free book promos Archives

Why Free is Still a Smart Marketing Strategy for Fiction Writers

June 20, 2016June 17, 2016Business of Writing, Uncategorized

by Jason Kong, @storyrally

If you’re wondering whether not charging for selected stories is benefiting your promotional campaign, you’re not alone.

With all the free writing flooding the internet, it’s harder to stand out. Even if someone downloads your free eBook, your fiction is competing with all the other stories on that person’s digital reader.

Given the ubiquity of free, it’s reasonable to question whether the market is saturated, thus reducing the effectiveness. I, on the other hand, believe free still works.

Let’s take a closer look on why that is.Continue reading

Using ‘Free’ as an Incentive

July 27, 2015July 26, 2015Business of Writing

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Free book promos aren’t for everyone. Some writers are passionate about receiving payment for their hard work. Other writers don’t yet have enough published work to offer one of their books for free. It’s possible, also, that writers of standalones might not find as much value in a free promotion as series writers.

For me, I’ve found that free book promos do have their place. I use them often. In fact, at least one of my books is always free.

I don’t like the idea of Kindle Unlimited (KU), because I don’t like putting all my eggs in one basket. I’ve also found that anytime I cut back on any platform, I hear from readers. And I hate making readers upset.

Instead, I use Amazon’s price-matching policy to make my books free. In the past I’ve used Smashwords (a book distributor) to make my book free on other retailers (Kobo, etc.) and then Amazon has rapidly matched the price. I’m now experimenting with Draft 2 Digital (another distributor), which I’ve really enjoyed dealing with so far. You can make your book free on Nook with Draft 2 Digital, which does put pressure on Amazon to match the price quickly. Also (and I’m straying slightly off-topic here, sorry), Draft 2 Digital seems much easier to work with. More on them on their FAQ page.Continue reading

The Impact of Free Promos

February 27, 2015February 27, 2015Business of Writing

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I had to answer a questionnaire for self-publishers recently and several of the questions stumped me. I have a feeling that this isn’t a good thing.

One of the questions was ‘How many books have you sold (not given away)?’ I had absolutely no idea. And this information is not exactly as easy to come by as you might think. There is no way on your KDP dashboard to find lifetime sales.

I also had no idea how many books, total, I’d given away.

Another question was ‘What is your strongest selling title? How many units have you sold?’

Hmm.

In my defense…I have been very busy writing several series. My self-published books number six which, although not a huge number, certainly adds a bunch of lines and some complexity to each month’s KDP excel sheet.Continue reading