Why Free Was For Me
If you’ve been following my announcement over the past month, you might have caught on to the fact that I’ve made my novel, A Previous Engagement, free as an ebook. (Paperbacks aren’t free, sorry…LOL). You can download it just about anywhere: Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, and iTunes. It was a risky move, just giving away my work, but it was one I felt I needed to make.
See, to be totally honest, before I made that novel free to download, sales weren’t going so great for me. I’d hand-sold about 100 paperback copies (of my two titles combined) and only about 30 of the ebooks. Sure, that’s a great start for an independent self-pubbed author like myself, but I knew I could be in better shape. After all, A Previous Engagement had been out for about five months in December and I hadn’t reached anywhere near the audience I knew I could. Ads, giveaways, and guest blogs were helping, but barely. And with a second title WAY under-performing the first after two months out, I was heading downhill. My self-publishing career was costing me more than it was earning me.
That’s when I knew it was time to take matters into my own hands.
I thought long and hard, made lots of lists, and consulted some of my friends in the Indie Author Group on Facebook. In the end, it was their advice that really got me leaning towards making one of my titles free. Many had shared their stories with me, especially how a free ebook had helped them to gain exposure, reach new readers, and ultimately, resulted in more sales of their other titles. With two books out, I knew making one free could help me sell the other. And since I plan to publish three more novels in 2012, I hoped reaching new readership would have a domino effect on all my titles’ sales.
So I did it. On December 9, 2011, one month ago today, I made A Previous Engagement free and lowered the price of Love Unlisted to just 99-cents. That was a big jump from my asking price of $2.99 for each title. I was risking quite a bit of potential profit, but I knew from experience in retail that you’ll sell more volume at a lower price. In the end, provided you reach as many new customers as you hoped, your sales dollars will be greater when selling at the lower price. But you’re not reading this for a basic consumerism lesson, you want to know what happened…
Well, a few things happened. First of all, I hit 1000 downloads of my free title in about 9 days. Today, one month later, I’m closing in quickly on 5,000 downloads. I’m averaging about 150-200 downloads every single day, and they’re coming from all outlets, iTunes especially. Here’s some other fun facts about what a free book will do for an indie author’s reach:
- I’ve gathered 470 ratings and about 30 reviews on iTunes for my free title.
- And about 20 ratings for my second novel (the 99-cent one).
- I reached the #4 spot on the top free downloads for contemporary romance novels on iTunes.
- The was listed on several popular sites as a free title, reaching lots of new readers. Check out GetFreeEbooks.com for one example.
- I’ve gathered almost 50 reviews on Barnes & Noble (2 for Love Unlisted so far.)
- My sales of Love Unlisted were multiplied 10 times over. I sold 4 copies in November, compared to over 40 copies in December alone!
- I’ve added about 20 new fans to my Facebook page!
- My blog went from averaging 8 hits per day to averaging over 40 hits per day!
So while it’s early days still, and I have new titles to publish and promote, I have to say that the first results of this freebie experiment are all positive. Not every rating is a 5-star one, not every review is glowing, but the point is that people are reading. And when they like what they read, they’re buying my next book. I’m not going to be a millionaire any time soon, but I’m just happy my books are being read.
At the end of the day, isn’t that why we write our books anyway?
15 comments
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Thanks for sharing this! I will share it as well!
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Thanks for reading and sharing, Kimberly!
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Great post, Stephanie! I’m in the same boat with low sales. I may just try your technique. Congratulations!
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Hi Donna, Thanks for reading and best of luck! It takes a lot to “give away” what we work so hard writing, but it has definitely paid off for me. I wish you success! Stephanie
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Great post…I did the same making Calculated Risk free…am now trying to unfree it…after 2 months and 55,670 downloads on Amazon alone, I’ve seen a bump in sales across the board. Same as with Itunes and Nook…Itunes has been most visible with all 7 books on assorted bestseller’s lists since Risk went free.
I’d say…do it!
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Hi Elaine, That’s great! Wow! I’m hoping for similar results, but first I have to write the other titles
Best of luck with your sales and “unfreeing” your book. -Stephanie
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Wow, Stephanie. I’m only about a month into this epublishing thing and your article is just the kind of info. I need to wrap my head around how it works. Good luck and thanks for sharing!
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Hi TJ – Thanks for reading! I’m only 6 months into self-publishing myself and still learning as I go. I’m glad I could help you think of new ideas! Best of luck. -Stephanie
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Excellent post, and generous of you to share your own experiences.
I too am at an early stage of self-publishing – I’ve brought out just one book so far (though I used to write for Mills and Boon and am trying to get my rights back from them, which would bump up my back catalogue considerably!) I hope to get another book out soon, and when I do, I may well try making the first one free.
Well done too on your NaNo success – I was a NaNo newbie in 2011 and was overjoyed when I made the 50k – I even had a special sweatshirt printed with the words NaNoWriMo Winner 2011 – just for fun!
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Hi Gilly – Congrats on your first NaNo! I’ve done three now and it never gets any less exciting to hit that 50k! I wish you success with your writing. Best of luck! -Stephanie
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Good luck Stephanie! Sounds like the strategy is working for you. I haven’t gotten to the point where I’ll reduce my $4.99 price for Fractured Facade, never mind make it free
But, I have decided to switch the order of books I plan to write this year so that the next one will be “less expensive” and perhaps even start out as free.
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Hi Elena – Thanks for reading! Best of luck with your own titles and strategy
-Stephanie
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Hi!!!! I just finished reading you book A prevoius engagment, and LOVED IT, it has all of the great things that a good romance novel has to have.
I read in about a day and a half, I could berely sleep thinking that I was just a few pages away from finding out what would happen.
I’m looking forward to reading Love Unlisted
Great Work!!!!!!!
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Thanks so much for reading! I’m so happy you enjoyed the book!!
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Stephanie! I’m 16 years old. I had this book awhile not caring much for it, but lately I hadn’t been able to put this book down! I absolutely love Tessa, Christian and Kendra I could relate in so many ways with each of them. After I read it, I found favorite parts and read them again and again. I was also sad to see that it was the end, I wouldn’t know what would happen with Tessa and Christian with their married life. I’m writing my own book about kinda like this one. I hope to be as successful as you were and that my characters reach out to teens like yours to me. Your book is definitely one I’ll refer to my friends.