# Are Freebies Killing the Novel?



## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Here we are, a year and a half after Amazon's Select program made free the magic bullet.

I used it to great success, but grew disenchanted about June of last year, when a thought occurred to me: With a sea of free content, the value of books was being reduced to nothing in many peoples' minds. Add to that the reduction in effectiveness of the algos over time, and I began to publicly question whether giving away 50K copies of a book warranted the grand you might make. Now it's nothing like a grand. If you're lucky enough to have 50K copies go out, you might see $300, which might break you even on your bookbub ad.

But we still have tens of thousands of authors eagerly giving their books away in the hopes that it "increases visibility" or "gets one read." This despite the fact that almost none of those fee downloads get read, as far as I can tell, and the vast, vast majority of those giving away their books for free aren't making enough to cover a decent bar tab over a few months. I'd estimate that less than 5% of free downloaded books get read, ever, if that. Based on my own habits. And I haven't downloaded a free book in many months. I've just got way too many books on my kindle, so there's no point.

So now we have an ocean of free books, which has resulted in free having little or no promotional value, with the notable exception of the first book of a series being perma-free - and even that is nothing like what it was two years ago.

The question is a philosophical one, and for some, a rather heated one: Is the slim benefit, if any, to be had from free nowadays, worth the destruction of the market we as indies rely upon (assuming you buy my theory that it's destroyed that speculative fringe that bought books to try new authors rather than looking for freebies - because there were no freebies a year and a half ago, or so few as to make it a non-issue)? By that I mean the buyer at the margins, who is willing to give an indie a try. It can't be argued that some percentage of that market has become a freeloader market - they won't buy a book by a new author, but they might look at it if free, assuming they can get through the 200 other free titles they've hoarded. So those former purchasers are now no longer a market. Sure, they might buy future paid titles if they like your free one, but there's no guarantee. 

In other words, we've sort of turned free into as much of a lottery as anything else, and we continue to add to the pile, compounding the problem. 

We can't stuff the toothpaste back in the tube, so this is more of a philosophical musing than anything. I have no solution, other than the one I've chosen - to not make any of my titles free anymore, except for the perma-frees. It's not a perfect solution, but it's the one that works for me.

And before we get into the long rants about how there's no other mechanism to get visibility, and how new authors lack a mechanism, blah blah, guess what? You mean exactly like it was a year and a half ago? How did all the authors who got visibility get it then? Most, with a lot of hard work, networking, regular production schedule, and delighted readers telling a friend. Even now, you look at authors who are making waves, like Elle and Holly and Colleen and Joe N, and they aren't doing it by using free. So the notion that it's the way to go is a false idol, in my opinion, which you may well disagree with.

My personal feeling is that free is like speed. In small doses, like the military does in times of war, giving pilots and soldiers the ability to stay alert longer, it's probably not terrible, but if you do it too much, pretty soon you're dependent and don't notice that your life has gone to crap. But we as a community have turned our readers into speed freaks, and ourselves into addicts. 

We've all seen the decline in overall sales over the last year and a half. There's no question in my mind that's due to free, as well as issues like the market maturing, etc. But mostly because a large segment we as indies relied on for sales, the casual reader who was willing to pay $3 to take a chance on a read, is gone. And they're never coming back.

That's not a big deal for me, because I've been fortunate to find an audience for my work. But it's a calamity for the new author starting out.

Not sure there's a solution. Just something to think about.


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## Jonathan C. Gillespie (Aug 9, 2012)

It's a tough nut to crack, for sure. While I share the same concerns you do, I can think of several authors who had free fiction out there long before the Kindle even existed, and they did alright by it, such as Cory Doctorow--a guy who basically built his audience on the back of free fiction.

I can think of a number of other authors that have spurred-on a reader base through the use of free products. I don't say "Select", because Select alone (or even perma-free books) moves the discussion away from the fact that free can also consist of podcasts, posted fiction on websites, freebies handed out at conventions, or what have you.

Free, especially Select, kind of sucks now if you're looking for an instant boost in sales. It's no longer the instant dose of exposure, because too many people are in the water, and too many of the free books out there are terrible. I stand by my ongoing advice that folks move out of Select (at least), if they're still in it.

But if you have no marketing budget, or you're just starting out, or whatever...it's still worth it to have at least one line in the water. "Free" is still working for the Beacon Saga. I'm still getting sales, still seeing new fans, etc. But that's because the series is well-written (according to my readers), not because I hashtag it with #FREE on twitter.

Where you're doomed, I think, is if you treat Free like the end-all, be-all of your marketing plan. You are toast if you do that.


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## Majure (Aug 9, 2013)

I admit that most of my Kindle library is filled with free and 99 cent books. However, I've paid up to $7.99 for books in a really good series. My own book is 99 cents, and I'm doing a free, five-day promotion starting August 19. The freebie is a decent way for a newbie to get _some_ visibility. As you said, "We can't stuff the toothpaste back in the tube..." The market shifts and adjusts.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

I never believed in Select to begin with. Not for the stuff I'm writing. Maybe, at one time, it worked for books with potential mass appeal.

However, I have what I call a permafree "extended sampler" of my series. The first twelve chapters, 60,000 words. It's meant for those who hesitate to invest in a series and to give them the chance to see for themselves what it's all about (more *here*).

If they're not hooked after this first dose of speed, well, then they're not. At least they didn't spend any money. In that case it's better they spend it on books they _do_ like instead of on mine.


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## Sapphire (Apr 24, 2012)

I never understood the free model, but I followed the advice I read here. I went with Select for 90 days and used my 5 free days. It felt good to see my book being downloaded, even in more than one country. _Felt_ good, but didn't produce sales results. At the end of the 90 days, I decided to listen to the logic of my business head and publish across the various platforms. I was slow in releasing a paperback, a mistake I won't make again. I still haven't published the sequel, a MAJOR mistake.

I now have set a schedule for future books, and will adhere to it as closely as possible. I will price no lower than the $3.99 price I set from the beginning. I am planning to keep my series at that price, but future books may be higher. I have abandoned the idea of free, other than an occasional small give-away (such as one I did on a local radio station show).

I am fully aware I come from a position of no credibility. I have published only one book and my sales are far below average. I write this to express my agreement with the OP. I am a new author. Yet, I see no visibility benefit from giving away piles of books.


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

Mr. Blake,

I appreciate the time you and others take to write posts such as this - addressing that age old question about marketing/promotion.

As of this morning, I'm convinced that a number of writers simply don't care. I did an interview with Simon on Rockingselfpublishing a few days ago on the subject. I did it only to help other writers. The response was ho-hum at best.

This morning, I posted another thread about marketing and guest blogs, again... yawn fest.

I think "free" is an easy way out for many folks. It is an excuse to avoid the unpleasant task of promotion. Even your previous post was sidelined by discussions about my watch. I apologize for that.

I believe the resources are out there, the knowledge is being openly shared. Folks just seem to not be interested.

I'm thinking my time might be better served by changing from self-publishing to selfish-publishing, and leave each to his/her own. They're all smart people - they'll figure it out.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Ya know....

When I was new here exactly one year ago I raised these exact points. Except I was looking ahead at freebies as a bubble ready to burst because, to me, that seemed inevitable. I felt that the incredible growth of freebies was a) increasing reader expectations of getting their reads for free and b) devalue the overall offering of indie product.

However, I was shouted down for my sky-is-falling attitude until I felt the sting of the lash across my shoulders. (I'd expect this thread to get some shoutin' too  )  
Ever the conformist, I stopped griping about freebies since I clearly didn't know what I was talking about. 

And here we are 
Of course, I've taken advantage of freebie promos since then - I'd be crazy not to (and was called a hypocrite for that, iirc). But, like many of us are finding, those promotions are a lot less effective now than what they once were. 
If anything, I'd like to see an average increase of prices for full-length novels to 4-5 dollars. It's not unreasonable.


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## Jonathan C. Gillespie (Aug 9, 2012)

Joe_Nobody said:


> I'm thinking my time might be better served by changing from self-publishing to selfish-publishing, and leave each to his/her own. They're all smart people - they'll figure it out.


Please don't. I enjoy your post and the OP's as well, and all the others from folks that are really putting out the numbers. Your advice is invaluable. Even if I can't always reply, or make it over here to even read, what you are doing is valuable for the community.

Re: Your watch thread -- I took it to heart. I've been meaning to find more blogs where I can put out some content like this -- the issue is finding those appropriate to my subject matter.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

@ Mr. Blake, if it were not for your freebies I would not have found you.   Now on that note, if it wasn't for finding you here and liking what you had to say, you would still be in the middle of my TBR pile.   As it stands right now, I am at 18% in Jet.    
Now how big my TBR pile is, well who knows since hanging out here, I am finding good authors and the other books are just being shoved farther down the pile.   Though it is way more than 200.

I think for readers that have a very limited budget for books, the freebies are great because it lets them know that hey blakebooks is worth the money and "ican'tputasentencetogether" is not worth the time or money.  (First name real, second name obviously fiction).    
I also have a very short list of authors I will buy when I have the money.

@Jonathan I see Beacon is a fairly short book so I will know in a hurry if I want the rest of the series.

So my thinking is freebies are great when used correctly and not by someone that thinks oh this is free so I must have it now.    
Oh and anymore the blurb has to really catch my eye if the freebie is short.  (under about 100 pages)  

I also have a list of authors that I will no longer get even if they are free.


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## Jonathan C. Gillespie (Aug 9, 2012)

cinisajoy said:


> @Jonathan I see Beacon is a fairly short book so I will know in a hurry if I want the rest of the series.


OT/
Not to derail the thread, but thank you for your time.

It's a serial, my friend -- think of each installment as an episode in a TV show. The first one is much shorter than the others. I hope you like it!
/OT


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

smreine said:


> Huh, I have a couple of Russell Blake books on my Kindle that I downloaded for free. It can't be all that bad.


But did you READ them?


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

One other thing:  for some people I do not think free is speed.  I think it is crack a step above or below speed depending on how you look at it.   Must. have. free. book.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

I haven't pubbed yet. My first two novels in my first series will be out before Christmas, though, and I've been spending a couple years working on my business plan for my indie press and reading this forum and other sites and learning everything I can. I haven't understood the free model either, particularly the permafree model. Going with a few free days here and there, like with the Select program, makes plenty of sense in that you want to be able to occasionally run promotions or offers (esp if you don't go with Smashwords and use their coupons).

But making a book permafree doesn't make sense to me. I'm planning to build my series and then at some point (3-5 books in?) drop the price of the first book in the series to $2.99 (and a reasonable lower price for the paperback) to make it an attractive intro to the series. Given that readers can download samples of books, I just can't see the justification for giving away a full novel.

Heck, with epubbing, we can even drop the price of books temporarily on occasion to run a promotion or a deal. But free forever? That's not a choice I'd make for my business. Each writer/publisher needs to make their own choice, naturally.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Jonathan C. Gillespie said:


> OT/
> Not to derail the thread, but thank you for your time.
> 
> It's a serial, my friend -- think of each installment as an episode in a TV show. The first one is much shorter than the others. I hope you like it!
> /OT


Note if some strange smiley avatar shows up on your facebook, you know you are liked. 
This goes for all authors I find here. It is a compliment.


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## MGalloway (Jun 21, 2011)

blakebooks said:


> I'd estimate that less than 5% of free downloaded books get read, ever, if that. Based on my own habits. And I haven't downloaded a free book in many months. I've just got way too many books on my kindle, so there's no point.


But do you think some of those free books would get read if a particular author suddenly started to make it big?

Also, to some limited extent, the act of downloading a book takes some effort on the part of the reader. There must have been _something_ in the cover art/blurbs/free samples that caused you to download the books. I would think that would count towards an author's visibility...even if that impression is only transitory.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

JimJohnson said:


> Heck, with epubbing, we can even drop the price of books temporarily on occasion to run a promotion or a deal. But free forever? That's not a choice I'd make for my business. Each writer/publisher needs to make their own choice, naturally.


The perma-freebie IS working for some, especially the first title in a series, so I would not discount it (despite the fact that I just wish all freebies would just go away, but it is what it is. I don't like dentists, either).
Who knows, by Christmas the whole system will have shifted into a new paradigm.
(And I promised myself NEVER to use that word!)


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## AutumnKQ (Jul 27, 2013)

There is definitely a strong psychological element to pricing.

I did stuff for free to build my business before-- I don't want to do it again. What free gets you is people who like free. They undervalue your work because they didn't pay for it. They've assigned it a value of 0 in their mind, even if what you are producing is at a higher level than some of the things they've paid for. Heck, some people even undervalue stuff *after* they pay a lot for it (as in- not using / reading what they paid good money for). But if they've paid me, I don't mind. I charge a hefty sum now (in my other business) and I won't lower my fee, even if I could get many more customers. I'm not willing to do the work required for less than what I'm charging and if I lower the price, it lowers the perceived value of my brand. Plus, I want to write fiction and taking more clients for less money would make it so I have less time to write fiction.

The only way I can see free working is in the case of a serial, like what Hugh did. Wool 1 was a short story. He gave me just a taste and I wanted to know what happened. I'm not on board for giving away entire novels for free, even if they are the first in the series. Before I started researching self-pubbing, I'd see books for 99 cents on Kindle and I'd assume they weren't well edited. I know now it was an unfair assumption, but 99 cents is a price I pay at the dollar store for cheap, poorly made items from China.


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## Silly Writer (Jul 15, 2013)

Joe & Russell,
I have lurked, absorbed and listened. I published my first book at full price, no where near free or .99, and although I'm biting nails not being able to get the exposure free or .99 would get me to gain some visibility, I am patiently waiting it out while writing Book 2. Do I have reviews? Some. Do I have sales? Few. Do I have 'Likes,' ehh, less than 100. But I value both of you for your advice, and am trying to do my part in bringing up the price for quality work. I sincerely hope you will continue to guide us newbies with your valuable time... Some of us do listen and learn!


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2013)

Freebies aren't killing sales any more than libraries kill sales. The problem is simply that most people use the concept of freebie wrong. Freebies aren't an ends unto themselves. You have to use them smart. 

The WORST people to promote a freebie to are bargain hunters, because these are people who download everything but don't read half of it. And they aren't going to be promoting your book to their friends, because they and their friends are all too busy hunting the next freebie. You have to promote them to people who otherwise expect to actually pay and will be inclined to pay in the future. Originally, announcing a free promo on a book site meant you were reaching people who ordinarily paid for books. If you got them to download the first one free, they would buy the others. 

But then the market SPLIT. The promo sites began to heavily fixate on free to the point where actual content and genre no longer mattered. These sites don't advertise themselves as places to find quality fiction. They advertise themselves as places to find "deals". It's a fundamental difference in thought processes. If you are promoting your book to bargain hunters, the majority of these people aren't going to change their behavior. They are going to download your book and promptly forget about you until six or eight months down the road when they finally see your book on their kindle and try to remember when they bought it. 

I have a free product called Elemental Metals. It's an RPG product. For every ten free downloads of EM, I also have a sale of Elemental Gemstones, which is a more substantial product. These are complimentary but separate products. I don't publicize this freebie on free/bargain sites, however. I only promote it on gaming sites.  The people who download the freebie are people who intend to use it, not just hoard it on their desktop and forget about it. I'm targeting gamers, not value shoppers. Now I could potentially put it up on a bargain site and gets 10,000 downloads. But would I maintain that one in ten sales ratio? Doubtful, because the people on the bargain site may not even be gamers. All I would accomplish is giving away 10,000 copies.


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## Jay Allan (Aug 20, 2012)

I tend to think markets adjust themselves.  I really don't think free books pull many sales from paid books.  In the end, you will never have most of the quality books (let me finish before you bite my head off) in the freebie bins simply because the market imperative for those authors is to make money and charge for their work.  You may see A good book from an author, a first in a series or something.  But the notion that free can replace paid for readers doesn't hold water to me.  Be honest...no one wants to give all their books away.  There may be good books in there at a given time from authors trying to get noticed, but the average quality level of all free books is a different thing.

I do think it may become harder for that author who offers book one free to stand out as more and more free books become available.  Authors overusing free may finish he work of wrecking it as a tool, but I just don't see it having much effect on paid books.

Keep in mind that free exists on Amazon because they want it to, because they feel it drives sales.  If that changes, the toilet will flush and free will be gone on Amazon.  and it won't make a bit of difference that its free on Smashwords.


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

AutumnKQ said:


> They undervalue your work because they didn't pay for it. They've assigned it a value of 0 in their mind, even if what you are producing is at a higher level than some of the things they've paid for


Right; this is my thinking. Some readers perceive a value of 0 because the author gave their work a perceived value of 0.

I believe my work has value, and I will assign a price to that. If a freebie-only reader doesn't like that; I wish them well. They will have no problem finding other books to read.


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

Quiss said:


> The perma-freebie IS working for some, especially the first title in a series, so I would not discount it (despite the fact that I just wish all freebies would just go away, but it is what it is. I don't like dentists, either).
> Who knows, by Christmas the whole system will have shifted into a new paradigm.
> (And I promised myself NEVER to use that word!)


Perma-free, for the first book in a series is like a nice, long preview or sample, IMHO. In my mind, there is a difference between this method of marketing and individual books for free. The free trial or free 'sample' is a common tactic for many consumer products. Microsoft offers 30 day free trials on software, most retail items have a 30 day return policy...

Other than books, I struggle to find another example of a product that is free for the lifetime usage. Some software, yes, but those offers often embed other marketing programs within their systems, either to gather user metrics or install additional promotional packages. Even at that, most free software is a limited usage version. Maybe we should offer free books without an ending? If you want to know how things come out, you have to pay...


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

MGalloway said:


> But do you think some of those free books would get read if a particular author suddenly started to make it big?
> 
> Also, to some limited extent, the act of downloading a book takes some effort on the part of the reader. There must have been _something_ in the cover art/blurbs/free samples that caused you to download the books. I would think that would count towards an author's visibility...even if that impression is only transitory.


It took just as much effort to answer your post as it takes to download a book.
Ok so Beacon took three extra steps but usually visit website, see book that looks appealing, click link, click buy. Done.
Beacon was visit KBoards, click on book bazaar, click on writer's cafe, click on this thread, click on book in Jonathan's signature, click buy. 
Yea real hard to get a book.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Joe_Nobody said:


> Maybe we should offer free books without an ending? If you want to know how things come out, you have to pay...


That'll only work out all right for those who never read their reviews...


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

For the past two years, I've been following the perma-free/publish-a-ton-of-books philosophy, and I've seen fairly good sales.  Not like the big guns, but it keeps growing. 

Because for me, I consider a new book just as effective for selling my books as any other marketing technique, and I'd rather be spending my time writing stories than guest blogging or working on a facebook page.  And since I write erotica, there's a smaller window for that kind of thing. 

It may sound like I'm stating the obvious, but free is an effective tool if the books you make free are good enough to make readers buy more of your books.  I download a ton of free books, and I'd estimate about 1 in 30 actually intice me to buy more from the author.  A lot of them are just plain bad, and many of them are okay, but just not good enough for me to pull the trigger on buying more. 

One curious thing I've seen over the years is authors using free to acquire a fan base, and once they're successful they suddenly come to the realization that free is bad, and try to discourage others from using it.

I have noticed a change in the turnover of the free lists (specifically for erotica).  It used to be that the top 100 free was fairly static, with books eventually floating off to be replaced by new ones.  Now it seems to be in constant flux, with a few sticking around but a lot of the content being new each week.  Someone could spend all of their time reading free, and never run out of new material.  The only problem with that is unless they break down and buy something from an author they enjoy, they're going to be spending most of their reading time wading through bad books to find the pearls.


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## jonathanmoeller (Apr 19, 2011)

Free ebooks are a marketing tool, like any other - if it works, use it, and if it doesn't, set it aside. No point in using a screwdriver when you need a hammer and vice versa. 

In my opinion, free ebooks are not a threat. Even if free ebooks were banned while I was typing this post, there would still be billions of hours of free video on YouTube, thousands of free books in libraries, hundreds of free shows on Hulu, and thousands of hours of video on Netflix or Amazon Prime for under $10 a month. Those are the real competitors to paid ebooks, not free ebooks.


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## Jan Thompson (May 25, 2013)

blakebooks said:


> I used it to great success, but grew disenchanted about June of last year, when a thought occurred to me: With a sea of free content, the value of books was being reduced to nothing in many peoples' minds. Add to that the reduction in effectiveness of the algos over time, and I began to publicly question whether giving away 50K copies of a book warranted the grand you might make. Now it's nothing like a grand. If you're lucky enough to have 50K copies go out, you might see $300, which might break you even on your bookbub ad.


Do we see trad publishers give away 80K thrillers/suspense novels for free? I am sure they don't make any of their books permafree, do they?



JimJohnson said:


> Right; this is my thinking. Some readers perceive a value of 0 because the author gave their work a perceived value of 0.
> I believe my work has value, and I will assign a price to that.


This makes sense.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

So much ado about (charging) nothing. Granted, free as a method to increase visibility and/or sales has lost much of its effectiveness. I for one never considered it to be a useful tool to that end. It can be a useful way to allow free access to a whole lot of people who may never have heard of you, and might be unwilling to risk a few dollars on a sample alone. Does it work the same for everyone? Of course not. Nor does everyone experience the same results with any other form of promotion. However, to say that free books devalues all novels? That's a bit of a stretch don't you think? Especially since when going free via select, it will be for a very limited time. The value of any novel is determined by the customer. The author/publisher can set a price that they wish to be paid, but in the end, it is the customer who makes the value judgment.

I find nothing wrong with a new author (or an established author trying out a new genre) using limited free runs in order to establish a reputation and gain a few readers. What I do find disturbing is everyone's willingness to set the first book in a series *permanently  * free. That, if anything, is more likely to devalue that author's work. All it tells me is "Try it, it will grow on you." What, like a fungus?

I still say screw all the promotion and write more (good) books. That and patience gives you the best chance at success.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Two weeks ago, I had a Bookbub ad for No Good Deed while it was free. It did really well, reaching #3 on the free list and over 33,000 downloads. I had expected increased sales post free as that had always been my experience before, but this time, the bump was very moderate. I think I might have just now hit 100 sales/borrows since coming off free. I used to do that many the first day--usually more. 

It still worked in that my other books are now selling steadily and this month is the best of the summer, by far, but it's still much less than what it was before, even when I had many less freebies.


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## Mike Dennis (Apr 26, 2010)

Russell--
I have to agree with you 100%. And I might add, it's about time someone expressed this thought as eloquently as you have.

I pulled out of Select in June when I gave away 35,000 copies of the first novel in one of my series, then sold only 350 books in the subsequent two weeks. Before that, all 10 of my titles were in Select. Now only one remains, and that one will come out when the 90 days are up.

Having said that, I also have to say that my 18 months of enrollment in Select was the _only_ thing that ever produced any meaningful sales for me during my 2+ years of self-publishing. Since pulling out, my sales are circling the drain. I now sell far fewer books with 10 titles than I sold one year ago with 6 titles, disproving the mantra of "more books = more sales". I've busted my ass on promotion, conferences, networking, etc, etc, all to no avail. All these people who have sold 1,000,000 books keep saying they "just got lucky". I don't believe that for a minute, of course, because you can't sell a million books in a year or two without a massive amount of help, but I will admit I could sure use a teaspoon of that kind of luck they're talking about.

Nevertheless, I'm not returning to Select. I'll say it again, you're totally right about "free" being a tool of disappearing utility. I'll never go back there again and I would urge other writers to do the same.

Keep these great posts coming.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

I was also saying free was a bad thing, as early as June of last year, in my blog. There was some shouting, particularly from a contingent that believed that the overall market wouldn't be impacted, which mistakes my point. I never said the overall market for novels would be affected. I said that the segment at the margin, that used to be willing to pay $3 to check out an author they were intrigued about, has been impacted. Many of those will no longer shell out $3 to test the water - they correctly view it as unnecessary in a universe where there are thousands of books for free to check out.

So Random House's sales won't be impacted. But the indie who could maybe sell 50 books a month to the curious has been. Most indies have seen a precipitous drop in sales from two years ago, even if they're doing everything right. And these are authors with 4-8 books in their backlist. So it's not just because they don't have enough books. They also have large twitter and facebook followings. The spend lots of time marketing. And their sales aren't anything like what they were pre-Select free. That's just the way it is. The new reality.

I have several perma-free books. All the first books in a series. I won't be doing that with BLACK, my new detective series, because I want to see how it works as a paid title. I think perma-free on first books in a series is a good idea, even now, albeit not as good as it was two years ago. But it still seems to work. JET is still my best ranked series of novels since book 1 went perma-free. Now almost a year later, and it's still performing.

The question is not whether free impacts the broad market. It's not whether perma-free is good or bad - to my eye, it's good for the first book in a series. The question is whether a hundred thousand books being free, and new ones cycling in and out as folks use their Select promos, has killed a particular segment that indie authors counted on to get traction while they built their audience.


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

I've just started doing this 'free' thing with my work. I'm testing the waters with short fiction, since the process doesn't take nearly as long like longer novels. I really don't like making my stuff free, but even I, as a reader, would find it ridiculous to have to pay for a 6-page book, so it's all good.

I agree that the market has become saturated with free books. Just like the market was saturated with 99-cent books a few years ago. Who knows what the next big thing will be in the ebook world?


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Joe_Nobody said:


> I believe the resources are out there, the knowledge is being openly shared. Folks just seem to not be interested.
> 
> I'm thinking my time might be better served by changing from self-publishing to selfish-publishing, and leave each to his/her own. They're all smart people - they'll figure it out.


I wish you wouldn't.

I've listened to your podcast and it was time well spent. As is reading Blake's posts. Even the ones reeking of tequila.

Anyway, you gave me a few good ideas, generally speaking, and I liked your take on pricing.

I have a few problems though. Most of the advice you and Blake give are for books with a potential mass appeal.

I write books in a pseudo-medieval setting - dark epic fantasy with gay MC's - and it's hard to figure out how I'm going to weave a hot topic like soccer or yachting into that. I took note of finding blogs that relate to subjects that figure in my books. Having a semblance of a marketing plan before writing the book seems sound advice as well, though too late in my case since I'm still writing the same series.

I assure you that I take advice - yours, Blake's and that of a few others - very seriously. Trying to adapt it to my specific genre and readership is not that easy though.


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## Jan Thompson (May 25, 2013)

Mike Dennis said:


> All these people who have sold 1,000,000 books keep saying they "just got lucky". I don't believe that for a minute, of course, because you can't sell a million books in a year or two without a massive amount of help, but I will admit I could sure use a teaspoon of that kind of luck they're talking about.


There are other variables. E.g.
- Were those other books priced cheaper than yours?
- Were they in a very popular genre?

I write thrillers and it's not as popular as paranormal or romance.



RM Prioleau said:


> I've just started doing this 'free' thing with my work. I'm testing the waters with short fiction, since the process doesn't take nearly as long like longer novels. I really don't like making my stuff free, but even I, as a reader, would find it ridiculous to have to pay for a 6-page book, so it's all good.


Traditional publishers are also giving away short story prequels for free. I started a thread on this a couple of weeks ago on whether SP authors are going to try to offer short prequels before their next big novel release, and several authors had been thinking all along about that even before I posted the question.

Here was the thread: http://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=158363.0

I had found two real cases of trad authors doing this: Weeks before the big day, one author published a prequel that leads into the upcoming novel. The other puts the prequel on Amazon, and says something like, "see the ending in the upcoming novel." One author gives away the prequel free. The other sells it for $0.99.

So maybe it's something for SP authors to consider. Rather than give away a whole whopping 400-page novel for free, try giving away prequels and shorts and appetizers and dipping sauce and such... But sell the steak.


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## beccaprice (Oct 1, 2011)

Dragons and Dreams is in Select, and I did a free giveaway over July 4th weekend. Had a fair number of downloads, and absolutely not sales bump. I've got a perma-free short story (The Snarls) with a teaser for D&D at the end. The Snarls gets a fair number of downloads, but I've seen absolutely no carryover in sales of D&D. D&D is coming out of Select at the end of August, and will be going up on as many other sites as I can (still not sure whether via Smashwords or D2D). My second collection of fairy tales (hopefully out this autumn) won't even start out in Select.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Mary: You're seeing what I reported around April-June. That the algos had again changed, and that free was all but worthless. You sell a certain number of books each day, so you have to subtract that from your 100. When you do, I'm pretty sure you haven't made enough to warrant the ad, and if you did, it wasn't much more. For me, the borrows isn't a good deal, because my ASP is $4.50-$6, and borrows cannibalize my sales.

Mike: Select might be a good deal still if you don't use the free promos and are just in it for the borrows. And assuming your normal pricing nets you, after accounting for the blending of 35% out of territory sales and 70% sales, about the same as a borrow. But as I said above, my pricing is higher, so every borrow is one I lose money on. I've proved to myself more than adequately that borrows cannibalize sales, so the question for me is, if that's so, am I seeing about the same either way? If not, it's foolishness to be in the program at this point, in my not-so-humble opinion. Others might disagree. That's their prerogative. 

As a general note, Amazon is in a tough place. They created the free monster with Select, to drive a short-term goal (make Prime a success) and a competitive one (have many be exclusive, so if you wanted to read their work, you had to come to Amazon to do so). Now, they don't want to alienate that large audience of freeloaders, because they do buy stuff, so they can't just shut it down. But they've taken the back door route, namely making it difficult for the pubs that focus on free, and by making free basically worthless to authors using it for post-free sales bumps. And yet they still have different business groups within the company that have different imperatives. Prime still needs free books as a lure. So how to get anyone with a brain to keep putting their books in? Limit the present reward to only borrows, and make free promos essentially worthless. Hype how great the borrows are through friendly interests who will tout the party line. I think the only thing they didn't get right here is realizing how desperate many authors are for any sort of visibility, even if their sales on an annual basis aren't really improved by running free promos. So the deluge continues, with the desperate telling themselves that "maybe" someone will read and like their book. Or that they have nothing to lose, as they don't sell on other platforms, thus exclusivity doesn't affect them (which ignores that one never knows what platform one will break out on, or which title). Whatever. Everyone's got an opinion. I just thought I'd float the question as food for thought.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

JanThompson said:


> There are other variables. E.g.
> - Were those other books priced cheaper than yours?
> - Were they in a very popular genre?
> 
> ...


I've been doing that for the last three months, but other than a spike when No Good Deed was free, it's been really hard giving away Mark Taylor: Genesis despite mostly good reviews. It's not super short, but at about 47k, it's half as long as the three other books in the series--but then people complain that it's too short.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2013)

blakebooks said:


> We've all seen the decline in overall sales over the last year and a half. There's no question in my mind that's due to free, as well as issues like the market maturing, etc. But mostly because a large segment we as indies relied on for sales, the casual reader who was willing to pay $3 to take a chance on a read, is gone. And they're never coming back.


Actually, no, I haven't. It seems to me that the overall book market is growing significantly, as well as my personal share in it.

Select was always just a cheap shortcut to game the system. Is it any wonder that the system broke? But "free" is not Select--it's been around much longer. Almost all of my favorite authors, I discovered through free, either by borrowing from friends or from checking out from the library. I've read a lot more free books (free to me, at least) than I've read books I paid for, and that's turned me into a person who spends a lot more on books than most other people. So to my way of thinking, free is neither a threat nor something to be avoided (Select, on the other hand ...).


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## Chris Northern (Jan 20, 2011)

Free was a phase. It will pass. Maybe already has. I still hold one piece free for now but anticipate that in a few short months the value of free will have faded over the horizon. It's all to do with volume. A large number of free titles puts the reader in the position of having to make a decision, and it might as well be "none of the above" in favour of choosing from a number of non-free titles. But we are talking, as usual, about a large number of specific individuals all making unique personal decisions. Who knows?


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Joe: Congrats on bucking the trend. One could argue that your growth might have been faster or better with more of that margin crowd buying instead of looking for free, but that's a hypothetical.

My key point keeps getting conflated. I'm NOT referring to perma-free first books in a series. I AM referring to the huge ocean of free books due to Amazon Select. They are two separate things, and yet many are using the terms interchangeably. I have taken great pains to qualify what I'm discussing here, and the viability of perma-free offerings that are first books in a series is not one of them.

As to sales, I'm talking about numerous authors with a number of titles in a bunch of different genres who sold steadily or grew at X rate before Select went into high gear, and whose sales have never been the same since. No disrespect, but if you were selling, say, 100 at that point (Dec, 2011) and you're now at 400, you're not who I'm talking about. Just as I, who sold 600 that December and now routinely sell 15-20K a month, is not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about authors who were selling, say, 1000 a month in December, 2011, who had been doing that reliably for one to two years, and who now are lucky to sell 300-400 a month, with 3-5 more titles out. They are the ones who were impacted. And as I allude to above, even if you're one of the lucky whose sales have grown, there's no way to know whether your growth might not have been considerably greater had the market not been impacted. Alternatively, you can posit that there was no impact of the margin audience, and this is all a tempest in a teapot. Again, my market hasn't been affected. So it's not self-interest here. I'm simply raising a question to debate and think about.

Now I'm off to write. Too much time on the forum today doesn't get books done.


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## Jan Thompson (May 25, 2013)

MaryMcDonald said:


> I've been doing that for the last three months, but other than a spike when No Good Deed was free, it's been really hard giving away Mark Taylor: Genesis despite mostly good reviews. It's not super short, but at about 47k, it's half as long as the three other books in the series--but then people complain that it's too short.


You mean people are complaining that the free prequel was not the full length novel itself?

Sometimes people just want free -- in their nature -- and refuse to pay for good products regardless.

The freebie short story prequel I saw was about 20-23 pages long.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

JanThompson said:


> You mean people are complaining that the free prequel was not the full length novel itself?
> 
> Sometimes people just want free -- in their nature -- and refuse to pay for good products regardless.
> 
> The freebie short story prequel I saw was about 20-23 pages long.


I think the complaint came when it was 99 cents before it was price-matched to free, but it's never been very expensive. I'm trying to get back to 99 cents now, and it should revert to paid any day now. I figure if I'm only giving away a handful a day, there's really not much point in continuing that effort.


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

Quiss said:


> But did you READ them?


I haven't done Select in a long time. I signed up when it first came around, went one cycle with it, did my free days, got the bump and moved on.

After releasing my 3rd book in the series I set the first book to perma-free. Thanks to the downloads of Book 1, Book 2&3 sell enough every month to make my car payment and insurance. Perma-free has its own set of issues (I think there is a lower ceiling (i.e. no blockbuster smash success) for perma-free books/series) but it keeps my sales pretty steady and the reviews continue to come in. When I hit 100 reviews on Book 1 I'll take it off free and see what happens.

With all that said, I'd rather have my book downloaded 10,000 times for free than purchased 5 times. But that's me.

A "good" free book isn't valued any less by the reader than a "good" paid book. It's not a commodity. My book being free does not drive down the market value of other books. And giving e-books away for free is very different from giving away services or inventory.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

I'm massively skeptical of the idea that only 5% of free books are read. I see that number again and again when people are complaining about free, but there's never any data behind it, just... cynicism.

But the larger problem here is that we're looking just at the ebook market here and complaining about falling prices and consumer entitlement there when in reality, this isn't an ebook problem, it's an internet 'problem'.

I can go on Amazon right now and get a movie streamed to me for no more than $3. That same movie would have been ~$15-20 on DVD. On Steam, I can grab a game for $20 that would be $60 in physical form.

The truth is, all digital content is lower priced and in the eyes of consumers, worth less. And that's not exactly an incorrect perception. When you have a hard copy, you own that thing; you will only lose it if something happens to you and you can even resell it if you want. With digital, the data itself is dependent on computers, which most people don't trust all that much and if the provider fails or otherwise gets a bug up their butt, it might become unavailable or, as Amazon has already shown, CAN BE REMOTELY DELETED.

Given the volatility and so much stupid app or device dependance, buying digital is a much larger risk for the consumer so they're less willing to pay as much.

As to the glut of free, Select's model was always really, really, dumb. You don't give whole things away for free in order to sell it to someone else down the road because when they hear that other people got it for free, they'll want it for free because freeness is awesome and paying for things sucks.

The point of giving whole content away for free, which is the same as the webcomic model I've mentioned before, is to sell other things. The free content is bait to lure folks in, get their butts in the seat, then offer them other things to buy, usually relating to their fandom of the free thing. A free book should lead readers to an adjacent series, world or genre and it should get them to your website _where you have swag_.

Yeah, swag seems to only apply to the nerd genres, but I guarantee you that other genre readers would enjoy having wallpapers, apps, bookmarks and other minor fandom items of a beloved series/author. Whatever you're going for, your free book should be trying to sell that, not itself.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Vaalingrade said:


> Yeah, swag seems to only apply to the nerd genres, but I guarantee you that other genre readers would enjoy having wallpapers, apps, bookmarks and other minor fandom items of a beloved series/author. Whatever you're going for, your free book should be trying to sell that, not itself.


OM frackin G! The nerds!
You've given me such a cool idea! I bought a bunch of artwork for my covers. I can easily come up with a very cool wallpaper with some of those images to give away on my web site.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

I was posting these thoughts over a year ago and heard the same things Quiss did. I get that there are some readers who only want free. That's fine. Those obviously aren't my readers. I want readers who respect the fact that, just like when they go to work, authors expect to be able to eat, too. I'm not writing books for fun. Yes, I enjoy it. Many people enjoy their job, but they expect to be paid. So, those readers who will only read me if I'm free - and then continue if my books are .99 or $2.99 - just won't read mine. Fine. There are plenty of books for them. There are also plenty of readers who respect the craft and understand that the price of a good book is still a bargain compared to a 2 hour movie. Those are my potential readers. It gets narrowed down by genre preference, etc of course.

I understand the value of a perma-free in a series for sure. That's a different animal. The first is being used to market the series. Fine. 

I am trying the same route Andrew Ashling has taken. I made a perma-free out of the first 21 Chapters (or 83,000 words) of my first book. It's clearly explained as such. This seems more fair to me than giving awaya 148,000 word book. That book is twice the size of most novels. So, my extended sample is still the length of most novels written as e-books.

As Andrew said, if they aren't hooked by that time, they aren't my readers.  They got to find out for free. If they are my readers, they will buy the first book and the rest of the series. Now the issue is finding those readers. It can't just be with the free extended sample. As we have said on here, those free downloads can sit for months.

Joe has proven there is a market for books that cost quite a bit more than most charge. He found a way to find readers. It wasn't shooting in a barrel with free books. It was hard work, finding blogs, etc (listen to his podcast if you haven't). I may never find enough readers to make this a true success, I don't know. But I sure won't make it by giving my work away either.

Time will tell if the extended sample works. In six or nine months, I may see it hasn't. Then I'll have to decide if I want to make that 1st book perma-free, try something else, quit, or


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Vaal: Good points on using free as a loss leader to sell other stuff. That's a valid use of free, IMO. As to the 5%, I readily admit that number's based on what I do with books on my kindle. The actual is likely far lower. I track conversion rates on my perma-free titles and the other books in the series, and truthfully, the number might be more like 2% actually get read by anyone interested in buying something. Would that it were higher.

Do you have a more reliable or better number? I'll gladly use that instead if you do. If not, I have to go with my personal habits and observations, as imperfect as those may be.

Trad publishers price their ebooks lower than the paper books. No question that folks value ebooks lower. Another good point. But not necessarily germane to whether a glut of free ebooks via Select has harmed the segment of the market that used to buy budget books to try an author out. I still sell plenty at $5-$6. Joe N sells plenty at $10 (I so wish I was Joe these days). There's elasticity in pricing, and perceived value issues, as well as genre-specific dynamics at play. None of which address the market segment I'm theorizing got gored by Select free, and will never be back. Thankfully that's no longer my target market, because I believe it's gone the way of passenger pigeons. But I do feel sorry for the indies who could make a decent living selling to that market, or could get their careers bootstrapped by that market, who no longer have the option.

I'm offline now for 8 hours. I gotta get this WIP moving, and as fascinating as this has been, the KB boards aren't doing it for me.


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## bhazelgrove (Jul 16, 2013)

Im with you Russell. I think the free thing has to be handled by the author. I have a one week giveaway coming up on my book and that is it. Somebody misses it it goes back to the seven dollar price. Oh well. Kid Rock said it best. You have to give your product value. And if someone wants to read my book then they can go get it free that week. But never again.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Phoenix: Interesting. Do you breakout what percentage of those sales were on the Select free books and what on the non? Did the Select free campaign ones significantly outperform the non? Were they in the same genre? In other words, what other factors other than free were at play?


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

blakebooks said:


> As to the 5%, I readily admit that number's based on what I do with books on my kindle. The actual is likely far lower. I track conversion rates on my perma-free titles and the other books in the series, and truthfully, the number might be more like 2% actually get read by anyone interested in buying something. Would that it were higher.
> 
> Do you have a more reliable or better number? I'll gladly use that instead if you do. If not, I have to go with my personal habits and observations, as imperfect as those may be.


I don't have more reliable numbers and it would be fairly difficult to gather them. The flaw, however, is in analysis. You have a lot of free books on your Kindle to the point that you don't DL more... but does that mean you plan to never, ever read them? I've had things in my cloud for years before I read them and I've watched things sit on peoples' Goodreads shelves for months before turning into ratings.

We're entering into a new world in terms of how people treat media too; where they collect of horde it, then burn off the backlog in big bursts. Until we can get a handle on how to even start measuring it, I don't think trying to say anything concrete about how many free books are read is valuable.

Besides which, if people really are just hording the books, it sort of goes against the idea that free is horning in on bargain hunters. To wit: either people are spending $3 to try out a new author and then reading the book to find out if they like them AND is doing the same with free, OR the free hoarders and the bargain hunters are two separate markets. The people who were reading the bargain books aren't going to stop reading and even with a big backlog, they will get to all of them eventually.

While I don't think free is helping most people, I really don't think its hurting. There are plenty of other industries that deal with free alternatives, even vastly superior free alternatives (I'm looking at you, software) and survived. At worst, we're in the middle of a shakeout as the ebook industry is still settling.

In fact, I'll go as far as to say that we would all be in a much better place if Amazon hadn't harpooned free like they did. That's what put us and the readers in flux; as far as I can tell, things were moving toward equilibrium up until the throttling started. People would use free to kickstart into sales, then go paid and everything was hakuna. Now, people are flailing desperately trying to make something stick because they don't have the money for the massive promotion free jump starts supplanted.


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## Jan Thompson (May 25, 2013)

Joe_Nobody said:


> Maybe we should offer free books without an ending? If you want to know how things come out, you have to pay...


That's already been done. The trad publisher was building up buzz for a new novel, so they gave away a prequel. The prequel has NO ending because it says: to find out what happens next... you click, go to Amazon and you get to preorder the main book. IIRC it was about $8 or something. Can't remember the title now because I read the prequel, wasn't interested, even though it was historical fiction which I do read if the story is good.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Well just from me personally, I can tell you that three authors will be selling more books because they put one or more than one free.  And that is just because one person liked their freebie.  She will also be reviewing the books and recommending them to friends.
Oh and FWIW all three were found here at KBWC.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

Two years ago a Free ebook was rare. Then came Select and the Deluge. Free will become a very marginal tactic. 

There are two types of buyers. The bargain hunters and those that pay to read. The bargain hunters are whimsy and look for "deals".

Those that pay to read...keep buying books. This is the smart core you want.


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## David J Normoyle (Jun 22, 2012)

Seems likely that if Select stops working (as many are reporting), then the Select freebie deluge will end by itself. People are going to stop spending time and money promoting free days if there is no post-Select bump.


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## scottmarlowe (Apr 22, 2010)

Someone said in another thread that Amazon had some new tricks up their Select sleeve (coming in a few months, maybe?). I wonder how, or if, this will affect the free effectiveness.


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## Alan Petersen (May 20, 2011)

I don't it's killing the novel, but it appears to be killing the once very effective free strategy.

I published my first book in February (2013) and even though I enrolled it in select, I decided not to go free. I had one sale promotion where I sold it for 99cents for a few days, but that's it.

The main factor for not going free is that I only have one book, so I didn't have anything else to sell, so why give away my only book. I'm now preparing to publish two more books by December, and I've been researching into the effectiveness of free *today*, not 2011-2012, and I doubt I'll go free. I might lower the price of one book, but I agree with Russell that there is a glut of free books. I want people to download my book for free because they want to read it, not because it's just another free book to add to their cluttered Kindle library.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

blakebooks said:


> Phoenix: Interesting. Do you breakout what percentage of those sales were on the Select free books and what on the non? Did the Select free campaign ones significantly outperform the non? Were they in the same genre? In other words, what other factors other than free were at play?


Hehe, you are so treading into competitive strategy territory, Russell... Plus, when I'm not rounding the numbers and adding in my head, the totals are actually a little more in the way of sales numbers and royalty amounts.

I put all books in Select to capitalize on potential borrows with the heightened visibility I hoped to get for them. Results are through July 31, but we're only now beginning to see substantive die-off in sales. 
_____________________

Christina Skye's new releases were 2 books in the same series, COME THE NIGHT and COME THE DAWN. We set NIGHT free on June 23, and it hit #3 with 50,000 downloads.

NIGHT results (the free one):
2889 sales
885 borrows
$4110

DAWN results:
4590 sales
203 borrows
$5030
_____________________

Lynette Vinet's new releases were 2 related books in the same collection, PIRATE'S BRIDE and SAVAGE DECEPTION. We set PIRATE free on June 22, and it hit #1 with 53,000 downloads.

PIRATE results (the free one):
3790 sales
955 borrows
$7270

DECEPTION results:
1954 sales
101 borrows
$1940

ETA: Guess I should mention these are all older backlist titles and historical romances, if that's not obvious.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Alan Petersen said:


> I don't it's killing the novel, but it appears to be killing the once very effective free strategy.
> 
> I published my first book in February (2013) and even though I enrolled it in select, I decided not to go free. I had one sale promotion where I sold it for 99cents for a few days, but that's it.
> 
> The main factor for not going free is that I only have one book, so I didn't have anything else to sell, so why give away my only book. I'm now preparing to publish two more books by December, and I've been researching into the effectiveness of free *today*, not 2011-2012, and I doubt I'll go free. I might lower the price of one book, but I agree with Russell that there is a glut of free books. I want people to download my book for free because they want to read it, not because it's just another free book to add to their cluttered Kindle library.


My Kindle Library is not cluttered. At the moment it is neatly categorized by author. My carousel is organized by who I am reading at the moment. My Kobo library is neatly arranged too.
My paperback books on the other hand well they are cluttered and scattered.


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## Amy Corwin (Jan 3, 2011)

I actually wanted to reply as a reader (instead of an author for whom the free days never did any good LOL). About once a month or so, I scan the book categories I'm interested in for free or books under $4.00. I don't download books that don't interest me just because they are cheap or free. I only download books I know I want to read based upon the blurbs.

I have found a lot of new authors that way and it means I can afford to buy more books than I used to be able to afford. Now, if a book is over $4.00, I really, really have to WANT to read that book and usually, I just decide I don't need to read it that much. 

So for those who think readers just download to collect and don't read the material, well, I think there are probably a significant number of readers like myself who look for free or inexpensive books because they allow me to read the types of books I like to read and let me afford it! It lets me read new stuff instead of falling back to my vast library of books I've already read. We're 20 miles away from the nearest library, so my Kindle has been a huge boon to me, as have the wide world of less expensive books. I used to get a lot of books from the used bookstore, but they closed....

Anyway, while as an author I agree that there may be a glut of free and it may work less well than it use to do, as a READER I'm glad authors are still using the technique as it lets me find new authors I like. 

What works for one author may not work for another.

In the end, I'm just glad that I can find new things to read without breaking my budget.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

jackz4000 said:


> There are two types of buyers. The bargain hunters and those that pay to read. The bargain hunters are whimsy and look for "deals".
> 
> Those that pay to read...keep buying books. This is the smart core you want.


You can't just file readers into 2 sections. Plenty of us are bargain hunters yet pay just fine for books. What is wrong with that? Everyone wants to save money, unless one is independently wealthy. But that doesn't mean I don't go and pay for books. I pay up to 7.99 for ebooks. But if I see something that I wanted and its now .99 cents, you bet I am going to grab that. 
And if I see something in the genres I read, by an author I like and its free? Of course I am going to grab that too. 
Or do I have to turn in my non whimsy card if I grab that one. Should I wait until its not free anymore? Then I am a "desired" customer? Forget that.

Most readers have a variety of ways they get books. Loans from friends, bookstores, libraries, used book sales, etc. If one is a voracious reader and has been all their live, it will almost always be a combination of things, not just one.

And yes, I have discovered authors by getting one of their books free. A book, not a prequel or a sample. A full book. Is that an expectation I have though? Of course not. But if its there, I'll get it. The value I place on a book isn't what I paid for it, or not. Its how I like the book when I read it. 
I got books for free that then went up to their regular price of 7.99-9.99 after the free period was over. I do not think these books are any less valuable than any other book I got and if I paid .99 cents for it or 9.99.

In the end I want to read what I want to read. And I know what I like.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Now Select itself is a freaking albatross.

It doesn't give you enough free days to matter on the free lists, it locks you out of all other avenues of digital publication, and borrows aren't as awesome as they could be, mostly because (IIRC), the user only gets *1* a month, so getting a particular person's borrow is a roulette wheel.

I will be dancing the dance of the... thing that dances a lot... when Sunday comes and Lighter Days is out of it, freeing my RB series from it forever.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

You are correct Atunah! Two is too little and too broad and I was in a hurry. I do the same as you and I am more of a reader than a writer.

I do think, but have no evidence that there are some who only go for the Free books. Free for the author, does not have the juice it had a year ago. Some may find it helps.

edit: ps: I have well over 200 Free ebooks and I'm very picky. I have read maybe 5 of them. That's just me.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Not on e-books but on other books:  I never or rarely buy new.
On cookbooks I have a $3 limit per book and that is only if I am looking to complete a set.  Other cookbooks $1 is my limit.   Craft books never over a $1.   Hardbacks and they better be in good shape $1.   Paperbacks 50 cents if I really want it, otherwise I wait till they are 10 or 15 for a dollar.


If you haven't learned by now cin is cheap.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

jackz4000 said:


> You are correct Atunah! Two is too little and too broad and I was in a hurry. I do the same as you and I am more of a reader than a writer.
> 
> I do think, but have no evidence that there are some who only go for the Free books. Free for the author, does not have the juice it had a year ago. Some may find it helps.


Oh sure, there will always be those that do nothing but get the free ones. They might have a variety of reasons to do so. But I think its a lot less than it used to be. There have been reports by kindle owners with very large archives, that it actually messes with their kindles. Like it can't properly process anymore. I am talking about those that have like 8000 books in their archives. 
Then also, when this all started, I got caught up a bit too in the free. It was new. But I have had my kindles since 2008, so I have learned that lesson. I actually am in the process of purging a lot of that stuff I got in the early years. The last 2 years or so, I only get those freebies that I would actually read. Meaning, they get vetted almost the same than a bought for book. I have to still like the genre, the cover, the blurb. If its a back list title, I have a record and reviews to look at.

I also used to get emails from the free sites. This was before there were so many each day. I stopped all that, no more emails other than bookbub. And I usually end up buying the bargains on there.

I think its also a fatigue of readers. Once you have your kindles for a while and see how large your archive gets, you just get more careful to what you get. It gets overwhelming.

Plus I know if a book is in the kindle owners library for loan, it will 99 out of 100 come up on a free day at one point. That is because most of you put it in select to use the free. So many readers know that by now. Not all of course, and probably not the majority.

You know who pretty much never uses the free days in the select thingy? Amazon's own imprints. And I have bought plenty of those.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Since we're talking about buying patterns, I gave a bit of thought to my own and realized that I probably look like a hoarder from other authors' side of things.

I collect free and 99-cent books in huge swathes, but don't touch them until I have a big chunk of free time. Then I reap through them until I find one I love. When I find that one, I abandon the free pile and hunt down other stuff from the author until I'm done or they screw up enough that I have to step back from their work and go back to the free pile/run out of free time.

I follow a First in, First out method of reading so I never 'orphan' a book, so a very, very long time can pass between DL and read and in fact I've come to some freebies that sent me to hunt down and author only to find that they apparently grew disenfranchised and packed it in.

Which brings me to sort of an irrelevant question: what exactly is the point of taking down a book due to low sales? Not even bad reviews, but low sales? I've found tons of books disappeared apparently due to a discourage author and I have to scratch my head because a trickle of cash is better than nothing at all.


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## pauldude000 (May 22, 2013)

Blake and Joe,

I wish to thank you for the time and effort you have invested in trying to help new authors. Initially, I made every mistake that can be made. Your advice and sharing of tests, thoughts, and results over time helped me figure out the system as best as I understand it now. 

Other authors can ignore your words if they like. As for me, I pay attention.

Thank you.


Other Authors,

If you are researching any topic, you always consider the source, am I correct? I always do. Consider this then; why should information or advice about book sales be any different?

Everyone has an opinion, that is a given. Some opinions are more informed than others, that is just the way things have always been. I advise that you check the source, just as you would when researching anything else. This is easy to do, simply by checking out the posters book(s) at amazon. If someone with a sales rank of 700,000 is telling someone with a sales rank of 2,000 that they are full of it, it is evident that the first is the one that has an uninformed opinion. Anyone can sound good on paper, but the proof of the pudding is in the pie.


Blake,

It is time I share my findings with you, and everyone else. They are relevant enough to get my novel, and a couple of my other books into the top 100 in genre in several categories, so maybe the information will be of some use to others. Please keep in mind that of my five books, one still has to get going and is currently climbing, and two I never expected to have great sales from, one due to controversial subject matter, and the other due to an extremely limited target audience. 

All of my books are on Select. However, from what I have found Select can indeed still work, but it is extremely dangerous if misused. Basically, when it was new it could launch a boulder high. Now the best it can do is rock the boulder, but even rocking a boulder can get it moving if done properly. 

Basically, I have found that the free days are exactly as you and Joe have been noting, from my own observations and marketing experiments. Using a blast of free books leads nowhere on sales. I logically broke this down, and determined to discover why. The reason that I have found is that we now have a generation of freebie hunters who only download free books, and a much smaller audience who find and download something free, then check out the authors other offerings. Free days help, but not much.

Amazon bias weights success as far as I have seen. A free day gives you a small bump. Five free days in a row give you the same small bump, excepting that you not only saturate the freebie hunter market, but also a part of your desired target audience which would be willing to buy a book. The technique I used, and am using, uses the free days sparingly in a rhythmic manner to get the boulder rocking, so that it will eventually roll by itself. Once it is rolling, you quit bumping until the boulder slows down and needs another bump. 

Basically, the boulder (book) cannot be moved by a single heave on a crowbar (5 free days in a row). It just sits there and laughs at the puny effort. However, rocking the boulder (one free day, to a maximum of two in any given week) gets the boulder moving (starts getting sales). Once the boulder is moving, you give it timed pulses to increase the speed of motion, like accelerating a merry-go-round. Then you QUIT pulsing altogether (no free days). If you don't you will actually kill sales from what I have seen. 

There is much more to marketing than this, as we all know, but this should help.

My two bits, for whatever help people can dig from the info.


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## Aducknamedjoe (Apr 25, 2013)

Blake, wholeheartedly agree with both of your points: Free with Select is barely/not worth it, but Permafree is likely still a good marketing tool.

That said, a point on Select for those just starting out: It may be worthwhile if you're not aiming for sales post freebie, but for reviews/newsletter signups.

I just did a 5 day Select giveaway of a short story/novelette and netted 400 downloads.  While I only got 3 sales post giveaway, I did get 1 review (5 stars!), and 3 additional promises to review on places like Reddit where I promoted it (which I will follow up on).  Additionally I got 4 signups for my email list on my website, which are hugely valuable to a new author just starting out building their list.

These numbers are peanuts to the big guys, but to a new author trying to jumpstart reviews/email lists, they're not nothing and may make limited usage of Select at the beginning of a book's shelf-life worth it to some.

As to permafree, I found 2 indy authors whose work I subsequently went on to pay for through permafree titles (Lindsay Buroker and Christopher Ruz).  I also downloaded Jet (and am actually reading it) so I may add that series to the ones I go on to pay money for after a permafree title.


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## Jonathan C. Gillespie (Aug 9, 2012)

Something missing in the analysis so far -- I don't think any of us have said it, though I could be wrong:

There are about ten batrillion more writers self-pubbing out there now than there were even a year and a half ago.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

I think I'm one of those readers that uses free books in the way you want them to be used.  It's a chance to try an author I've never heard of.  I don't vet free books any differently than paid books - the cover entices me, I read the blurb, if it sounds interesting, I get it.  I always have about a 6-month TBR pile on my Kindle, the book gets added to the pile, when it gets to the top, I read it.  By the time I read it, I don't remember whether I paid for it or got it free.  If I like it when I read it, I'll buy and immediately read one book after another by that author (especially in a series) - low and behold, you have a paying customer.

I don't think it is just the glut of free books available leading to lower sales, I think it is the injudicious use by many authors of putting books up for free.  In a free book thread I follow on anther forum, the readers are savvy enough to say "this is book #2 again, book #1, #3, and #4 have all been free in the past."  Okay, hmmm, this author puts every book they write up for free at some point, why buy them?  I put them on a price-drop list at another site and am notified when their books are free again. In the meantime, I am happily buying many books from other authors who introduced me to their writing with ONE book.

Don't shoot yourself in the foot by always having a different book available for free.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

crebel said:


> I think I'm one of those readers that uses free books in the way you want them to be used. It's a chance to try an author I've never heard of. I don't vet free books any differently than paid books - the cover entices me, I read the blurb, if it sounds interesting, I get it. I always have about a 6-month TBR pile on my Kindle, the book gets added to the pile, when it gets to the top, I read it. By the time I read it, I don't remember whether I paid for it or got it free. If I like it when I read it, I'll buy and immediately read one book after another by that author (especially in a series) - low and behold, you have a paying customer.
> 
> I don't think it is just the glut of free books available leading to lower sales, I think it is the injudicious use by many authors of putting books up for free. In a free book thread I follow on anther forum, the readers are savvy enough to say "this is book #2 again, book #1, #3, and #4 have all been free in the past." Okay, hmmm, this author puts every book they write up for free at some point, why buy them? I put them on a price-drop list at another site and am notified when their books are free again. In the meantime, I am happily buying many books from other authors who introduced me to their writing with ONE book.
> 
> Don't shoot yourself in the foot by always having a different book available for free.


I can think of 2 authors that have put every book free at one point in time or other. Neither are well known.
Now a third author has put many of his on for free at various times. Sometimes in groups of 2 or 3. But he is big and may need the tax break lol.


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## Deke (May 18, 2013)

I'm not sure that free is killing the novel, but the economics of indie-pub sure are.  Walk through a bookstore and you see all the one-off novels that trad-pubs are making.  Go on Amazon and see all the series that indie-writers are pubbing. Everyone's following the path of profits by writing series. It makes sense, but it's really changing the novel.  One-offs are going the way of the dinosaur.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

I'm just wondering how many readers have downloaded so many bad free books, that the market isn't there anymore like it was in the beginning. They've become more selective and that's why the numbers are down for most everyone in Select?


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## Jan Thompson (May 25, 2013)

pauldude000 said:


> Blake and Joe,
> 
> I wish to thank you for the time and effort you have invested in trying to help new authors. Initially, I made every mistake that can be made. Your advice and sharing of tests, thoughts, and results over time helped me figure out the system as best as I understand it now.


I agree with that. I'm not new to writing, but I'm new to self-publishing, and I'm learning about doing it right and avoiding pitfalls. So I also appreciate the advice, ideas, suggestions, and all the different opinions on the Writer's Cafe.

Thanks for keeping the board discussions civil.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

I don't know that I have an opinion on whether anybody here is right or wrong. But I would like to note something about my own buying habits:

Before ebooks came along, I bought books pretty much the same way I buy them now.

I had a budget. I bought a very few books in hardback the day they came out.  I did browse the paperback shelves for new books I didn't know about yet.

I went to the library, I traded/borrowed among friends, and also bought used books.  I was one of those people who would fill a bag for a dollar at the end of the sale too. 

I have books on the bookshelf behind me here that I bought in the late 1980s that I haven't read yet.  Every now and then I'll pick up a book off that shelf and read it.  Some of those books I paid full price for. Some I got for a dime.  A lot of them I got free, one way or the other.

The thing is, in the old days, writers and publishers never had any record of any of those books I acquired free or used.  That activity was invisible to them.

Now it's not invisible any more.  Now you can see when I download a freebie or buy a bargain priced book.  It may seem like my activity is new behavior and I'm foregoing full priced books for deals, but honestly, you just didn't notice before.  And when a book has a high price I can't afford at the moment, I go back off grid and look for it at the library or thrift shops.

In the meantime: A lot of the people I see at the library and the thrift shops have taken their time moving to ebooks.  They didn't have incentive to do it until there were more free and cheap ebooks.  But they are catching up.

So ...

I guess this is all a way of saying that all this data is incomplete -- when we see a large shift is it a change in consumer habits, or just that a different group of consumers are being measured now than were before?

Camille


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## burke_KB (Jan 28, 2013)

blakebooks said:


> Joe: Congrats on bucking the trend. One could argue that your growth might have been faster or better with more of that margin crowd buying instead of looking for free, but that's a hypothetical.
> 
> My key point keeps getting conflated. I'm NOT referring to perma-free first books in a series. I AM referring to the huge ocean of free books due to Amazon Select. They are two separate things, and yet many are using the terms interchangeably. I have taken great pains to qualify what I'm discussing here, and the viability of perma-free offerings that are first books in a series is not one of them.
> 
> ...


As a newbie, I really appreciate your posts, Blake. Please don't stop sharing 

I had a question though. Is it select taking off or could it be an unrelated growth in self publishing over all? As an observer, it seems like selling ebooks is harder because it's becoming more popular, more competition, and the select model might be more of a coincidence than a causation.

I'm curious if that might be more of the root cause between 2011 to 2013 sales drops. The market went from, what, 300,000 self published works a year to about 1.5 million? I know the numbers are harder to pin down because they used to be based on ISBN and now there are confused by ASIN numbers. I'm curious if people producing a book a month is more of the issue rather than pricing them at free. That and all the shorts. It's a shotgun business model rather than a sniper rifle.

It seems like a few big fish got lost when the pond became an ocean.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

I want to echo that thanks to Blake and Joe.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Martitalbott said:


> I'm just wondering how many readers have downloaded so many bad free books, that the market isn't there anymore like it was in the beginning. They've become more selective and that's why the numbers are down for most everyone in Select?


I do know one thing I have read or attempted to read more bad short stories than full length novels that were free. The other day I decided to read on my cheap tablet which has nothing but free short stories. I gave each book between 5-10% to catch my attention. 4 out of 5 were deleted unfinished. This is why I now always look at the number of pages. Now I do have to admit that if the short story is written by a KBWC regular, it will probably be good. Though if the author is just into themselves here then there is a good chance it will be bad.

What I appreciated this morning was an author told me his books were more like episodes than novels. I like those too and yes from what I have read so far, I will like him.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

I agree with Russell. Far too many writers don't understand how to use free -- or perma free, for that matter.

Something else that hasn't been mentioned is the way Amazon changed how Affiliate sales are counted on free stuff. Many people who used to list free books don't do it, or have cut back.

My problem with Select is that it, well, isn't. There's no filter, so any random piece of junk is mixed in with decent to excellent books. They are on the same footing as in regular KDP.

I wonder if Prime members are getting more selective (ha!) about what books they chose to download or borrow?


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

From Bowkers I read that in 2000 big pubs published 20,000 +/- fictional novels. In 2010 it had jumped to about 42,000 titles.

I don't know how many SP books are out there, but there must be a Million (1,000,000). There are thousands of Free books, yet good books seem to to continue to sell. Usually.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Sheila_Guthrie said:


> I agree with Russell. Far too many writers don't understand how to use free -- or perma free, for that matter.
> 
> Something else that hasn't been mentioned is the way Amazon changed how Affiliate sales are counted on free stuff. Many people who used to list free books don't do it, or have cut back.
> 
> ...


I can't speak for all affiliates but I know that ereaderiq went from posting 300-400 freebies a day to maybe 150. I don't know how much of a difference that makes.


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## Mandy (Dec 27, 2009)

When bought my first Kindle, I downloaded free books obsessively. Any- and everything. Eventually I realized this market of free books wasn't a passing fad, so my habit slowed to a dead crawl. With my recent purchase of a Paperwhite, my bargain hunting has picked back up, but I'm much more reserved when it comes to buying free books. I take the time to make sure it's something I want to read. But now I'm much more likely to spend up to $3.99 (and occasionally as high as $5.99) for an unknown author.

But I do love a good bargain. My husband and I have modest incomes, and we have three children, so we tend to spend our money carefully. I use eReaderIQ, and if that $9.99 book I wishlisted goes on sale for free or 99 cents, of course I'm gonna snap it up. It's not much different than waiting for an electronic or anything else to go on sale. Free ebooks allow me to try out a new author without risk. I've read free indies that were very well-crafted, and I've read $3.99 indies that were just beyond awful. I've read free books and liked them so much that I've gone on to buy the author's other works. The problem with self publishing is that _anyone_ can publish a book. As readers, we have no idea how much effort or editing was put into your book until we try it. All we can do is look for clues in the blurbs and reviews. That's why I tend to go straight to the poor reviews when browsing books. If there was a way to guarantee that a $5-10 indie ebook was at least well-written and edited, I'd probably be much more willing to take that risk.

This is one reason why I like to hang out in the Writer's Cafe even though I've never written a book and have no intentions of doing so. Hanging out here lets me put faces to some of these unknown authors. I see you authors interact with one another and the readers, and it gives me an idea of whether I may be interested in your book. I've spent far more money on indie books since I started hanging around here than I did previously.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Mandy said:


> But I do love a good bargain. My husband and I have modest incomes, and we have three children, so we tend to spend our money carefully. I use eReaderIQ, and if that $9.99 book I wishlisted goes on sale for free or 99 cents, of course I'm gonna snap it up. It's not much different than waiting for an electronic or anything else to go on sale. Free ebooks allow me to try out a new author without risk. I've read free indies that were very well-crafted, and I've read $3.99 indies that were just beyond awful. I've read free books and liked them so much that I've gone on to buy the author's other works. The problem with self publishing is that _anyone_ can publish a book. As readers, we have no idea how much effort or editing was put into your book until we try it. All we can do is look for clues in the blurbs and reviews. That's why I tend to go straight to the poor reviews when browsing books. If there was a way to guarantee that a $5-10 indie ebook was at least well-written and edited, I'd probably be much more willing to take that risk.
> 
> This is one reason why I like to hang out in the Writer's Cafe even though I've never written a book and have no intentions of doing so. Hanging out here lets me put faces to some of these unknown authors. I see you authors interact with one another and the readers, and it gives me an idea of whether I may be interested in your book. I've spent far more money on indie books since I started hanging around here than I did previously.


I sometimes look at the reviews and sometimes don't. And sometimes I wish there had a been a review.
Oh Mandy if you are looking for good authors, the first two posters blakebooks and Jonathan C Gillespie are both good.


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## 54706 (Dec 19, 2011)

My thoughts on free and my thoughts on KDP Select free are different, as are my thoughts about how they work in different genres...

I did KDP Select free for almost a year, in 2012.  Towards the end, I saw little results not only in overall download (DL) numbers but also in buy-through to the rest of the series.  And I know that *most* readers who read my book 1 go on to buy the other books in series, so I know a huge %age of the freeloaders weren't even reading it, based on sales of book 2.  I've had readers come to my FB and say they DLed by book months and months ago and finally got around to reading it when they found it again on their Kindle, buried under all the other free books.  So yeah, I see an issue with too many free books.  HOWEVER....

There is still nothing out there better than giving away a book 1 free (in a series) except hitting the Kindle Daily Deal, which 99% of us will not get.  Even BookBub is only a short-term hit, and they reject more ad requests than they'll ever accept.

KDP Select was awesome in 2011 and 2012.  The algos were strong for big DLed books and the readers weren't yet addicted to free.  It's how I built my base of readers who are still with me today.  AND, you can't forget the loan $ you get from that.  I think it only added up to a few thousand for me overall, but that's better than a sharp stick in the eye.  For people who had their books at .99, those loan rates were awesome.

But now, KDP Select stinks.  At least it did for me by the end of 2012, beginning 2013.  So I dropped out and did one book on perma-free.  This series had really started to die out on KDP Select, so I figured I had nothing to lose.  Going perma-free was awesome.  I get a couple thousand DLs a month on War of the Fae 1, and sales picked right back up again and have stayed steady for months, even through the summer. It's a 7-book series, and buy through is very high, so one free gets 6 books sold at $4.99 each. 

Why is perma free better than Select?  Probably because you can run promotions for the freebie frequently and your days of free don't run out.  And of course you can be free everywhere not just on Amazon.  You miss out on the loaner $, but for me that wasn't worth staying in for only 5 free days. 

Do I recommend perma-free?  Absolutely, but only so long as you have a series and you're only making book 1 free.  I don't think it helps doing it on stand-alone books. Most readers will just move on to their next free book rather than looking up your other stuff, unless your one free book was SO compelling, they were captivated and can't live without you anymore.  That's a small percentage of free DL readers, believe me. 

I've had hundreds of readers tell me that's how they found me, just before buying every book I've written.  They read the series they got hooked on, then go looking for other things I've done.  They've also told me they probably never would have tried my stuff to begin with, without getting a freebie first.  Many (not all, but many) readers are all about the free books these days; they rarely buy books unless they get hooked by a freebie or get a strong recommendation from a friend. 

^^^ That applies to my YA Fantasy, paranormal stuff ^^

The romance readers are different.  They spend a lot of $$ on books and they read like maniacs.  The advice you get for some genres doesn't necessarily translate to romance.  I learned that the hard way this spring/summer.  Luckily I'm flexible and I can make adjustments on the fly, so I was able to grab a wave and ride it. 

I don't know if KDP Select is working for romance.  I suspect it might be better than the other genres, because romance readers are hugely loyal to authors they like.  Amazon keeps asking me to go Select with my titles, but for now, I've declined.  I might change my mind about that when I write a series. 

I feel like this post was all over the place.  I hope it helps anyway.


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## pauldude000 (May 22, 2013)

JanThompson said:


> I agree with that. I'm not new to writing, but I'm new to self-publishing, and I'm learning about doing it right and avoiding pitfalls. So I also appreciate the advice, ideas, suggestions, and all the different opinions on the Writer's Cafe.
> 
> Thanks for keeping the board discussions civil.


Life is too short for all of that stuff, so civil, helpful, and friendly is the name of the game from now on. Stress breeds more stress.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

The only post here I have read is Blake's original OP.



> I used it to great success, but grew disenchanted about June of last year, when a thought occurred to me: With a sea of free content, the value of books was being reduced to nothing in many peoples' minds. Add to that the reduction in effectiveness of the algos over time, and I began to publicly question whether giving away 50K copies of a book warranted the grand you might make. Now it's nothing like a grand. If you're lucky enough to have 50K copies go out, you might see $300, which might break you even on your bookbub ad.


We don't have to reason this out. We can observe that independent book sales have continued to increase during the period when many were available for free.



> But we still have tens of thousands of authors eagerly giving their books away in the hopes that it "increases visibility" or "gets one read." This despite the fact that almost none of those fee downloads get read, as far as I can tell, and the vast, vast majority of those giving away their books for free aren't making enough to cover a decent bar tab over a few months. I'd estimate that less than 5% of free downloaded books get read, ever, if that. Based on my own habits. And I haven't downloaded a free book in many months. I've just got way too many books on my kindle, so there's no point


.

For discussion, lets accept the idea that only 5% of free books are read. In that case we can think of 95% as being ignored. Is 5% a problem?



> The question is a philosophical one, and for some, a rather heated one: Is the slim benefit, if any, to be had from free nowadays, worth the destruction of the market we as indies rely upon (assuming you buy my theory that it's destroyed that speculative fringe that bought books to try new authors rather than looking for freebies - because there were no freebies a year and a half ago, or so few as to make it a non-issue)? By that I mean the buyer at the margins, who is willing to give an indie a try. It can't be argued that some percentage of that market has become a freeloader market - they won't buy a book by a new author, but they might look at it if free, assuming they can get through the 200 other free titles they've hoarded. So those former purchasers are now no longer a market. Sure, they might buy future paid titles if they like your free one, but there's no guarantee.


The question may be philosophical, but even if that speculative fringe is being destroyed, its not a material effect. For the total market, I see the opposite. All the evidence I see shows it growing at a very healthy pace. These markets always have positive and negative pressures. We can identify many, and are ignorant if many. But we can say the increasing sales indicate the positive pressures are greater than the negatives.

The idea of a marginal negative effect of the speculative fringe buyer may be correct. But the market tells us all the negative effects, including that fringe, are being dominated by stronger positive pressures.



> In other words, we've sort of turned free into as much of a lottery as anything else, and we continue to add to the pile, compounding the problem


.

Lottery? Sure. Some win, some don't. But as mentioned above, I question if it is a problem.



> We can't stuff the toothpaste back in the tube, so this is more of a philosophical musing than anything. I have no solution, other than the one I've chosen - to not make any of my titles free anymore, except for the perma-frees. It's not a perfect solution, but it's the one that works for me.


Free books are a tactic in support of an author's strategy. The author is the best judge of what's in his best interest.



> And before we get into the long rants about how there's no other mechanism to get visibility, and how new authors lack a mechanism, blah blah, guess what? You mean exactly like it was a year and a half ago? How did all the authors who got visibility get it then? Most, with a lot of hard work, networking, regular production schedule, and delighted readers telling a friend. Even now, you look at authors who are making waves, like Elle and Holly and Colleen and Joe N, and they aren't doing it by using free. So the notion that it's the way to go is a false idol, in my opinion, which you may well disagree with


.

I don't know if it's the way to go. I make that decision for only one author. But I note those authors mentioned above seem to be prospering alongside all those free books.



> My personal feeling is that free is like speed. In small doses, like the military does in times of war, giving pilots and soldiers the ability to stay alert longer, it's probably not terrible, but if you do it too much, pretty soon you're dependent and don't notice that your life has gone to crap. But we as a community have turned our readers into speed freaks, and ourselves into addicts.


I doubt we know enough about the behavior of authors or consumers to support that conclusion. Again, the market is growing at a healthy pace.



> We've all seen the decline in overall sales over the last year and a half. There's no question in my mind that's due to free, as well as issues like the market maturing, etc. But mostly because a large segment we as indies relied on for sales, the casual reader who was willing to pay $3 to take a chance on a read, is gone. And they're never coming back


.

Not sure what decline you mean. Are you referring to average author sales, or total independent sales? I grant the data kind if sucks, but the comments we get from Amazon and B&N indicate independents are a growing segment of total sales. The independent market can be growing at a healthy pace while the average book sales fall.

If total independent sales are rising, while average is falling, then its reasonable to look at increased competition from other authors as the reason.



> Not sure there's a solution. Just something to think about


.

I think we have to look at the market and observe its behavior. I'm sure not smart enough to figure it out. I don't need to. I can simply get answers by looking at it. If my ideas are at odds with what I see the market do, I can either believe my own theories or my own lying eyes. The eyes have it.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Terrence,
Being a very cheap reader let me address a couple of your issues.
I will address your second concern:
_For discussion, lets accept the idea that only 5% of free books are read. In that case we can think of 95% as being ignored. Is 5% a problem?_Let's say for simple math that a person has 100 books downloaded free. Person starts at the top and goes from A-Z on either titles or authors. It could be that the person reads 5 bad books in a row and decides freebies are not worth it and so does not give the other 95 a try and in those 95 are some diamonds but they were hidden deep in the coal and overlooked. So yes that could and probably does hurt a good author.
For the record I try to read at least 2 to 3 chapters of every free book I have picked up. But that is me, I know another reader that just dumped about 600 she never even tried.

This second one 
_My personal feeling is that free is like speed. In small doses, like the military does in times of war, giving pilots and soldiers the ability to stay alert longer, it's probably not terrible, but if you do it too much, pretty soon you're dependent and don't notice that your life has gone to crap. But we as a community have turned our readers into speed freaks, and ourselves into addicts.
I doubt we know enough about the behavior of authors or consumers to support that conclusion. Again, the market is growing at a healthy pace._
Oh yes it is very easy to get addicted to free. And the buy with one click makes it even easier. Heck when I started getting free books it was nothing for me to get 40, 50, 75 in a day. And only about half of those or less were cookbooks. I and many other people first thing in the morning check for the freebies. 
SO yes I agree with the speed analogy.

_Next concern: We've all seen the decline in overall sales over the last year and a half. There's no question in my mind that's due to free, as well as issues like the market maturing, etc. But mostly because a large segment we as indies relied on for sales, the casual reader who was willing to pay $3 to take a chance on a read, is gone. And they're never coming back
.

Not sure what decline you mean. Are you referring to average author sales, or total independent sales? I grant the data kind if sucks, but the indications we get from Amazon and B&N indicate independents are a growing segment of total sales. The independent market can be growing at a healthy pace while the average book sales fall._

Here is what he is talking about. Most people don't think twice about paying 99 cents for a book but anymore they look real close as to whether to spend the $3 and take a chance.
Especially if these readers follow the free book trail.
I know on any day of the week I can get a mystery/thriller for free. Why would I spend the money to get a mystery/ thriller that might or might not be good.
Also I can get short stories for free all week long, why would I pay 2.99 or 3.99 for less than 50 pages if I had never read the author before.
Now yes the free might not be good but at least all I am out is time and not money.

For the record when I said cheap here is my book count as of noon today 5636. Of those books I might have $56.36 invested. Especially if I don't count Atlas Shrugged which was bought with a gift certificate anyway.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Here is what he is talking about. Most people don't think twice about paying 99 cents for a book but anymore they look real close as to whether to spend the $3 and take a chance.


How do we know that? Wouldnt that imply the continual increase in independent aggregate sales is due to much larger volume of 99 cent books? Is that reasonable? Do we have reason to believe the aggregate sales of $3 is falling?



> Especially if these readers follow the free book trail.


Do any of us know how many individual consumers download free books? And if Blake is correct, wouldnt we have to discount that effect by 95% of downloads?



> I know on any day of the week I can get a mystery/thriller for free. Why would I spend the money to get a mystery/ thriller that might or might not be good.


I dont know. Do you buy mystery /thrillers? If so, why? I think the evidence shows us many people do. I dont know why. I just observe they do. My understanding isnt necessary for anyone to buy a book.



> Also I can get short stories for free all week long, why would I pay 2.99 or 3.99 for less than 50 pages if I had never read the author before.


Again I dont know. I also dont know anything about how short stories sell.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Terrence I will gladly answer all your questions but right now I must go cook dinner. I really don't want to burn the pork chops.  I will be back later tonight.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> I know on any day of the week I can get a mystery/thriller for free. Why would I spend the money to get a mystery/ thriller that might or might not be good.


No reasons, but let me rephrase that:

_I know on any day of the week I can get a Fantasy for free. Why would I spend the money to get a a Fantasy book by George RR Martin?_

You might even prefer his books at $9.99 a pop instead of a free download. Why? Branding maybe? Because your friends read his books and were enthusiastic about them? Because he gives the reader exactly what he would expect of a Fantasy book? Hardly, because he doesn't. Could it be the quality of the reading experience?


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

From a reader's point of view I'm naturally suspicious of free books. I rarely download them and have only read a handful, of which only a couple were good. One of the reasons I don't download free books is that I have wide and eclectic tastes and as someone who only reads about twenty books a year I'm very, very selective. The free lists are a just a temptation to start reading books that I probably won't like and with a couple of exceptions that has proven the case. I have never yet liked a book enough to go on and read anything else by the same author. Not to say I never will, just I haven't yet. There are one or two I've banked for future reading, but none I've been absolutely compelled to go out and buy straight away.

When I pay for a book I obviously attach a value to it, and for that reason it gets prioritized. 90% of the books I've read this year were paid for. I do, however, download a lot of samples. I think this is perfectly enough for me to judge whether I want to read a book or not, and that I have to pay for the rest of the book is more appealing than being able to get it for free.

I agree wholeheartedly that Select freebies have created a monster. Most people on these boards attach value to their work, but readers often don't care about anything other than price, so if there are thousands of free books available then they're not going to pay for regular priced books.

I think something like 10 cent promos would be far better. At least the author would get something, and a value, if small, would be attached to their work.


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## Alan Petersen (May 20, 2011)

cinisajoy said:


> Terrence I will gladly answer all your questions but right now I must go cook dinner. I really don't want to burn the pork chops. I will be back later tonight.


Mmm, pork chop.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

ChrisWard said:


> I agree wholeheartedly that Select freebies have created a monster. Most people on these boards attach value to their work, but readers often don't care about anything other than price, so if there are thousands of free books available then they're not going to pay for regular priced books.
> 
> I think something like 10 cent promos would be far better. At least the author would get something, and a value, if small, would be attached to their work.


I kinda disagree. I think readers care a whole lot about many things other than price. The main one being "is this book going to entertain me/will I enjoy reading it?" I read 350-400 books a year and other than maybe 20-40 books from the library, I read no free books. I can't remember the last time I downloaded a free book for my Kindle. I found early on that I don't read books I get for free most of the time because I'm downloading them "just cause" instead of because I want to read them. So I stopped and now I just buy books that I know I want to read. Price, below a certain amount that varies by author/desire to read that book, doesn't even factor into my buying decisions. What I, and everyone else I know irl who are readers, care about is whether the books are good (ie we'll like them) or not. I pay for books all the time, because the books I want to read generally cost money (and usually are in the 5-10 dollar range, sometimes more. I rarely spend less than 5 bucks for a book).

Free does seem to still work for a first book in a series. But I wonder how much just having more books in the series helps, as well. We'll see in the future, I suppose.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Andrew Ashling said:


> No reasons, but let me rephrase that:
> 
> _I know on any day of the week I can get a Fantasy for free. Why would I spend the money to get a a Fantasy book by George RR Martin?_
> 
> You might even prefer his books at $9.99 a pop instead of a free download. Why? Branding maybe? Because your friends read his books and were enthusiastic about them? Because he gives the reader exactly what he would expect of a Fantasy book? Hardly, because he doesn't. Could it be the quality of the reading experience?


Let me rephrase this again. 
I know any day of the week I can get erotica free. So why would I pay for erotica by an unknown? 
And as far as that goes, for $30 I can buy smut from a well known author, but in my opinion that is too expensive for smut. I mean just because everyone I know (in person) likes 50 Shades does not mean I will.

But then I have always been outside the box and never ever ever went along with what was popular. Yes even in school.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

_Quote

Here is what he is talking about. Most people don't think twice about paying 99 cents for a book but anymore they look real close as to whether to spend the $3 and take a chance.

How do we know that? Wouldnt that imply the continual increase in independent aggregate sales is due to much larger volume of 99 cent books? Is that reasonable? Do we have reason to believe the aggregate sales of $3 is falling? _

No, it means if Jane Blow writes one book and no one has ever heard of her, she has a better chance of attracting attention at 99 cents and then once she gets known and writes other books, she can price them higher.
Quote

_Especially if these readers follow the free book trail.

Do any of us know how many individual consumers download free books? And if Blake is correct, wouldnt we have to discount that effect by 95% of downloads?_

I know just on one site dedicated to free kindle books, his following is over 7000 people. He usually does take the time and gives good hand picks. I am assuming that you mean 95% of the free downloads.
As far as authors making money on their other books from giving away free stuff, I would say Mr. Blake is reasonably close on his estimate. At best in Marketing and using free giveaways, you are doing wonderful if you get 10% of the people to buy more from you. This applies to food, books and everything else.
Quote

_I know on any day of the week I can get a mystery/thriller for free. Why would I spend the money to get a mystery/ thriller that might or might not be good.

I dont know. Do you buy mystery /thrillers? If so, why? I think the evidence shows us many people do. I dont know why. I just observe they do. My understanding isnt necessary for anyone to buy a book._

Yes FWIW I do read mystery/thrillers. The only things I don't read are Christian (fic or non-fic) and historical fiction. Why do I buy books well 2 reasons, reading books to read, cooking and craft books to use. And once in a while just because the title caught my eye.
I buy mystery/thrillers and other genres because I like them and like to read.

Quote

_Also I can get short stories for free all week long, why would I pay 2.99 or 3.99 for less than 50 pages if I had never read the author before.

Again I dont know. I also dont know anything about how short stories sell._
I am guessing like any other genre.

Now that we have covered me, what do you like to read and what do you like to pay?

Oh and I didn't even buy a JA Konrath and a Jack Kilborn until I had gotten one of each free.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> No, it means if Jane Blow writes one book and no one has ever heard of her, she has a better chance of attracting attention at 99 cents and then once she gets known and writes other books, she can price them higher.
> Quote


I dont know if that is true. I dont think we know enough about the demand curve at those levels to say.



> I know just on one site dedicated to free kindle books, his following is over 7000 people. He usually does take the time and gives good hand picks. I am assuming that you mean 95% of the free downloads.


OK. i still dont know how many consumers download free books.



> As far as authors making money on their other books from giving away free stuff, I would say Mr. Blake is reasonably close on his estimate. At best in Marketing and using free giveaways, you are doing wonderful if you get 10% of the people to buy more from you. This applies to food, books and everything else.


Could be. But I fail to see how that is a problem for anyone.



> Yes FWIW I do read mystery/thrillers. The only things I don't read are Christian (fic or non-fic) and historical fiction. Why do I buy books well 2 reasons, reading books to read, cooking and craft books to use. And once in a while just because the title caught my eye.
> I buy mystery/thrillers and other genres because I like them and like to read.


Ok. Thats the answer to the question you asked.



> I am guessing like any other genre.


No. I know nothing about the short story market. I know something about other genres.


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

Doomed Muse said:


> I kinda disagree. I think readers care a whole lot about many things other than price. The main one being "is this book going to entertain me/will I enjoy reading it?" I read 350-400 books a year and other than maybe 20-40 books from the library, I read no free books. I can't remember the last time I downloaded a free book for my Kindle. I found early on that I don't read books I get for free most of the time because I'm downloading them "just cause" instead of because I want to read them. So I stopped and now I just buy books that I know I want to read. Price, below a certain amount that varies by author/desire to read that book, doesn't even factor into my buying decisions. What I, and everyone else I know irl who are readers, care about is whether the books are good (ie we'll like them) or not. I pay for books all the time, because the books I want to read generally cost money (and usually are in the 5-10 dollar range, sometimes more. I rarely spend less than 5 bucks for a book).
> 
> Free does seem to still work for a first book in a series. But I wonder how much just having more books in the series helps, as well. We'll see in the future, I suppose.


I agree but you look at it from an honourable point of view. I refuse to download movies or music because I believe the artists should be paid, even if the film studios/music companies get most of the money. A lot of people I know haven't paid for a movie/music/book in YEARS. They want their media at the lowest possible cost, preferably free. Books get passed around and people will wait six months to a year to read something if they know there's a copy going about. Just my experience, but it seems that a lot of casual fans will hold off paying until they can get the lowest possible price. I think in that sense, the cheaper the better works.

I'm pretty sure I'm contracting myself here, but its pretty hot today and my brain's feeling a bit fried ...


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I pay for movies/tv and music if they are easily available and not too expensive.  Again, convenience and "do I want this" are more important than pricing.

Doctor Who used to be the most pirated TV show around. Then the BBC got smarter and made the episodes available in the US same as the British air dates. Illegal downloads of Doctor Who dropped by over 2/3rds.

Guess what is the most pirated show now? Game of Thrones. Why? Because HBO severely restricts who can see it.  If they made HBO-go subscriptions not tied to cable providers (since a lot of us no longer use cable tv anymore but things like netflix and Amazon streading) and/or made the episodes available on Amazon instant streaming right after airing the way a lot of shows are, I bet piracy would drop significantly.  I'd happily pay 1.99 per episode of GoT if I could, even though I now (hypothetically, don't sue) get it for free. Because it would be more convenient.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

ChrisWard said:


> I agree but you look at it from an honourable point of view. I refuse to download movies or music because I believe the artists should be paid, even if the film studios/music companies get most of the money. A lot of people I know haven't paid for a movie/music/book in YEARS. They want their media at the lowest possible cost, preferably free. Books get passed around and people will wait six months to a year to read something if they know there's a copy going about. Just my experience, but it seems that a lot of casual fans will hold off paying until they can get the lowest possible price. I think in that sense, the cheaper the better works.
> 
> I'm pretty sure I'm contracting myself here, but its pretty hot today and my brain's feeling a bit fried ...


Question about the music.
Would you download it free if it was on special for free from Amazon? I do not mean illegally downloading.
Oh and on books, most of my books are second hand.


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

Permafree = excellent business practice

Using Select to go free 5.5% of the time = destroying indie markets

Do I have that correct?


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## Jan Thompson (May 25, 2013)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> Permafree = excellent business practice


I'm currently still working on my mss preparing them for SP, so could you explain this please? This seems to be an Amazon phenomenon to be permafree. How can it be an "excellent business practice" when it doesn't bring in any income for that book in question?

I read that some authors give away over 30,000 ebooks. Is it necessary? If I buy into what my favorite authors are writing, I'd willingly pay to get their ebooks. Then since I've got money invested in it, I'm more motivated to actually read the book I have bought.

I've read that authors use it as "bait" to entice readers to buy their OTHER books. But I still think that if readers value your books, they will pay for them because they know that you're sensible enough to price it right for them. And if you value your readers, you will make it affordable for them, but not necessarily free except on limited promotion periods.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> Permafree = excellent business practice
> 
> Using Select to go free 5.5% of the time = destroying indie markets


That's what I'm hearing, too and if you step back a bit that seems odd. 
Permafree = selling your other books in the series
Select occasional promo = doesn't work

The more I read this thread the confuseder I get. Rather than having a book permanently free, why then not offer it free for a day or two every month and promote the heck out of it?
(This is of course leaving aside the points about being available at other vendors, borrows, the headache of making sure your promo hits at all vendors at the same time, and other logistics)
I am considering a perma-free for my series but every time I'm convinced I'm doing the right thing, someone says something to make me doubt it.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I am reading a couple of authors here who's first book in the series is free.
One author will not be terribly expensive because it will only cost me $14 to get the rest of the books.  He was a promo.
The other one I am looking at about $25 per series and he has several series.  I think he is perma-free but not sure.
But if both these authors had not been temporarily free I would not have found them.


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

JanThompson said:


> I'm currently still working on my mss preparing them for SP, so could you explain this please? This seems to be an Amazon phenomenon to be permafree. How can it be an "excellent business practice" when it doesn't bring in any income for that book in question?
> 
> I read that some authors give away over 30,000 ebooks. Is it necessary? If I buy into what my favorite authors are writing, I'd willingly pay to get their ebooks. Then since I've got money invested in it, I'm more motivated to actually read the book I have bought.
> 
> I've read that authors use it as "bait" to entice readers to buy their OTHER books. But I still think that if readers value your books, they will pay for them because they know that you're sensible enough to price it right for them. And if you value your readers, you will make it affordable for them, but not necessarily free except on limited promotion periods.


I'm poking a hole in the logic here. Frankly, if you think Select books damage the market--by being free 5.56% of the time, maximum--then you have to admit that permafree titles, which are free 100% of the time, are significantly more harmful to our industry.

My personal belief is this.

Once you've written a novel, if your goal is to make money, it doesn't matter how much time you spend on it. It doesn't matter if it took ten days or ten years. All that time is a sunk cost. What price point will make you the most money? That's all that matters.

This varies by book. But if you've got a series of multiple books, it turns out (supposedly) that charging $0.00 for the first book will make you more money than charging $2.99 or $4.99, because so many more people are picking up that first book for free--and discovering you're great--that now they want to pay you $5 each for three more books. Whereas, if you never offered that free taste, you'd make a little more off book #1, but much less off books #2-infinity.

Indisputable, right? By reducing the risk of entry to zero, you'll grab much more followthrough, and profit, than if you charged for book one.

Yet somehow, using Select to make that first book free 1/18 as often as a permafree title destroys our entire market.

? ? ?

Framed in these terms, that's nonsense. If you think Select freebies are a problem, then your permafree title is many times worse. Thus the problem isn't people making their book free, it's that too many people are competing with YOUR free title.

Russell is very smart and extremely successful, but I find this argument absurd.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Quiss said:


> That's what I'm hearing, too and if you step back a bit that seems odd.
> Permafree = selling your other books in the series
> Select occasional promo = doesn't work
> 
> ...


Well the first big difference is the free lists. IF you're aiming for visibility, you want on these lists. And you will only be on them for the extent of time that your book is free. If you go free for two days, these lists might give you an extra bump, but thanks to the new algorithms, this bump flat out disappears the literally second you stop being free and you stop benefiting from it.

Being permafree means you stay on that list and keep benefiting from it.

Second, the 'people don't read free books' dealie probably has a lot to do with how free promo sites work. They encourage people to grab huge numbers of books off the list and then it might take them a LONG time to burn down to your book.

However, if you have your book free all the time, it's going to be found and picked up by people searching for it, for keywords, or just in genre. That means they're here to read your book specifically, so you'll have faster turn around from the free book to a purchase in the series. Again, being on those lists helps.

Third, you only get five promo days every *90* days. Supposing you do a big promo and get good word of mouth for that book. The problem is, a lot of people are going to be telling their friend who likes sci-fi about this great sci-fi book they got for free. Then that friend goes to get the book and is surprised to find that it is not free and now maybe they think they'll get it later, maybe at the top of the month, or on payday... and forget it. You just lost some momentum. If the book was free the whole time, word of mouth works harder for you in that respect and everyone who is even mildly interested in in your book will grab it because... well why the heck not?

Breaking it all down, I would say that Select is like No2 in your car. You can hit that button and supercharge everything, blowing past everyone... but only in a sprint and only a limited number of times.

Perma-free is like just plain having a good engine. You can keep constant acceleration, have better control and will always have it available when you need it.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

My issue with Select has nothing to with freebies, for what it's worth. My issue is the exclusivity. If I were in Select, I'd be cutting out 30-60% of the money I make every month.  Amazon isn't the King for every indie, though I realize it is easy to forget that sometimes.


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## Ty Johnston (Jun 19, 2009)

Doomed Muse said:


> My issue with Select has nothing to with freebies, for what it's worth. My issue is the exclusivity. If I were in Select, I'd be cutting out 30-60% of the money I make every month. Amazon isn't the King for every indie, though I realize it is easy to forget that sometimes.


Totally agree. The worst business move I've yet to make as an author-publisher was to place most of my titles in Select early last year. It killed my sales, and I'm still not completely recovered. I'm not suggesting Select is the great evil some seem to think, because it has worked wonders for some, but Select didn't work for me. Perma freebies _have _worked for me.

As for those perma freebies on my series, I'd estimate about 5 percent of those who pick up the initial freebie follow through with buys of the other e-books. 5 percent doesn't sound like much, but it adds up, especially if one is giving away hundreds or thousands of free e-books each month.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Ed: The percentage of folks who have a series and can make the first free is a fraction of the total number in select. So the net effect of those free books is tiny compared to the number of hopeful authors going free via Select and then wondering why all that visibility hasn't netted many, or any, sales. 

Maybe I'm completely wrong, in which case, I'm, well, completely wrong. I raise the question because it seems that the whole Select thing has advocates, but whose arguments fail for me. One of which is that the reason Select promos aren't as successful these days has nothing to do with algo changes, but rather more to do with more books in the market. A simple logical test would be to look at the dollars earmarked for Select each month, and note it hasn't changed at all since January, and the payouts have gone up per unit, not down, and yet the impact of post-free sales bumps has gone to near nothing for those in the top 5, and nothing at all for the other tens of thousands of hopefuls who go free every day. IF the market were really that much larger in terms of free, and that was the reason it didn't work anymore, wouldn't you expect the payout to drop as precipitously as the post-free sales bump has? And yet it hasn't. Unless one posits a market where the vast majority of titles aren't being borrowed even as they swell the market exponentially, in which case it's actually even more of an argument against Select due to zero positive impact of free on sales, and zero borrows. To me that's obvious. To many, not so much. All fine by me.

So much of all of this is based on fear and hope. I'm busy with a project, and I'd love to address the numerous comments and emails I've gotten, but I don't have enough hours in the day, for which I hope nobody's annoyed at. My gut says free on the massive level that Select has made the first stop for every budding author out there is a negative to the margin biz that used to buy books to see if they might like an author. That's neither good, nor bad. It simply is, if I'm right. Arguments in favor of free are super. If an author believes they should be using that mechanism, I say, super duper. My life won't change at all. I'll still sell what I sell, and bless everyone with their hopes and dreams. I'm raising the idea that maybe, though, free has cut off a valuable margin that's converted to freebie downloaders. There's no way to prove or disprove that. Time will rinse it all out in the end. Meanwhile, I'll continue to write, hopefully sell, and be pragmatic. I'm simply articulating what I've sensed through my observations of the market, and it's by no means definitive. But if nothing else, it's certainly sparked discussion and thought, which was my intent in the first place.

Peace all. Do as you believe benefits you, and hurt as few as you reasonably can.


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## Jan Thompson (May 25, 2013)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> I'm poking a hole in the logic here. Frankly, if you think Select books damage the market--by being free 5.56% of the time, maximum--then you have to admit that permafree titles, which are free 100% of the time, are significantly more harmful to our industry.


I'm looking behind me to see if you were talking to me because you quoted my post which I assumed meant you were responding to my innocent question, "Why permafree?" I was reading the thread, trying to make heads of tails out of permafree vs Select, trying to make some sense on how giving away free books can bring a net profit for a publisher.

So I have no thought on Select. I barely know what it is. Just can to clarify that I'm probably not the one you were referring to as "if you think Select books..." because that "you" is not me 

All I know is that when I get published, I will probably not participate in the Select program. I am on Amazon Prime, and I have not checked out a single book from them. There are just too many so I just back off and read the authors I am familiar with. I try not to step into something that I'm not sure about, and I'm not sure about Select. I need to see some statistics, number, over time, etc.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

jackz4000 said:


> Two years ago a Free ebook was rare. Then came Select and the Deluge. Free will become a very marginal tactic.
> 
> There are two types of buyers. The bargain hunters and those that pay to read. The bargain hunters are whimsy and look for "deals".
> 
> Those that pay to read...keep buying books. This is the smart core you want.


See, as a reader, I will do both. I check out the free books to see if there's anything that looks interesting. With so many to choose from now, I'm less likely to download just because it's free. If nothing free interests me, the I look for books I might like and see if it's available to borrow in KOLL. If not, and it really interests me, I'll buy anyway.


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## Jan Thompson (May 25, 2013)

cinisajoy said:


> I am reading a couple of authors here who's first book in the series is free.
> One author will not be terribly expensive because it will only cost me $14 to get the rest of the books. He was a promo.
> The other one I am looking at about $25 per series and he has several series. I think he is perma-free but not sure.
> But if both these authors had not been temporarily free I would not have found them.


The authors whose books I read will tweet or put on their Facebook page whenever their novels go on sale. They'll say something like "free for two days only." When I get that kind of emails, I rush to Amazon and immediately download that book (if I haven't already read it). So I have several of those.

I just checked my Kindle account and saw that I had books I bought in December 2012 that I haven't started reading yet! I bought a thriller ebook in time for a booksigning and that was over a month ago. Haven't cracked the first page yet. I have several freebie historical fiction sitting there waiting for me to read. I actually have Blake's King of Swords downloaded in July sometime (because it's free!) but I am not sure when I can get to it because right now the library wants the books I'm reading back and so I need to finish those hardcovers first. Blake, you're in competition with Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, Joseph Finder, and Vince Flynn. Hope they are good company to keep. Those hardcovers are all due back in the Library in a couple of weeks.

So all that to say even if I get freebie ebooks I may not get to read them. I cleared out my Kindly app the other day and I saw that a bunch of the free ebooks I had downloaded weren't any good reading (plotting issues for the most part). So I permanently deleted them. I only kept Blake's books and few others.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "One of which is that the reason Select promos aren't as successful these days has nothing to do with algo changes, but rather more to do with more books in the market."


Exactly. It might be time for Occam's Razor. If sales for individual independent books are down it's because of stiff competition from other independents books. Our books compete with each other in the market.

Authors do what they can to push their books in a market where total spending is increasing at a rate much lower than the rate of increase in independent books. Want to know where your sales have gone? Just run through the list of folks posting here. Aint this a great country? God Bless capitalism!


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

JanThompson said:


> I'm looking behind me to see if you were talking to me because you quoted my post which I assumed meant you were responding to my innocent question, "Why permafree?" I was reading the thread, trying to make heads of tails out of permafree vs Select, trying to make some sense on how giving away free books can bring a net profit for a publisher.
> 
> So I have no thought on Select. I barely know what it is. Just can to clarify that I'm probably not the one you were referring to as "if you think Select books..." because that "you" is not me
> 
> All I know is that when I get published, I will probably not participate in the Select program. I am on Amazon Prime, and I have not checked out a single book from them. There are just too many so I just back off and read the authors I am familiar with. I try not to step into something that I'm not sure about, and I'm not sure about Select. I need to see some statistics, number, over time, etc.


No, sorry, I was referring to Russell's argument that the market for lower-priced books has been damaged by Select, but permafree is totally cool. I don't see why one type of free book is a problem while the other type is kosher.

Russell, that would be my gripe with your point that most people are using Select inefficiently. Maybe so, but either free books hurt the market, or they don't. Maybe permafree hurts the market _less_, because at least you're encouraging readers to pay for later titles, but at least Select books cost money 94% of the time. It's hard for me to believe that's more harmful than books that cost money 0% of the time.

But to me, that's almost a tangent to the bigger point: that, as you've done a great job capturing and publicizing, Select is the most worthless it's ever been. It's still a great tool for a handful of people/books, but by and large, you're probably better off trying permafree (assuming you need to). Even so, I don't get why it gets a pass for being a smart decision but Select is messing up everything. What's smart for one author really doesn't have anything to do with what's good for the market.

I think Jay's point from much earlier is the most vital to this whole conversation. Ultimately, to make a living as an author, you have to charge something for your work. We're all incentivized to stick a price tag on our books. Most authors who stick with it--and, presumably, have the experience and drive to produce the best/most desirable work--are gonna ask money for it.

Either readers will value that (and their connection to a series) or not.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Anyone know how many books are free on any given day? How many are Select free? How many are perma free? What percent of Select free days are actually used? How many free downloads are there? Select free downloads? Perma free downloads?


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## Zoe York (May 12, 2013)

I've written a novella that I'm going to release free as an introduction to my series. I write contemporary romance. It's a giant pond, hard to get noticed in. I don't want to give my novel away for free, because that's counter to the point of, you know, making money. LOL I did a sale, and had a nice run, got on one of the Amazon top 100 lists, but dropped off when the price went back up. So that tactic to get more exposure didn't work (or didn't have a long tail might be more accurate). So now we're going to try this. Can't hurt, because I'm writing the novella for this purpose. If it doesn't translate to sales of the novel, then after a few months, I'll notch the novella up to .99 cents. But I'm going to leave it free through the release of books 2 & 3 in the series, because all of my observations over the last year have reinforced my belief that series take off after book 3 (or even later), and a free or cheap introduction to the series can really help give it a boost.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Ed: Permafree doesn't damage the market because it's a sliver of the size of the Select freebies, as a group, not as individual titles. So if it does damage it, which I don't believe it does (it hasn't damaged mine, that's for sure), it's a fraction of the damage that Select freebies have. 

Again, if the notion is that massive amounts of more books in that system is the reason Select is so inefficient now for a sales bump post-free, why have the dollars remained the same since Jan and the payout increased, with all those additional books in that system, presumably all getting at least a few borrows, thereby presumably grossly diluting the loan pool payout? 

Perhaps I've got this all wrong and free hasn't had a negative effect, and all is well. My sales certainly haven't suffered, although one could argue that they would be double if not for the free glut effect, but hey, that's all angels on heads of pins. I'm just throwing it out there for debate. It's certainly achieved that. So mission accomplished. I was hoping someone could provide a decent argument that it hasn't impacted that audience at the margin, but I haven't seen that. I think Amazon's own dual actions of reducing the effectiveness of free to near zero and severely curtailing what the pubs can feature as far as free tells us that Amazon doesn't much like the monster they created either. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting that, as well.

It's been a good discussion, but I'm now 2K behind where I should be, and today's the day I need to make it up, so I won't be online until the wee hours of tomorrow.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

I think it's hard to compare a couple of years ago to now--especially in self publishing.  I remember in early 2011 when there were almost no free books in the Amazon store (except for the public domain ones).  Then one day in April, Amazon decided to price match over 6000 books to free all at once.  A number of authors careers took off after that.  But that was a long time ago.  Select didn't exist then.  Still, in the early age of select, a lot of authors were able to rack up serious downloads with favorable algorithms and build just the audience they need.  Now, times are different.  It is harder to get noticed.  And I feel bad for indies just starting out now.  But you have to make the best of what's available.  And right now, the best tool available is to go permafree to give people a taste, get them to sign up for your mailing list, then sell them book 2.  

On a tangential note, one of the important things to note about a discussion on freebies is that it attracts a lot of freebie hunters that just like getting something for nothing.  Now some of these people go on to read the books and become fans.  A lot just binge download free books and never read the things.  This point is true for both permafree and KDP select free.  But also within that discussion is the point that some people that download free books are only interested in things that cost nothing, so you'd never be able to make money on them.  In that way, I'm not sure not freebies are killing the novel--unless you believe that the glut of free books is converting some paid readers into freeloaders.  

Then again, who knows?  Maybe some new competitive edge will hit the market sometime soon.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

blakebooks said:


> I was hoping someone could provide a decent argument that it hasn't impacted that audience at the margin, but I haven't seen that.


That margin is what pushes the freebies up and gives them visibility when they return to paid. That margin is not, and never has been, a revenue source in and of its own. At least that's my observation and how I use it. If you're expecting it to be more, then, yes, you'll be disappointed. If you use it for what it is and not what you think it should be, then you shouldn't be disappointed when it performs to expectation. In fact, the MORE that margin sticks to freebies, the better -- so long as the margin remains well-marginalized. Which I don't see any evidence that the size of the margin is increasing in any substantial way. If you think it is, what evidence do you have?


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

lacymarankevinmichael said:


> -unless you believe that the glut of free books is converting some paid readers into freeloaders.


I think this is the fear here.
It then comes down to reader perception. If they continue to find that the free books are not of great quality, this will take care of itself.
If the free books they find are, indeed, excellent then I would assume that they will continue to hunt for free books rather than pay for them.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Quiss said:


> I think this is the fear here.
> It then comes down to reader perception. If they continue to find that the free books are not of great quality, this will take care of itself.
> If the free books they find are, indeed, excellent then I would assume that they will continue to hunt for free books rather than pay for them.


By that token though, I'm not sure that those who have gone from paid to freeloaders were much of our audience anyway. When I uploaded my first book in July of 2010, Amazon had just separated the free and paid bestseller lists because the top 100 was routinely all free books and the publishers were angry that their paid books could barely crack the top 100.

Even back then in 2010, unless you were an insanely fast reader, there were plenty enough free books to download so that you'd never have to pay for another book again in your life if you wanted to.

I do also wonder about the impact of the Kindle Fire sometimes also. When Amazon and B&N were only doing e ink readers, the people buying them were big time readers. But with the tablet readers like the fire, a lot of people have joined the fold that like getting that free book a month from prime and casually downloading freebies. But that core group of readers that originally had e ink readers is still there (although some now have Kindle Fire's too), and I don't know that a great many of them have turned into freeloaders.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

Confession: I occasionally download free books, but I'm very selective and so they get read...if they suck, despite believable reviews, I just stop reading and delete it from my Kindle. 

Free just seems wrong to me, in part because as a journalist for 30 years I consider myself a professional writer. It would hurt to give something away that I worked on for years and so I resisted Select. I also despise the exclusivity of it. However, when my sales were slow to start despite really good reviews from bloggers, readers and even USAToday, I realized that free was working for many author friends. I wrote a 12-page prologue, Lust and Honor, included the first chapter to the novel it leads into, uploaded it in June 2012 with a professionally designed cover and my sales took off. That short has been among the top 20 short fiction freebies for a year and held the number one spot for a couple of months. It's had 150,000 downloads and it seems that 10 percent of those translate to sales. So free worked for me, but I will not give away full-length novels. I just can't. My work is worth something, even if just to me. 

I definitely agree that freebies have diluted the market...bargain hunters buy clothing and other consumables just because they're cheap. And that's just what they get...something cheap that may languish in their closets the same way free books go unread on Kindles. 

I wonder what would happen if Amazon eliminates Select and permafree. Would book buyers return or revolt?


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Pheonix: I'm not saying that the margin is increasing in size. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I have no way of knowing. My thesis is that a substantial portion of the margin, call it X, that used to pay $3 for a book of an author that looked interesting, has now become Y, the reader who won't spend $3 on that author who they're curious about, but rather will either wait for the book to go free, or go on to one of 50 in the genre they're curious about that is free today. Call that Y. My idea is that Y is a group that used to be X (as opposed to folks who didn't buy anything, preferring the library or used books or whatnot), and that whatever the reduction in X is, reduces the available buying pool for authors who made 100 sales a month (as an arbitrary number) at that $3 point  to readers who bought them out of curiosity. 

So I'm not saying that X is growing. I'm saying that it's shrinking. Now it could be shrinking just due to shifting buying habits as the market matures, or it could be that X is growing far slower than the number of books hitting the market, and so X's dollars are spread thinner across more books, or my theory could be correct, which is that X figures why spend the money when there are so many books for free? I'm not sure there's any way of definitively knowing which it is, or whether it's something else. But I'm not saying that X is growing or shrinking in absolute terms. That's unknowable from my standpoint.

If I'm any example, I've actually stopped downloading free books, and buy books I really want to read, because I have so little reading time, and I'd prefer a James Lee Burke to 10 freebies of indeterminate quality. I have never minded paying for a book. But for a while there, I'd get BB or POE and just download whatever looked interesting in my genre, if it was free, of which I've read maybe 2% so far over a year and a half. Again, I have no idea if I'm typical or atypical, but I suspect that my experience, wherein the novelty is gone on free content, isn't unique.

The point being that we tend to view things in price terms, but as a reader, I tend to look at it in quality terms, and not all reading experiences are equivalent. Some are well worth paying for. Others you couldn't pay me to read. My hope is that as the market matures, that becomes more commonplace, and quality ultimately rises. Guess we'll see.

Harriet: That's not a bad strategy. Believe me, it pains me to give away an 85K novel, but like you, it's worked for me, and my philosophy is that I'm in this as a book seller to sell books, not prove points. If giving away the first novel in a series is what it takes, that's just the way it is.

Quiss: Most didn't pay any attention to free until all the pubs popped up to capitalize on Select's rush of free content. I remember the shift over a few months, when it dawned on lots of readers that they could save that cup of coffee's worth of spare change they were shelling out for a book and get 50 for free.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

Russell:

Jeez, I just realized I'm a speed freak, crackhead, whatever! I checked out your books and which one did I just download--the freebie! I promise to read and leave a review for King of Swords. Although mine are romantic thrillers, I learned that I enjoy conjuring up evil as much as the romance so I'm predisposed to like your work.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Harriet: Oh, good. You might also grab JET while it's free. KOS is gritty, JET is more Bond meets Kill Bill - sheer escapist fun. But the writing quality is consistent across both books. My voice, for better or for worse.

Hope you enjoy KOS.


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## burke_KB (Jan 28, 2013)

blakebooks said:


> Ed: Permafree doesn't damage the market because it's a sliver of the size of the Select freebies, as a group, not as individual titles. So if it does damage it, which I don't believe it does (it hasn't damaged mine, that's for sure), it's a fraction of the damage that Select freebies have.
> 
> Again, if the notion is that massive amounts of more books in that system is the reason Select is so inefficient now for a sales bump post-free, why have the dollars remained the same since Jan and the payout increased, with all those additional books in that system, presumably all getting at least a few borrows, thereby presumably grossly diluting the loan pool payout?
> 
> ...


What are the actual numbers for select vs non-select and free vs paid? I've seen numbers for the explosion of self published titles, so there's an argument for supply outpacing demand, but I haven't seen any numbers for free books cannibalizing paid books, which I think is the argument you are making. I'm curious about this sliver of the pie you mentioned. Do you have a data source that I can look at? Or is this a gut feeling?

The payouts for the select program aren't that interesting to me. Amazon promotes a program that has market share and they are one of the best promoters out there, so their payout ratios are a result of their work, right? I'm more interested in books published overall. Amazon is slowly losing market share to other companies. They are not the only game in town like 2009. Saying Amazon is good at pushing free books is like saying Coca Cola is good at selling bottled water. We all know this, or am I missing something?

Here's an alternative scenario. Someone offers a free book and does a promotion. A couple years ago there might have been 10,000 books in their genre, but today there are 100,000 or 250,000. The free loaders read a little, are not impressed and look for something better. No sales of sequels. No reviews. No word of mouth. No impact on the system. Or they read a review and a two star review says authors x,y and z are all better at this kind of story. Again, no sales of sequels, no word of mouth, no impact on sales.

Here's another question for people releasing new books in 2013. Is the sales to reviews ratio the same as it was in 2009 or 2011? (I don't have any experience before 2013.) Do you sell 100 copies per review? Do you sell 250 copies per review. Review activity might be a metric to understand if supply is outpacing demand, but I could be wrong. If my theory is right, and there are just more books overall, than I would suspect that it requires more sales to generate reviews. I think people will have less patience for a bad book if they have more alternatives to try, so reviews might be more rare. Just a theory.

Big names are releasing their backlists at indie prices. Stephen King tested the waters with a few $5 books. As prices stabilize, and supply grows, the competition is fiercer. If supply is outpacing demand, price elasticity changes. Cheaper and free don't have the same impact.

I mean, Jim Carrey is self publishing. It isn't 2009 anymore


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Burke: It's gut feel. The data you ask for isn't available, to my knowledge.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Harriet Schultz said:


> I wonder what would happen if Amazon eliminates Select and permafree. Would book buyers return or revolt?


Most book buyers don't care about amazon select. they don't realize that amazon select has anything to do with pricing. they think it's all up to the authors.

if amazon suddenly decides to not allow anything "free", then readers may notice. some may start "buying" books, some will look at libraries or illegal sites, and some will shrug and go on with their lives.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Again, if the notion is that massive amounts of more books in that system is the reason Select is so inefficient now for a sales bump post-free, why have the dollars remained the same since Jan and the payout increased, with all those additional books in that system, presumably all getting at least a few borrows, thereby presumably grossly diluting the loan pool payout?


I dont see the connection between the number of borrows and damage to the market from Select free.

Are you saying dollar/borrow rate has increased? If so, then unit borrows have fallen, and there is no reason to presume all those new books are getting a few borrows per month. (Or are you referring to something else increasing since January?)

I


> was hoping someone could provide a decent argument that it hasn't impacted that audience at the margin, but I haven't seen that.


I doubt any economist would argue there has been no marginal effect. I sure wont tackle that. Thats a losing position. Of course it has a marginal effect. Just about everything has a marginal effect. Thats what the margin means. Id ask how strong it is. Can it be measured? What is the evidence? Does it have a material effect on sales? Is it stronger than a host of other marginal effects? Does it have both a positive and negative marginal effect? How do the positive an negative net out?

To date, most of the ideas I have seen for the net negative effect of free books are theory without evidence. Lots of anecdote and projection of personal behavior onto everyone else. There is nothing wrong with theory. There is nothing wrong with speculation or hypothesis. They give us good ideas of stuff to look for, and that stuff often turns out to be significant when we dig up the evidence.

But it is a mistake to conclude a material effect based on a hypothesis without evidence. Im sure not that smart.



> It's been a good discussion, but I'm now 2K behind where I should be, and today's the day I need to make it up, so I won't be online until the wee hours of tomorrow.


Thats what God made 2AM for.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Anyone know how many books are free on any given day? How many are Select free? How many are perma free? What percent of Select free days are actually used? How many free downloads are there? Select free downloads? Perma free downloads?


No idea on any of your questions but my question is are you counting the free books? (make that public domain) Not enough coffee.

Other question, I have had your book (which I got free) since Dec 26. Is it any good?
Seriously I moved you up in the queue.


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## burke_KB (Jan 28, 2013)

It's been a few years since I took economics, so I double checked the theory at wikipedia. Link below.

From the list at wikipedia, books don't qualify as big purchases, long lasting purchases, or necessities. They're not like houses or diapers. They're mostly impulse buys and entertainment. If they were like diapers, they would be inelastic. Since there is high availability of substitute goods, they have "great" elasticity. I bolded the section from the guy who invented the idea.

Basically, Amazon has published thousands of Tolkien and Twilight clones. The price range from $0 to $5 isn't as important as the fact that the number of clones keeps growing. With that many substitutes, price points have little impact on buying behavior.

Amanda Hocking hit it big with her Twilight stuff. At the time, 2009, twilight was selling for what, $12-$15 dollars from traditional publishers? It had a huge audience, and she offered similar fair for $1-3. Supply and demand worked for her. Now there are hundreds of thousands of Amanda Hocking clones, and they can't give their books away for free.

Are there any MBA types who can punch some holes in my reasoning? I have a science and art background. Accounting bored the crap out of me 

FROM WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand
Together with the concept of an economic "elasticity" coefficient, Alfred Marshall is credited with defining PED ("elasticity of demand") in his book Principles of Economics, published in 1890.[20] He described it thus: "And we may say generally:- the elasticity (or responsiveness) of demand in a market is great or small according as the amount demanded increases much or little for a given fall in price, and diminishes much or little for a given rise in price".[21] He reasons this since *"the only universal law as to a person's desire for a commodity is that it diminishes... but this diminution may be slow or rapid. If it is slow... a small fall in price will cause a comparatively large increase in his purchases. But if it is rapid, a small fall in price will cause only a very small increase in his purchases.* In the former case... the elasticity of his wants, we may say, is great. In the latter case... the elasticity of his demand is small."[22] Mathematically, the Marshallian PED was based on a point-price definition, using differential calculus to calculate elasticities.[23]
The overriding factor in determining PED is the willingness and ability of consumers after a price change to postpone immediate consumption decisions concerning the good and to search for substitutes ("wait and look").[24] A number of factors can thus affect the elasticity of demand for a good:[25]


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Terrence: What I mean is I keep hearing this theory advanced that the reason that the post-free bump is now down to effectively nothing is because there are so many more books in Select. But I look at the $1 million a month budgeted for borrows since January (a constant number since then), and if that theory was even close to correct, I'd expect to see the borrow fee paid per book to go down considerably, not up, as it has. Thus, I conclude that the number of borrows per month is going down, not up, and that the theory that there are multiples of what there were in Select is a specious one. It's really more of a tangent - the number of books in Select. At best there are about the same number as in January per the payout, maybe a few less, and yet the effect of a free promo via Select on post-sales is now negligible, whereas in January it was someone reasonable, albeit 10% of what it was the prior January.

Hope that's clearer.

As to whether it's a mistake to draw conclusions from theories that aren't empirically testable, sure, in a perfect world, that's true. But this is more of a shadows on the wall of Plato's cave world we're muddling through, so sometimes all we have are theories that fit our observations. I'm freely admitting there may be other explanations. Just because mine can't be conclusively proved doesn't mean it's wrong, although I also buy that non-disprovable theories are basically useless to predict accurately, and thus are more of philosophical interest than use.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> No idea on any of your questions but my question is are you counting the free books?


Counting free books? I dont know how to do it. How do I get a count? Thats the problem.



> Other question, I have had your book (which I got free) since Dec 26. Is it any good?
> Seriously I moved you up in the queue.


Is it any good? One day people will be talking about the independent blockbuster that rocketed out of the Select Swamp like the Phoenix.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Quiss said:


> I think this is the fear here.
> It then comes down to reader perception. If they continue to find that the free books are not of great quality, this will take care of itself.
> If the free books they find are, indeed, excellent then I would assume that they will continue to hunt for free books rather than pay for them.


Queen of cheap here. I have found free books that were great. Yes I will buy more of the author's work if it appeals to me. By that I mean ok this is something I would not normally read but if it is good, I will recommend the author to others that like that type of book. Though I never admit I got the book free.
I have also found freebies that were horrible. Those authors I will not buy again. I also found one author that was pretty good but she used the same exact hook (exact words) at the end of book 2 and book 3. Needless to say book 3 (if you can call it that it was super short) did not do what she said it would. It resolved nothing and was just a teaser so people would buy book 4. She is one I will not ever pick up again.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Counting free books? I dont know how to do it. How do I get a count? Thats the problem.
> 
> Is it any good? One day people will be talking about the independent blockbuster that rocketed out of the Select Swamp like the Phoenix.


My not yet caffienated brain typed free instead of public domain. This is what I get for trying to talk before brain is awake.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Terrence: What I mean is I keep hearing this theory advanced that the reason that the post-free bump is now down to effectively nothing is because there are so many more books in Select. But I look at the $1 million a month budgeted for borrows since January (a constant number since then), and if that theory was even close to correct, I'd expect to see the borrow fee paid per book to go down considerably, not up, as it has. Thus, I conclude that the number of borrows per month is going down, not up, and that the theory that there are multiples of what there were in Select is a specious one. It's really more of a tangent - the number of books in Select. At best there are about the same number as in January per the payout, maybe a few less, and yet the effect of a free promo via Select on post-sales is now negligible, whereas in January it was someone reasonable, albeit 10% of what it was the prior January.


Well, I cant defend that theory you hear. I have no reason to accept it.

Phoenix has presented some pretty good data and observations over time about how the post-free placement on popularity lists has changed. While we have to do a bit of inference, the observed data is consistent with the hypothesis.

But the number of borrows in Select? I doubt it is a function of the number of books in Select once the population is in the hundreds of thousands. I think that is exactly what the evidence shows. We hypothesize borrows will increase as Select population increases, but data shows that is not true. My hypothesis is borrows are a function of the number of people who like to borrow. One might also hypothesize that free books are attracting the small pool of consumers that once borrowed.

An economist would graph the data with the Y-axis representing total borrows, and the X-axis representing total Select books. The data seems to show a convex curve. (it rises, then starts to level off, like a bent fishing pole.)



> As to whether it's a mistake to draw conclusions from theories that aren't empirically testable, sure, in a perfect world, that's true. But this is more of a shadows on the wall of Plato's cave world we're muddling through, so sometimes all we have are theories that fit our observations. I'm freely admitting there may be other explanations. Just because mine can't be conclusively proved doesn't mean it's wrong, although I also buy that non-disprovable theories are basically useless to predict accurately, and thus are more of philosophical interest than use.


I dont say your hypothesis is wrong. I say it is not confirmed by the data, and we have a competing hypothesis that is better confirmed (Phoenix). I certainly accept that we have to act in a world of imperfect data. In that situation, I find it very important to acknowledge 1)the weakness of the data, and 2)the fact that I am making a best guess I can in choosing an action.

And I still can't get my apostrophe key to work.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> My not yet caffienated brain typed free instead of public domain. This is what I get for trying to talk before brain is awake.


Public domain books certainly fall under the free category when they are free. Gutenberg provides a free download. Amazon charges for them.

We probably also have to look at different market segments like new, last ten years, public domain, etc. I think what we are dealing with is the segment of new plus backlist.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Here's some anecdotal evidence that freebies are actually helping the novel if you have a series.  I've seen this a bunch of times before.  Reader picks up first book in a series free.  They love it and go buy every other book in the series.  So if you have a kick ass first book in your series and do a permafree Boobkbub ad or some other promo, it could do wonders for your paid sales.  This could even be true if you put the 1st book free in your 2 or 3 or 7 book series into select.    

But as Ed Robertson has pointed out before, readers are series dependent instead of author dependent.  So even for established authors, it's still best to put your first book free in each series.  As for standalone books, the benefit of putting them free is almost nil.  You'll get little to no bump from select and a lot of readers won't cross over from stand alone book to stand alone book even if they're written by the same author.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

I figure KOLL Payments are going up because the kitty is based on the number of Prime users, but since you only get the one free borrow a month, lots of people forget to use it OR choose not to use it on books that are going to be Select free in a week or so anyway. KOLL borrows are an entirely different animal than free and have a ton more restrictions on them.

Not many authors have you seen even mentioning that you can borrow their books from KOLL and not many websites compile and aggregate what books are in KOLL on a given day and mail them out. By and large, the ability to borrow from KOLL is invisible to most users.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Lacy: If you read the thread, you'll see I take great pains to differentiate between perma-free of the first book in a series, which I do and think is effective, and Select freebies.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Public domain books certainly fall under the free category when they are free. Gutenberg provides a free download. Amazon charges for them.
> 
> We probably also have to look at different market segments like new, last ten years, public domain, etc. I think what we are dealing with is the segment of new plus backlist.


HMMMMM. With the exception of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", and Shakespeare, I have found that Amazon does not usually charge for the public domain books.
I am still trying to figure out why Hunchback costs and Les Miserables does not. Same author.

I was wondering if you just meant indie authors or all freebies? And yes I will try to find the data for you because you have me curious.
I just went to amazon and clicked free kindle books and we are talking at least 56,621. Does this help with your data?


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

As for the number of free books on Amazon:

I see 382,500 titles in the KOLL right now. A lot of Select titles never go free, and a lot of others don't always use their 5 free days every period, but let's say they do. With 5 free days over every 90-day period, roughly 1/18 of the Select books will be free each day. 21,250, in other words.

Meanwhile, I've seen free ranks as low as #30,000, and that was twelve months ago. Mix in all the free books that are unranked, and those 12+ months of growth, and I'd say there are 40-50K free books at any given time, maybe more. That means the Select titles are at most about 50% of the total, and probably more like 25%. Permafree, then, would be 50-75% of the total.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> I just went to amazon and clicked free kindle books and we are talking at least 56,621. Does this help with your data?


Sure it does. And look how it ties in with Eds data just above.



> I am still trying to figure out why Hunchback costs and Les Miserables does not. Same author.


Public domain books can be posted to KDP by anyone who wants to. I can make an edition of _Hunchback_ and make it free or sell it for $10. I think Amazon has limited how many versions of the same PD book it will accept.


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## Kathy Clark Author (Dec 18, 2012)

Just when we get comfortable writing and publishing and growing our fan base blakebooks and a handful of others drop out of their fantasy world and bring up both an interesting and a mission critical issue, free books. So sidetrack me for a few hours.

_*As a way of background.*_ 

I am a traditionally published author who had 23 books published and sales in excess of 3 million over 15 years
I dropped out of writing books long enough to be sure my fan base all died off
Then I came back in 2012, uploaded the 21 back list titles I had my rights to starting in April, 2012
I released my first new title in October, 2012
I released a total of 5 new titles in 3 genres between 10/12 and 7/13

At first I had no free books offered then I tried a few and here's the results [All Amazon #s]:

The first 5 months averaged 570 books / month bought or borrowed through Amazon
The next 8 months, 6 of which had downloads, averaged 491 books / month bought / borrowed
Months where free books were not free averaged 526 sold / month bought / borrowed
Months where free books were offered for free averaged 516 sold month bought / borrowed
Average sales July - October was 597 books bought / borrowed
Average sales November - August, 2013 was 488 books bought / borrowed (an 18% drop)

Also, the comission dropped from and average of $2.30 to $1.39 per book bought or borrowed

Findings / Conclusions
The change in sales does not test out to be statistically significant but for me there was a major step down in sales starting in November in spite of the fact that 5 new books came into the marketplace for me.

_*Where to next*_

Without an exception every book made free saw a small bump the following few months of 5 to 20 books sold. Beyond that I have to believe that the 25,000+ free books really haven't helped much.

We authors will always be at the mercy of the policies established at Amazon so my thought is to look to Bezos and Amazon for what's next. Has the last 18 months yielded them what they were looking to accomplish? We all know Bezo's philosophy is customer centric and his view of Amazon is to make it more like a public utility and as such what they sell are all commodities. To his credit he is continually tweaking the business. He has been quoted as saying "If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness." And inventiveness drives the top and bottom lines Jeff has said on many occasions. When someone comes up with an idea for an experiment, Bezos commonly says, "We can measure that." This is revealing because it shows that one of his first thoughts is whether they can measure an experiment. When someone comes to you with an idea, the first question to ask yourself is "can we measure this?"

Even if you can measure it, and the results tell you not to do it, that doesn't always mean that you shouldn't. Bezos says, "Sometimes we measure things and see that in the short term they actually hurt sales, and we do it anyway." While they may hurt the short term, they can benefit in the long term. If it's good for customers, it's a good indicator that you should make that experimental practice permanent

I would say that if the last 18 months has eroded their revenue as it seems to have eroded ours they will tweak the Amazon engine yet again. I will be a step ahead. Other than priming the well on a new release or series addition, making books free is a long term unhealthy thing to do and the next two books I have already teed up will be my *last* on the free list for me.

I think an equally big issue is the quality of books published in the indie sector and the reaction by readers to this extreme diversity of quality. I struggle also with the price points as the commission percentages are so much larger on Amazon than in the traditional marketplace. The trouble is I can live well with all my books being $0.99 but new readers are be unable to separate that price from a new author's unknown content book priced at $0.99 and therefore my books tend to be overlooked.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> As for the number of free books on Amazon:
> 
> I see 382,500 titles in the KOLL right now. A lot of Select titles never go free, and a lot of others don't always use their 5 free days every period, but let's say they do. With 5 free days over every 90-day period, roughly 1/18 of the Select books will be free each day. 21,250, in other words.
> 
> Meanwhile, I've seen free ranks as low as #30,000, and that was twelve months ago. Mix in all the free books that are unranked, and those 12+ months of growth, and I'd say there are 40-50K free books at any given time, maybe more. That means the Select titles are at most about 50% of the total, and probably more like 25%. Permafree, then, would be 50-75% of the total.


You know it's funny. With all the complaining about how terrible Barnes and Noble's site is, when it comes to freebies, it's a lot easier to use than Amazon. So there are 382,500 titles in the KOLL right now. Do you have any idea how many permafree titles there are on Amazon (or a way to even find out)?

Because currently on B&N, there are 1,852,172 free books.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

Thanks, Russell for the tip about Jet. Got it. 

This is totally off topic, but it's making me nuts and since so many writers are participating, I thought someone might have an idea about what's going on.

Both of my books (a series) have sold the same number this month, yet the ranking of one is 25,000 higher (e.g. worse) than the other. This has gone on for two days. How can this be?


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

lacymarankevinmichael said:


> You know it's funny. With all the complaining about how terrible Barnes and Noble's site is, when it comes to freebies, it's a lot easier to use than Amazon. So there are 382,500 titles in the KOLL right now. Do you have any idea how many permafree titles there are on Amazon (or a way to even find out)?
> 
> Because currently on B&N, there are 1,852,172 free books.


Hahah, there are? Did someone at Nook upload the entire public domain? As Cin pointed out above, a search on Amazon at this exact moment yields 56,622 free titles. I'm not sure exactly how many of those are permafree--I just scanned through the first 400, and only 5 of them were in Select, but it could be the search is indexed in a way that Select titles are rarely shown at the top.

But even if all the Select titles currently free are in that search, that leaves you with a minimum of roughly 35,000 permafree titles. So, unless some permafrees are excluded from the search for some reason, the range is 35,000 - 55,000 permafreebies.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> Hahah, there are? Did someone at Nook upload the entire public domain? As Cin pointed out above, a search on Amazon at this exact moment yields 56,622 free titles. I'm not sure exactly how many of those are permafree--I just scanned through the first 400, and only 5 of them were in Select, but it could be the search is indexed in a way that Select titles are rarely shown at the top.
> 
> But even if all the Select titles currently free are in that search, that leaves you with a minimum of roughly 35,000 permafree titles. So, unless some permafrees are excluded from the search for some reason, the range is 35,000 - 55,000 permafreebies.


As a sidenote, I read a neat trick about how to navigate B&N for freebies. If you type in 0.00 to the search box, it pulls up all 1.8 million books. And for example if you put 0.00 Romance, it'll give you all the free romance.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

lacymarankevinmichael said:


> As a sidenote, I read a neat trick about how to navigate B&N for freebies. If you type in 0.00 to the search box, it pulls up all 1.8 million books. And for example if you put 0.00 Romance, it'll give you all the free romance.


Keep in mind that most of those 1.8 million are public domain. 
Yes amazon has PD books but they are usually not listed under free kindle books. Though they are free. You have to do a search for the author.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

I wonder if the difference in numbers for B&N and Amazon free is because of the [Adult] tag on Amazon hiding stuff?

Also, permafree won't show up in the KOLL because it wouldn't be in Select.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

lacymarankevinmichael said:


> Even back then in 2010, unless you were an insanely fast reader, there were plenty enough free books to download so that you'd never have to pay for another book again in your life if you wanted to.


Free books have always been available. ALWAYS. Every town has a library. There are websites devoted to book swaps. People share paper copies all the time. This argument always ignores the fact that when a reader finds an author that they love, they are usually more than willing to plunk down money for the entire back list.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Deanna Chase said:


> Free books have always been available. ALWAYS. Every town has a library. There are websites devoted to book swaps. People share paper copies all the time. This argument always ignores the fact that when a reader finds an author that they love, they are usually more than willing to plunk down money for the entire back list.


Exactly my point. I think the only two reasons for anyone to still consider using select is 1. people hoping to build up their mailing list by giving away gobs of copies and making new fans and/or 2. people with a book series putting the first book free and hoping people will love it enough to buy the rest of the series. 
But unfortunately, these are both more long term results. The visibility bump is mostly gone and borrows aren't exactly reliable. So depending on how long your Select book is and how long people's TBR piles are, you may not see (if at all) the true result of your KDP promo for months.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Deanna Chase said:


> Free books have always been available. ALWAYS. Every town has a library. There are websites devoted to book swaps. People share paper copies all the time. This argument always ignores the fact that when a reader finds an author that they love, they are usually more than willing to plunk down money for the entire back list.


Ok let's see to go to the library, I have to know their hours, put on clothes, drive to the library then wander around looking for the book I want. Book swaps most times you either have to drive to get the book or pay postage. They don't magically appear. And not every town has a library some have closed.
With Amazon I can get the newest authors just by clicking a couple of buttons.
Let's say I want to read a book on fish aliens. Amazon came up with 12 results just in kindle books. They would be stored all over the library but here I can just click on whichever one looks good. Amazon has made it much easier and more convenient. And free is really free.

PS I am not into fish aliens but it was the oddest thing I could think of.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Actually, a good chunk of libraries now use Overdrive or something to to allow the borrowing of ebooks from them too.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Crazy question to those that say you may not see results for months.
I am going to borrow Russell Blake for the moment.  Let's say I got Silver Justice  free on Sept. 4, 2012 and found it in my TBR pile on August 7, 2013.   When I buy the rest of Mr. Blake's books do you think he really minds that it sat on my shelf unread for nearly a year or will he be glad for the sales now.   
Now let's say I tell all my facebook friends how great Silver Justice was, well the book is no longer free, so any friends that want his book will now pay 4.57 for it.  I will not tell them I got it free.  So he will profit even more than if I had read it immediately.   Let's say I have 100 friends that like that kind of book (or even 10 and they each have 10 friends).  If I told them to get it when it is free Mr. Blake makes nothing off of it but if I tell them now, Mr Blake will make $500 less amazon costs.  Of course if those 100 friends tell 10 friends each then Mr. Blake has made 5K less costs easy.

You are griping that people are not reading your books as soon as you put them free.  So you want all the money up front with no later sales.   Is that what you are saying?  Because that is what it sounds like.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> Actually, a good chunk of libraries now use Overdrive or something to to allow the borrowing of ebooks from them too.


This is true but here is the catch to that. Would you drive 180 miles to get a library card just to borrow e-books?
You may be in a place where they do but there are many of us that aren't. And I don't know about you, but there is no way I would mail a copy of my driver's license to a library to get a card there. And several libraries that do loan e-books *Charge* for a library card if you are not a resident in that city? 
So not always feasible.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> You are griping that people are not reading your books as soon as you put them free. So you want all the money up front with no later sales. Is that what you are saying? Because that is what it sounds like.


That's not what I was saying at all. In the old days of select, you'd do your free run, hopefully get a massive freeload, then get better exposure on the pop list, and get a nice bump in sales. There was a sense of immediate gratification. Now if you do a free run, even if you get a download windfall, you hardly get the exposure bump and hardly get many sales. 
In both equations you appreciate anyone that reads and likes your book, then goes on to buy more of your books. A write will take whatever sales they can get, no matter when they can get them. But the immediate gratification is gone is all.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

cinisajoy said:


> Ok let's see to go to the library, I have to know their hours, put on clothes, drive to the library then wander around looking for the book I want. Book swaps most times you either have to drive to get the book or pay postage. They don't magically appear. And not every town has a library some have closed.
> With Amazon I can get the newest authors just by clicking a couple of buttons.
> Let's say I want to read a book on fish aliens. Amazon came up with 12 results just in kindle books. They would be stored all over the library but here I can just click on whichever one looks good. Amazon has made it much easier and more convenient. And free is really free.
> 
> PS I am not into fish aliens but it was the oddest thing I could think of.


Of course. And you can also get your favorite paid books, too with just a click of a button. I was pointing out that we have always had access to free books. The ones I cited are the ways we used to get free books back when you had to drive anywhere to get any book, free or paid. Access is just easier now. In my lifetime it has always been the case that I'd never have to buy another book to keep reading something new. But I did buy books, and I continue to buy books, because there are a ton I want to read that are not free.

I am also a huge audio junkie. My library has a huge selection of audio books I can download at home. I still buy at least four a month because those are the stories I want.

All I'm saying is that the argument that "there are so many free books now, no one is buying anything", is flawed. I know a ton of authors making a mint right now. Clearly people are buying books. If people wanted free, they could always get free. But it might not be the book they really want to read.


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

Anyway, post-free results aren't dismal these days because the market's glutted with free. It's because free runs no longer vault you up the pop lists like they used to (or at all, in some cases). So once a book reverts to paid, no one's seeing it anymore. No visibility, no sales.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

cinisajoy said:


> This is true but here is the catch to that. Would you drive 180 miles to get a library card just to borrow e-books?
> You may be in a place where they do but there are many of us that aren't. And I don't know about you, but there is no way I would mail a copy of my driver's license to a library to get a card there. And several libraries that do loan e-books *Charge* for a library card if you are not a resident in that city?
> So not always feasible.


My local library has access to Overdrive or something like it and the selection of books sucks. You won't find Indies there or even many well-known authors. And the download is only instantaneous if no one else has already borrowed that ebook, just like at the regular library.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Ed: True dat. I mixed up two topics here, really. 1) Are free books in general ruining the early adopter market of book buyers who would have been likely to purchase an indie book if the author looks interesting, and 2) Is Select a smart choice for the vast majority of authors given the current results we've been seeing? Your observation succinctly articulates the reason post-free sales are negligible now. 

It seems the first is unknowable as there are too many alternative explanations, some more plausible than others. The second is absolutely knowable, although there seem to be many who believe that the visibility afforded by a Select free run will yield non-sales related benefits, which are sufficient to justify an exclusive with Amazon for 90 days.

I think it's pretty clear where I stand in both regards.

A good discussion, though.


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## Sapphire (Apr 24, 2012)

I went shopping for school clothing every fall when my children were young. This was for necessities, not fashion wishes. I soon learned (was "trained" by the retail stores) to purchase the bare minimum in August because prices were slashed across the board by the first of October. I used the savings for dinners out, movies, savings fund, etc. I was the winner from the price slashing. The retail stores were the losers. Yes, they generated a lot of traffic through the doors with their big percent-off advertising, but, overall, the stores banked fewer dollars from selling school clothing. Incidentally, many of those store-fronts in the malls sit empty today.

A reader can read only so many books in a year no matter how prolific a reader he/she is. Readers have been "trained" to buy Select freebies, perma-freebies, $.99 specials, etc. Readers are the winners. Writers receive fewer royalty dollars. Yes, there's a lot of traffic, but how much is actually banked?

*I wonder what would happen if readers were "re-trained" to expect to pay a higher price for ebooks.* Somehow I doubt they would significantly reduce the number of books they read.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

cinisajoy said:


> You are griping that people are not reading your books as soon as you put them free. So you want all the money up front with no later sales. Is that what you are saying? Because that is what it sounds like.


I'm not griping so much as discussing how it skews data collection and perception from authors. People act like they expect free select days to instantly have an effect on their books--you hear tons of 'two weeks out of free and I haven't seen a bump.

It's more of a reality check than a gripe. Because of the algo changes, free is no longer a short game to rise up the lists, it's the long game of waiting for the free books to work their way up the piles and getting read.

The data collection comes in when we start talking about what books are being read and not factoring in the fact that not everyone _is_ going to read the books instantly.

So yes, if you get writer X's book for free, then don't buy their next book for months, they should be happy with the sale, but until that sale comes up, they have no way of knowing if you're reading it and might convince themselves that you're not. It's just a psychological thing that I feel contributes a great deal to perceptions of what free actually does.

By the same token, when I talk about perma free and the reduced chance of being deep in the to-read pile, it's more an issue of instant gratification for the author. You'll see those results sooner rather than later and get your little ounce of joy out of it.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Vaal: The fallacy there being the assumption that the Select freebie ever gets read, of course, and doesn't simply sit at the bottom of the towering stack of other, newer free content. Since that's not knowable, it's only that assumption that makes Select free a decent option for authors now from the free perspective. Given that it's every bit as non-falsifiable a theory as "the vast, vast majority of free books will never, ever get read" it merely indicates what I would call a wishful thinking bias, as opposed to a pragmatic one. So it's a pick your flavor of kool-aid discussion now, rather than anything we can measure either way. For every gushing testimonial that someone just got around to reading your book after half a year, we have folks like me who have more on their kindle than they could read in five years, and get sidetracked by newer books I want to read.

I use the same pragmatic approach with PR and advertising. If an ad doesn't pay for itself, it was a bad investment. Sure, the job of the ad seller is to convince me that there's so much more than just sales relating to the ad to consider, but that's a pitch. I recognize it as such. Many believe the pitch. I don't, having run national campaigns in another life and known many ad and PR guys. With PR, it's even less concrete and measurable, because you're trying to affect perception, rather than generate a sale.

All snake oil is sold the same way. There are no new ideas.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

> Or it is proof that the book is in a less popular genre, or too new, or too old, or has not been extensively promoted, or has a weak cover or blurb, or has a story that for any number of reasons unrelated to its validity does not have mass appeal. What it does not mean is that the author's opinion is uninformed or invalid. I could list any number of authors whose opinions I would value far above any Amazon top 100 author. Bestselling status is simply not the bellwether of quality for books or the authors' opinions thereof.


Genre makes a huge difference. Also, although most indies make the majority of their money on Amazon, a few are doing better other places for some reason. You can't always judge success simply by Amazon.

Edit: Or they may do very well under a pen name that you don't know about.

Every author's opinion has value of some sort.


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## Guest (Aug 10, 2013)

Having just used two hours writing time reading this thread and getting no work done I wanted to thank Blake for kicking off the discussion. Although it hasn't changed my plans for my series, I've learned a few things along the way. Thanks to everyone for sharing your data, information, and opinions. It's been an interesting read.


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

cinisajoy said:


> Ok let's see to go to the library, I have to know their hours, put on clothes, drive to the library then wander around looking for the book I want.


Actually, you don't have to do that wandering part. Maybe Colorado is ahead in the library game, but I have access to both Denver and Douglas County libraries here. If I want something from either, I go to the website, see if they have what I want, and put a hold on it. I get an email notification when the book is ready, waltz in, and pick up the book from the hold section.

And for ebooks available to borrow you don't have to do the rest either, and both my libraries have ebooks available, admittedly nothing like the selection in printed books.

As to free, I have some massive, unbusinesslike, emotional block over it. While I certainly can give copies away here and there, and have, the thought of pricing one of my books at "free" just doesn't wash. Maybe because I come from a family where my mother used to say regularly that even if you were giving away kittens no one wanted, you should charge $5 or so because otherwise the people wouldn't value the kitten. I do think people consider things they get for free worth exactly that. You can sell me on the first book in a series theory, but that's about all, and even though I accept the theory and think if I ever write more in what I intended to be my cozy series I should try it....

Also, I know we all have a tendency to think that the way we look at things is the way most people do. I've given up on that and accepted I march to a different drummer in most aspects of life, but even so there has to be a considerable segment of the reading population like me. Like others I was excited by cheap books for Kindle in the beginning, especially as I'm one of those who believes ebooks _should _be considerably less than printed books. However, I soon came to the point I no longer even look at free and $.99 books. Maybe it's not fair, but I tried too many that were terrible. I'm in a thread on one forum where every day one lady lists the freebies available in one genre along with their blurbs. I'd bet for 95% of those the blurbs have errors or are so badly written you can tell what you'd be getting without further investigation.

Instead of considering free, I'm looking at my own prices and thinking time for a raise.

P.S. As to the original premise of this thread, yes, I think the flood of free has been damaging to all of us. I also think there's nothing any of us can do about it but try to put out books readers find worth paying for.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

Vaalingrade said:


> Actually, a good chunk of libraries now use Overdrive or something to to allow the borrowing of ebooks from them too.


The first thing I did when I got my e-reader was to get a library card. First time ever, I have to admit. Well, nearly every book that I wanted to read had a wait list on it. And when I did get a book I couldn't finish it in the time allowed (I am not one of those book-a-day readers  )
I no longer get ebooks from the library system.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

cinisajoy said:


> Now let's say I tell all my facebook friends how great Silver Justice was, well the book is no longer free, so any friends that want his book will now pay 4.57 for it. I will not tell them I got it free. So he will profit even more than if I had read it immediately. Let's say I have 100 friends that like that kind of book (or even 10 and they each have 10 friends). If I told them to get it when it is free Mr. Blake makes nothing off of it but if I tell them now, Mr Blake will make $500 less amazon costs. Of course if those 100 friends tell 10 friends each then Mr. Blake has made 5K less costs easy.


I like this point quite a bit.
But how many people, unless they're very avid readers, actually rush to tell everyone about a book they just read? It would have to be a pretty extraordinary title, I think. Except for other writers, I don't think I've ever seen any of my Facebook or G+ people talk about a book.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

ellenoc said:


> As to free, I have some massive, unbusinesslike, emotional block over it. While I certainly can give copies away here and there, and have, the thought of pricing one of my books at "free" just doesn't wash. Maybe because I come from a family where my mother used to say regularly that even if you were giving away kittens no one wanted, you should charge $5 or so because otherwise the people wouldn't value the kitten. I do think people consider things they get for free worth exactly that. You can sell me on the first book in a series theory, but that's about all, and even though I accept the theory and think if I ever write more in what I intended to be my cozy series I should try it....


Your $5 kitten reminded me of a couch. They put it out by the street with a Free/Gratis sign on it. No takers. They put a $10 sign on it. Less than an hour later, the couch was stolen.

Now I do have a long TBR list, but my big problem with that is I come in here and find all these bright shiny authors. Oh that one looks nice, let's give him a try, oh there is a pretty one, this one is eloquent, oh that one is elegant. Must try them all.
I would probably get more reading done if I would stay out of here.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

Quiss said:


> But how many people, unless they're very avid readers, actually rush to tell everyone about a book they just read? It would have to be a pretty extraordinary title, I think. Except for other writers, I don't think I've ever seen any of my Facebook or G+ people talk about a book.


That's the longed for, but elusive, "buzz" that turns a book into a gotta read best seller. I haven't see it on FB and I think it originates with bloggers whose followers are devoted to a particular genre (FSOG clones come to mind).


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

Harriet Schultz said:


> That's the longed for, but elusive, "buzz" that turns a book into a gotta read best seller. I haven't see it on FB and I think it originates with bloggers whose followers are devoted to a particular genre (FSOG clones come to mind).


It was the making of my first romance, but I never got any sense it came from book bloggers. I think it came from chat on sites like Goodreads and other reader-centric forums.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

ellenoc said:


> It was the making of my first romance, but I never got any sense it came from book bloggers. I think it came from chat on sites like Goodreads and other reader-centric forums.


Yep, that is where I see it all the time. Goodreads, amazon genre forum, specifically romance. Most other genre forums on amazon have died a sad death. 
Many times, by the time I read about those books on the big blogs, they have already spread around those forums.

I can't figure out how to find anything on FB, or even use it, so I have no clue if stuff like that goes on there. Does FB have forums? That site is a total mystery to me. So much clutter and ads and I don't know where the posts are.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

blakebooks said:


> <snip>


Considering how we have no data and nothing but anecdotal evidence, there is no universal pragmatic choice in this game. A pragmatic choice is based on study and education and we have precisely zero science here.

Pragmatism is not the same as cynicism and the same line of thought that says 'well free books will never, ever be read except a tiny percentage' can easily be turned around saying that what books _are_ read and do result in later sales would never have been read without the free books.

The bottom line is that we don't know. Not only do we not know, but we have no way of finding out. Amazon probably has this data because pretty much all modern consumer electronics spy on everything you do with them, but they're not going to give it to us.

Yeah, Select's free is a fox trap and doesn't work, but we have no _actual_ evidence, only anecdotes that are directly contradicted by other anecdotal evidence, that it's doing harm to people who aren't caught in it in the market as a whole. I don't see the point of sounding the alarm because of shadows in the dark.


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## Rusty Bigfoot (Jul 6, 2011)

I have a 99 cent book that I offer for free when I can. In fact, it's free right now. It's brought me new readers who like it and then buy more. I find it a great marketing tool. Here's the link if anyone's interested:

http://www.amazon.com/Wilsons-Bigfoot-Campfire-Collection-ebook/dp/B005HYDL8M/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1376175624&sr=8-4&keywords=rusty+wilson+bigfoot

But...for stand-alone works, what's the point of free? If it doesn't lead readers to your other books, then you're just giving your work away for nothing. It reminds me of newbies who will let magazines and newspapers publish their works for free just to say they've been published.

One exception is a friend who published a kid's book by her deceased mom. She offers it free a lot because she wants kids to read it. It has a great message (being diferent is cool, let's all get along).


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Rusty Bigfoot said:


> I have a 99 cent book that I offer for free when I can. In fact, it's free right now. It's brought me new readers who like it and then buy more. I find it a great marketing tool. Here's the link if anyone's interested:
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Wilsons-Bigfoot-Campfire-Collection-ebook/dp/B005HYDL8M/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1376175624&sr=8-4&keywords=rusty+wilson+bigfoot
> 
> ...


I have read all but Crybaby in it. You are a good story teller.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

I think Free is more of a side-show event. The main event is that there are many more good books today as compared with just a few years ago. I don't think there are that many more readers. Authors seek a mechanism to reach the readers in a sea of books. Konrath preached, "Go forth and write books and multiply". And they did.

It's a cornucopia of books in genres large and small. Many of them are well written for the genre, have great covers, and blurbs. Look in any tiny or giant category and you will find them. Take a look at Erotica. The Free and 99's could last someone a decade of err...reading. 

For readers it's a Golden Age. Never before have so many good books been available and so cheap. Even big pubs lower their prices to compete. Kurt Vonnegut for $1.99 and many other DD's that are even better. Last week a big pub had Free Pre-Orders for a book. I think it lasted a day. Good books are abundant and cheap and there is always a "deal" or 1.99 or 99 or Free promo.

I hope there is a corresponding increase in new readers to buy and read all these books.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "This is easy to do, simply by checking out the posters book(s) at amazon. If someone with a sales rank of 700,000 is telling someone with a sales rank of 2,000 that they are full of it, it is evident that the first is the one that has an uninformed opinion. Anyone can sound good on paper, but the proof of the pudding is in the pie."


So Scott Turrow gives good legal advice because he sells lots of books? And my grasp of economics will increase if I sell more novels about Islamists and the Church?


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## Rusty Bigfoot (Jul 6, 2011)

cinisajoy said:


> I have read all but Crybaby in it. You are a good story teller.


Not to hijack the thread, but thanks a million for the compliment!


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Rusty Bigfoot (Jul 6, 2011)

I've always felt that the price of ebooks is way too low. The perception is more that since they're just 0's and 1's (digital) that there's no production costs and they should be cheap. But the writer pays a lot in blood, sweat, and tears to produce those bits and bytes and should be recompensed. But what do you do when the market won't pay you what you're worth? One nice thing about my reviews is the readers often say they got more than what they paid in value (most of my books are in the $4 to $5 range). Too bad there's not a tip jar at the end of every book to help out.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

C.C. Kelly said:


> Amazon has already begun to address the Free issue with their Affiliate Program and I wouldn't be surprised if they changed their policy to price match down to 99 cents only.


They don't price match to 99 cents now. It is against their TOC to have your book lower anywhere else than on Amazon _unless_ it's free.


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

C.C. Kelly said:


> My point was that I won't be surprised if Amazon changes their TOC and stops price matching to free. If a book is priced lower through a different channel, Amazon might "price match" down to some minimum (narrowing the margin, but not actually matching the lower price), thereby eliminating the glut of free books. Just a thought.


But that would mean that Amazon is no longer the cheapest provider of that book. If they don't price match down, their offering will cost more, which doesn't seem to fit into their current model.
The only option would be to kick that author to the curb and disallow the book on Amazon at all. This would result in the only free books at Amazon being available through Select. A pretty drastic step but if they're not making money on freebies, why not?


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Guest (Aug 11, 2013)

Frankly, I think this whole discussion can be summarized as lots and lots of angst backed up with some intelligent induction, but very little concrete, reliable evidence (except in the case of perma-free, which is working for some people and therefore not making us quite as angsty).

Screw angst.  I'm going to write.


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

justsomewriterwhowrites said:


> Reading The Cutting Room right now, and I have to say, I'm getting more from that .99 than I'm getting from a 14.99 book I bought 6 months ago and still haven't gotten around to reading. Great job, Ed! It's an excellent book.


Well, that was unexpected.  Thanks! It's funny, the serialized version didn't do very well at all, so by the time I put the whole book out, I'd lost a lot of faith in it. But it's done a lot better in novel format. I might even get to write a sequel to it.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

C.C. Kelly said:


> My point was that I won't be surprised if Amazon changes their TOC and stops price matching to free. If a book is priced lower through a different channel, Amazon might "price match" down to some minimum (narrowing the margin, but not actually matching the lower price), thereby eliminating the glut of free books. Just a thought.


Their only competition that doesn't offer free books natively and doesn't price match free is B&N and we all know how awesomely the Nook is doing.

Free books available and cheaper books available is an incentive to buy an ereader, which is Amazon's primary objective. Destroying it completely is cutting their own throat.

Also, based on the premise of the thread, permafree is the 'good' free and Select is the 'bad' free. This would be getting rid of the opposite one from what's being complained about.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Rusty Bigfoot said:


> I've always felt that the price of ebooks is way too low. The perception is more that since they're just 0's and 1's (digital) that there's no production costs and they should be cheap. But the writer pays a lot in blood, sweat, and tears to produce those bits and bytes and should be recompensed.


If we say a producer wants to generate the greatest amount of revenue, he prices where units x price yields the max. The price is too high if raising it reduces total revenue. It is too low if reducing it reduces total revenue. It has nothing to do with blood sweat and tears. Its math.



> But what do you do when the market won't pay you what you're worth? One nice thing about my reviews is the readers often say they got more than what they paid in value (most of my books are in the $4 to $5 range). Too bad there's not a tip jar at the end of every book to help out.


If the market wont generate max revenue at a price I think reflects my worth, then I am over valuing myself. I accept I am not worth that price.


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

Amazon's not gonna stop doing free books because that will give every other ebookstore a competitive advantage over them. And a pretty big one. They're probably something like 60% of the overall US ebook market right now and that figure has been shrinking every year. They're not going to hand Apple a big leg up on them.

They can't stop us from doing free, either. If they hand down terms saying "Offering books cheaper at another site--including free--is a violation, and your account may be suspended," that may lead to most books being raised to $0.99 at all sites, but then that provides a huge incentive to post free content on every store EXCEPT Amazon. And not having content that other stores do offer is the absolute last thing they want.

All the tweaks Amazon has made over the last ~18 months implies there's too _much_ free stuff, or that it's too visible, or that they feel authors are too incentivized to make their work free, but I'd bet having some amount of free books around is a good thing for the market. I mean, you can't expect to walk into a Barnes and Noble and walk out with ten paperbacks for zero dollars. Pretty big advantage for the Kindle.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Ed: Fair point on Amazon using free as an advantage. But at whose expense? As far as I can tell, 99% of all free content that's not public domain are indie authors scrabbling for any sort of visibility. So basically we are subsidizing Amazon's competitive edge. Nice of us. The trad pubs don't do it. Maybe they know something, having all those big brain accountants working for them?

Here's an idea. There's an old saying: The value isn't what you think it's worth, it's what the market thinks it's worth.

My final thought after spending way too much on KB over the last two days is that authors should view free not as authors, but as book sellers.

Terrence has a valid point, which is that the goal of any efficient pricing strategy is to maximize revenue. If we get the ego out of the way and simply view our babies as a product, and our job as a bookseller (not as authors, as booksellers) to maximize revenue for our product line, then we can view free in the correct manner - as a loss leader that drives sales of our other books. Because the algos ain't performing like they used to. I keep hoping Amazon will tweak them and give us back at least _some_ love, but I also hope I live a long time in spite of all my vices. I have lots of idle hopes that have little chance of happening.

For someone with one book, I'm not sure that free makes any sense. For first book in a series, absolutely, assuming the other books are available for sale. For a standalone, even with other titles that you hope will see some lift, not at all that I can tell anymore. If others feel like rolling those dice, hey, best of luck. Not for me. This isn't dogma, though, it's business, and if something changes, I'll be the first in line at the free trough again.

I've always viewed my bookselling business as one of finding the sweet spot between volume and price. I've experimented with all the different price points, and discovered that my sales at $4-$5 for older titles, and $6 for newer ones, is the sweet spot for my market. For Joe Nobody, it's $10 - but we have to assume that he wouldn't sell way more at $7 than he's selling at $10, which we don't know because he's never tried it. My hunch, though, is that he's got his pricing right for his genre, which is completely different than mine. It's a niche. And niche markets will pay more. That's why they can be wildly profitable. I say good for him. I'm green with envy. I could just about double my revenues at $10, but my gut says that with James Lee Burke backlist novels selling for $6, I'm going to lose a lot of my readers if I edge it much higher. Then again, I might try $7 this holiday to see how that plays. Only via experimentation can we understand our market, which is constantly changing.

And now I'm offline, and am going to apply myself to writing some more. Because while these conversations are fascinating, they don't get the book written, and I have a pretty insane production schedule over the next 5 months.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

jljarvis said:


> I read that and felt like it needed to be crossstitched on a sampler.


I don't know what to say. The first step to literary immortality...


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

I've seen HQ set books free. So at least one traditional pub has used free as a marketing boost on Amz.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Ed: Fair point on Amazon using free as an advantage. But at whose expense? As far as I can tell, 99% of all free content that's not public domain are indie authors scrabbling for any sort of visibility. So basically we are subsidizing Amazon's competitive edge. Nice of us. The trad pubs don't do it. Maybe they know something, having all those big brain accountants working for them?


What subsidy? Let's forget about quantifying it. Let's just identify it. What cost is incurred by independents to support Amazon's competitive edge?

The big publishers have a very different pricing problem. They are trying to max revenue over a large number of books including hardcover, paperback, and eBooks. They also have a cost structure independents don't have. Advances? So their objective is maximizing the return from a large basket of books. They are essentially venture capitalists specializing in books. I wouldn't expect them to act the same as independents.

Those accountants really are pretty smart, and are juggling far more than an independent author. They essentially have a linear programming model, while a slacker like me has a book.


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## RJ Kennett (Jul 31, 2013)

Unsure. My novel is doing well, but I'm pretty sure it would be doing better if it didn't have to compete for attention with free. But I'm a patient sort, even if I'm stuck in retail while I build my brand.

I'm following a couple of first-time authors with one release, like myself, who launched about the same time and in the same genre as me. They used the free model to build a base quickly - I did not. At this point, none of our books are free, and they're ahead of me in the rankings on Amazon (generally hanging around 3,000-4,000 in paid; I'm now hanging around 6,000-10,000 paid, but constantly moving up). All have good reviews, though they generally have more - in at least one case, a lot more. So people _do_ seem to read the freebies, at least enough to generate buzz if the book is good.

It looks like the free model helped them sprint to an early lead, and I'm sure they're making decent money now. My marketing plan is geared as a marathon. My book is also pricier; they went with the $2.99 model after their free time; I was $2.99 for two weeks as an introductory offer, then ratcheted it up to $4.99. The thinking was that readers would see price = quality and still give me a shot, even if they "kick the tires" a bit more, taking time to read the free sample. Result: Sales are still increasing, nearly doubling every week. I can't say which model is better; if they gave away 30,000 copies to make an instant splash, but make no money on them, and I sell 30,000 over one, or two or three years, it's my opinion that I win out long-term. But I can always change my mind and give it away free (or discount) for promotional periods if I need to; the thousands they've already given away can never be converted into sales, at least not for that title. The horse has left the barn.

I think the most important thing is that the book is good, and you don't get hung up on the numbers - get to cranking on the next book. (Which is why hypocritical me is typing on a forum instead of working on the sequel!)


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

If your sales are doubling every week, you will soon be kicking all our butts.


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

C.C. Kelly said:


> My thought above included Amazon still allowing FREE books through Select, which would make it more attractive and relevant again and allow Amazon to maintain a healthy Free market place. I never said anything about them suspending accounts - that would be silly. But they could control their minimum price for non-Select books. Is 99 cents that much of a deal breaker? Starbucks seems to be doing just fine with outrageously overpriced coffee, even when other stores offer free and discount coffee, Starbucks is packed, because customers enjoy the Starbucks experience.
> 
> Ultimately, Amazon wants to maximize profit and I suspect they will implement strategies to accomplish this, whether any of us think it is wise or not.
> 
> ...


I didn't mean to imply you'd said anything about Amazon suspending accounts. I was trying to use an example of the hardest skull-crackin' Amazon could try on us, and why it still wouldn't work. That it would actually hurt them.

I don't think the Starbucks example is perfect. Indie coffee shops are like us, scrambling for whatever customers they can nab. It's more like if Burger King, Wendy's, and Jack in the Box were all offering free french fries while McDonald's continued to charge for them, and refused to drop to free even though potatoes, like ebooks, have magically become virtually cost-free to offer up to customers. McDonald's might make more in the short term, but every other major franchise would siphon away customers day after day, because free french fries.

As Amazon's profit sheets show, they're not really about the short term.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

I think the concern is legit but overstated. Never coming back? Please. 

As a book buyer, my own career aside, I look for bargains as much as anyone. But I still pay for plenty of books, especially if its an indie whose work I already know and enjoy. I don't wait for a free or discounted promotion. I want my fix of my fave authors ASAP.

One need not make things sound dire and end-of-the-world to get attention on a topic.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4


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## jvin248 (Jan 31, 2012)

.
Amazon can't shake the free download game any more than the automotive manufacturers could drop their $3500 rebates prior to the recession. Only after a major external system shock could they back away. Same for Amazon and Select (will the rules/mix change? certainly).
.
I've watched the Empirical data grow that it takes around 20 titles to start getting somewhere. Reading this thread gelled the idea that 90 days / 5 free days = 18 published units needed to have something free every day -- just like having the impact of a perma-free title.
.
.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> " I don't wait for a free or discounted promotion. I want my fix of my fave authors ASAP."


If a consumer has to expend time and effort checking and monitoring free lists to get what he wants, then it is no longer free. The consumer's transaction costs raise the price he pays. Cash costs may be zero, but transaction costs can be very high.


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## Mike Dennis (Apr 26, 2010)

Vaalingrade said:


> Because of the algo changes, free is no longer a short game to rise up the lists, it's the long game of waiting for the free books to work their way up the piles and getting read.


Vaal--Sorry, it's wishful thinking.

Since January, 2012, I've given away over 75,000 copies of the first book in one of my series. This is over multiple Select free promos. If that book is getting read after a long trip up the readers' TBR lists, I'm not aware of it. Since January, 2012, I've garnered maybe 30 new reviews, and as I write this, the book sits at 136,000 in the Amazon rankings. The other two books in the series are at 225,000 and 246,000. Nineteen months is long enough. I've seen next to nothing for my massive giveaways.

Select is a long-term loser.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Mike Dennis said:


> Select is a long-term loser.


I _*already said that*_.

Select doesn't work. A giant free burst isn't going to generate any long term staying power because Select gives you neither visibility, nor targeted delivery. Your books go to people who are grabbing anything and everything at which point it doesn't matter if they're being read because the person reading it isn't the intended audience anyway.

However, the thing I'm arguing with is the idea that no one is reading these free books or that some hyperbolically small number of free books get read. Your data doesn't prove or disprove that your books are being read, just that they didn't generate buy-throughs and reviews for you which isn't the same thing.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Vaalingrade said:


> I _*already said that*_.
> 
> Select doesn't work. A giant free burst isn't going to generate any long term staying power because Select gives you neither visibility, nor targeted delivery.


No, it doesn't get you that. If it did, that'd be a bonus.

What is DOES buy you, even after the free-burst is over, is placement in also-boughts.

Is it a lot? No. It's something. And it's something enough that some people do well with it.

But here's the thing: No system will turn every writer, even good ones, into John Lockes and Amanda Hockings. For there to be top writers, there have to be midlisters and, yes, even bottom-listers.

Nature of the game.


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## RJ Kennett (Jul 31, 2013)

Terrence OBrien said:


> If your sales are doubling every week, you will soon be kicking all our butts.


But my book hasn't been out a full month yet, so we'll have to see how it holds up long-term. A guy can dream, though.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> I mean, you can't expect to walk into a Barnes and Noble and walk out with ten paperbacks for zero dollars. Pretty big advantage for the Kindle.


Great analogy, Ed. This says it all.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Terrence OBrien said:


> So Scott Turrow gives good legal advice because he sells lots of books? And my grasp of economics will increase if I sell more novels about Islamists and the Church?


I think your state of economics will increase.


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## Mandy (Dec 27, 2009)

Quiss said:


> The first thing I did when I got my e-reader was to get a library card. First time ever, I have to admit. Well, nearly every book that I wanted to read had a wait list on it. And when I did get a book I couldn't finish it in the time allowed (I am not one of those book-a-day readers  )
> I no longer get ebooks from the library system.


Same here. I got a card when I bought my Paperwhite (I've had a card before, but my kids and I were really bad at returning books on time). I stopped checking out books because I'm not a fan of the time limit. I have a habit of rotating 4-6 books at a time, and I don't want to be pressured to finish a book before it's zapped.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Rusty Bigfoot said:


> I've always felt that the price of ebooks is way too low. The perception is more that since they're just 0's and 1's (digital) that there's no production costs and they should be cheap. *But the writer pays a lot in blood, sweat, and tears to produce those bits and bytes and should be recompensed. * But what do you do when the market won't pay you what you're worth? One nice thing about my reviews is the readers often say they got more than what they paid in value (most of my books are in the $4 to $5 range). Too bad there's not a tip jar at the end of every book to help out.


I cannot disagree with this statement but there is one field that gets paid even less for blood, sweat, tears and cramping hands. Try doing the needlearts for a living. I know there are a very few that make their living that way and most that do go into the design part. (If you ever want to see a discussion that has more opinions than this one, read a thread that is what should I price my work, and do not ever mention the C word. C(opyright).)

Now I like the cheaper and free books. Now sometimes reading threads about pricing makes me feel like I have been the poor (in terms of money), but at least I feel welcome.


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## Mandy (Dec 27, 2009)

ellenoc said:


> While I certainly can give copies away here and there, and have, the thought of pricing one of my books at "free" just doesn't wash. Maybe because I come from a family where my mother used to say regularly that even if you were giving away kittens no one wanted, you should charge $5 or so because otherwise the people wouldn't value the kitten. I do think people consider things they get for free worth exactly that. You can sell me on the first book in a series theory, but that's about all, and even though I accept the theory and think if I ever write more in what I intended to be my cozy series I should try it....


I disagree. I don't value my books (and other products) by the amount of money they cost me. I value them by what they mean to me and how much I enjoy them. I've got $20 hardbacks sitting on the shelf untouched and I've got free or dirt-cheap books that I adore so much they've become tattered. And I very often pay full price for new copies of those tattered books so I can keep my beloved tattered first copies and continue to read the fresh copies. Now, instead of replacing my favorite worn copies with paperbacks, I replace them with ebooks.

I don't consider free books to be worthless. I know that some will be crap, and some will leave me yearning for more. I do consider free books to be a risk-free way to try unknown authors. If the book is terrible, I've only lost a little time. If I liked the book, that author has gained a new fan and new sales on his other books.


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## cwashburn (May 20, 2013)

I read an interesting description once about how black pearls came to be more valuable than white.   To be brief, when first introduced they had little value until a smart marketer developed a campaign (maybe based on deBeers) to pay models and actresses to wear them in beautiful settings and paid jewellers to showcase them along side rubies and emeralds.   People went for it.   I suppose the moral might be that a value can be based on what qualities and values the seller attributes to it.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Terrence OBrien said:


> If a consumer has to expend time and effort checking and monitoring free lists to get what he wants, then it is no longer free. The consumer's transaction costs raise the price he pays. Cash costs may be zero, but transaction costs can be very high.


I want to comment on this because I have seen this way too many times.
Company A which is 5 blocks from your house has a widget for $5. Company B which is 50 miles away is giving away the same widget. Many people will drive the 50 miles just for the free widget. (make that 100 miles they have to come home.) I see wear and tear on the vehicle and if the car gets 25MPG, with gas prices at $3.50 a gallon I see an outlay of $14 for a $5 widget. My math comes up with $9 out of pocket. Always amazes me that people don't think of that as part of the cost. Their argument is always but we got the widget FREE.
PS: Used the 25MPG and gas price for mathmatical purposes only.


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## Sapphire (Apr 24, 2012)

jvin248 said:


> .
> Amazon can't shake the free download game any more than the automotive manufacturers could drop their $3500 rebates prior to the recession. Only after a major external system shock could they back away. Same for Amazon and Select (will the rules/mix change? certainly).
> .
> I've watched the Empirical data grow that it takes around 20 titles to start getting somewhere. Reading this thread gelled the idea that 90 days / 5 free days = 18 published units needed to have something free every day -- just like having the impact of a perma-free title.
> ...


If you took this approach (18x5=free book every day), then you would be providing all your work for free. Your readers could wait out the rotation and "buy" all your 18 books for zero dollars over a 90 day period. What have you accomplished, other than writing for nothing other than your own pleasure?


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Mandy said:


> I disagree. I don't value my books (and other products) by the amount of money they cost me. I value them by what they mean to me and how much I enjoy them. I've got $20 hardbacks sitting on the shelf untouched and I've got free or dirt-cheap books that I adore so much they've become tattered. And I very often pay full price for new copies of those tattered books so I can keep my beloved tattered first copies and continue to read the fresh copies. Now, instead of replacing my favorite worn copies with paperbacks, I replace them with ebooks.
> 
> I don't consider free books to be worthless. I know that some will be crap, and some will leave me yearning for more. I do consider free books to be a risk-free way to try unknown authors. If the book is terrible, I've only lost a little time. If I liked the book, that author has gained a new fan and new sales on his other books.


My copy of Autopsy by Michael Baden finally had to go in the trash when I would turn a page and it would fall out of the book. I am so glad Cheaper by the Dozen is hardback. It is not quite as worn.

I agree with you on the free books being a risk free way to try new authors. 
Though this thread is making my short term TBR list longer. And yes I will review all the books I am reading right now.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Mandy said:


> Same here. I got a card when I bought my Paperwhite (I've had a card before, but my kids and I were really bad at returning books on time). I stopped checking out books because I'm not a fan of the time limit. *I have a habit of rotating 4-6 books at a time,* and I don't want to be pressured to finish a book before it's zapped.


I thought I was the only one that did this.


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## Deke (May 18, 2013)

My take on this is that the golden age of the freebie Kindle novel ended a year or so ago.  Now there are so many free books out there that it's no longer an effective way to draw people to your titles.  Now it's about new marketing strategies and that old thing called quality stories.


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## Kathy Clark Author (Dec 18, 2012)

My proof case today is my New Adult Romance, *Life's What Happens*, set in 1969-70. It's an award winner iin 2013 and a 4.0 star average review but this year the most sales in a month was 6.

It was free yesterday and Friday, over 4,000 downloads making it #30 overall in Amazon and it was #1 in the category yesterday. *Today it sold 22 at $2.99* and made it in its cat to #15 paid...so it gets read. It's good enough given its a true story to do much better but it is obscure in that there are not a lot of *New Adult Romances* not set in contemporary times on the market.

My conclusion is this is a valid marketing tool for this particular book. It is also not a reliable method I'm guessing because it needs a flood of reviews to get noticed.


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## Kathy Clark Author (Dec 18, 2012)

We are all in the business of interfering with a reader's buying habits through our writing and marketing and to that end I found some 2012 Pew Research data that thinking about it quantifies where the free book discussion likely fits in.

Let me first say the sample sizes are very very small and I can't vouch for it's randomness. It was funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.










Most of us are focused on the read for pleasure group in the chart above. Hopefully the various types of materials such as books or something else is in our personal wheelhouse.

Next...









One more consideration given that free books are generally limited to eBooks.








The article points out the e reader covers all types. Their study said a majority of e-book readers under age 30 consume their e-books on a desktop or laptop computer; the second most popular method is by cell phone (41% read their e-books this way). Some 23% of e-book readers ages 16-29 read e-books on an e-reader like a Kindle or Nook, and just 16% read e-books on a tablet computer.

*Now, and finally, the point of all the data is how readers get their books.*









The other category unfortunately was not explained as the only example was a discussion on how college students hack the system to get free books. But I could see that it also where the free books would be accounted for in the study.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

cwashburn said:


> I read an interesting description once about how black pearls came to be more valuable than white. To be brief, when first introduced they had little value until a smart marketer developed a campaign (maybe based on deBeers) to pay models and actresses to wear them in beautiful settings and paid jewellers to showcase them along side rubies and emeralds. People went for it. I suppose the moral might be that a value can be based on w hat qualities and values the seller attributes to it.


Hhhmmmm. I don't know about that article? Wild black pearls are extremely rare and pricey. Usually sold individually. Even 100 years ago a real wild black pearl necklace was worth $1 Million. You might find wild pearl jewelry at Soethby's or Christie's at auction today.

Even cultured (farmed) black pearls are pricey because they are more difficult to farm. All wild pearls are much more pricey than cultured and extremely rare. A couple special whites are pricier than blacks.

Imitation are the cheapest. Maybe the article was about imitation pearls and that would make sense. Imitation are easy to make whether black or white. China is overflowing with them.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

rjkennett said:


> But my book hasn't been out a full month yet, so we'll have to see how it holds up long-term. A guy can dream, though.


No problem. Three weeks of doubling puts you at a multiple of eight times the first week. Even if you sold one book the first week, in ten short week you are selling 1,024 per week. Maybe I can write a new miracle marketing book for independent authors. _How To Sell 1,000 Books A Week_, a guaranteed ten week program ...


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

> I cannot disagree with this statement but there is one field that gets paid even less for blood, sweat, tears and cramping hands. Try doing the needlearts for a living. I know there are a very few that make their living that way and most that do go into the design part.


But that is not a good comparison to books.  For instance, I also paint. I do oil, acrylic, mixed media and water color. Talk about a hard way to make a living. However, just like needlework, people don't buy these products for something to do. They don't buy several a month, unless they are a collector. Some people read a book a day. That would be 30 books a month. How many people would buy 30 things to hang on their wall a month?

Books entertain. Most people don't decide they'll buy a piece of art (or craft) and spend a few hours every day only concentrating on it. It would be nice if more people bought original art, but they don't.  Most can't afford it. But a book? A book, even at $5, $7, or $10 is no more expensive than a movie most places and less expensive than many restaurants, for a lot more hours of entertainment. It shouldn't be considered unreasonable for readers to spend that given what they get. And some authors here have proven readers will. Some have proven a LOT will.

The key is finding your audience. There will always be readers who only want free and try to persuade authors to give away their work for next to nothing. Just like there will always be readers who won't touch a free book no matter what. There will always be readers who only read romance. There will always be readers who read almost every genre. No group of reader is more or less important. No book will get every reader, no matter the price. My job is to find the audience that fits my needs and enjoys my type of product, not to give all of my work away, praying that someday down the line they'll actually pay for a book. (Like I've said before, I do undestand 1st in a series free or a very large sample).I'm slower getting there, in a genre that is not super popular, but does have a solid large following once you get known.

The one reason so many do free and .99 I think is because they think they will become immediately best sellers and stay there. And one in a million do. Then there are those who want to be paid and build an audience of readers who have no issue with that. Maybe they do 1 perma-free. Maybe not. Doesn't mean they won't make it, but it takes time. Heck, I do a .99 on my first book every so many months with Bookbub. That is for a very short time, hoping to find those readers who talk a LOT to others who like family saga and historical fiction.

Your needlework or my fine art have a one in a billion chance to make us a living. At least with writing I have a one in a million chance, thankfully...IF I put value on my work and price it fairly for both parties. I could say "and write a good book" but what one considers a good book is different from what another does. I need to write the best books I can, have great covers, write a good blurb that lets people know if they would like it or not, and then FIND MY AUDIENCE.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Kathy Clark a.k.a. Bob Kat said:


> Let me first say the sample sizes are very very small and I can't vouch for it's randomness. It was funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
> (Cut for brevity)
> The other category unfortunately was not explained as the only example was a discussion on how college students hack the system to get free books. But I could see that it also where the free books would be accounted for in the study.


One of the other things that struck me about these charts is that they were only measuring people who read a book within the last year. I suspect that the vast majority of books are read by a minority of those readers -- and that the habits of those people are significantly different from all those people who read only one or two books a year.

For instance, people who read a book only once or twice a year are highly unlikely to even be registered at a library. And though they can read on their smart phones, they are certainly unlikely to own an ereader.

Camille


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Let me first say the sample sizes are very very small and I can't vouch for it's randomness. It was funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.


Its a pretty good sample size. It gives a margin of error of appx 2%. And if its a Pew phone poll, its well randomized. Far better than most of the stuff posted here.


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## Willo (May 10, 2013)

Kathy Clark a.k.a. Bob Kat said:


> We are all in the business of interfering with a reader's buying habits through our writing and marketing and to that end I found some 2012 Pew Research data that thinking about it quantifies where the free book discussion likely fits in.
> 
> Let me first say the sample sizes are very very small and I can't vouch for it's randomness.


Brilliant.



Vaalingrade said:


> The point of giving whole content away for free, which is the same as the webcomic model I've mentioned before, is to sell other things. The free content is bait to lure folks in, get their butts in the seat, then offer them other things to buy, usually relating to their fandom of the free thing. A free book should lead readers to an adjacent series, world or genre and it should get them to your website _where you have swag_.
> 
> Yeah, swag seems to only apply to the nerd genres, but I guarantee you that other genre readers would enjoy having wallpapers, apps, bookmarks and other minor fandom items of a beloved series/author. Whatever you're going for, your free book should be trying to sell that, not itself.


Yes 



swolf said:


> It may sound like I'm stating the obvious, but free is an effective tool if the books you make free are good enough to make readers buy more of your books. I download a ton of free books, and I'd estimate about 1 in 30 actually intice me to buy more from the author. A lot of them are just plain bad, and many of them are okay, but just not good enough for me to pull the trigger on buying more.


I have to agree with this one. If you're going to go free for any period of time, put your best work out there. If a story doesn't start gaining strong momentum until Books 2, make book 2 free. If I like a story's premise, and the sample makes it clear it's of reasonable quality, I'd be likely to pick up book 1 before reading book 2.



AutumnKQ said:


> There is definitely a strong psychological element to pricing.
> 
> I did stuff for free to build my business before-- I don't want to do it again. What free gets you is people who like free. They undervalue your work because they didn't pay for it. They've assigned it a value of 0 in their mind.
> The only way I can see free working is in the case of a serial, like what Hugh did. Wool 1 was a short story. He gave me just a taste and I wanted to know what happened. I'm not on board for giving away entire novels for free, even if they are the first in the series. Before I started researching self-pubbing, I'd see books for 99 cents on Kindle and I'd assume they weren't well edited.


I've seen this perception at work in more than one industry. I don't personally use that kind of lens when I'm buying media, but I've witnessed enough of that perspective in others to know it's a real thing for some readers.



Jay Allan said:


> I tend to think markets adjust themselves. I really don't think free books pull many sales from paid books. In the end, you will never have most of the quality books (let me finish before you bite my head off) in the freebie bins simply because the market imperative for those authors is to make money and charge for their work. You may see A good book from an author, a first in a series or something. But the notion that free can replace paid for readers doesn't hold water to me. Be honest...no one wants to give all their books away. There may be good books in there at a given time from authors trying to get noticed, but the average quality level of all free books is a different thing.


I definitely think the market will eventually balance itself.


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