free? Good thing those places are top secret!
Just stop all the madness! 

Free game aps on itunes? Surely you jest! Free games on Facebook and loaded into every computer Why Gamestop must be shaking in their boots.


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## sbaum4853 (May 3, 2010)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> I disagree with most of what you said. It seems you only have one book out and that you are selling it at .99 cents. This is not a wise decision if you want to make money selling eBooks. You need to get more books out for your fans to buy and price them higher.
> 
> I am making _more_ money as time goes on, because I'm putting out _more_ books and all of my novels are priced 2.99 - 5.99. (My 30 Minutes of Flash is only 99 cents.)
> 
> You can afford to give a book away for free if you have others out there for people to buy for decent money. You have to sell six books to my one to make the lowest commission on my books. On the high end, you need to sell 13! On top of that you have nothing to sell to repeat buyers.


I wasn't looking for a critique, Lisa. I was trying to participate in the conversation. I've been at this for 13 years, I have many books out under multiple pen names, and I make my living as a full-time writer. I haven't updated my signature on Kindleboards in years because I don't come here to sell books, I come here to talk to writers. I feel like from your comments that you didn't understand what I was saying at all, but I think we should let it go. Maybe I wasn't very clear. Have a good one.


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

Here's the thing guys, this is an individualized decision for each of us.  Some of us can make free work, some of us can't.  Some of us can make more with a permafree first novel, some of us will make more with no freebies.

Everyone is different.  I like the "idea" of unity amongst authors - and that's why I come here.  To meet you guys and learn from you.

But business is business.  You CAN NOT run a business based on what's good for other people in your market.  You run your business based on what's good for YOU in your market.

I'm not even sure the first example exists, to be honest?  Who runs a business based on their competitors?  And don't take that the wrong way, I don't think fiction authors compete in quite the same way as most businesses (including non-fiction authors).  This is not a zero sum game.

My first book is at 99 cents right now - it will stay this way until December 1, then I will go into Select and milk that puppy for all it's worth.  At the end of 90 days, I'll probably pull it out and try out a $2.99 price tag.  if it doesn't work, I'll go permafree.

See how this works?  I make decisions, I check it out, and I make more decisions.  No where in this scenario do I say, hey I'll check out _____'s sales and adjust my plan accordingly.

Who gives a crap what _____ is doing?  Not me.  I'm not ______.  

It doesn't apply.  DOES NOT APPLY.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

ML Hamilton said:


> Look, I don't want to make anyone feel upset,


Actually, you were the one who seemed upset in your previous post. The problem is your post was full of melodrama (killing publishing!), accusatory language towards those who dont agree with your position (flat out stupid!), and you offered absolutely no facts to back your position.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

BrianKittrell said:


>


I'd say pass the popcorn, but I already ate my chocolate ration for the day. (I gotta have chocolate with popcorn.)


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Last I heard schools were giving at least twelve years of education for free. UGGGHHH! What were they thinking? That knowledge is valuable! Stop giving it away for free!!!!


And yet - My kids never went to FREE school...I homeschooled them both and paid tens of thousands of dollars out of my own pocket to do so.  People still pay for what they want, even if there's a free alternative. Very nice example.


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## DRMarvello (Dec 3, 2011)

Price has nothing to do with value: it is strictly a marketing decision. Going free is just another price choice.



jasonzc said:


> But I will say this: Any one of my books blows all of yours away. Point blank. And that's what it's really about as an author.


No, that's really about having a healthy ego. Good for you that you believe in your books. But it has nothing to do with price or the value of your books in the marketplace.

The market will pay for what it wants, and it will ignore what it doesn't want. Price is a tool for negotiating the best revenue stream, across all of your products, from a willing marketplace.


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## ML Hamilton (Feb 21, 2011)

Adam Pepper said:


> Actually, you were the one who seemed upset in your previous post. The problem is your post was full of melodrama (killing publishing!), accusatory language towards those who dont agree with your position (flat out stupid!), and you offered absolutely no facts to back your position.


Yes, I'm upset. Obviously, I'm not the only one who is, but I accept your critique as such. Thank you for your input.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

If we really want to tighten up the supply of ebooks, we writers should:

- Stop encouraging other writers to self-publish  
- Stop helping other writers via forums and cover feedback  
- Complain more in public about how hard it is to self-pub instead of being so stoic and upbeat   
- Absolute ban on any indie success stories


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

Andykay said:


> but it is certainly also true that if someone reads twenty free books in a year, they're buying less other books.


Produce some evidence that supports this. I've yet to see one shred of credible evidence that shows consumption of free books has any negative impact on sales of paid books.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

sbaum4853 said:


> I wasn't looking for a critique, Lisa. I was trying to participate in the conversation. I've been at this for 13 years, I have many books out under multiple pen names, and I make my living as a full-time writer. I haven't updated my signature on Kindleboards in years because I don't come here to sell books, I come here to talk to writers. I feel like from your comments that you didn't understand what I was saying at all, but I think we should let it go. Maybe I wasn't very clear. Have a good one.


Sorry. I shouldn't make assumptions from a signature line. I owe you an apology for that.

I still disagree with the premise that sales tank from free. I still disagree it devalues a writers' work. All the classics are now available for free on Amazon yet people still buy the paperbacks and the hardcovers in addition to getting the ebook for free. The classics are not devalued by being free.
My hardcover sells for $22.95 and I have people who regularly buy it along with getting the ebook for free.

The only thing that happens with a billion ebooks available is that it makes discovery of those without a fanbase or marketing strategy behind them, harder to discover. That's it.

Working for a fanbase is something every artist or product has to do. Some will find them, some won't.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> This is one reason publishers were so convinced ebooks weren't worth selling or pursuing was because they sell so few at the high prices. It took a few indie breakouts to show them how wrong they were. Then they said "ebooks are a fad." _Then_ Amazon lowered prices to $9.99. _Then_ the publishers boycotted, which didn't last long. _Then_ they trash talked Amazon. *Now they're starting ebook only publishing arms.* See? They're coming around to reality.
> At a few of the big conferences the smart ones said they are unloading a lot of their dead weight old school employees, and hiring those who know marketing, editing, formatting, and creating covers for ebooks.


This... after burying their heads in the sand regarding ebooks, they are now going to be doing ebooks themselves. They are realizing that the business model they had was flawed. It only worked because there was no other game in town. The fact that I can now sell for less and still make more profit per book is a very appealing proposition to myself and others, and frightening to publishers. Yes, it requires marketing, something I am now responsible for as a self-publisher whereas the publisher marketed your book (you would hope they would at least... that wasn't always the case).



Victorine said:


> Amazon has all the stats. They know how much they are selling right now, with the current free book market. They know how much they were selling before they allowed books to go free.
> 
> If free is hurting sales, Amazon will do something different.
> 
> If free is helping sales, Amazon will keep giving away ebooks.


Or, if they like free, but not the current implementation, they will tweak their algorithms, much like they did in April 2012. They liked giving a boost to books that had solid free promotions, but they realized it was too overpowered before, so they dialed back the power (but there is still plenty of power there, it's just not overpowered as it was before). They could have eliminated free ebooks altogether... they chose to find a middle ground that met all or most of their goals.



A. Rosaria said:


> Where are these algorithms documented? I've not seen them, never heard Amazon state what they are, maybe I missed this and they did, if so enlighten me.


Amazon is not going to divulge their algorithms... that doesn't mean that one cannot deduce what are some of the main factors that affect the algorithms, by simply observing and analyzing the trends. You can do this yourself. Just saying "Amazon hasn't showed their algorithms so there's no possible way to know what types of things affect them." is just silly and ignorant.

http://phoenixsullivan.blogspot.com/2012/08/just-how-do-those-amazon-algos-work.html

Phoenix Sullivan breaks down some of the main factors that go into the popularity algorithms, how they differ from the best seller algorithms, and how free downloads can significantly improve your rankings on the popularity lists.

Whether or not you choose to be enlightened by this is up to you. The information is there. Some people choose to just ignore it since it's not from Amazon directly. Silly them.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

MaryMcDonald said:


> I'd say pass the popcorn, but I already ate my chocolate ration for the day. (I gotta have chocolate with popcorn.)


 

Chocolate with popcorn?



Betsy


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Get paid! YOU are worth it!


Worth it? Why? Maybe I suck. I find life much more fun when I reconcile to selling nothing. It's just a book.


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## Danielle Kazemi (Apr 2, 2011)

ML Hamilton said:


> Look, I don't want to make anyone feel upset, but I really don't understand why we constantly devalue ourselves as writers. I understand coupons, I understand samples, I even understand giving away a book or two as a prize in a contest, but I do object to giving away entire books for days at a time or keeping a title free forever.
> 
> I'm not going to say it hasn't worked for some of you, because clearly it has, but there is such a glut of free books now, no one would have to pay for a book ever again. Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it certainly can't be helping that there are hundreds of books out there being offered every single day for free.
> 
> ...


It's not devaluating - it's promotion. When a book goes free, it lands now on a separate bestseller list. If your book makes it onto the list, it ends up in front of people who may have missed it when you initally published your book. There are over a million ebooks on Amazon - maybe almost at the million and a half mark. There's only a finite space on the bestseller lists. Many people use the RSS feed at the bottom to get instant notifications when a book enters onto said list. If your book, I'll call it "Book 1" lands on the list, Jane Smith in Nowhereville goes "Hey, I never heard of this. Let me see what it's about." She downloads your book because 1 - it's new and 2 - it's free. It might take up to a month for her to get around to read it if she ever does.

After that, if she likes what you wrote, she'll seek out more books under your name. If not, she'll delete it or write a horrible review (that's one of the biggest risks of going free - bad reviews from people who don't read your genre). If she likes it, she might share the "new" find with her friends. We all do this when we discover something great and we're the first one of our friends. Perhaps then Sue and Meg, her friends, also download it for free and get another one of your books. You just made three sales from people who never heard of you before they found your freebie. And then because they think they might be some of the firsts from among their friends to hear about you...it continues.

It's not undervaluing or being foolish. It's a great plan especially for new names which don't have a large budget for advertising. It also works for some people, like me, who don't like marketing and feel uncomfortable asking someone to simply buy their book. I can point people towards the free one and not feel so "salespersony".

It does seem to work much better with series as opposed to stand alone books. Or if you have other books in the same genre, using a freebie to generate sales for those is also possible. It also works in hard to stand out genres where readers generally gravitate towards names they are familiar with. Eventually, through time, luck, everything else, an indie name becomes a familiar one and people pick up more of those books. This is a more long term plan and you might not see results until months later. Hope this makes sense.


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## sbaum4853 (May 3, 2010)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Sorry. I shouldn't make assumptions from a signature line. I owe you an apology for that.
> 
> I still disagree with the premise that sales tank from free. I still disagree it devalues a writers' work. All the classics are now available for free on Amazon yet people still buy the paperbacks and the hardcovers in addition to getting the ebook for free. The classics are not devalued by being free.
> My hardcover sells for $22.95 and I have people who regularly buy it along with getting the ebook for free.
> ...


Thanks and we're all good. To clarify, I am all in favor of free and use it myself all the time (have a free book out there right now).


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

JanneCO said:


> And yet - My kids never went to FREE school...I homeschooled them both and paid tens of thousands of dollars out of my own pocket to do so.  People still pay for what they want, even if there's a free alternative. Very nice example.


Lol, good point. I homeschooled my daughter for one year through a paid site, and she's been enrolled in a private school (where we pay thousands a year) for the last three. So do I care she can get a free education just by showing up at the bus stop in my neighborhood? Nope. I'll keep paying for the private school.


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## ML Hamilton (Feb 21, 2011)

Danielle Kazemi said:


> It's not devaluating - it's promotion. When a book goes free, it lands now on a separate bestseller list. If your book makes it onto the list, it ends up in front of people who may have missed it when you initally published your book. There are over a million ebooks on Amazon - maybe almost at the million and a half mark. There's only a finite space on the bestseller lists. Many people use the RSS feed at the bottom to get instant notifications when a book enters onto said list. If your book, I'll call it "Book 1" lands on the list, Jane Smith in Nowhereville goes "Hey, I never heard of this. Let me see what it's about." She downloads your book because 1 - it's new and 2 - it's free. It might take up to a month for her to get around to read it if she ever does.
> 
> After that, if she likes what you wrote, she'll seek out more books under your name. If not, she'll delete it or write a horrible review (that's one of the biggest risks of going free - bad reviews from people who don't read your genre). If she likes it, she might share the "new" find with her friends. We all do this when we discover something great and we're the first one of our friends. Perhaps then Sue and Meg, her friends, also download it for free and get another one of your books. You just made three sales from people who never heard of you before they found your freebie. And then because they think they might be some of the firsts from among their friends to hear about you...it continues.
> 
> ...


Okay, okay. I cry defeat. I agree with the earlier post that we have to do what is best for our business model. If free works for people, as they clearly say it has, I will say no more on it.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> The freebies aren't hurting them, what is is the fact that we can roll out the same quality of ebook (actually better on the formatting end) faster and for cheaper. If there are two mystery suspense thrillers in the top 100 ebook best sellers list, and one is selling for 6.99 and the other is 14.99, the one at 6.99 is the one most readers are choosing.


Yes, but the indie $6.99 will be a thing of the past. Indies will be 99 cents or free.

So then the reader will get to the point where they look at having to dig through thousands of possible cheap books to find one they might like (via preview) or they can go back to the big publishers, trusting them to have books of quality writing and editing. 
It's most certainly the route I would take. I have only so much time to read.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

*wanders back in*

i've had a couple more thoughts....

Author A's free books don't effect my buying Author B's non-free books.  

Doing away with free books entirely does not ensure that I'll be more likely to buy Author B's books. 

I'm more likely to buy authors I like as people, so authors who are nice to each other get first crack at my money. 

There are a lot of factors that go into sales, so just because one author's books are selling better doesn't mean they are taking sales away form a second.  Especially if you're talking two different genres.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Quiss said:


> Yes, but the indie $6.99 will be a thing of the past. Indies will be 99 cents or free.


Really? I'd love to see hard data on this. Most of the indies I've bought have not been 99 cents.


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## MsTee (Jul 30, 2012)

As a few others have already said: I don't buy/download a book until I read the sample. Even if it's free, if the sample isn't to my tastes, I'm not downloading it. I can see where a few might get this assumption that free devalues a work/the industry, but IMO, an author offering a full-fledged book (50K +) at 0.99 is more devaluing. It means they want to charge for it, but at a cheap price that they hope will entice the readers. No. Let me be enticed first by your sample...and then your work itself. $0.99 is for short works.

I think having the free runs is a great idea for exposure. It's like giving a whole long sample to encourage readers to read your other not-free stuff.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

ML Hamilton said:


> Look, I don't want to make anyone feel upset, but I really don't understand why we constantly devalue ourselves as writers. I understand coupons, I understand samples, I even understand giving away a book or two as a prize in a contest, but I do object to giving away entire books for days at a time or keeping a title free forever.
> 
> I'm not going to say it hasn't worked for some of you, because clearly it has, but there is such a glut of free books now, no one would have to pay for a book ever again. Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it certainly can't be helping that there are hundreds of books out there being offered every single day for free.
> 
> ...


It is misleading when people say there are so many free ebooks, readers will not have to pay for any ebooks ever again.

If your books are interchangeable with other books, then I would agree. But they are NOT.

If you want to read Hunger Games, you have to buy it. It does no good to go look at all the thousands of ebooks that are free. THAT one isn't free. That story is unique. No other book will do if you want to read about Katniss and her experiences.

This is what indie authors need to realize. We need to write stories that people want, and no other free ebook out there will substitute. If we have done this, the next thing to do is get the word out.

One more point I want to make, and that's my Angry Birds point. That's a free app. Millions of people have downloaded that game and played it for free. FREE. Yet the makers of that game are making a ton of money on all the merchandising that is coming their way. There are t-shirts and stuffed animals and even a tv show. Plus people can buy extras on the app itself.

Yes, there is loads of money to be made on giving something away for free.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

ML Hamilton said:


> Okay, okay. I cry defeat.


I dont think you need to cry defeat, and there is something to be said for believing in the value of your work and holding onto that ideal. But I think the mistake you are making is in drawing a direct line in cause and effect. My belief is that ebook prices will continue to drop whether we like it or not. And I find it very hard to believe that indie authors have any impact on that. The best we can do is use what's available to us in the moment and adapt as needed.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

I don't sample, but I don't download every free book I see, either. The cover and blurb have to entice me. Here's the thing. I have a huge archive of unread books on Amazon now. They show up in my archive or cloud on my Kindle or app. It doesn't tell me how much I paid for the book. So, the book either entices me or it doesn't from what I can see of it. I don't start to read it because it was free, I don't NOT start to read it because it was free. And it either grabs me when I start reading or it doesn't.

If I like a book, I seek out others by the author, especially if it's a series, and buy them. 

Betsy


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## ML Hamilton (Feb 21, 2011)

Adam Pepper said:


> I dont think you need to cry defeat, and there is something to be said for believing in the value of your work and holding onto that ideal. But I think the mistake you are making is in drawing a direct line in cause and effect. My belief is that ebook prices will continue to drop whether we like it or not. And I find it very hard to believe that indie authors have any impact on that. The best we can do is use what's available to us in the moment and adapt as needed.


I agree with that. I will admit to frustration over the last two month with the dramatic fall off in sales for so many of us, and I spoke from that frustration and fear a bit too hastily.

Indie authors have fought so hard for legitimacy and we've finally won it. In my personal opinion, I feel we should be paid for our creative talents. How we go about doing that is again up to the individual author and I also support that.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Last I heard schools were giving at least twelve years of education away for free. UGGGHHH! What were they thinking? That knowledge is valuable! Stop giving it away for free!!!!


And here I thought my taxes were paying for schools! I've been swindled!


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Good lord. Look, Select is one of the tools Amazon gives us, and it has been extremely productive for a number of authors. Given the paucity of sales-boosting tools out there, many people are going to use Select as long as it's available. Authors are not going to shun Select based on an idealistic appeal to communal values, especially one unsupported by any convincing evidence of likely success. If you think Select depresses sales, write to Amazon about it. Authors will stop using Select when Select no longer exists. Maybe you can hurry that process along. But so long as it exists, many people will use it.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Quiss said:


> Yes, but the indie $6.99 will be a thing of the past. Indies will be 99 cents or free.


Hardly. I'm selling _more_ of my higher priced books. I don't send my daughter to the cheapest private school, I didn't buy the cheapest house in my neighborhood or county. I don't go to the cheapest mechanic, dentist, or doctor. Starbucks is hardly the cheapest coffee in town. 
I look for quality. If your indie book finds a fanbase, they will buy your books. I could get more (I've had dozens of fans tell me I should charge more, that my books are worth a higher price) but right now I'm balancing charging the right price to get more fans.


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## DRMarvello (Dec 3, 2011)

Quiss said:


> Yes, but the indie $6.99 will be a thing of the past. Indies will be 99 cents or free.


Not in my experience. My book is selling way better at $2.99 than it did at 99 cents.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

ML Hamilton said:


> Look, I don't want to make anyone feel upset, but I really don't understand why we constantly devalue ourselves as writers. I understand coupons, I understand samples, I even understand giving away a book or two as a prize in a contest, but I do object to giving away entire books for days at a time or keeping a title free forever.
> 
> I'm not going to say it hasn't worked for some of you, because clearly it has, but there is such a glut of free books now, no one would have to pay for a book ever again. Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it certainly can't be helping that there are hundreds of books out there being offered every single day for free.
> 
> ...


I value my work as a writer... I want to make money from that work, as much money as I can. No matter how much value I put on my work, through my blood sweat, tears and eventual carpel tunnel syndrome, if the market doesn't value it because they can't find it, then it truly has no value beyond the value I (and maybe my mom) put on it.

I think the greater tragedy is the truly great literary works that no one will ever hear about, that may only sell a few copies a month, because an author an author was against, completely misunderstood, and failed to use a marketing/promotional tactic that could help them to really earn some good money from their truly great literary works. It's a total shame that such books may never, ever reach their full potential.

If we are offering the public an important product, why aren't some of us doing all that they can to be noticed by the public. Tweeting just won't cut it. Writing yet another book that will probably have the same fate of languishing in the hundreds of thousands in the bestseller lists, making a few sales per month, won't cut it. You need to market that book if it truly is an important product.

You say, "there is such a glut of free books now, no one would have to pay for a book ever again." You're right, they would never have to pay for a book again...

Why in the world are they still buying books? Especially from the same authors who routinely give away their books for free.



Quiss said:


> Yes, but the indie $6.99 will be a thing of the past. Indies will be 99 cents or free.
> 
> So then the reader will get to the point where they look at having to dig through thousands of possible cheap books to find one they might like (via preview) or they can go back to the big publishers, trusting them to have books of quality writing and editing.
> It's most certainly the route I would take. I have only so much time to read.


Hahaha! The sky is falling indeed.

Please, please, please come and gloat to me about how right you were and how wrong I was, when this happens. I won't hold my breath.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Quiss said:


> And here I thought my taxes were paying for schools! I've been swindled!


True. And some, like my hubby and I, will pay for others' educations and not use it ourselves, but choose to pay out to a private school on top of what we pay in taxes.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> In my personal opinion, I feel we should be paid for our creative talents.


Why? Who should do the paying? Consumers buy products. They buy what they choose. They ignore what they choose. They have no obligation to any of us.


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## A. Rosaria (Sep 12, 2010)

eBooksHabit said:


> Amazon is not going to divulge their algorithms... that doesn't mean that one cannot deduce what are some of the main factors that affect the algorithms, by simply observing and analyzing the trends. You can do this yourself. Just saying "Amazon hasn't showed their algorithms so there's no possible way to know what types of things affect them." is just silly and ignorant.


Deducing something out of data collected still doesn't necessarily make whatever you deduced a fact or remotely correct.


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## ML Hamilton (Feb 21, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Why? Who should do the paying? Consumers buy products. They buy what they choose. They ignore what they choose. They have no obligation to any of us.


I'm not certain I understand what you meant, so forgive me if I misinterpret it. I meant we are offering a product. That's all.


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

ML Hamilton said:


> I'm not certain I understand what you meant, so forgive me if I misinterpret it. I meant we are offering a product. That's all.


Yes. And that's why if you choose to use "free" as a marketing strategy, it should be done judiciously. Personally, I wouldn't do it if I only had one book out, because then what else does that reader have of yours to buy once you've hooked them? I also would only do it for the first book in a series (and not until there are at least 3 books in the series).

Currently I only have one freebie -- a short story in a perma-free anthology. The story stands alone, but it's also part of my existing series. So it's a nice lead-in for readers to find my books. It comes in the middle of the series, so it's a nice bonus for my existing readers, but because the story stands alone, it could actually be read at any point in discovering the series without losing continuity.

Once my third novel in the series is released, I might decide to put the first book free. Not sure. Haven't decided. And if I do, it might be perma-free, or it might be free just for a limited time (although done through price-matching rather than Select, so it would be for a longer period than just 5 days). But all of these considerations would be based on making MORE money for me, rather than simply giving the book away.

I have countless friends who have doubled, tripled, quadrupled or more their monthly earnings just by making the first book in their series permanently free.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

A. Rosaria said:


> Deducing something out of data collected still doesn't necessarily make whatever you deduced a fact or remotely correct.


Start here and then continue reading the next couple weeks of blog entries: http://www.edwardwrobertson.com/2012/05/amazons-ever-changing-algorithms-kindle.html

The "data avengers'" work is careful and quite convincing. It passes the test of a successful _theory_: it's predictive of future events.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

A. Rosaria said:


> Deducing something out of data collected still doesn't necessarily make whatever you deduced a fact or remotely correct.


Okay, buddy...


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## BlankPage (Sep 23, 2012)

_Comment removed due to VS TOS 25/9/2018_


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## Cheryl Douglas (Dec 7, 2011)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> No Way.
> 
> I have a series. I just loaded Book 1 up on Smashwords so I could set it free to everyone in the world. My goal is to give Book 1 away free, then if the reader likes my story they will be willing to pay for the rest.
> 
> Yes, I believe my books are worth buying, which is why I so strongly believe by giving them a free one, my sales on the others will increase.


I'm with you on this one, Lisa. Giving my books away has earned me tens of thousands of dollars over the past six months. As long as it's working, I'm going to keep doing it!


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

eBooksHabit said:


> Please, please, please come and gloat to me about how right you were and how wrong I was, when this happens. I won't hold my breath.


You have no idea how much I'm hoping and praying that I'm wrong. 
Gloating isn't the point.


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## Missy B (Aug 20, 2012)

Going free now is a completely different animal than it was a few years ago. Two of the titles I have now were freebies. One was on Smashwords and the other on my old website. I didn't have covers. Barely had blurbs but I got a lot of downloads on them. But even then I put them up as a promotional tool. So my theory is that free has only recently became a dirty word. 

My only additional defense of free is to mention Harlequin. Every month and every line has a free serial. They've done this for years and years. You can say a lot about Harlequin but they value their books, they look to their bottom line. I don't think they've ever worried those free serials would kill all sales because their readers would only read the freebies.

So I'm at a complete lost for this reasoning. Free does not make the sky fall. It's promotion. Now I can say promotion in any form leaves me feeling dirty but that's because it's a clever way to say Dear God Buy My Book, Please! But that's another can of worms.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Adam Pepper said:


> I dont think you need to cry defeat, and there is something to be said for believing in the value of your work and holding onto that ideal. But I think the mistake you are making is in drawing a direct line in cause and effect. My belief is that ebook prices will continue to drop whether we like it or not. And I find it very hard to believe that indie authors have any impact on that. The best we can do is use what's available to us in the moment and adapt as needed.


Maybe. Or maybe the big publishers out of fear of Amazon's ability to discount eBooks will raise the prices on their eBooks. Instead that will put upward pressure on pricing.

In an industry changing as fast as ours is, it is hard to know what's going to happen next week much less next year. Most predictions even from industry "experts" have been wrong. So I do the best I can to build as large a fan base as I can. I think that is the closest we can ever come to anything like a guarantee.

ETA: And sometimes that "anything I can" includes making books free.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Amanda Brice said:


> Yes. And that's why if you choose to use "free" as a marketing strategy, it should be done judiciously. Personally, I wouldn't do it if I only had one book out, because then what else does that reader have of yours to buy once you've hooked them?


I disagree. I completely agree that by having more books in a series, the success from a free run or perma-free book can splash over into your other books you have available.

But, to think that going free with a single book is not worth it comes down to a lack of understand how the _current_ Amazon algorithms work.

Going perma-free with a single book is silly unless your goal is to not make any money at all.

But, by using a small window giveaway (a few days), by promoting that giveaway to maximize the number of downloads, you will affect the Amazon algorithms, and you will create more exposure for your one book. Due to that increased exposure, people will buy THAT book, because they now see the book in the lists that they browse. Hopefully, as part of an overarching marketing plan, you have your website listed in the front and back of your book, maybe even an invite at the end of the book for people to go to your website (people like to be told what to do), hopefully you have a mailing list signup form in a very obvious place on the website, and then you get them on your mailing list for when your next book(s) come out, so you can sell them those books.

Having more books is ideal, absolutely.

It's hardly a disqualification for using free giveaways to boost your book's visibility once you revert back to paid.



Missy B said:


> Going free now is a completely different animal than it was a few years ago. Two of the titles I have now were freebies. One was on Smashwords and the other on my old website. I didn't have covers. Barely had blurbs but I got a lot of downloads on them. But even then I put them up as a promotional tool. So my theory is that free has only recently became a dirty word.
> 
> My only additional defense of free is to mention Harlequin. Every month and every line has a free serial. They've done this for years and years. You can say a lot about Harlequin but they value their books, they look to their bottom line. I don't think they've ever worried those free serials would kill all sales because their readers would only read the freebies.


Great points!


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## A. Rosaria (Sep 12, 2010)

Becca Mills said:


> Start here and then continue reading the next couple weeks of blog entries: http://www.edwardwrobertson.com/2012/05/amazons-ever-changing-algorithms-kindle.html
> 
> The "data avengers'" work is careful and quite convincing. It passes the test of a successful _theory_: it's predictive of future events.


I'll look into it.


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## ML Hamilton (Feb 21, 2011)

Becca Mills said:


> Start here and then continue reading the next couple weeks of blog entries: http://www.edwardwrobertson.com/2012/05/amazons-ever-changing-algorithms-kindle.html
> 
> The "data avengers'" work is careful and quite convincing. It passes the test of a successful _theory_: it's predictive of future events.


Very interesting.


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## cdvsmx5 (May 23, 2012)

Free to the reader is not free to the producer or the retailer.  Promotion has real costs.

Amazon has never liked free because it costs them money to setup, catalog, display and deliver ebooks.

Select 'free' charges authors exclusivity, but does offer library payments.  The benefits to authors appear to be diminishing, the causes are unimportant.

What does Amazon get for 'perma-free'?  Does it sell more or less books overall, or only more of this not that?  Amazon probably knows and we don't.  Except, I recognize increasing resistance to price matching zero.  Anyone else?  It remains a violation of TOS.  Author's with strategy dependant on zero matching should be prepared for further obstacles or even bans.  Charging download fees similar to the 70% program is another possible response.

Be careful out there.


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

Estelle Ryan said:


> As a one-book unknown author, these free books are 'free' advertising.


EXACTLY. And what you put between the pages of that free advertising is what counts in the end. What they find inside will make or break you. Not the fact that they got it for free.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Things that bring customers to Amazon benefit Amazon.  You better believe Amazon knows how many people who come to Amazon directly to a free book from a site such as ours end up buying additional items.  And I bet it's significant.  As long as free makes Amazon money, they'll continue to encourage it.  It's like Prime.  Prime in theory costs Amazon money. But people who are Prime members spend more money at Amazon.  A lot more.

Betsy


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Becca Mills said:


> Start here and then continue reading the next couple weeks of blog entries: http://www.edwardwrobertson.com/2012/05/amazons-ever-changing-algorithms-kindle.html
> 
> The "data avengers'" work is careful and quite convincing. It passes the test of a successful _theory_: it's predictive of future events.


Every KDP author should read those for an understanding. It is part of why I disagree with PG's "we know nothing" theory. 

Sharing data and even sharing anecdotes helps us learn what are successful strategies. By the way, I would agree with the "don't make a sole offering free" theory if, even with the changes in algorithms being free didn't frequently increase visibility and discoverability at least for a short time.


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## Coral Moore (Nov 29, 2009)

ML Hamilton said:


> Look, I don't want to make anyone feel upset, but I really don't understand why we constantly devalue ourselves as writers. I understand coupons, I understand samples, I even understand giving away a book or two as a prize in a contest, but I do object to giving away entire books for days at a time or keeping a title free forever.


You know, I actually agree with you in principle. I don't give away books like that because I don't like the lack of control. I like being able to talk to every person I give away a book to, even if it's only to say, "Hi, here's my book. I hope you like it." Controlled giveaways like LibraryThing and Goodreads I like much better. That said, this is my own policy and I don't presume to tell anyone else what to do with their books or their career.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Things that bring customers to Amazon benefit Amazon. You better believe Amazon knows how many people who come to Amazon directly to a free book from a site such as ours end up buying additional items. And I bet it's significant. As long as free makes Amazon money, they'll continue to encourage it. It's like Prime. Prime in theory costs Amazon money. But people who are Prime members spend more money at Amazon. A lot more.
> 
> Betsy


You know, I didn't even have an account with Amazon before self-publishing. I started out by buying books, then DVDs, then I started purchasing more expensive items like my Kindle, and my $259 juicer. I love the ease of one click, the reviews on products, the fast turn around on shipping, and ebooks that I can start reading right away.

I've had fans who did not have an Amazon account and opened one to get my ebooks. I speak at teen events and in the process I educate people on the ease of use of the Free Kindle aps and one click. Amazon has a mini army out there touting the benefits. I do it just so they buy my books.


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

eBooksHabit said:


> It's hardly a disqualification for using free giveaways to boost your book's visibility once you revert back to paid.


Sorry, I guess I should have clarified that it didn't make sense FOR ME because I don't use Select, so I have no way to control when I would go back to paid to ensure that it happened at the peak of download frequency. I don't use Select because I make a lot more from my non-Amazon sales than I do from Amazon, so doing Select would be a money-loser for me. So I have to rely upon price-matching.

The point is that everyone's experience is different, and while going free might be cannibalizing sales for some authors, it's massively increasing sales for other authors.


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## ML Hamilton (Feb 21, 2011)

Coral Moore said:


> You know, I actually agree with you in principle. I don't give away books like that because I don't like the lack of control. I like being able to talk to every person I give away a book to, even if it's only to say, "Hi, here's my book. I hope you like it." Controlled giveaways like LibraryThing and Goodreads I like much better. That said, this is my own policy and I don't presume to tell anyone else what to do with their books or their career.


Thank you for this. I appreciate it. And I agree with you on everything you said.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Things that bring customers to Amazon benefit Amazon. You better believe Amazon knows how many people who come to Amazon directly to a free book from a site such as ours end up buying additional items. And I bet it's significant. As long as free makes Amazon money, they'll continue to encourage it. It's like Prime. Prime in theory costs Amazon money. But people who are Prime members spend more money at Amazon. A lot more.


Exactly. Things that bring customers to my books, like free promos, benefit my books. Amazon is in business to improve their business. I am in business to do the same.

Re: them buying other items after going to the site for a free book... it is a significant amount.

It amazes me that not a single anti-freebie person here, bashed Harvey for giving away a $200 Kindle Fire HD. Here's a hint... he didn't just do it because he's a nice guy (though, I am sure that played a part). He did it because giving away a $200 item drives traffic to, engagement with and excitement for his forum here. He makes money from advertising, as well as every Amazon link in our signature lines... The more readers and authors he can get to come to this site, by giving away something that cost him $200, he has calculated (probably) that the increased traffic and excitement will way more than payoff the $200 he had to actually spend. A free ebook does not have a cost for anyone, anywhere close to $200, yet it has the same type of upside.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Amanda Brice said:


> Sorry, I guess I should have clarified that it didn't make sense FOR ME because I don't use Select, so I have no way to control when I would go back to paid to ensure that it happened at the peak of download frequency. I don't use Select because I make a lot more from my non-Amazon sales than I do from Amazon, so doing Select would be a money-loser for me. So I have to rely upon price-matching.
> 
> The point is that everyone's experience is different, and while going free might be cannibalizing sales for some authors, it's massively increasing sales for other authors.


Thank you for the clarification. And you are right, in your situation, if being in Select causes you to not make as much money, then absolutely that's not a tool you should use.

P.S. I featured Eternal Spring on my site the other day. =)


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## 60911 (Jun 13, 2012)

Quiss said:


> Like someone else here said: it's not the cost of the book - it's cost of my time wasted on a bad book thrown into the fray by someone churning out six titles a year.


I usually try and steer clear of these discussions, because I know I can offend people better than anyone, but I had to weigh in because after reading almost all of it, I got really steaming PO'd, especially at the little shot quoted above.

Cheap and free ebooks have always been around, from libraries and used book stores, so there have always been ways to read without the author receiving a dime of compensation. Piracy, also, though I don't hear people talk about that one as much anymore. This is the same angry hissing that surrounded the straw man argument of the "Tsunami of Crap" that was so prevalent on the net a year or so ago, and it's got the same force of data behind it - none. Ebook sales are still rising as digital replaces paper, so any anecdotal arguments about how people are only reading free ebooks is simply that - anecdotal.

Every one of these straw man arguments tends to come from the same quarter, though, and - not aiming to offend anyone, here, but it's a shot of truth, so it will probably sting - it always seems to come from authors who are (probably legitimately) afraid that their efforts will be in vain, languishing more or less unread. The solution of trying to get rid of every free book? Utterly ludicrous. I mean, really? How do you propose to get the authors of the 1.7 million books (in just the Kindle store) to march together in lockstep for that one? That would require cooperation of a sort unheard of in all human history.

It would also be slitting some of our financial throats. The first quarter of this year with two paid titles I made thirty bucks. Last month, with two free titles and six paid, I made $5,500 (yeah, my sixth, seventh and eighth titles this year will be out in the next couple months. Sorry that the fact that I can write pretty quick offends you, but at least my fans seem to like them). Do any of you authors who are advocating we do away with our free books want to pick up the tab and start paying my bills when my book sales slide off because my series lose exposure? I'm not exactly going to say "pound sand" here (never mind, yes I am), but why would I do that to myself because you 1) either write less fast than I do, 2) haven't figured out how to garner as much exposure as free has brought me? I won't step into the ugly realm of argument that if your books aren't selling, maybe it's because people don't like them, because frankly, there are numerous examples of great books going unread. The original poster could very well be right, and his books are hands down better than mine, but apparently mine are better in getting in front of eyes and collecting dollars, and that is at least part of my objective in writing them - and his as well, I would guess by his somewhat acrimonious attitude toward free books being the root of all his problems with sales.

Assuming I did dispense with my free books, mark everything up to the rate of my other books ($4.99), and assuming every other indie did as well, wiping out the FREE category, what guarantee is there that simply by sacrificing our book sales, yours would rise, you anti-free advocates? None. Absolutely none. I'm all for helping people in need. If someone's bleeding to death and needs a transfusion to help save their life - hey, here's my arm, let's get this show on the road. But I'm not all about opening my wrists up for no definable purpose.

Sorry if this post comes off as me being an arrogant, sarcastic, irritable (insert your favored expletive here, it'll probably be accurate). I respect anyone who comes to the table and puts their sweat, blood and tears into their manuscript and hits publish, putting it out there in the cruel world for judgment. But I worked my tail off trying to produce good books, trying to differentiate myself with a marketing strategy that offers hundreds of my hours of labor putting together two books as a "loss leader" to get people to try my others, and it's finally working and allowing me to make a living doing what I love to do, write books. The idea that someone else thinks they can come along and suggest I should stop because they think that their lack of success is somehow due to the fact that my books are free? Prove it. Your issue is discoverability, not the specter of free books clouding the way to your wholly amazing offerings, and until you realize that, you'll continue to sit back and rely on the marketing strategy of hoping to hit it big instead of working with the reality that few authors "hit it big" and that most manage a career by building a fan base one book and one reader at a time, and that...is a lot of hard work.


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

eBooksHabit said:


> P.S. I featured Eternal Spring on my site the other day. =)


THANK YOU!!!!!!


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## DRMarvello (Dec 3, 2011)

Amanda Brice said:


> Yes. And that's why if you choose to use "free" as a marketing strategy, it should be done judiciously. Personally, I wouldn't do it if I only had one book out, because then what else does that reader have of yours to buy once you've hooked them? I also would only do it for the first book in a series (and not until there are at least 3 books in the series).


Just FYI, I did have successful results from going free with my first (and only) book, and which is part of a series. The book was going nowhere because it had no visibility. I got a few dozen sales upon initial release, probably as a direct result of my marketing efforts. Over time, the sales dwindled to 0, and the ranking went into the 500K range. Books at that level and higher (numerically) have essentially lost their "discoverability."

I decided to try new metadata (a new description and a new price). But changing the metadata would not change my ranking, so I needed to do something to put the book in front of readers again. That was where the free campaign came in. I used going free to attract attention to the changes I'd made, and it took off from there. I concluded that bad metadata had been holding back a good book, although I know there could be other explanations.

If I had never gone free, I'm sure my book would still be languishing. Instead, I sold over 500 copies (at $2.99) in both August and September. I'm convinced that going free helped me make more money than could have been possible otherwise.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

DRMarvello said:


> Just FYI, I did have successful results from going free with my first (and only) book, and which is part of a series. The book was going nowhere because it had no visibility. I got a few dozen sales upon initial release, probably as a direct result of my marketing efforts. Over time, the sales dwindled to 0, and the ranking went into the 500K range. Books at that level and higher (numerically) have essentially lost their "discoverability."
> 
> I decided to try new metadata (a new description and a new price). But changing the metadata would not change my ranking, so I needed to do something to put the book in front of readers again. That was where the free campaign came in. I used going free to attract attention to the changes I'd made, and it took off from there. I concluded that bad metadata had been holding back a good book, although I know there could be other explanations.
> 
> If I had never gone free, I'm sure my book would still be languishing. Instead, I sold over 500 copies (at $2.99) in both August and September. I'm convinced that going free helped me make more money than could have been possible otherwise.


THIS is business 101.

New release? Promote it... Uh oh, it's not selling anymore! What can be changed? Maybe my pricing is wrong and my description is not working for people. Crap, no one is seeing my amazing and necessary changes. Let's promote it. Yay, people see it and are no longer turned off from the price and description. Cash checks. Lather, rinse, repeat.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Quiss said:


> Like someone else here said: it's not the cost of the book - it's cost of my time wasted on a bad book thrown into the fray by someone churning out six titles a year.


Imagine! Someone writing 2,000 words a day in order to "churn out" that many books a year. How DARE they. No people who are professionals with professional output allowed. 

Yes, that was heavy-handed sarcasm but the comment was a totally unnecessary cheap shot.


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

Quiss said:


> Like someone else here said: it's not the cost of the book - it's cost of my time wasted on a bad book thrown into the fray by someone churning out six titles a year.


I just noticed this when JR quoted it. I've seen this sentiment a few times--you're hardly the only one who thinks this. It bums me out.

You know what my daily schedule is like? I wake up whenever my son feels like it (he's two, so these things are not negotiable). I spend a few minutes cuddling in bed with him and playing iPad. And then I send his sweet, snuggly face away with daddy for a few hours so I can lock myself in a ten foot by ten foot box to write, edit, and publish. That is often about four hours without cuddly snuggles. I can get a _lot_ done in four hours. Then my son homes so he can nap. I put him to sleep, and instead of napping with him (even though I'm exhausted), I get up and write, edit, and publish for another hour.

I watch him in the evenings while my husband works, and while the baby is driving his choo-choos and watching Curious George, I'm doing statistical analysis of my sales/rankings patterns on the living room computer and answering emails. After dinner and bathtime, I put him back to bed. And guess what I do? I get up and work for a few more hours! No wonder I'm so tired.

My weekends are like that, too, except the part where I spend time with my family, because I lock myself in my office for twelve hours a day to get more work done.

Anyhoo, I've just published my sixth book of the year. I'll have another novel-length serial and full book out by the time 2013 rolls around. I do the freebie thing as a strategy a lot. I earned $100 in July 2011, versus $7000 in July 2012--mostly because I'm publishing a lot of titles. Are my freebies crap? Does this mean I'm wasting my time when I'm not with my toddler's adorable stinky feet? I sure as hell hope not, because I'm dedicating a lot of time to not being with my son when he's little and cuddly so that I can give him a college fund.

Everyone produces at a different rate. My rate happens to be fairly brisk because I work on it--hard--every damn day. Speed doesn't have anything to do with quality.

I don't know why we have to pretend that people who don't do what we do are bad.


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## MegSilver (Feb 26, 2012)

Why is this even an argument? 

No, seriously. This thread is the equivalent of Macy's, Target, Penneys, the Gap, Banana Republic and etc insisting another of these companies follow a specific business model and never experiment.

Absolutely ludicrous.


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## 60911 (Jun 13, 2012)

SM, JR...I want you both to know that I <3 you both. In a mostly non-creepy way. 

And I say that because there is no "Like" button for your posts. (And also because I edited most of the sarcasm out of my rebuttal above - most, I say, so best not to imagine what the first draft was like).


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

JRTomlin said:


> Imagine! Someone writing 2,000 words a day in order to "churn out" that many books a year. How DARE they. No people who are professionals with professional output allowed.
> 
> Yes, that was heavy-handed sarcasm but the comment was a totally unnecessary cheap shot.


Wow. Those of us who write 5-7k a day must be *really* terrible.  (Curse me for being a full time writer who works 4-6 hours a day on her JOB, which is, you know, writing...)

I like what Victorine said. My books are my books. If readers want my books, they will buy my books. My books aren't interchangeable with someone else's books. Not if I'm doing my job correctly and writing awesome books that readers can't put down. I'm the only place you can find an Anne Baines thriller or science fiction by Annie Bellet.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

RobertJCrane said:


> And I say that because there is no "Like" button for your posts. (And also because I edited most of the sarcasm out of my rebuttal above - most, I say, so best not to imagine what the first draft was like).


You edit? Here I thought because you churn stuff out at such a fast rate, that you put out crap!


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## Ali Cooper (May 1, 2010)

I never have and never intend to give books away indiscriminately for free. Via smashwords coupons, very occasionally, to specific people - yes. Otherwise - no.

And whilst I can see that someone with a substantial series may argue that one free book is a loss leader and will benefit them personally, at least in the short term. I don't see how anyone with any business sense can fail to see that in the long term, free is devaluing books and destroying the book industry for everyone.

I read forum members on dot com referring to authors with utter contempt, tolerated only to give away free books and on no account to think of interacting with readers.

And in UK, more and more readers are posting about how their kindles function much better once they've deleted all the rubbish free books they downloaded, only to find that 1 in 20 or 25 were worth reading. An increasing number of readers are realising this and saying that in future they'll only be downloading the free books they'd otherwise happily pay for.

If only writers could a) have a bit of self-respect, and b) regard fellow authors as colleagues, rather than rivals who must be kicked out of their way, and c) concentrate on writing quality books instead of playing stupid games, we might be able to build a decent, sustainable indie book industry for the future.


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## 60911 (Jun 13, 2012)

eBooksHabit said:


> You edit? Here I thought because you churn stuff out at such a fast rate, that you put out crap!


Absolutely I edit!

I remove some fast-written crap, and replace it with other fast-written crap. It's all the same now, innit?


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

A. Rosaria said:


> I'll look into it.


I mean, it's not like Amazon came down from on high and told us how that stuff worked. But it's been five months and our theories there still seem to fit the behavior we see on Amazon.

On the main subject at hand, I think free books are less dangerous than they appear to be. They don't exist in a vacuum, dragging all the paid books down with them. There are a lot of pressures keeping prices up: the 35/70% royalty structures; writers' need to get paid to do this for a living; high-priced trad books; etc. etc. There are different segments to the reader market, too. To a lot of people, $3-6 is a trivial sum for the book they want. A good indie book is a real bargain.

I think it's possible to give away books and still value your work. By definition, anyone who's trying to make a living at this has to find a way to get paid.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Geepers, I really stepped on some toes!
Sorry 'bout that.

I think, _as a reader_, I am tired of wading through Amazon previews and thinking "WHY are you wasting my time with this? WHY can't you edit before publishing? Are you really in so much of a hurry that you can't spell check? How long is it going to take me to find a book that I want to spend my time on?"

I worry that this trend will continue as people rush to market with unfinished product. 
A apologize if you felt yourself addressed by my comment.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

Ali Cooper said:


> I don't see how anyone with any business sense can fail to see that in the long term, free is devaluing books and destroying the book industry for everyone.
> 
> If only writers could a) have a bit of self-respect,


I fail to see it, because no one has demonstrated even the slightest bit of proof to this devaluation theory. Further, even if we were to grant you the devaluation piece, it is a giant leap to then say we are destroying the industry for everyone. That is unsubstantiated melodrama.

In addition, the price I choose to put on my books and my self respect are not directly intertwined.


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## 60911 (Jun 13, 2012)

Ali Cooper said:


> And whilst I can see that someone with a substantial series may argue that one free book is a loss leader and will benefit them personally, at least in the short term. *I don't see how anyone with any business sense can fail to see that in the long term, free is devaluing books and destroying the book industry for everyone.*


Because I've yet to see anyone offer one shred of proof outside of a vague, tingly feeling they get in their tender undercarriages that this is actually true in any measurable way. Point me to the sales data that says Ebook sales are down, please. Point me to the data that says that less Ebooks are being sold because there are free books out there. There have always been free and cheap books, from libraries, from used book stores, from piracy - these are not new phenomena that people are carping about.



Ali Cooper said:


> If only writers could a) have a bit of self-respect, and b) regard fellow authors as colleagues, rather than rivals who must be kicked out of their way, and c) concentrate on writing quality books instead of playing stupid games, we might be able to build a decent, sustainable indie book industry for the future.


Because some of use free books as a marketing strategy, it means we have no self-respect? It means we don't regard fellow authors as colleagues? I respect anyone who spends the time and effort publishing a book, and I honestly don't care if everyone writes series and makes their first book free. I bought Freedom's Sword from JR Tomlin even though we write in a similar genre, and now I'll be buying an SM Reine novel, even though she and I write in a similar genre. I wish them both magnificent, enormous success. Their success doesn't take away from mine one iota, because as has been argued nearly to death, Ebooks are NOT A ZERO-SUM GAME. Just because someone buys one of my urban fantasy novels doesn't mean they're not gonna buy one of SM's later. This is not a brutal, cutthroat business unless you make it one, and it's totally sustainable, just like it has been since before there were indies in the fray. The people who most seem to think that this is some form of bloodsport seem to be the ones who fit the description in my last post - the ones that aren't meeting their own expectations for sales, whatever those may be. Or to put it another way, the more I read good books, the more I want to make time to read more good books instead of watching TV, playing a videogame, etc.

As for the last, what stupid games are we playing instead of writing quality books? I mean, I'm playing Borderlands 2, but I'd hardly call it stupid...


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

Ali Cooper said:


> If only writers could a) have a bit of self-respect, and b) regard fellow authors as colleagues, rather than rivals who must be kicked out of their way, and c) concentrate on writing quality books instead of playing stupid games, we might be able to build a decent, sustainable indie book industry for the future.


Oh shit!


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

I downloaded the first Hal Spacejock book because it was free. I might not have tried it otherwise, but after reading it, I bought all the other books in the series. At least in my case, making the first book free generated sales that might otherwise not have existed.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

Even the most successful among us are tiny guppies in the vast ocean. We have no say in this whatsoever. You can be practical, or you can stand on principle. That's a choice we each must make. Those that want to wag a judgmental finger at others are missing the point, and the ride...


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

You know what? If you don't like free books, then don't offer a free book and don't download free books. Simple. End of discussion.

Okay, I know that's not really the end of the discussion, but seriously, not everyone's situation is the same. And it's not like there were no free books prior to December 2011. Sure, KDP Select made it easier to increase the number of free books out there, but publishers have been giving out free books BY THE TENS OR EVEN HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS at a time for decades.


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## Thomas Watson (Mar 8, 2012)

Amanda Brice said:


> You know what? If you don't like free books, then don't offer a free book and don't download free books. Simple. End of discussion.


If that doesn't work, try "Your mileage may vary."


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## Lissie (May 26, 2011)

jasonzc said:


> Of course I have an Author Central page. Not that it's germane.
> 
> Yes, I'm not having great sales. Few of us are. That was sort of...the point.
> 
> But I will say this: Any one of my books blows all of yours away. Point blank. And that's what it's really about as an author.


Wow you have psyc powers - or are an amazingly fast reader - you managed to read my books in the 30 minutes between my comment and your reply! I didn't comment on your books what I said -and I repeat it - you don't have an authorcentral page - I clicked through from the author name of the amazon.com listing of the first book in your sig - and I did NOT go to your authorcenter page.

Thank you for clarifying what being author it is- I thought it was about writing great books which inform or inspire an audience - my mistake. Clearly it's just a pissing contest.

FYI I review under my own name because I only leave honest reviews.

_Sorry, edited. Family friendly conversation, thanks. --Betsy_


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Quiss said:


> Yes, but the indie $6.99 will be a thing of the past. Indies will be 99 cents or free.
> 
> So then the reader will get to the point where they look at having to dig through thousands of possible cheap books to find one they might like (via preview) or they can go back to the big publishers, trusting them to have books of quality writing and editing.
> It's most certainly the route I would take. I have only so much time to read.


No! That is not the case at all. Prices have actually been climbing, not falling. Free is really used mostly as a promotional tool, with follow up books usually at 2.99 or higher. Many authors have been playing with pricing and seeing what the market will bear. Marie Force as an example, has gone from 2.99 to 3.99 and just released her newest in the series, book 7, at 4.99. Her first book is either perma free or very often free.....and this book 7 that was just released two days ago is around #25 on all paid on Kindle. The price is not scaring people away.....the free book lures them in, and they keep coming back for more.


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## ML Hamilton (Feb 21, 2011)

Clearly, we're all feeling defensive and upset. It's been a difficult two months for a number of us and I think that is being reflected here. Let me be the first to apologize for upsetting the cart this morning. I was rightfully and duly chastised for it and I admit I was wrong to be reactionary. Can we please have some civility now?

We are colleagues and we need to treat each other with respect. I repeat what another author said earlier in this thread that we shouldn't dictate to others best practices regarding their own writing. I was wrong to do that and I have changed my mind.

Please, let's not continue this divisive discussion. I am removing myself from it now and again, I apologize for my own rant earlier in the day. I'm as frustrated and worried as so many of you are, but it was wrong to make sweeping generalization that I couldn't back up with facts.

Peace, my fellow authors.


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

PamelaKelley said:


> The price is not scaring people away.....the free book lures them in, and they keep coming back for more.


Gemma Halliday is another good example. The first book in her High Heels series is perma-free. The rest of the novel-length books in that series are $4.99, with the short stories in the series at 99 cents and the novellas at $2.99.

She also has also two half-boxed sets for $6.99 each, and a "full" (includes all but the latest release) boxed set at $9.99. She's hit the NY Times bestseller list twice with the boxed set.

Considering as she's sold well more than one-million self-published ebooks, I'd say that free certainly isn't hurting her...or forcing her prices downward.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Thanks, MLH!

Betsy


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## phil1861 (Dec 22, 2011)

eBooksHabit said:


> I disagree. I completely agree that by having more books in a series, the success from a free run or perma-free book can splash over into your other books you have available.
> 
> But, to think that going free with a single book is not worth it comes down to a lack of understand how the _current_ Amazon algorithms work.
> 
> ...


I will have to confirm this; had I not enrolled TMAS into Select and run promos on a six week cycle since I would not have made the money to pay for the next in the series book for editing and cover design. My big goal for TMAS was to pay for the next book. Select made that happen so I could get the next book out. It's even paid for a third the novel after that.


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## ML Hamilton (Feb 21, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Thanks, MLH!
> 
> Betsy


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## Lissie (May 26, 2011)

A. Rosaria said:


> Deducing something out of data collected still doesn't necessarily make whatever you deduced a fact or remotely correct.


Whaaat - are you serious? Science is built on observation - that's what built the world that has brought us to the point that eBooks exist. How the hell do you think someone worked out how to generate electricity?


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

Hey I like the free ebook giveaway option!  It has worked pretty well for me.  And I just signed a deal with SalGad Publishing and they published the book this past Monday and then did a 3-day giveaway.  It's gone quite well.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

PamelaKelley said:


> No! That is not the case at all. Prices have actually been climbing, not falling. Free is really used mostly as a promotional tool, with follow up books usually at 2.99 or higher. Many authors have been playing with pricing and seeing what the market will bear. Marie Force as an example, has gone from 2.99 to 3.99 and just released her newest in the series, book 7, at 4.99. Her first book is either perma free or very often free.....and this book 7 that was just released two days ago is around #25 on all paid on Kindle. The price is not scaring people away.....the free book lures them in, and they keep coming back for more.


That's a good point, Pamela
Would be super if prices could settle around 4-5 dollars which seems fair for an ebook. I wonder where Harper Collins will end up.
But if the lowbie and freebies continue, the market may come to bear that price and nothing more.

I am not asserting that this will be, in spite of my strong language. I have no crystal ball. I FEEL and I FEAR that is where it is heading.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

First of all, I'm an optimist. But, I'm also an avid reader and book buyer. I don't think I'm alone in the way I buy books, which is honestly pretty much ignoring the free and .99 books. There's just too many of them to wade through.

It's much easier for me to either jump to the top 100 list and see what looks interesting. I'll admit I use that list as a screener, assuming if a book gets that high, there's a reason and an audience of people who like it. Then I investigate further.

I find plenty of other books as well...through word of mouth, which is usually social media, someone recommending an author or new book on Facebook, Twitter, or a blog...and here on Kindleboards.

I subscribe to Pixel of Ink and get the multiple emails daily.....if I have a free moment, I may glance at them. But, more often than not, I don't. 

So, I'm one segment of the book buying audience. One who doesn't hesitate much at price and buys books often.

There's another segment of the audience that loves free books, and will only "buy" if they are free or .99. A woman in my office is in this category. She is never going to pay money for an ebook.....so we're not losing any sales from her, she was never going to buy anyway.  I suspect quite a few are in this camp.

I just don't think free is anything to worry about.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

Quiss said:


> That's a good point, Pamela
> Would be super if prices could settle around 4-5 dollars which seems fair for an ebook. I wonder where Harper Collins will end up.
> But if the lowbie and freebies continue, the market may come to bear that price and nothing more.
> 
> I am not asserting that this will be, in spite of my strong language. I have no crystal ball. I FEEL and I FEAR that is where it is heading.


This is fairly anecdotal, but my observations match Pamela's. This year, I've seen a lot of authors move from $0.99-2.99 to $3.99-4.99 (and a few even higher). I'm not sure why this is happening, but I think a lot of the pro indies have bumped prices up to that range, which has encouraged others to give it a shot, too. And it turns out readers are still willing to pay $4-5 for the books they want. Especially since indie books are getting more and more indistinguishable from trad stuff--in everything but price, that is.

And this is happening at the same time there are more free books out there than ever.

I think some of us are too quick to brush off concerns about free books--there _is_ only so much time to read in a day--but we aren't seeing a race to the bottom. If anything, it appears to be the opposite.


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## Thomas Watson (Mar 8, 2012)

Quiss said:


> That's a good point, Pamela
> Would be super if prices could settle around 4-5 dollars which seems fair for an ebook. I wonder where Harper Collins will end up.
> But if the lowbie and freebies continue, the market may come to bear that price and nothing more.
> 
> I am not asserting that this will be, in spite of my strong language. I have no crystal ball. I FEEL and I FEAR that is where it is heading.


Perhaps you do have a crystal ball, but you see through a glass darkly... Or something like that.

Select exists to attract readers to the Kindle, using free content. Whether or not it aids or harms indie authors is likely not a major concern for Amazon. With that in mind, I think you are quite correct that free and 99cent books are in a way going to devalue the ebook market. But I don't think it will do so to the degree that only free ebooks will be supported in that market. Amazon would need to pull the plug on Select long before that happen, to sustain their own profitability. I'm guessing that a price range between 2.99 and 5.99 is where things will fall. That's a gut feeling folded into an educated guess, and prices may do otherwise, but you get the point (I hope.)

The only segment of the publishing industry I see being hurt by this devaluation would be the traditional publishers who are hard at work trying to undermine Amazon's efforts to control ebook prices on new releases. It would not surprise me at all to learn that this has been the plan behind Select all along.


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

BrianKittrell said:


> Gaining readers = gaining money. One does not exclude the other.
> 
> (snip) Good metaphor: People don't only eat one block of cheese. If they get a whole block of cheese and like it (and appreciate the company's generosity for allowing them a sizable sample of the cheese), the company may have gained a permanent customer. It's the same with ebooks. For those who create more than one block of cheese (or book), the potential benefit is huge. Likewise, if a company creates 10,000 blocks of cheese and gives them all away as samples (and doesn't make any more cheese), well, that's not a very good business decision.


I can see the logic of both sides, because there are two sides at play here. Listing one free book does sound like a useful marketing technique. However, a problem can occur when too many people do this. Just look at USA economy. Off-shoring made sense on an individual level, but once more and more people started doing it, the bad consequences started appearing--just look at the unemployment rate. Or, to go back to the cheese example, when most cheese companies give away a block of cheese, how many people will _buy_ cheese?

My argument is what is good for the individual is not always good for the many, and of course, when it is no longer good for the many, the individual doesn't always stay unaffected. My point? Not to steer anyone away from the free book idea, for I am on the fence myself about it actually, but speculate on the long-term effect of your short-term plan of a free book. Not only that, speculate on the effect if more and more people join in.

Jodi


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Deducing something out of data collected still doesn't necessarily make whatever you deduced a fact or remotely correct.


Agree. It isn't necessary. However, we can study the behavior of systems and generate similar results with varying degrees of accuracy. For example, the behavior of the Amazon best seller lists is consistent with the behavior of exponential moving averages. Older sales appear to have less weight than more recent sales. If we had daily sales data for 1,000 books, we could probably develop a set of equations that delivered results with a high correlation to the actual Amazon results.

However, that still wouldn't make the results necessarily correct. "Necessary" is a luxury we don't always get.



> I'm not certain I understand what you meant, so forgive me if I misinterpret it. I meant we are offering a product. That's all.


Agree. Authors get paid for their products, not their talent. We can measure sales. We can't measure talent. And each producer sets her own price. They rarely let competitors set it for them.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

PamelaKelley said:


> First of all, I'm an optimist. But, I'm also an avid reader and book buyer. I don't think I'm alone in the way I buy books, which is honestly pretty much ignoring the free and .99 books. There's just too many of them to wade through.
> 
> It's much easier for me to either jump to the top 100 list and see what looks interesting. I'll admit I use that list as a screener, assuming if a book gets that high, there's a reason and an audience of people who like it. Then I investigate further.
> 
> ...


I have to agree with this. I am a VERY heavy reader and book buyer in addition to being an author. (I would be willing to bet some fair coin that few of you have spent as much as I have on both books and eBooks this year) Do I glance at the free books? Yes. But nothing more. I rarely download them because they are not what I want. It has been pointed out that books are not "fungible". When I wanted a translation of a certain chronicle as research, another would not do even though it was darn expensive. When I wanted Bernard Cornwell's new historical novel, it doesn't matter that another author has another historical novel free. Oh, I might spot it and, if it looks interesting, download it. I _might_ find a NEW author I like that way, but it sure as heck didn't keep me from buying Cornwell.

I have someone in my family who could afford more expensive books but loves looking for 99 cent ones. She then buys more expensive ones by an author finds that way if she really enjoys their work. Free ones don't appeal to her though. I'm sure there are people who consider 99 cents too cheap and inferior and don't buy them. (I think I may fall into that category unconsciously) There are no doubt some people who never buy anything else.

Book buyers are not all one big category but a lot of small ones.

And it's true that what is good for one may not be good for the many, but 1) we may as well face that in the current publishing environment we don't have the information to judge what is good for the whole and I'm not sure anyone does and 2) even if we did getting authors to act in concert makes herding cats look simple. It's more like herding cat hair. These arguments simply don't work.


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

Quiss said:


> That's a good point, Pamela
> Would be super if prices could settle around 4-5 dollars which seems fair for an ebook. I wonder where Harper Collins will end up.
> But if the lowbie and freebies continue, the market may come to bear that price and nothing more.


So, what's stopping you from listing your book at 4-5 dollars then? Nothing. I have two books at $4.99 myself. It doesn't matter what ANY other book sells for compared to mine - if they want to read the second or third book in the series, they pay $4.99. If not, then skip it. How does another authors price point have anything to do with this decision?


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> I think, as a reader, I am tired of wading through Amazon previews and thinking "WHY are you wasting my time with this?


OK. Stop wading.


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> It has been pointed out that books are not "fungible". When I wanted a translation of a certain chronicle as research, another would not do even though it was darn expensive. When I wanted Bernard Cornwell's new historical novel, it doesn't matter that another author has another historical novel free. Oh, I might spot it and, if it looks interesting, download it. I _might_ find a NEW author I like that way, but it sure as heck didn't keep me from buying Cornwell.


But imho, I think fiction is fungible to an extent. Not everyone browses for books based on a specific author or title or specific topic. Some just browse by more general criteria. For example, someone might browse for fantasy fiction or "vampire romance." In this case, books do become more interchangeable if the reader's tastes aren't too narrow (such as "I will only buy non-Medieval, non-European fantasy" or "I will only buy a vampire romance if the woman involved is a human and a hunter of supernatural creatures.")



> And it's true that what is good for one may not be good for the many, but 1) we may as well face that in the current publishing environment we don't have the information to judge what is good for the whole and I'm not sure anyone does and 2) even if we did getting authors to act in concert makes herding cats look simple. It's more like herding cat hair. These arguments simply don't work.


My argument on the good for the many vs good for the individual comes from me looking at our (USA's) current economy and realizing how the individual cannot ignore the effect of the many--even when there aren't "many" out there yet when the individual launches his or her plan. Even if I just want to look out for myself, my best plan is to always look at what happens if lots of others do what I do and how and how fast will it affect me?

I think someone else in the thread wrote that businesses do not consider what harm their actions will have on other businesses. But I think that attitude actually hurts businesses eventually, because they didn't look far enough ahead to see the consequences their actions will have on others and how it will thus trickle back upon them. Businesses do not work in isolation, and when they think they do, they run into trouble.

That being said, I am considering the free technique and how and when I want to use it. But when I do, I'm going to think long and hard about what happens if I do, what happens if many do, where we will all end up in the end, and what I'll do when that happens.

Jodi


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

Jodi said:


> My argument on the good for the many vs good for the individual comes from me looking at our (USA's) current economy and realizing how the individual cannot ignore the effect of the many--even when there aren't "many" out there yet when the individual launches his or her plan. Even if I just want to look out for myself, my best plan is to always look at what happens if lots of others do what I do and how and how fast will it affect me?


Your argument comes straight out of the Communist Manifesto. This is a (fairly) free market. Which is why I make decisions based on what's good for my businesses. Not YOUR business, unless I've entered into a partnership with you. You're free to enter into partnerships if you wish, then work together collectively all you want. No one's stopping you, just as no one's stooping Quiss from pricing her books higher.

But to come in and say we're in this together, we're not. Yes, I support all of you in your dreams and business decisions, but to ask me to raise my price to not go free so you can catch up? That's naive and unfair to me.

If I see an opportunity, I take it.


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

JanneCO said:


> Your argument comes straight out of the Communist Manifesto. This is a (fairly) free market. Which is why I make decisions based on what's good for my businesses. Not YOUR business, unless I've entered into a partnership with you. You're free to enter into partnerships if you wish, then work together collectively all you want. No one's stopping you, just as no one's stooping Quiss from pricing her books higher.
> 
> But to come in and say we're in this together, we're not. Yes, I support all of you in your dreams and business decisions, but to ask me to raise my price to not go free so you can catch up? That's naive and unfair to me.
> 
> If I see an opportunity, I take it.


I'm afraid I wasn't clear with my point if you believe I am preaching communism.

My point isn't to control your (you, in general) business. My point is if you do something that is good for your business but likely bad for the industry if many people start doing it, you aren't doing yourself any favor in the long run. My point is do focus on just your own business, but realize when you do, you aren't alone. Others may and likely will follow your lead. And if many people do, there will be a tipping point where it is going to affect your business.

In this case, I do believe free is like off-shoring. Good for the now, good for the me the individual who puts out books for free (and kept them there), good for a certain amount of people, but eventually, when enough people do it, it's going to be bad for me (and for most of those who also followed lead). Because when enough people do it, it affects the entire industry. If go do free, I want to minimize this vicious cycle and I also want to make sure I know what to do when I see these consequences circle back around on me.

I think that is where we differ. I believe that free will pick up steam and that it will have detrimental consequences in the long run.

Jodi

PS: I don't believe in communism, but I do believe in a fair, but not free, market. Meaning--to take the argument away entirely from books--there has to be some general rules the involved parties agree to abide by, and then in that playing field, let merit and ability win.


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

Jodi said:


> I'm afraid I wasn't clear with my point if you believe I am preaching communism.
> 
> My point isn't to control your (you, in general) business. My point is if you do something that is good for your business but likely bad for the industry if many people start doing it, you aren't doing yourself any favor in the long run. My point is do focus on just your own business, but realize when you do, you aren't alone. Others may and likely will follow your lead. And if many people do, there will be a tipping point where it is going to affect your business.
> 
> ...


Free is almost over...that boat has sailed. Which is precisely why this thread is so strange. The prices are rising, not falling. Free is not what it was last year. Yet, the OP, who I respect wholeheartedly and I'm sure does write excellent books, is asking for those of us who know how to work the system for short term gains, to stop.

NO.

That's not a free market. If you fail to sell you either sink or swim. Find a better way to market, hire someone to do it for you, or not.

No one is taking away ANYTHING, in the way of decisions, from any other author by coming up with their own pricing strategy. It's nonsense. This is how business works.

I can see your point, I know what you're saying. I work in environmental protection, so this actually does apply in some way to the work I do with farmers. Clean up your act or I'll come in and regulate you. That threat has worked wonders, you'd be surprised.

But we're authors, not farmers with cows crapping in the river. It's not even close to being the same - no one's water is getting polluted, we're not gonna get regulated by the government if we fail to regulate ourselves. If the price of books falls, so be it. Those who can't keep up with trends will fall away, leaving those who can, to prosper.

That's called life. Winning is not guaranteed.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Jodi said:


> I'm afraid I wasn't clear with my point if you believe I am preaching communism.
> 
> My point isn't to control your (you, in general) business. My point is if you do something that is good for your business but likely bad for the industry if many people start doing it, you aren't doing yourself any favor in the long run. My point is do focus on just your own business, but realize when you do, you aren't alone. Others may and likely will follow your lead. And if many people do, there will be a tipping point where it is going to affect your business.
> 
> ...


So, everyone offers their books free for a period of time. How does that ruin the market?

I can turn on the radio and listen to free music. How does that ruin the music industry? People won't ever buy a CD because they can listen to free songs?

Now, I understand if all ebooks everywhere were free, and no ebooks were ever offered for a price, that might not be a wise thing. But that's not what's happening. There are plenty of ebooks selling very well on Amazon, and other places.

I agree with you somewhat - if something is going to be harmful in the end, I'm not going to do it. I just don't believe that putting a book free for a while is harmful. (Or even offering a book free all the time. There are plenty of other books that are not free.)


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

Victorine said:


> So, everyone offers their books free for a period of time. How does that ruin the market?


Sorry, I definitely wasn't clear enough. I'm talking about permanent free, not free for a week, a month, even a year, or even free sporadically.



> I agree with you somewhat - if something is going to be harmful in the end, I'm not going to do it. I just don't believe that putting a book free for a while is harmful. (Or even offering a book free all the time. There are plenty of other books that are not free.)


I agree on the temporary technique, not the permanent free. Because imho, and I'm just one person believing this, that if one person believes it's okay and does it, a lot of people also are thinking and doing or going to do the same thing. Then it's not just one, and eventually, it reaches a tipping point.

ETA: And to clarify further, there are some instances I believe in permanent free--but it's a limited permanent free. The technique I would like to try is similar to how commercially published authors offered a free story on their webpage or sometimes a free story on e-readers. With the latter, the technique I saw was selling a novelette set in a for-a-price novel series. With the other, you reach a different audience, the one that browses websites, not a bookstore, for free fiction. Then I figure the power of recommendation kicks in, and the reader will go on to buy other fiction from that author. With the current way ebiz is set up, I don't think the impact of a free story on a webpage or a free novelette (when the rest are novels) will have the bad impact the permanent free novel will.

Jodi

PS: Sorry about typos and other errors. I'm fighting **grr** bad allergies and my brain is not firing on all cylinders.


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## Shane Murray (Aug 1, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> I think everyone should stop giving their books away free, except for me. Then my book can have the top 100 spots on the free best seller lists. So yeah, I'm all in. NO MORE FREE EBOOKS!


Sounds like a great plan!!


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Jodi said:


> Sorry, I definitely wasn't clear enough. I'm talking about permanent free, not free for a week, a month, even a year, or even free sporadically.
> 
> I agree on the temporary technique, not the permanent free. Because imho, and I'm just one person believing this, that if one person believes it's okay and does it, a lot of people also are thinking and doing or going to do the same thing. Then it's not just one, and eventually, it reaches a tipping point.
> 
> Jodi


I highly doubt we'll ever see the day where all ebooks are free.

Even if every book everywhere were free except for mine, that wouldn't ruin my sales. Books are not interchangeable. If someone wants to read how Steven falls in love with Emily, they HAVE to buy my book. No other book tells my story.

The real problem is getting the word out about our books. If no one knows about Emily and Steven, they won't know if they want to buy my book. That's different than free ebooks ruining the market.


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

Victorine said:


> I highly doubt we'll ever see the day where all ebooks are free.


I don't either. The tipping point is well before that if it goes anything like my USA economy example. We don't have to have all jobs off-shored before America feels the impact; we're feeling it now, both the public/consumer and the businesses.



> The real problem is getting the word out about our books. If no one knows about Emily and Steven, they won't know if they want to buy my book. That's different than free ebooks ruining the market.


You make a valid point. Perhaps when it gets the point that free no longer works for getting the word out about other, for-a-price books, then there may be fewer people putting out free novels and the trend will reverse. Hopefully that will happen before my doomsday scenario happens ;-)

Jodi


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## Robert A Michael (Apr 30, 2012)

Wow. Lots of hurt feelings here for what I thought was originally an innocent, albeit self-serving, request.  

I don't think that the OP was questioning any particular author/publisher marketing strategy using Select or PermaFree on back lists.  I think he was merely suggesting a hiatus from those marketing strategies.  I think his idea is to push readership on Amazon (the customers) to PAY FOR books in the month of October rather than have more and more becoming or remaining free--some of which I think he was afraid might be in his genre for perhaps a new release for Halloween.  

Regardless of your success using whatever marketing technique suits you best, the grassroots idea that we could all put that aside for one month was a cute idea, if not exactly compelling.  Those of you who posted that he was asking to move mountains if he was expecting the entire community to jump on that crazy train with him:  you have a valid point.  We are a fiercely independent community that will doggedly pursue a poster who will announce their sales success but not reveal their titles or pen names!  There is little to no chance the OP will even convince a dozen folk to follow his suggestion.  And, you know what?  Most of them will notice no difference because if they are willing to follow his suggestion, they weren't seeing any results (for WHATEVER REASON!) from Select or PermaFree in the first place.  Some will, some won't. It is like any other bright idea here.  Too many variables exist (number one being the sheer number of competition) to champion any one particular marketing strategy as king.

So, to all of you who posted derogatory comments about the quality of other author's writing

To all of you who posted demeaning the original poster regarding his low sales status, his veracity, or his mother

To all of you who get their knickers in a twist about their almighty world-beating marketing strategy

To all of you who allowed this to get off-topic or became a little too worked up over a minor forum topic

SHAME ON YOU.

We can all go back to writing now.  Nothing to see here.


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## ecrotty (May 23, 2012)

Wow.

This is one hell of a thread, that's for sure.

Here's what it boils down to in my mind.

A book sold for free is not a book lost at a cost. Most of the people downloading the free books would have never purchased the book if it were 99 cents or 99 dollars.

It's irrelevant.

What going free _is_ however is a marketing tool. Nothing more, nothing less.

And because I love to talk about myself, I'll bring my site up. All of the the sites out there (young & old) that provide a collective of the freebies generate their own audience. Some larger than others. Some smaller. Some more honest. Some more dishonest. Whatever. The point here is there is a lot of people that can be tapped into as a marketing opportunity. They payout may not seem as easy as it once was. There's a reason for that. It's not.

The free market has matured and some sites have matured with it providing new advertising opportunities that did not exist before. And, some of these audiences are big and intently listening. Case in point, the advent of promoting non-free books on primarily free sites. It gives the "old-timers" something new to look at.

I used this break-down of the viewership of a free collective site in a previous post :

~40% digital hoarders that will get anything and everything no matter what it is but read only a very limited few (this is me).. also can be the old-timers of free
~20% fixed income people that are very thankful and excited to have such a world exist
~20% people into the "indie" scene looking to be introduced to new authors
~20% people new to the free world and soaking it all in

Some decry the free method because people aren't downloading 30k on a single post any more. Who has done the math here? The big reason is a lot of the "old-timers" already HAVE said book. Or they are much more selective because they have been doing it for so long. And, there's no reason to add another book to the TBR pile. Managing a Kindle with hundreds of books is not fun. It's a chore. Plus, it's math. If you have a userbase of 10k, and 5k have been with you for more than three months... Chances are, most of that audience has already downloaded a newly minted freebie (but not new work) already. Hence, you don't see the 10k downloads when everything was all hot and new.

Is this a problem moving forward? Of course not. It's a continuous flow of people. Especially in the time of the year we are in. The holidays. Prepare for a new unleashing of Kindles everywhere with the new glowing goodness that is the Paperwhite. And that means new readers. New readers looking for books.

AKA, people that have *NOT* read your work... Looking to fill their Kindles until it bursts at the virtual seams.

So. Don't give up on the free. Change how you do the free.

(i feel like i could write a book myself. ... now... where to go to hang out with other authors... )

* late disclaimer to the thread : i know this has been mentioned by others. just adding my unnecessary two and a half sense.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Jodi said:


> But imho, I think fiction is fungible to an extent. Not everyone browses for books based on a specific author or title or specific topic. Some just browse by more general criteria. For example, someone might browse for fantasy fiction or "vampire romance." In this case, books do become more interchangeable if the reader's tastes aren't too narrow (such as "I will only buy non-Medieval, non-European fantasy" or "I will only buy a vampire romance if the woman involved is a human and a hunter of supernatural creatures.")
> 
> [snip]
> Jodi


I may go out looking for "medieval historical fiction" as a category if none of my favorite writers have something new out. But even if I'm only looking at the category they still aren't fungible. I'll look at the description and some won't interest me. I'll look at a sample and some I won't like the writing.

There is no way that fiction is really fungible because rarely are any two pieces all that much alike which is a requirement.


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> I may go out looking for "medieval historical fiction" as a category if none of my favorite writers have something new out. But even if I'm only looking at the category they still aren't fungible. I'll look at the description and some won't interest me. I'll look at a sample and some I won't like the writing.
> 
> There is no way that fiction is really fungible because rarely are any two pieces all that much alike which is a requirement.


I guess I am thinking of my own habits. I'm extremely picky in fantasy fiction, but in the new genre I'm getting into (Regency and Victorian romance), I will go to a yardsale or the 10 cent table at my library, and I will pick up any that fit the genre. I am more picky if I have to pay the normal price for a book.

Different scenario--zombie movies. I love Resident Evil movies and the Night of the Living Dead series, but since I'm such a zombie fan, I will buy any zombie movie I see. While I'll buy a RE or NLD over a random zombie movie, if I do not have that option, I just buy whatever I see. If I have to pick between two, I may spend a longer time on the blurb. But that is because I can only buy so many at $9.99 or $19.99. If they were all $5.00 I would get both.

Long story short, I see your point. The fungibility is pretty miniscule--except, in my case, when it gets dirt cheap. Then it's the more the merrier; I can afford both. But when the price isn't the barrier and when the reader is not buying because he or she specifically wanted an author or title, something will tip the reader over to one choice or another.

Jodi


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## JeanneM (Mar 21, 2011)

balaspa said:


> Hey I like the free ebook giveaway option! It has worked pretty well for me. And I just signed a deal with SalGad Publishing and they published the book this past Monday and then did a 3-day giveaway. It's gone quite well.


Congrats!! So happy for you.


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

I had post where I thought I understood free.  And I do, but I still can't ignore the fact that I think this particular method of free ebooks is self-defeating.  IMHO, a permanent free e-novel sold on Amazon to hook a reader so reader will buy your for-a-price e-novels works only if the number of free ebooks are small compared to ones out there for a price.  And then you have to get in there during that brief time period.  Eventually, there are enough free ebooks out there the reader has so many options of free that the chances are that reader will pick your free ebook to get hooked on your for-a-price works drops sharply.  That is, free works because most fiction isn't free.  When enough people jump on board this technique, free doesn't compete with for-a-price, it competes with free in the same way for-a-price competes with for-a-price and free.    

So, yeah, I do get it.  I totally get that idea of "why give up free technique," because unless someone steps in puts a regulation on it, it eventually kills its own advantage and you are forced to move onto another thing anyway.  So, get in while it is hot and move out when its dead and rinse and repeat on the next idea.  As long as there is a next idea, the premise works, or if there is not, it collapses and eventually everything starts over and old idea is new again. 

Jodi


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## Error404 (Sep 6, 2012)

GuyF said:


> But I am not displacing as many paid sales as you might think. 1000 free downloads do not equate to anywhere near 1000 lost paid sales. Most people will not read it after downloading, and of those who do, most would not have had enough money to buy so many as they downloaded. They would instead spend much of that time shopping and agonizing over which few books to buy. (I do that myself.) I am totally cool with the fact that they are reading my book for free rather than agonzing over where to put their money. In addition to making me more money, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Maybe that free entertainment will help them with that decision of what to buy next, or maybe our interaction ends with their having enjoyed my work and my having a warm fuzzy feeling. Okay either way.


This. Just this.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Jodi said:


> Looking back over the threads and thinking about it (for far longer than I should, mind you), I think I kinda get it, the thought behind the permanent free ebook. The thought is there is some kinda check built into the whole premise, that even if one free, full-length book become de rigueur for indies, the hypothetical reader will get hooked and not move onto more free ebooks but rather will stay with that author until, I dunno, the reader moves on for whatever normal reason (taste change, disappointment, etc.) a reader moves on. Looking at it that way, as long as the pressure isn't to keep giving more and more of one's stock away for free, the cycle probably is *not* as doomsday as I thought. That's a relief, I tell you.
> 
> Jodi,
> Who shouldn't post when head is full allergies, for she gets apocalyptic thoughts ;-) I also tend to lose my "nots" when stuffed full of allergies too.


Yes. If I find an author I enjoy, I do buy more of their books. Because I'm a picky reader, because if I like an author's style, I know I'll like more of their work, and because it's worth it for me to pay to get something I know I'll like.

I'm not the only one like this. Many people choose books by their favorite authors. That's the #1 reason people buy books. Just look at how well JK Rowling's new book sold, even though it's not getting the best reviews.


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

I have to say that I use the free option as a last resort, and that means anytime I'm over or close to 450,000 in rank. Then I'll try it. And when I've tried it, it's pulled me out of the muck for at least 6 to 8 sales I wouldn't have had. Over-doing it is the problem, I think. Although I don't have a series up, I can see how advantageous a free trial promo would be on say the first or second title. Series books really feed off each other and I wished I would have started off that way.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Jodi said:


> I guess I am thinking of my own habits. I'm extremely picky in fantasy fiction, but in the new genre I'm getting into (Regency and Victorian romance), I will go to a yardsale or the 10 cent table at my library, and I will pick up any that fit the genre. I am more picky if I have to pay the normal price for a book.
> 
> Different scenario--zombie movies. I love Resident Evil movies and the Night of the Living Dead series, but since I'm such a zombie fan, I will buy any zombie movie I see. While I'll buy a RE or NLD over a random zombie movie, if I do not have that option, I just buy whatever I see. If I have to pick between two, I may spend a longer time on the blurb. But that is because I can only buy so many at $9.99 or $19.99. If they were all $5.00 I would get both.
> 
> ...


I'm not saying I totally disagree with you. There are different categories of buyers (cheap buyer, buyers who don't care about price, ones in the middle, picky buyers, buyers who will try anything, etc) and the same buyer may fall into different categories depending on the genre. But I would say that generally speaking, something will tip the reader, as you say, and many, many readers will go looking for an author they know they enjoy.


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> I'm not saying I totally disagree with you. There are different categories of buyers (cheap buyer, buyers who don't care about price, ones in the middle, picky buyers, buyers who will try anything, etc) and the same buyer may fall into different categories depending on the genre. But I would say that generally speaking, something will tip the reader, as you say, and many, many readers will go looking for an author they know they enjoy.


I wish I could find that survey out there that revealed buying habits. Mostly, I think it went that most readers buy authors they know. Then they buy ones recommended to them. The actual browsers out there--the ones purposefully looking for new works without regard to known author or recommendation--are really very few. ETA: But I can't help but think browsers are key to the rest. Someone has to look for new works and recommend them to keep the whole system going.

Jodi


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

Victorine said:


> Yes. If I find an author I enjoy, I do buy more of their books. Because I'm a picky reader, because if I like an author's style, I know I'll like more of their work, and because it's worth it for me to pay to get something I know I'll like.
> 
> I'm not the only one like this. Many people choose books by their favorite authors. That's the #1 reason people buy books. Just look at how well JK Rowling's new book sold, even though it's not getting the best reviews.


Actually, during the car ride home, my opinion (surprise, surprise) changed yet again. I think what I posted originally only works for a short time frame in which there is a clear advantage to free--that is, there not so many free ebooks that it is free vs paid not mainly your free vs others' free. But I think this gets into some kinda basic business concept (the name of which I cannot remember) that basically goes the advantage goes to the one who gets in fast before lots of others get in. Those people are safe later when the advantage is gone if brand loyalty is good enough that the reader will keep going back to them. Probably more likely in the literary world than in the widget world.

ETA: So I guess my question is this: if free does work like I guessed above and free's advantage went away today, where would that leave you (general you)? Presuming that your readers will also recommend you to others, could you survive on your current base of readers gained by this free method? If not, would you have to go out and find the next equivalent of the free method to keep the money coming in?

Jodi


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Jodi said:


> I wish I could find that survey out there that revealed buying habits. Mostly, I think it went that most readers buy authors they know. Then they buy ones recommended to them. The actual browsers out there--the ones purposefully looking for new works without regard to known author or recommendation--are really very few. ETA: But I can't help but think browsers are key to the rest. Someone has to look for new works and recommend them to keep the whole system going.
> 
> Jodi


Few in a market that is made up of millions of people can be quite a big niche, besides which when people are browsing Amazon, which they do whether they call it looking for new authors or not, they will frequently find them. 

I agree that the browsers are the key to the process.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Jodi said:


> Sorry, I definitely wasn't clear enough. I'm talking about permanent free, not free for a week, a month, even a year, or even free sporadically.
> 
> I agree on the temporary technique, not the permanent free. Because imho, and I'm just one person believing this, that if one person believes it's okay and does it, a lot of people also are thinking and doing or going to do the same thing. Then it's not just one, and eventually, it reaches a tipping point.
> 
> ...


The thing is, readers can find free stuff if that is all they want, even if there were no free books on Amazon. I can go to fanfiction. net and send dozens of stories to my Kindle right now. They are free. I can do the same for Fictionwise. I can send articles and blogs as well. I could read for the rest of my life and not have to buy anything ever. However, I still buy books that attract me with a good cover, blurb, genre and good writing. Free just allows me to find them more easily. I am reading a free book I downloaded yesterday. The blurb was so intriguing to me, if it hadn't been free, I'd have paid for it. Now that it has been free, it is probably enjoying good sales today because of increased visibility and people who share my affinity for this kind of book, finding it. Also, I had posted about the book on my author fb page, and even though the book is back to paid, someone bought it because they thought it sounded good. So, even though the author didn't make any money off of my download, about a 100 more people saw my post about it on my FB page. That is free advertising right there.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I can go to the library and read as many free books as I want. In fact, if my library doesn't have the books I want, it will order them for free! from a library that does and I can go pick them up locally.  I can even get free ebooks now from my library!

It really is a terrible thing that libraries ruined the book market long before ebooks came along, isn't it?


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

MaryMcDonald said:


> The thing is, readers can find free stuff if that is all they want, even if there were no free books on Amazon. I can go to fanfiction. net and send dozens of stories to my Kindle right now. They are free. I can do the same for Fictionwise. I can send articles and blogs as well. I could read for the rest of my life and not have to buy anything ever. However, I still buy books that attract me with a good cover, blurb, genre and good writing. Free just allows me to find them more easily. I am reading a free book I downloaded yesterday. The blurb was so intriguing to me, if it hadn't been free, I'd have paid for it. Now that it has been free, it is probably enjoying good sales today because of increased visibility and people who share my affinity for this kind of book, finding it.


Very true. But I think there is a difference between free books in a bookstore that also sells for-a-price books, and free books that one has to go somewhere else to get. Basically the convenience and time factor. Even with my crappy 3G connection, I can get tons of free ebooks in one go on Amazon/Kindle. But if I have to do a search online or join a community or find a blog that has free fiction, that puts a barrier up. It is not as convenient or time-efficient. Therefore, the audience is limited a little. I guess it is the same concept of getting samples. I'm not sure how well it would work in a store if the free full-fledged product was free on the shelf next to those that cost the buyer something. But if you have a limited sample or you have to jump through a hoop (fill out a form or go to a webpage to find out there is a freebie), then free doesn't eat into profits of the for-a-price products, because most people aren't going to jump through the hoop or be satisfied with the limited freebie.

I guess I like the idea of freebies being closer to the old-fashioned model than the new-fashioned one where free sits shoulder to shoulder with for-a-price and free is multiplying.

Jodi


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

There are millions of Kindle owners, and yet, I don't know many authors who are able to give away millions of ebooks when they go free. That means not every kindle owner is downloading craploads of free ebooks. (Otherwise we'd all get millions of downloads, right?)

However, some of the top books on Amazon have sold millions of copies.

Why is that? Does that mean people would rather pay for ebooks?

No. That means if people really want a book, they will buy it. The trick isn't to stop all authors from giving away their books. The trick is to convince people that your book is something they want to read. If you can do that, free or paid, you will get millions of people reading your book.

No one cares if a book that they don't want is free.


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## Andykay (May 10, 2012)

Wow, a lot happened here since I looked last night heh. This is a fun debate. I can't possibly reply to every post, but there's a few general things I can comment on.

For those that say that Amazon would have done something if free was detrimental, I'd argue that they are. Amazon is a mammoth company, and KDP was a big deal. They aren't going to roll it out and then remove it all together just a few months later. The kind of data they're dealing with is so massive in scale and has so many variables that it's going to take time for it to take shape. But even with that in mind there's been a few important changes recently:

a) It's much harder to get a book discounted to perma free than it used to be.
b) The algorithm changed a few months after KDP was released to make it less effective in driving sales.
c) This is the most telling one. They moved the free list away from the paid list on the website.

Now obviously we don't know the reason they did this stuff, but the general trend is towards minimising the number of free books and the exposure they have on the site. To me, that says they're worried about the impact free books have. Like I said, they can't just go and cancel KDP two months after launching. This is exactly the kind of action I'd expect Amazon to take if free wasn't having the effect they'd hoped. Just conjecture, but that's all we have to go on.

And to those that say it isn't a zero sum game, I think you're missing the point. People can certainly read your book while still reading many others, but at some point that is no longer true. At some point people hit the wall where they can't read any more than they do. They are literally spending 100% of their free time reading. That line exists for everyone. It's a hypothetical point that nobody will ever reach, but it's still there. If everyone was at this point, books would be a zero sum game. Nobody could read any more than they do, so every book added to the pool would remove another. 

The more people read in general, the closer they get to that line, and the more like a zero sum game books become. With every book you add to your schedule, it becomes harder to make time for new ones. So yes, readers can read your book and my book and twenty other indie's books in a year. But what about another hundred? Three hundred? For every individual reader, there is a number at which books begin to fall to the wayside, and I'd argue for many, with their normal busy schedules, it's quite low.

As for the topic as a whole, it seems that the key debate is whether cost or time is the predominant factor in how much people read. A lot of people argue that free books get the price sensitive people to read more, but I think the plunging price of indie books has already satisfied that. If you removed every free title from Amazon today, you'd be left with a slew of fantastic indie books between $1 and $5. So for ~$15 a month, even the most avid reader could have all the books they want. It's likely that the vast majority of kindle owners can afford $15 a month.

Before free came along, I'd be very surprised if even the price sensitive kindle owners weren't already reading their fill, because books were just so d*mn cheap. If we'd gone from an age of $16 ebooks straight to a ton of free titles, then of course free would cause people to read more, since that is such a huge saving, but when you already have $3 books, suddenly it makes much less difference. At $3 a book, people would already be buying almost as many titles as they can handle. The price sensitivity barrier has already been broken for the majority of consumers. Without free titles, people can still have books ~80% cheaper than they could ten years ago. Going the last 20% might increase consumption a little, but it's not going to have a markable effect.

And yes, this is purely speculation. The whole thread is speculation, both the pro-free and anti-free sides. Neither of us can trot out figures or studies because its still a budding industry and there's a huge lack of information out there. All we can do is argue a weigh up what info we have. 

As I said, I wouldn't try to dissuade people from using free, since it works and if you don't tons of other people still will, but I do think it's detrimental. I think Amazon will smarten up at some point and shift the KDP incentives to be royalty based rather than free promotion based, but that's just me. Time will tell I guess.


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> I can go to the library and read as many free books as I want. In fact, if my library doesn't have the books I want, it will order them for free! from a library that does and I can go pick them up locally. I can even get free ebooks now from my library!
> 
> It really is a terrible thing that libraries ruined the book market long before ebooks came along, isn't it?


Libraries don't ruin profits because there are limitations in place. There are only so many libraries, there are only so many copies of the book in the library, there are only so many books they can buy, and so on. Also, the borrower doesn't own the book. It has to be returned. If the borrower wants to keep the book, he either has to go out and buy it or ;-) steal it. Libraries have limitations. The main one being that, as I see it, library books will never come close to overwhelming or out-numbering books sold through other venues (bookstores, electronic or brick-and-mortar).

Jodi


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> My point is if you do something that is good for your business but likely bad for the industry if many people start doing it, you aren't doing yourself any favor in the long run.


That is exactly what successful businesses do. They innovate and get the jump on the competition. No business can be successful if it rejects opportunity because some other business might do something dumb down the road.


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## Weirdling (Jun 25, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> That is exactly what successful businesses do. They innovate and get the jump on the competition. No business can be successful if it rejects opportunity because some other business might do something dumb down the road.


I guess it depends on one's definition of success. To use the job example again, these USA businesses might have done well to off-shore--until enough businesses jumped on the opportunity. When that happened, enough people didn't have money to buy goods/services because of lack of jobs that the consequences are beginning to be seen. Now you hear in the news how these American businesses have to cut back, first usually with more American workers, and then with closing store locations. In this case successful ends up hurting those very businesses in the long term, but not in the short term.

But I do think the analogy falls apart a little when comparing literary works to the job market. Mostly because, this is only one industry here, really. But I do think it works only if few people are doing it, but once enough people do, it loses its advantage. So, I think if you want to do free, better to do it now than later when it loses its clear advantage.

Jodi


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## Sam K Mills (Oct 1, 2012)

I think this free ebook phenomenon will eventually run its course and will be part of internet history. Just like in the early days of internet when they were offering free internet services and even free computers, not many people were interested. People still believe in ‘you get what you pay for’
Having said that who doesn’t love free stuff. You can watch free indie movies on Youtube why not a free ebook on amazon.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

I have to say my daughter loved the movie _The Hunger Games_. She went to the theater and saw it three times. I went once. But because she loved it so much, I bought it for her on DVD, along with the necklace of the mockingjay symbol.

Even if the movie were free, I would have bought the DVD for her.

Even though I can get the classics free as ebooks, I still buy the paperbacks and hardcovers.

It is perceived value. _It doesn't matter_ if a billion trillion ebooks are free. 
The fan will still buy the ones they _want_ because of perceived value. All these doom -sayers that "free" will ruin ebooks are missing the whole point. *They're already all free through pirate groups, libraries, or borrowing from friends.*

Free helps readers "discover" you out of the billion trillion ebooks available. It is a marketing tool. Only a small percentage will go on to buy the rest of the books from that author and that's fine, because that is all we are looking for.

The doom - sayers are totally ignoring reality that readers or music listeners can get whatever they want for free now and it hasn't ruined any markets. Instead, for artists, it's exploded the middle ground of those who can actually make a living doing something they love.

If I listen to an artist enough for free on the radio or Youtube, chances are I'm going to buy his/her/their music. I _want to support_ artists I love.

I have fans now that complain my books are too cheap! (Go figure.) and will turn around and order all my ebooks, and the hardcover at $22.95, because they want to "support" me.

This perception only comes after I give book 1 away for free, they read it, and see it is exactly what they wanted to read. I've built up a true fan who doesn't care if there are other angel series out there or history mysterys, they want _mine_.

My ebooks are _not_ interchangeable with anyone elses. These fans then tell their friends, etc.

You who think my sales or freebies in any way impact yours-are wrong. I work at make my books "discoverable". I make it "convenient" by making it free, but the rest is up to the potential reader.


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## phil1861 (Dec 22, 2011)

Can you honestly say that giving away something is a fad? Free is as close as you come to universal appeal. 

If I offer you a diet Dr. Pepper for free, but you like Mr. Pibb, the only thing that would prevent you from accepting it is taste. One less barrier to over come, risk. You risk nothing but taste. 

I offer you my novel for free, but you don't like civil war fiction. You risk nothing but taste and perhaps a quick read before deciding if the time was or wasn't worth it. If you do not like civil war fiction you aren't going to risk both time, taste, and money - three barriers to book buying with time being the one that is a constant. Take away the barrier of money from the equation and there's one more possible customer in my future. 

As long as legal tender is the risk and what drives our system of barter free will always be a marketing tool, and one that always provides some dividend in the end - good will.


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## Griffin Hayes (Sep 20, 2011)

My two cents: I recently pulled out of Select since I was sick of needing to run giveaways every month in order to get maybe 1% back in sales (that is if one was lucky enough to get picked up by POI and ENT). I realize Amazon was trying to make the program attractive, but in my mind, 5 free days per book is too much. Each book should get 1 maybe 2 days per 90 day period. If for no other reason than to reduce the constant barrage of freeness (I just made that word up I think). But everything is cyclical. Now that the average indie book price is rising (from $2.99 to $3.99), it's helped to bring back the .99 cent ebook.


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

Griffin Hayes said:


> I realize Amazon was trying to make the program attractive, but in my mind, 5 free days per book is too much.


LOL, in my mind, 5 days of free every 90 days isn't anywhere near enough. I have friends who have pulled out of Select because they realized that they made so much more money by having a perma-freebie as a loss leader into the rest of their books than by making one book bounce back and forth between free and paid.

Those who have done long-term freebies (a week or more, but not permanent) as well as those with perma-freebies generally say that the big increase in sales of other books (as well as the big shoot up the free list) doesn't happen until well AFTER the 5th day the book is free.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Ali Cooper said:


> I never have and never intend to give books away indiscriminately for free. Via smashwords coupons, very occasionally, to specific people - yes. Otherwise - no.
> 
> And whilst I can see that someone with a substantial series may argue that one free book is a loss leader and will benefit them personally, at least in the short term. I don't see how anyone with any business sense can fail to see that in the long term, free is devaluing books and destroying the book industry for everyone.
> 
> If only writers could a) have a bit of self-respect, and b) regard fellow authors as colleagues, rather than rivals who must be kicked out of their way, and c) concentrate on writing quality books instead of playing stupid games, we might be able to build a decent, sustainable indie book industry for the future.


Really? My free book has benefited me long term. As a virtually unknown writer that one marketing tactic has built a substantial fan base. One I wouldn't have had without that free book. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a message that a reader was so glad I offered my first book free because if I hadn't they likely wouldn't have found it and the rest of the series.

As far as destroying the book business...that is pure hyperbole. As Amanda said earlier, publishers have been giving away books for free for decades. Libraries lend them for free. People share them, too. Yeah, I could go the rest of my life never paying for a book ever again. But if I want the latest Ilona Andrews or Kim Harrison on my ereader, I'm not going to wait. It will be an instant paid download. People will still pay for what they want to read.

1)I take offense to the notion I don't have any self respect because I offer a loss leader for the long term. I'm making a better living now than I ever have in my life largely due to that free book. It's all about discoverability. 2) I ended up putting my book free because a fellow writer took the time to mentor me in the marketing side of indie publishing. Her help launched my career. 3) I'm definitely not playing games. I work hard. Very hard. And just because I chose to make a book free says nothing about my work ethic.


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## BJ Whittington (Aug 30, 2011)

A. Rosaria said:


> With amazon recent new change of not putting the paid and free bestsellers next to each other but hiding the free list


I had not notice this, 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/154606011#1
Does show the top 100 Free side by side with the for sale, but is the rest of the list gone forever?


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## cdvsmx5 (May 23, 2012)

BJ Whittington said:


> I had not notice this,
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/154606011#1
> Does show the top 100 Free side by side with the for sale, but is the rest of the list gone forever?


Using your link, I do not get paid & free side by side. I used to and maybe will again, but not for the past several weeks.


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## DRMarvello (Dec 3, 2011)

cdvsmx5 said:


> Using your link, I do not get paid & free side by side. I used to and maybe will again, but not for the past several weeks.


What you see is cookie-driven because Amazon is doing A/B testing (possibly A/B/C). If you repeatedly delete the Amazon.com domain cookies and refresh the page, what you see changes. I observed the following three scenarios (each one starts with the page displaying the top 100 paid):


The page displays a link for the top 100 free. Clicking the link replaces the paid list with the free list.
The page displays a link for the top 100 free. Clicking the link puts the free list side-by-side with the paid list.
The page displays the top 100 free list next to the top 100 paid list, without the need to click a link.

I'm not sure which of the 10-14 cookies that Amazon uses controls this display, but if you delete the cookies, you have a chance of getting assigned a different page configuration.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Clearly, as has been discussed here several times, Amazon is doing A/B testing as DRM points out. I do not assume that having free on their own page would hurt us. A lot of people assume that, but not having them competing for attention with high selling paid novels might actually be an advantage. It would also simply overall decrease the distraction when looking at either list. Change is not always bad.

What Amazon will decide works best is still open to question, but of course, they'll think about what works best for them. I also think what works best for them probably works best for us too over time. But then most of my eggs are in a basket labeled 'Amazon'.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

I would like to take a pragmatic approach to this.

As a practical matter, it seems to me that some people are benefiting from the free system, while some are not.

I have neither benefited from free (I gave away quite a few books through Smashwords and Apple, and on both platforms, my general sales have plummeted; and on KDP select, never had a borrow, never had a post-free spike), nor have I benefited from my I-will-not-give-away-my-books-free phase, so at the moment, with sales falling off a cliff, I feel lost. I am inclined to try KDP Select again, for 1-2 titles, knowing that it will be impossible to persuade the majority to join in a no-free movement.

The fact is, I am not sure what percentage of those who go free benefit, and what percentage do not. And in which categories it works, and does not work. (My categories being mainstream fiction, essays, humor, political, nonfiction, satire, biography, critique.)

What would be great, beyond these discussions (in which naturally, everyone pursues their self-interest), if someone would compile data from a survey, and all participating tell the truth: whether they benefited or not, and in which categories. 

I am not denying that there are always exceptions to the rule--outstanding books make their own rules--but if it turns out that, at this stage, 90 percent of people who go free don't benefit, but are too proud or disenchanted to mention it on these boards (but would, in a survey), then I might decide to rely less on free as a tool and more on just improving my books' quality and my marketing.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Richardcrasta said:


> What would be great, beyond these discussions (in which naturally, everyone pursues their self-interest), if someone would compile data from a survey, and all participating tell the truth: whether they benefited or not, and in which categories.


Part of the problem is that quite a few people do not promote their free promotions, as if just because it is free, people are somehow magically going to start finding their book.

I have seen countless threads here where people say "I barely had any downloads during my promotion. I know it's probably because I barely contacted any sites, but still, KDP Select just didn't work for me."

Of course it didn't work... you (not _you_ specifically) didn't promote the book.

People aren't going to buy or download your book if they can't find it or do not know about it. Just waiting and hoping isn't going to change this. Just writing another book isn't going to change this, if your lack of promotion for all future books is much like all of the current books, nonexistent.

The people who did not properly promote their books, will skew the stats.

Yes, there are times a solid promotion just doesn't pay off. Is it Select's fault? Is it the unending supply of free books that we should blame? Or could it be your cover, your blurb, your genre, your reviews, and many other factors that contribute to people not making sales and not getting free downloads? It would be hard to isolate the causes, yet people want to blame Select/free ebooks for not working and ruining the world, instead of considering that their work could be improved.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

eBooksHabit said:


> Part of the problem is that quite a few people do not promote their free promotions, as if just because it is free, people are somehow magically going to start finding their book.
> ....


It's been my experience that tweeting and Facebooking and whatevering your butt off does virtually nothing. Your book either gets "magically" picked up by the big blogs, or it does not. Getting picked up has everything to do with genre and cover. I have a feeling some of the blogs read samples of the books they promote.

It really is feast or famine, with a handful of books every day being given the star treatment and the rest languish. Ah, but even the stars will be languishing come 30 days and the dreaded cliff of ugh.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Dalya said:


> It's been my experience that tweeting and Facebooking and whatevering your butt off does virtually nothing. Your book either gets "magically" picked up by the big blogs, or it does not. Getting picked up has everything to do with genre and cover. I have a feeling some of the blogs read samples of the books they promote.
> 
> It really is feast or famine, with a handful of books every day being given the star treatment and the rest languish. Ah, but even the stars will be languishing come 30 days and the dreaded cliff of ugh.


I agree that Tweeting and Facebooking are not that helpful for promotion. You may get a sale or two here or there, but not enough to significantly change your standing in the rankings.

On my most recent book promo, before I started eBooksHabit.com (not meant as a plug, just clarifying that owning a free ebook site didnt contribute), I was able to get 12,500 downloads before ENT picked me up and I never was picked up by POI. I promoted my book like a crazy person, contacting as many blogs (that are not free ebook blogs) as I could think of and find, that may be interested in the book. Many did not post, but quite a bit did, and since this was mostly fresh to their readers (read: not just another free ebook), and because i convinced the blogger there was a connection between the subject matter and their blog, that helps them to repeat the connection to their readers.

Yes it was a lot of work, but to be able to get 12,500 downloads without the big free ebook sites picking me up, was a great start a free promo, and those downloads wouldnt have happened if not for a hard work. People here, and on the writer blogs that promote such a philosophy, still haven't convinced me that just writing another book could solve the problem. Of course I will write more books, but that is the sole marketing plan of many authors. "If I just write one more book, people might find me." The reality is that new book will suffer the same lack of discoverability that the author's other books are suffering from.

As a self-publisher, the marketing responsibilities are yours. The reason publishers were so selective was because they were going to be (hopefully, and usually) putting a lot of their own money and resources into marketing the books they selected. I have seen the stories around here on KB about authors who had books picked up by publishers, and the publishers barely marketed the book. Those aren't the grand success stories of being a published author. They are authors who were waiting to get their books under their control again. The same goes for books that you publish yourself. If you aren't marketing those books properly (for whatever reason), then people probably won't find your books.

(The "you" and "yours" are not you Dayla...unless it applies to you, but it wasn't directed to you specifically).


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

eBooksHabit said:


> (The "you" and "yours" are not you Dayla...unless it applies to you, but it wasn't directed to you specifically).


Yeah, I was just being disagreeable because I hate having freebie days as my main strategy, LOL, not the people who try to help others with them. I think it's always good to share our experiences, even if I sound like a cranky poopoobear.

I'm thinking about putting out some shorts to support a few existing novels and doing free runs with them. Once an ISBN (orwhateverthedoohickeyit'scalled) for a book has been pimped out as free 3 or 5 times, most of the contacts you can reach will already have it. I think you need fresh ISBNs all the time if you're gonna work the Select Strategy. That means splitting your work into smaller pieces, more novellas, fewer full-length novels. Me, I love the idea of short stories. Maybe i won't sell many, even at 99cents, but if I can give away a bunch as loss-leaders for longer work, that might be okay!

Look at me acting all optimistic and crap. Musta had two coffees today!


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

I agree with eBooksHabit. 
It is a discoverability issue.
I haven't seen that just writing another ebook gains that much fan base unless you let readers know you have another book out. 
I usually contact blogs outside the ones that feature free books.

If you're experiencing zero sales it means your book is not anywhere potential readers would find it. It also means readers are not recommending it to their friends. It is your responsibility to get it in front of the eyeballs of potential readers which means you have to find a way to market your books.


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## Andykay (May 10, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> I have to say my daughter loved the movie _The Hunger Games_. She went to the theater and saw it three times. I went once. But because she loved it so much, I bought it for her on DVD, along with the necklace of the mockingjay symbol.
> 
> Even if the movie were free, I would have bought the DVD for her.
> 
> ...


You're missing a pretty important distinction. Things like Youtube and Myspace, where people can go and sample musician's work, have obviously been a boon for those artists. So has the internet and the general decentralisation of the industry. Those things are all great. But they're focused on one thing: samples. They're things that can only be consumed in a limited fashion, in a specific location (ie: the website in question). They give you a taste and then if you like it, you make a purchase.

Libraries are similar. There are limited copies of books, limited libraries, fines, time limitations, the inconvenience of driving there etc etc. There are plenty of factors that mean libraries aren't particularly threatening. To be fair, they probably did have some impact when they appeared, but it's been so long that would be lost in the mists of time.

But piracy is an entirely different beast. Most music pirates don't go on to buy the album. Some do, sure, if they really like that album, but the majority of people have already got the whole product and simply won't pay for it when it nets them nothing. If you genuinely do that, you're in the minority. And even if you do do that, it's unlikely you buy every album you pirate. You consume the entire product, but only buy the ones you love. It's pretty hard to argue that piracy has helped the music industry.

To give some perspective, I'm 28 years old. Right as I began listening to music, the internet and Napster hit. There were only a few years in my early teens where access to illegal music wasn't ubiquitous and easy. I've grown up on a diet of pirated music. As someone who produces creative work, I hate the idea of people stealing my content for free, and I want to support the artists I love, but I still find the idea of buying a CD to be somehow a waste of money. It's ingrained. I do my best to overcome it now that I'm older and have different principles etc, but it's not easy, and I certainly purchase less music than I would if there was no piracy option.

Free and constant music is such a part of the young, western cultural ideology that many people just don't buy it anymore. If I go through the thirty or forty people in my extended social circle, I can think of one or two who actually purchase music with any regularity, and one of those is a musician himself. Even other musicians I know pirate music. They all still buy music to some extent, but they're all certainly spending less on music than they would if they couldn't get it for free.

Now I'm aware this is anecdotal, just a little slice of my world, but I'm quite confident it applies to the majority of people in my age bracket. Samples are great and I've found hundreds of new artists through free, legal channels, but the availability of convenient, full length pirated albums certainly hasn't done the music industry any favours.

And as for your books not being interchangeable with anyone else's, that's true to a point, but it goes back to what I said before. People only have a certain amount of time to read. They may keep adding to that if they keep finding great authors that they love, but eventually they hit their celing. Everyone has a ceiling where they can't read any more. At that point, your book IS interchangeable. They have more great books that they love than they have time to read, and at that point someone is losing out. When more and more of those slots are occupied by free books, that's less sales.

EDIT: Also, it's hard to really draw direct comparisons to other industries like music or film, since each has its own factors at play, but revenue from CDs/digital downloads and DVDs/digital downloads have both been in freefall over the last few years. The industries still survive, but it's pretty difficult to ignore the impact piracy has had.


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## Kris10inger (Oct 6, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> No Way.
> 
> I have a series. I just loaded _Angel in the Shadows, Book 1_ up on Smashwords so I could set it free to everyone in the world. My goal is to give Book 1 away free, then if the reader likes my story they will be willing to pay for the rest.
> 
> ...


I could not agree more. As an Indie authors, readers are less likely to purchase our books for fear they are buying a dud. Not to mention the millions of dollars publishing houses have to promote traditionally published authors, while we rely on other not so attention grabbing methods for promoting.You do have to prove yourself to the reader when you are asking for their money. Not saying you have to make your book free, but if sales are dismal you need to start thinking of a new way to promote the book and a free promo has been proven in some cases to help.  I have heard plenty of authors say that their sales increase with a few days on a free promo.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> And as for your books not being interchangeable with anyone else's, that's true to a point, but it goes back to what I said before.


Books are interchangeable depending on the user's purpose. If he needs _Catcher In The Rye _for an English class, then it is not interchangeable. If he needs a book to read on the NY-LA flight, then many can meet that purpose and are interchangeable.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Andykay said:


> You're missing a pretty important distinction. Things like Youtube and Myspace, where people can go and sample musician's work, have obviously been a boon for those artists. So has the internet and the general decentralisation of the industry. Those things are all great. But they're focused on one thing: samples. They're things that can only be consumed in a limited fashion, in a specific location (ie: the website in question). They give you a taste and then if you like it, you make a purchase.


I'm not missing anything. I can listen to a whole song album on Youtube or a whole album. I can even put it on repeat. I can do it 24/7. There's nothing "sample" about it.



Andykay said:


> Libraries are similar. There are limited copies of books, limited libraries, fines, time limitations, the inconvenience of driving there etc etc. There are plenty of factors that mean libraries aren't particularly threatening. To be fair, they probably did have some impact when they appeared, but it's been so long that would be lost in the mists of time.


Wrong. My library will get any book you request. I can keep renewing it or check out a new copy. I don't get "just a sample" of the book for free, I get the whole darn thing. Shoot, I can get every book an author has written for free from the library. They're more generous than me. I only give one away free.


Andykay said:


> You consume the entire product, but only buy the ones you love. It's pretty hard to argue that piracy has helped the music industry.


I never said it helped. I said ebooks are available for free through enough pirate sites that if someone wants to avoid paying for ebooks that option is available. Free won't tank books, and piracy won't either.



Andykay said:


> And as for your books not being interchangeable with anyone else's, that's true to a point, but it goes back to what I said before. People only have a certain amount of time to read. They may keep adding to that if they keep finding great authors that they love, but eventually they hit their celing. Everyone has a ceiling where they can't read any more. At that point, your book IS interchangeable. They have more great books that they love than they have time to read, and at that point someone is losing out. When more and more of those slots are occupied by free books, that's less sales.


You took this out of context. I said my books are not interchangeable TO MY FANS.



Andykay said:


> EDIT: Also, it's hard to really draw direct comparisons to other industries like music or film, since each has its own factors at play, but revenue from CDs/digital downloads and DVDs/digital downloads have both been in freefall over the last few years. The industries still survive, but it's pretty difficult to ignore the impact piracy has had.


Counting a famous (as in I'm sure you've heard their music since it's even bumper music for TV shows) musician as my friend, and we've actually discussed this topic (as artist to artist) yes, it's evolved. Songs can be released single-ly instead of on albums. Song hits are more important now. Merchandising the brand can actually make more money than the music sales.

I think you are missing the point entirely which is each author (or musician) must build up their own loyal fan base. Free is a discoverability tool for doing it.

If you don't want to offer a whole book free to entice readers to buy your other stuff, then don't. But don't expect those of us who choose to-as hurting your non-existent sales. (Because readers don't even know your books are out there, because you don't or can't or won't make it easy for them to find).

My not making my book free-*is in no way going to help your readers find your book*.

You have to do something to help readers find your book if word-of-mouth isn't doing it.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Books are interchangeable depending on the user's purpose. If he needs _Catcher In The Rye _for an English class, then it is not interchangeable. If he needs a book to read on the NY-LA flight, then many can meet that purpose and are interchangeable.


Terrence,
As I stated in my post (which I'm not sure you read), I said my books are not interchangeable _to my fans_, which is why I can confidently give my first book away. 
If they have become a fan by the end of book 1, they will gladly buy book 2. If they care about the characters and they want to find out what happens next, my books at that point are no longer interchangeable.


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## Andykay (May 10, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Wrong. My library will get any book you request. I can keep renewing it or check out a new copy. I don't get "just a sample" of the book for free, I get the whole darn thing. Shoot, I can get every book an author has written for free from the library. They're more generous than me. I only give one away free.
> I never said it helped. I said ebooks are available for free through enough pirate sites that if someone wants to avoid paying for ebooks that option is available. Free won't tank books, and piracy won't either.
> 
> You took this out of context. I said my books are not interchangeable TO MY FANS.
> ...


I've said a few times already I'm not discouraging people from using free. It's the best tactic authors have at the moment. Go to town. I'll join you when I have the drive to finally finish one of the things I'm working on =)

All I'm arguing is that it's damaging to the industry as a whole. Free books read mean less paid books read, for reasons explained in past posts. Unfortunately it can't be stopped, except at root level, since it makes no sense for any individual to stop using free promotion.

Anyway, I've said my piece in this thread I think. It has made for wonderful procrastination though.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Andykay said:


> I've said a few times already I'm not discouraging people from using free. It's the best tactic authors have at the moment. Go to town. I'll join you when I have the drive to finally finish one of the things I'm working on =)
> 
> All I'm arguing is that it's damaging to the industry as a whole. Free books read mean less paid books read, for reasons explained in past posts. Unfortunately it can't be stopped, except at root level, since it makes no sense for any individual to stop using free promotion.
> 
> Anyway, I've said my piece in this thread I think. It has made for wonderful procrastination though.


More readers are being born everyday and world population on the whole is growing at a dramatic pace. There isn't a static finite group of readers to sell to but a growing one.

Actually, several studies show the amount of books read is way up since ereaders hit the market. So more books _are_ being bought and read now. It's good for the industry.

Your book argument doesn't take length into account at all. You can read two 60,000 word books in the time it takes to read one 120,000 word. 
As I've stated before, free isn't taking away from paid books, because free has always been available.


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## Andykay (May 10, 2012)

That's not relevant though. If free is impacting a smaller pool of readers, the impact just gets bigger as more readers are added.

Just because sales are increasing doesn't mean free is a good thing. There are tons of other factors at play. Sales are increasing because books are cheaper, because e-readers are convenient, and because there are more book buyers out there than ever before. And for all of those reasons, there would be even more books sold if people weren't also reading free books. The debate is "would we be better off without free books." We can be worse off and still have sales increasing.

Book length is also irrelevant as far as I can tell. We're talking averages here, not individual situations where people read a book of X length. Some may read short free books and long paid books, but the opposite will occur just as much.

Free hasn't always been available, not like this. Pirating books has only become remotely prevalent in the last few years and libraries I already covered. These freebies are literally the same as buying the book. They're as convenient as humanly possible (1-click), exactly the same quality as any book you buy, are effectively limitless, and are yours forever. No free (legal) option that existed in the past even comes close to offering what free ebooks do.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

Richardcrasta said:


> I would like to take a pragmatic approach to this.
> 
> As a practical matter, it seems to me that some people are benefiting from the free system, while some are not.
> 
> ...


To add to what I said above, I see this as an argument not about ethics (obviously), but between Idealism and Self-Interest. I have often taken the idealistic position in my books, have spent years writing, publishing, and promoting books such as "Impressing the Whites" and "The Killing of an Author"--and each time, have come out of these episodes with 2 black eyes (if they could find my third eye, that would be black too). I have only two friends (both of whom I greatly admire) who always back their idealistic statements with actions; I am in the worst financial circumstances of my adult life, ever, as a result. The only book of mine that has sold a passable number of copies as an e-book is one in which I was less than idealistic, and a bit pragmatic--and it is not by any means in the same league as my best reviewed book.

Still, I would say that if those of you who are taking the Idealistic position can afford it, by all means follow your heart. If I could, I would. Right now, my primary instinct is to survive with any pragmatic tool available (without stooping to unethical means such as sockpuppet reviews of myself, or buying reviews) so I can publish more books of an idealistic nature (and I mean this in the Franz Kafka and Shakespeare's "To thine own self be true" sense).


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

Andykay said:


> All I'm arguing is that it's damaging to the industry as a whole. Free books read mean less paid books read


You asserted this numerous times but haven't produced any evidence. You have a theory based on a host of assumptions.


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## Andykay (May 10, 2012)

Given we have no concrete evidence, all we have is conjecture. Nobody has any proof to the contrary either, which is what makes the debate so interesting.

But that said, as I mentioned earlier, there's hints of evidence in Amazon's behaviour recently.

I don't really think my assumptions are that unfounded. People have limited time. At some point, something has to give. That's it in a nutshell. But yea, I've probably spent enough time and a few too many words in this thread already, so no more for now.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Andykay said:


> Book length is also irrelevant as far as I can tell. We're talking averages here, not individual situations where people read a book of X length. Some may read short free books and long paid books, but the opposite will occur just as much.


But you keep bringing up the individual situations where people read a book of $0.00 price over a book of X price...

----

And if we are talking about cutting into total reading hours, something you have harped on over and over and over and over, then all of the other examples of free books matter in the discussion.

Your counterpoints to Lisa's and other's examples of other ways to get free books has been to say that those ways aren't as easy as 1-click. The ease of accessibility plays zero factor into the "available reading time" metric. While I think your available reading time measurement is a joke of a metric, let's run with it since you don't seem to want to drop it, and since it seems to be your main point for being anti-free.

If someone gets a book from a library, for free, and they read that book, it cuts into their total available reading hours for the year. It doesn't matter if it's 1-click or 1-drive and a browse through shelves of books... reading a book they got for free cut into their available reading hours for the year, and into the overall author profit pool, just like you claim happens when people download free ebooks. (Which helps to make your "reading hours" metric even more silly, but hey, it's your main argument, not mine).

If someone borrows a book from a friend, for free, and they read that book, it cuts into their total available reading hours for the year. It doesn't matter if it's 1-click or 1 meetup at Starbucks to the get book... reading a book they got for free cuts into their available reading hours for the year, and into the overall author profit pool, just like you claim happens when people download free ebooks.

If someone pirates a book, and they read that book, that cuts into their total available reading hours for the year. They probably wouldn't have purchased the book anyway. Their "total available reading hours per year" are defined in a different way, and a different set of principles, than someone who buys books. The same could be said for someone who reads free books. Just because someone has "X available reading hours per year", doesn't mean they are going to use all of those hours on paid books. Some will borrows from friends, some will borrow from the library, some will go to a used bookstore (and while money was paid, it did not contribute to the overall author pool), some will dumpster dive behind B&N to get the books with the covers ripped off of them, some will pirate books. Just because someone has "X available reading hours per year" does not mean people will fill 100% of those hours with books they paid for.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

Andykay said:


> Given we have no concrete evidence, all we have is conjecture. Nobody has any proof to the contrary either,


You're wrong. We have thousands of years of evidence across multiple product lines and industries. People have been giving sex away since the dawn of man yet that hasn't destroyed the prostitution business.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Andykay said:


> Given we have no concrete evidence, all we have is conjecture. Nobody has any proof to the contrary either, which is what makes the debate so interesting.
> 
> I don't really think my assumptions are that unfounded. People have limited time. At some point, something has to give. That's it in a nutshell. But yea, I've probably spent enough time and a few too many words in this thread already, so no more for now.


We _do_ have evidence though. 
The Verso Study http://www.versoadvertising.com/Wi7survey2012/, among others.
The fact that libraries have been around since Ben Franklin invented them
The fact that Napster didn't kill the music industry (it's evolved, sure, but ebooks are evolving publishing)
etc... 
Free is not detrimental and *does not kill off industries*. 
What kills them off is *innovation*, which mean ebooks are a threat to more expensive paperbacks and hardbacks, which need to be warehoused and physically shipped. Matter-of-fact most of the big publishers are catching on and what they're doing is getting backlist up, or opening ebook publishing only arms. Would they do this if they thought free was killing off they're business? NO.
They've been offering free paperbacks and arcs for years. Where do you think the idea came from?

Please keep your email address the same so I can say "I told you so", for the next thirty years or so.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Please keep your email address the same so I can say "I told you so", for the next thirty years or so.


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## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

~5000 reads on this thread, and zero sales for me. Sure, let's give books away.

F.


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

jasonzc said:


> ~5000 reads on this thread, and zero sales for me. Sure, let's give books away.
> 
> F.


You think that posting inflammatory statements on a forum targeted toward writers is going to sell books for you?

You have much yet left to learn, padawan.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

jasonzc said:


> ~5000 reads on this thread, and zero sales for me. Sure, let's give books away.
> 
> F.


I think I can attribute two sales from posting on this forum. If your goal is sell books, posting on a writer forum probably isn't the best way. If that's your entire point for being here, you will be disappointed. Hopefully you have other reasons for being here. Most of the rest of us do.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

jasonzc said:


> ~5000 reads on this thread, and zero sales for me. Sure, let's give books away.
> 
> F.


  We're *NOT* your market. We're other authors sharing info. here. You need to join Dr. Who and the hitchhiker's guide sites. Go out and find _your readers_. Why don't you listen and learn get out of having a pity party for yourself? What you're doing clearly isn't working, so instead of blaming everyone else, change *your* marketing plan and do something different!


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## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

Unless Amazon's algorithms and source code are viewable by the public, i.e. open source, you are simply accepting their word as far as sales go.

That is not a shrewd business move on the part of authors. It may be more rewarding for more well-known writers, but they are still subject to the same accounting slight-of-hand. More so, in fact, because they have more sales to steal from...

You people are basically arguing about nothing, or the wrong things. Make Amazon prove their figures are valid. And taking the word of a third-party accounting agency or governmental organization is laughable.

Perhaps you can't necessarily read source code and understand it. Others can, and they have no financial interest in it as such, just a desire for overall fairness in the marketplace.

I would put my investment money into Smashwords, if they were public with their accounting practices as well.

Stealing from people should not be a protected trade secret. Just like the over 5000 secret patents the U.S. holds. Secret patents? WTF?

Oh, and the Edge is my favorite new eReader. http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/10/dual-screen-entourage-edge-ebook-reader-gets-a-little-hands-on-t/

It's clunky and cool, great for kids. It takes like, five minutes to boot up, and the OS is basically AmigaDOS/Workbench. Pretty open system, too, I think. It was almost $500 a few years ago. I'm going buy one today for my son. It's $59 at a pawn shop in town.

We need ebook readers like the Kindle White in schools, not multimedia crapfest glorified phones and videogame/porn boxes. Books were supposed to be the point of Amazon and the Kindle.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Now you're not getting sales because Amazon is stealing them from you? This guy...

Screw the book publishing and free ebook website owning businesses I am in.

Selling foil hats would be WAY more profitable.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

jasonzc said:


> Unless Amazon's algorithms and source code are viewable by the public, i.e. open source, you are simply accepting their word as far as sales go.
> 
> That is not a shrewd business move on the part of authors. It may be more rewarding for more well-known writers, but they are still subject to the same accounting slight-of-hand. More so, in fact, because they have more sales to steal from...
> 
> You people are basically arguing about nothing, or the wrong things. Make Amazon prove their figures are valid. And taking the word of a third-party accounting agency or governmental organization is laughable.


Amazon is not the only place most of us are selling our books.

Making accusations that authors can't read source code is ludicrous (it's not _that_ hard) and that has nothing to do with you or I setting our books free. 
You're welcome to sell all your books through your own personal website. You don't have to trust anyone. No one is stopping you. 
You're welcome to pingback and track all your sales through any available tracking software or reinvent the wheel and write your own code to do so.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

jasonzc I am going to say this out of kindness and respect because you are here to be a better publisher/sell books. Maybe not RIGHT here sell books, but in general.

You have your author name branded across your books and that's a great first step, but it's small and hard to read in thumbnail size. There is no consistency in titles or cover art to show which books BELONG together, if any. 

Most of the cover art isn't very professional looking. Perfect Me for example is odd given the book's description and there's clearly a cropping issue on the right side of the cover. The images don't seem to tell me what the story is about. Hurricane Regina is blurry, and that's a picture of a submarine. I do NOT get kidnapping, sci fi adventure at all from that cover. I get Power-point report on submarine safety in hurricanes (maybe because my hubby IS a submariner). I don't get it. Is it a submarine story? If so the font and title don't really work. Now I have a romance called Cancelled, and it's ironic on purpose because my romance is from a male POV and doesn't have a traditional HEA. The image on my cover is what is happenning right as you open the book. Page 1 Chapter 1, MC wakes up to a strange blond. (edit: After I finished this post I had this thought, put a hot picture of Regina on the cover with a sub imposed, THAT will help explain that story better than what you've got right now, but consult a professional cover artist and you can really get more bang for your buck).

Your author picture here isn't professional. And you're not alone in this, but I think it does make a difference. Readers want to buy books from professional authors, they can't tell the difference between a traditionally published author and an indie when the cover art and author bio and pic are professional looking. T-shirt and bizarre background aren't going to work. That doesn't LOOK like a picture a publisher would put on the back jacket of a hard back. Your author pic on Amazon is worse. It's clearly a point and click pic with a bad flash. Your author bio needs something more interesting about you than that you write and do activities every other author does. Where does your humor come from? What inspires you to write what you do? What do you say about yourself when you meet someone for the first time as an interesting tidbit to make conversation? What do you have in common with your readers so they can LIKE you just by reading the author bio and want to give you money?

You are pricing very high for short stories. The problem isn't free books, it's that full-length professional novels are $2.99 now. Readers don't want to pay $2.99 for 100 pages from an unknown. They WANT to pay $.99 for an unknown author's novel, honestly. 

Your product descriptions need some help, too. You are falling into what I call the "cleverness of ambiguity" trap. Authors are so afraid to say WHAT happens in their book, like it will ruin the secret or something for the reader. It's a myth. Cut out every bit of vague language and replace it with WHAT happens in the book. I'm not checking all of them, but I will give you an example. Hurricane Regina's description is confusing. You have hes and shes all over, and your paragraph organization has more than one main thought in each. On my first three reads, I thought Captain Dan was the captor. All 3. 

Readers have their bags packed and they are ready to book a journey with you. Most are not interested in the mystery destination behind curtain #3. You need to SELL the journey they are going to take with you with concrete details and unique experiences they aren't going to get ANYWHERE else. The premise of Hurricane Regina is interesting, but with a real life sub on it, is it science fiction/paranormal or does it take place on a REAL sub? And the premise is buried in the middle of the description as the second and third sentences of the last 'graph. There's a reason a lot of sci-fi covers are illustrated, it's because unless the real world features heavily in it, using real world photography sends a mixed message to the reader.

You have diamonds. They're rough cut. Polish them up before you worry about what other authors are doing to be successful. Because to be honest, that IS the secret we who sell books have (and I do NOT sell many, to be clear, but I haven't had a month of no sales in the year I've been doing this). We fake it until we make it and make our books and listing appear to be no different in quality than a traditionally published book. 

And really get a better author photo. You are not unphotogenic. I love Russell Brand, and since all I can see in the photos you have posted is hair, you remind me of a doppelganger for him.  Get some kooky photos taken with any friend you have who is a hobbyist photographer (We all have this friend) or go to a mall studio and pay $199 for the CD of images and take a ton of outfits and different poses. Work it.


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## cdvsmx5 (May 23, 2012)

eBooksHabit said:


> ...Selling foil hats would be WAY more profitable.


No way! I'm giving them away free!


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## rachael (Aug 25, 2012)

> jasonzc I am going to say this out of kindness and respect because you are here to be a better publisher/sell books.


Very thoughtful, informative and classy response, Elizabeth. Your post was a pleasure to read. I hope Jason takes something from this and appreciates the time and effort you put in to help him.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

cdvsmx5 said:


> No way! I'm giving them away free!


And yet I could still make money w/ foil hats even though it's something people could make themselves and you're giving them away for free.

It's all about finding your audience and bringing the book, errr, foil hats to them.


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## amiblackwelder (Mar 19, 2010)

righterman said:


> I'm in. I am sooooo done with free. I admit it, I used KDP select and had many books "hit" on POI and ENT -- but I am DONE! This free mentality is killing us. Amazon should remove all free books from their site. .99 isn't even worth it unless your book is less than 5,000 words -- sell your 8,000 - 20,000 word books for at least $2.99! Get that 70%!!
> 
> Occupy Amazon! NO MORE FREE BOOKS!!!!!
> 
> ...


I have to say for myself I give away books to make money. My profits increased to $500 a month because of my free runs at KDP...from Jan-May and then in the summer they slowed down to $250...so it worked for me. Now, the freebies seemed to have slowed a lot, but will ride it until the end of the year. That is my plan. Then I'll put all my books on all sites. But the first books in my series' will always be free.


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## Andykay (May 10, 2012)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> We _do_ have evidence though.
> The Verso Study http://www.versoadvertising.com/Wi7survey2012/, among others.
> The fact that libraries have been around since Ben Franklin invented them
> The fact that Napster didn't kill the music industry (it's evolved, sure, but ebooks are evolving publishing)
> ...


Like I said, I think I'm done here. I'll keep repeating myself at this point. But I am certainly looking forward to seeing what happens in the next thirty years. More importantly, I'm looking forward to the next year or two, when I think Amazon will make some changes. Time will tell.


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

Adam Pepper said:


> You're wrong. We have thousands of years of evidence across multiple product lines and industries. People have been giving sex away since the dawn of man yet that hasn't destroyed the prostitution business.


Your logic is infallible, sir. That is one industry that has remained through thick and thin.


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

BrianKittrell said:


> Your logic is infallible, sir. That is one industry that has remained through thick and thin.


Ahem! Should I be smiling here....


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

BrianKittrell said:


> Your logic is infallible, sir. That is one industry that has remained through thick and thin.


But mostly thick.


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## eBooksHabit (Mar 5, 2012)

Perfect ending for this thread!


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

A reminder to folks that it is not done here to critique/provide feedback on works that have not been offered up for critique/feedback.

Thanks.

Betsy
KB Moderator


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## cdvsmx5 (May 23, 2012)

eBooksHabit said:


> And yet I could still make money w/ foil hats even though it's something people could make themselves and you're giving them away for free.
> 
> It's all about finding your audience and bringing the book, errr, foil hats to them.


Well, all the best with that.

Mine are specially constructed to make them addictive. The first is free, but it will make you want need to buy the next. And the next...

[manic laughter fades in background]


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## Jan Strnad (May 27, 2010)

It just seems to be the way of the world for things to get more complicated.

It used to be that we'd go to a movie and show up early, stand in line to get good seats. We'd have to talk or something to pass the time until the show started.

Now we can buy tickets online and get reserved seats. But...you pretty much *have* to do this hours or--in some cases--_days_ in advance. And you pay a "convenience fee" on top of the ticket price. If your plans change, too bad. You'll still have to show up at the theater before showtime to get a refund (even if you're oozing with flu virus, as was the case with me once--I apologized to the clerks for exposing them).

Advantages, disadvantages, extra cost.

The world changes and you have to deal with it.

Back in Fall 2011, before free books by the boatload, my book _Risen_ was selling well, by my standards, sales steadily growing. Once free books hit, sales fell off a cliff. So then I had to do a free promo, promote to 12-15 sites, and give away 33,000 books in order to score a sales bonus and a boost for who-knows-how-long. Three weeks later, I've had my best month ever and though sales are declining, they're still higher than they were in Fall 2011.

So...advantages, disadvantages, extra trouble.

I don't know. I just try to go with the flow and enjoy the trip.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Stepping in here...

Jason, as I posted, the unsolicited comments on your work were inappropriate here; additional comment by you is unnecessary, inflammatory and adds nothing to the discussion of the subject at hand.  Accordingly, I've removed your comments and those responding to them.

Thanks, all.

Betsy
KB Moderator


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## Kris10inger (Oct 6, 2012)

BrianKittrell said:


>


Hilarious!


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## Kris10inger (Oct 6, 2012)

eBooksHabit said:


> You completely misunderstand what I am trying to say, which is along the same lines as the general misunderstanding about how Select and the algorithms work.
> 
> Amazon calculates free downloads as sales for their popularity ranks at a rate of about 10 free downloads to 1 sale. The popularity ranking is based on # of sales in a roughly 30 day period. The more sales (including free downloads converted as sales for the popularity ranking algoithm), the higher you are, and the more exposure you have. The books on the popularity lists for the various categories are all paid ebooks. People browsing these lists are looking to buy. If you are on these lists, there's an increased chance people are going to buy your book (obviously other marketing signals play a factor... the cover, blurb, sample, reviews, etc). But, by having more free downloads, you increase your rankings (and visibility) on these lists. then, people who buy books, browse those lists, and may buy your book. *THAT is the goal of a free promotion, via Select anyway.* Once you go back to paid after a free promotion, if you gave away enough downloads, you catapult yourself in the popularity lists, you usually make more sales, bumping you in the bestseller rankings, leading to more sales, etc...
> 
> ...


I have a question.  My sales are better on Barnes and Noble than on Amazon. Would it be wise to take a chance on Select? I'd have to take my novel off of BN in order to use select, but I was thinking that since my sales are very steady on BN that I could risk it for 90 days in order to try and boost my sales on Amazon.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Kris10inger said:


> I have a question.  My sales are better on Barnes and Noble than on Amazon. Would it be wise to take a chance on Select? I'd have to take my novel off of BN in order to use select, but I was thinking that since my sales are very steady on BN that I could risk it for 90 days in order to try and boost my sales on Amazon.


It would depend on how much better your sales are at B&N. For instance, if you sold 5 at B&N in a month, and only 2 on Amazon, while sales at B&N are more than twice that of Amazon, neither are very good so you might as well take a chance. If, however, you sell 100 a month on B&N, and only 40 on Amazon, then it would make no sense to go with Select, even if the ratios are about the same in both instances. I think Select would easily boost your sales to make it worthwhile in the first case, but it's a lot less of a guarantee in the second.


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

I'm torn between free and not free. Like everyone else here, I'd like to reach a wider readerbase. I did a free run for one of my books, and the download numbers weren't overly crazy like some of the other KB members had reported here. I think it's just another one of those things where free ebooks works great for some genres but not others.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Well, I'm firmly against shoveling freebies to the masses, because I think it's bad for the industry and especially so for indies that are trying to gain traction as professional writers, rather than hobbyists.

HOWEVER...
I'm not closed-minded, either. Some of the posts here are very sensible.
There is value in promos and, like many here mentioned, it gets your name out there and maybe a few reviews. 

I am about to publish my second book via KDP Select, mainly because I see nothing happening at Kobo or Smashwords. Nothing to lose there.  As part of that I will run a few free days to coincide with some blog posts and interviews I have lined up. 

After that it's back to paid.  I won't do perma-free or 99-cents. I'm worth more than that, even if I never sell another book (she says snootily)


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

Quiss said:


> After that it's back to paid. I won't do perma-free or 99-cents. I'm worth more than that, even if I never sell another book (she says snootily)


I'm glad that you think it's okay to do things that you disdain as long as it's _you _and _just this once_. Stick to your guns. I appreciate someone with principle.

How's this: Do whatever you want, and don't be condescending toward people with other strategies because you're hurt that "devaluing their work" via freebies is helping them make a living wage. I don't think less of you for choosing not to do freebies. Oh, wait, you're planning on doing a freebie. Never mind. I hope it works well for you.

Mm hmm.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

smreine said:


> I'm glad that you think it's okay to do things that you disdain as long as it's _you _and _just this once_. Stick to your guns. I appreciate someone with principle.
> 
> How's this: Do whatever you want, and don't be condescending toward people with other strategies because you're hurt that "devaluing their work" via freebies is helping them make a living wage. I don't think less of you for choosing not to do freebies. Oh, wait, you're planning on doing a freebie. Never mind. I hope it works well for you.
> 
> Mm hmm.


I'm not sure that I deserved that, frankly.
If anything, my post is stepping BACK from some points I raised earlier in this thread and others, because I find some people's input valid and compelling. 
I STILL don't think that giving away your hard work for free is a good idea but that doesn't mean that using occasional promos is a bad idea. 
I'm not sure why this is upsetting you so much - it was certainly not my intent. Sarcasm isn't really what this forum is about, is it?

This isn't about principles. It's about hearing what other people are saying. We are all allowed to change out minds or to try new things. It's how we learn and grow. I'm sorry you missed that point and I'm sorry if I didn't make it clearer for you.


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## Rachel Schurig (Apr 9, 2011)

Quiss said:


> I'm not sure that I deserved that, frankly.
> If anything, my post is stepping BACK from some points I raised earlier in this thread and others, because I find some people's input valid and compelling.
> I STILL don't think that giving away your hard work for free is a good idea but that doesn't mean that using occasional promos is a bad idea.
> I'm not sure why this is upsetting you so much - it was certainly not my intent. Sarcasm isn't really what this forum is about, is it?
> ...


My head is kind of spinning. With one breath you say shoveling freebies to the masses is bad for "real" writers, then you say you're going to try it anyhow, then you go on to indicate that someone having a book perma free or at $.99 means they don't value their work.

I'm glad you're open minded enough to change your mind about marketing strategies based on the experience of others. I think that's great. But you've been quite outspoken about free books, to the point that I've found a few of your comments slightly offensive. Saying that you're now going to try it, while _still_ talking down those who use the strategy differently than you, has me scratching my head.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Rachel Schurig said:


> My head is kind of spinning. With one breath you say shoveling freebies to the masses is bad for "real" writers, then you say you're going to try it anyhow, then you go on to indicate that someone having a book perma free or at $.99 means they don't value their work.
> 
> I'm glad you're open minded enough to change your mind about marketing strategies based on the experience of others. I think that's great. But you've been quite outspoken about free books, to the point that I've found a few of your comments slightly offensive. Saying that you're now going to try it, while _still_ talking down those who use the strategy differently than you, has me scratching my head.


Yeah, mine too. Probably a matter of poorly chosen words.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Bella Andre gives the first book away in every series—for free.

Scott Nicholson sells most of his books for 99 cents each.

Both are successful and there are several writers who are making a living doing what they're doing. Yet, if you ask one hundred readers of their genres, there is a good chance none of the readers have heard of them!

Discovery (having your target market know who you are) is very difficult for authors. Those who are afraid of free truly don't understand how huge the book market is. 

If I could, I would give away a million of my first book every month. The problem is—I can't find a million takers because it is extremely hard to reach all potential readers.

I agree with smreine that it is condenscending to blame people who are trying strategies that are working for the down fall of a whole industry (ruining, de-valueing their hard work, etc...) an industry that doesn't even acknowledge us.

Innovation changes industries. Indies are prepared to roll with the changes. Free does not equal perceived value so it will not replace paid for books, which means there will always be a market willing to pay for books.


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

Quiss said:


> I'm not sure that I deserved that, frankly.
> If anything, my post is stepping BACK from some points I raised earlier in this thread and others, because I find some people's input valid and compelling.
> I STILL don't think that giving away your hard work for free is a good idea but that doesn't mean that using occasional promos is a bad idea.
> I'm not sure why this is upsetting you so much - it was certainly not my intent. Sarcasm isn't really what this forum is about, is it?
> ...


I also find it very shocking when I am rude and people are offended. Gosh darn people and their feelings.

And unfortunately, I have no other communication mode than "sarcasm," unless you're looking for "snark" or occasionally "absurd beyond reasoning." And sometimes "Pig Latin," but mostly when I'm drunk.


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## trublue (Jul 7, 2012)

@LisaGrace,

I agree 100%. The truth is if you can get the first book in readers hands
It works well for the rest of the series. Whats wrong with giving the readers a free book?
I am sure many of you have said this more elegantly but...

Chill out. It's one book. Readers don't know you are the New JK Rowling. Show them what you got.
Times are tough. People are broke. Unless its the only book you will ever write, set it free.
One free book doesn't make you less of a writer.


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## 60911 (Jun 13, 2012)

Quiss said:


> Well, I'm firmly against shoveling freebies to the masses, because I think it's bad for the industry and especially so for indies that are trying to gain traction as professional writers, rather than hobbyists.
> 
> After that it's back to paid. I won't do perma-free or 99-cents. I'm worth more than that, even if I never sell another book (she says snootily)


I think I can do this without sarcasm.

If you look at the sales threads and rankings of many of the authors advocating free books, I think you'll find that a compelling number of people who give away one or more books perma-free and have been doing it for a little while are also making a living as full-time writers. I realize that it seems like offering a book for free, on the surface, devalues the work and the author, but in fact it would appear that a growing number of authors are giving away books free AND also making reasonable sums of money with their writing.

Did I make it? I'm afraid to look back, but I think I made it through the whole post without an iota of snark.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

RobertJCrane said:


> I think I can do this without sarcasm.
> 
> If you look at the sales threads and rankings of many of the authors advocating free books, I think you'll find that a compelling number of people who give away one or more books perma-free and have been doing it for a little while are also making a living as full-time writers. I realize that it seems like offering a book for free, on the surface, devalues the work and the author, but in fact it would appear that a growing number of authors are giving away books free AND also making reasonable sums of money with their writing.
> 
> Did I make it? I'm afraid to look back, but I think I made it through the whole post without an iota of snark.


Considering the tone of the post to which you replied, I think you did a marvellous job. I considered replying but my snark-o-meter went right off the scale.


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## 41413 (Apr 4, 2011)

RobertJCrane said:


> I think I can do this without sarcasm.
> 
> If you look at the sales threads and rankings of many of the authors advocating free books, I think you'll find that a compelling number of people who give away one or more books perma-free and have been doing it for a little while are also making a living as full-time writers. I realize that it seems like offering a book for free, on the surface, devalues the work and the author, but in fact it would appear that a growing number of authors are giving away books free AND also making reasonable sums of money with their writing.
> 
> Did I make it? I'm afraid to look back, but I think I made it through the whole post without an iota of snark.


Excellent job, sir. You are much more mature and restrained than I could ever hope to become.


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## 60911 (Jun 13, 2012)

smreine said:


> Excellent job, sir. You are much more mature and restrained than I could ever hope to become.


Yeah, but you were funnier. And I shiver to think of the unchecked awesomeness JR would have unleashed had she responded without fear of the mighty banhammer.


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## DRMarvello (Dec 3, 2011)

RobertJCrane said:


> ...I realize that it seems like offering a book for free, on the surface, devalues the work and the author...


This is the part of the argument against free that falls apart for me. Free has never been the same as worthless. If readers enjoy a book, it has value to them. We could argue all day about what _monetary_ value to place on that reading experience, and to make matters worse, I'm sure that value is different for every reader. To me, if an author chooses to give a book to readers for free, it's just a very nice gift.

What gives a book value is not what authors put into writing it, it's what readers get out of reading it.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

DRMarvello said:


> This is the part of the argument against free that falls apart for me. Free has never been the same as worthless. If readers enjoy a book, it has value to them. We could argue all day about what _monetary_ value to place on that reading experience, and to make matters worse, I'm sure that value is different for every reader. To me, if an author chooses to give a book to readers for free, it's just a very nice gift.
> 
> What gives a book value is not what authors put into writing it, it's what readers get out of reading it.


The value of a book to the _author_ has NEVER been the price of a single copy, whether that price is $50 or free. The value to the reader is simply impossible to calculate.


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## KealanPatrick (Sep 5, 2010)

Perhaps I'm not qualified to post on this thread, but as that's never stopped me before, I see no reason it should now.

I've already posted elsewhere about what free did for me. What I never talk about is the financial history of that free book. Hence my concern that I'm not qualified to contribute to this discussion, because my background is a little different.

Pre-August 2011, I was selling a couple of hundred books a month. Then I made _The Turtle Boy_ free, and now I'm selling a couple of thousand books a month. I chart my figures and it's clear that August 2011 was the game-changer for me. Sales of the other books in the series went through the roof in that month and they've stayed up, and buzz for the fifth and final book, a full-length novel which comes out on October 31st is huge.

_The Turtle Boy_ is still free, and I intend to keep it that way.

In addition to that, since August of 2011, I've sold (as in: for money) _The Turtle Boy_ to print and digital markets in Poland, France, and Germany. I've sold (for money) the audio rights. It's been optioned for film, an option for which I've been paid twice.

And let's go back further. Before this digital explosion, I was paid $1500 for the novella by a print publisher back in 2004, and paid $500 each by two foreign publishers who ultimately went under (but not before the checks cleared) before they could release the book.

If this constitutes devaluation, or a lack of unity, then I guess I'm guilty, but last time I checked, me supporting ideas that have little to back them up didn't help me put food on the table. I have proof of what works for me, and from what I see, similar tactics have worked for others. My best advice is for you to focus on what works for you and dispense with the blanket condemnation and hysterical finger-pointing. It does no one, including you, any good.


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## DRMarvello (Dec 3, 2011)

KealanPatrick said:


> Perhaps I'm not qualified to post on this thread, but as that's never stopped me before, I see no reason it should now.


Actually, your experience makes you eminently qualified to post on this thread. You demonstrated beautifully how free (even perpetually free) can be used as a promotion tool. What's more, _The Turtle Boy_ proves its value to you every day by leading new readers, who clearly valued their initial reading experience, to your other books.


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## KealanPatrick (Sep 5, 2010)

Thanks Dan! That's what I was hoping to demonstrate, but the prevalent negativity suggested a disclaimer was wise nonetheless.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Well, I'm firmly against shoveling freebies to the masses, because I think it's bad for the industry and especially so for indies that are trying to gain traction as professional writers, rather than hobbyists.


Professional writers? Who cares? Consumers don't. If a hobbyist can beat him by competing in the market, then the hobbyist makes money and the professional doesn't.

And value? I initially value my work at nothing. Consumers place value on it when they buy it. It's just another widget in the market.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

> Quiss quote: Quote
> Well, I'm firmly against shoveling freebies to the masses, because I think it's bad for the industry and especially so for indies that are trying to gain traction as professional writers, rather than hobbyists.


*My Christmas wish list*:

A cyber shovel big enough to give away a million ebooks to the masses.

P. S. I make more money when I give away one book free, go figure. 
P.S.S. I'm a professional writer daring readers not to get hooked on my books.


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## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

DRMarvello said:


> Price has nothing to do with value: it is strictly a marketing decision. Going free is just another price choice.
> 
> No, that's really about having a healthy ego. Good for you that you believe in your books. But it has nothing to do with price or the value of your books in the marketplace.
> 
> The market will pay for what it wants, and it will ignore what it doesn't want. Price is a tool for negotiating the best revenue stream, across all of your products, from a willing marketplace.


I bet my books become major motion pictures.

Price does have a lot to do with value...


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Jason, you've been a member long enough that we do not allow name calling on these boards.  Your post and others that have quoted it have been removed.

Betsy
KB Moderator


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