Well, my book When, Were, & Howl is nearing the end of the ‘free ebook’ promotion on Amazon. It’s always hard to say whether a free promotion is driving business or not. I’m curious to see how the book does tomorrow when the sale is through and the novelette is back to $0.99.
The balance of sale pricing is difficult for me. I don’t believe in changing prices around a lot, mostly because I am so irritated with the stores for falsely inflating prices so that they can give a “sale”. In my mind the book is worth what it is worth and should be put up at a price and held there, which of course makes it difficult when judging your own book’s worth. How much is an ebook worth?
So I decided to go with the free offering as soon as the book became available so that at least people wouldn’t buy it one day and feel disappointed when it was dropped to free the next.
Have you had any luck with donation buttons or considered those? I havent yet , just wondering 🙂
A Very Mwerey Christmas was free for 5 days. In that time the downloads spiked and I had a few hundred free downloads, and I sold more regular copies of other books than on a day when a new book is not posted, but I made a few mistakes.
1) I lost all of the sales that I normally would have gotten with a “new release” because I made it free out of the gate.
2) The regular sales are consistent with sales I would have gotten ANYWAY with a new release with a charge on it.
3) I thought the ranking would stay. The minute it goes from free to paid, the ranking disappears.
4) Because people download tons of free material, it takes a while to read, so I may make sales way down the road that I don’t know are tied to the free promotion.
Bottom Line. Next time I won’t do a free promotion on a book I’ve just released. Also, I don’t like the exclusivity of KDP Select, so I’m planning to be careful on what books I submit through that program and will only enroll them for the 90 days. (For the first time since starting, my Barnes & Noble monthly numbers are higher than my Amazon numbers.)
Free copies are a great way to get your name out there. It’s just that I have to tweak the process.