Why Free Ebook Promotions Aren't Helping Your Sales

Although I've never had amazing results, I was thinking about running a Free Book promotion this week since I still have a few promo days left for my KDP titles. But you know what?  I've talked myself out of it. Why? Because I realize that it will have little to no impact on my overall goals. If I am going to make my work free, I need it to accomplish something. Something like:

Increased sales
Name recognition
Best selling status
Amazon Prime borrows
Increased reviews
Higher (sustained) rankings

Free promos worked a year ago when Amazon's KDP program was fresh and new. An author would do a promo, offering his/her title for free, then make enough money on the following days, weeks, and maybe even a month or two to buy a Ipad or make a full month's mortgage payment.

Unfortunately, for most authors running promotional campaigns now, the results aren't so productive or lucrative.  Why?  Because our potential readership has been completely spoiled with the overwhelming number of free book titles offered daily. Why buy books (especially from an author whom you've never even heard of) when you can have your pick from a constantly changing list of hundreds of free titles 365 days a year?

Here are some quotes from readers who suffer from Chronic FEDS (Free Ebook Download Syndrome) Give special attention to the text in bold.

"The impact of having many books on my computer or on my Kindle has little if any negative impact. On my computer, my 20,000 books take less space than one hour of recorded TV. And on the Kindle, they are always there just in case I want to read them."

"If it says free and has a semi interesting looking title and cover art I will download it.  I will probably never even look past the first page."  

"I download about 15 to 40 books per week at least. I doubt I'll ever be able to read them all, but I can't help it." 


So with that said . . . I think I'm going to try Sample Campaigning.  Yeah - I just made that up.  Like just now.  You heard it here first.  No more will I promote free titles, but I will encourage readers to download a free sample of my books instead, and here's why:

• Samples are free.  People love free, as we've learned from the comments above.
• Samples are short, therefore fitting right into the lives of busy Ereader readers. 
• Although short, samples generally give enough content to help a potential buyer decide if they like/dislike your work enough to want to read more - unless the ebook is front loaded with a lot of blah-blah-blah that readers like to skip past. 
• In my opinion, samples are more likely to be read, because more thought goes into the download. 
• Samples have a "Buy Now" link at the end, for ease of ordering. 
• Samples are typically deleted guilt-free if a reader has no interest. There's no unspoken pressure to keep the content and eventually read it.
• 
  

Maybe FREE will work for me later, but for right now, I'll give Sample Campaigning a try.
I'll keep you posted.

Kimberly T. Matthews

"I knew exactly how many condoms were left in his gym bag, in a little black box, wrapped in gold foil. Seven. Each time I randomly checked for no other reason besides I knew they existed, there'd always been seven. So I was taken aback that morning when I went to do his laundry, peeked in the box and only found three..."
 Lisa from - "Lisa's Dress" 
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F - R- Double E - The New "Four Letter Word"

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In the world of writing and ebook marketing, has the word FREE become a new four letter word? Warping our price expectations as readers, and cheapening our work as authors? I can say for myself, this free thing is turning into a double edged sword. Maybe.

So what had happened was . . . 

I recently read two FANTASTIC books by Adrienne Thompson. Enjoyed them immensely. (Click the image to the right to peruse her 5-star reviews) Both were free downloads that I'd obtained a few months back when she ran a campaign. Now as much as I enjoyed her work, and have no reservations of reading her third title, guess what was stopping me? You guessed it - it wasn't free. 

So I know what you're thinking - it had to be priced at almost a million dollars since I was hesitant about purchasing it. Of course not. It was a measly $1.99.  Far less than the price of a cuppa coffee, and would last longer too!  Not to mention more enjoyable. And I just can't make it myself at home. 

I had to slap myself when I realized why I wasn't tapping the "1-Click" purchase button. What is wrong with me for thinking like that? I was slow to spend 2 bucks on a book that I KNOW I will enjoy?  Shame on me! Once I had this epiphany, I did PURCHASE Adrienne's third title. And guess what? It didn't break the bank, or send my home in foreclosure. I still have enough to get a cup of expensive coffee if I want to . . . or buy another book by another great author. 

I don't know about this FREE thing . . . is it doing more damage than good? Is it turning us into Kindle Hoarders?  Free just might be the new four-letter word in town.

I think I'll go wash my mouth out with soap.

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Should You Make Your EBook Free?

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One author's take on making a title available for download at the price of FREE!
With permission from Stephanie Haddad

Why Free Was For Me - Stephanie Haddad

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 Unlistedto 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?

Original post - http://www.stephaniehaddad.com/fiction/?p=487#comment-475

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