by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I’ve done a better job lately keeping up with sales figures for my books.
I know this is one thing that many self-published authors advise against. Kristine Rusch stated:
Resolve to stop watching the sales figures in 2013. You won’t be able to tell from month to month how the year is going.
She has a good point and many other good points in her post Year-End Numbers.
But I find it hard to resist. For one thing, I was burned by a rotten month early in 2012. I didn’t pay attention and I made only about a quarter of the income that I ordinarily receive in a month’s time from Amazon for my self-published books.
For me, lagging sales numbers mean that I need to run a sale of some sort (because I don’t advertise and I’m not really into self-promo.)
When I saw that my December sales weren’t off to a great start, (and I had a newish book that released in October), I decided to put one of my ebooks up for free. I didn’t advertise it in any way. It wasn’t featured on any daily deals sites. I didn’t tweet it, I didn’t mention it here, I didn’t put it on Facebook.
I have the same concerns that most of y’all do about putting a book up for free. Free books frequently equal awful books. Making books free devalues books and the book selling market. Making books free hurts because you invested lots of time and thought into the book.
But I will say this…if you’re looking for a bump in sales, you’ve got a good book, and you have other books available for sale (particularly in a series), then you might find a good deal of success with this tactic. It does seem to move books.
I took the usual route of making the book, Dyeing Shame, free on Smashwords. After some time (probably 4 or 5 days), Amazon price-matched it. And the book was downloaded over 85,000 times in December. (Yes, it briefly reached number one on the free charts.)
I really can’t explain why it rose so high on the charts. It might have had something to do with the fact that the book had some decent reviews previously (and real reviews….good and bad and lukewarm.) It might have to do with the fact that my name isn’t too obscure on Amazon and is connected to traditionally published books (but…this somehow seems less-likely to me.)
Sales did start to increase for the other two self-published books in the series. I ended up the month with a decent-enough 1,089 books sold for the month.
What I’ve noticed for January, though, is that sales have continued and are stronger from last month. I’ve kept the book free (why not?) and so far I’ve had 1272 sales for the month (as of this moment…writing this post a couple of days before the end of January) and over 25,500 more downloads of the freebie.
The takeaway from this experiment (the experiment of keeping something free for longer) is that the impact of the free book on the other books in the series may be stronger the following month (although it doesn’t seem to be terrible for the first month, either.)
I’d remarked to my husband that I was seeing good sales as the result of the free promotion and he frowned. “You’ve got a book listed for free? Is it a weaker book?”
I explained that it was actually a stronger book. It was supposed to tempt readers into buying the other books.
“You’re giving a good book away for free?”
And I know there’s not a lot of logic in that for many people in the business world. My husband wasn’t really onboard with the whole idea. But…it does seem to work.
Will it always work? Is this always the best course? Is this something I’ll continue doing? This industry is changing so quickly that I really couldn’t say. What’s a good approach today isn’t always a good approach tomorrow.
Have you ever run a free book promo? Would you? If you have, did you have any success with it?
Image: Flickr: Poornomore
I think that free isn’t working as well as it used to because there are so many free books available. Where the free promotion seems to work is if the book belongs to a series. My publisher has made one of my books free this week. It’s the first in a 12 book series, so like you, I’m watching with interest to see what happens. We can but try these things :)
Elizabeth – Thanks for sharing your experiences. I’m glad you’ve found that promo-ing your series by offering a book for free worked. That’s what matters in the end. I wonder if it would be the same for an author who wasn’t already established, as you are…
Good for you. I believe that sometimes you just have to try something new. I just have one e-book, with the print book to be out soon, but at some point wouldn’t mind trying something like this. And, no, it isn’t always easy to explain to another what you are doing, even if it makes sense to you and seems to work. – Karen
Hi Elizabeth – very interesting read – and how ‘we’ realise we need to react and adjust to life out there as authors … yet the business world is still fixed in its ways … I wonder where you’ll go with the ‘free’ part and your sales as the year progresses – good luck with everything …
Fascinating … cheers Hilary
Hilary–I’m not much of a business person, so this definitely isn’t easy for me. I’m sort of just reacting to a stimuli–free is working well, so I’ll continue what’s working. What was funny was me trying to explain to *hubby* why I’m doing this…ha!
I think the only way to really change things up if you’ve got a book that’s been free for a while is probably to change which books are being offered for free. I’ll have another release in the series this summer, and I’ll probably shift the free price to another book.
Shelley–Very good point. Yes, if I didn’t have a series, I wouldn’t even consider doing it. Best wishes for your promo! Just remember that the effects might take a good 30 days to trickle to the other books. I was impatient the first time I ran one of these promos and pulled the sale almost immediately.
I think of free promotions as advertising- without having to throw down a couple of hundred dollars. And seeing a return in a month is fabulous :-)
WiDo uses free promos all the time to great success. And I was one of the readers who downloaded your free Myrtle Clover book. Loved it! I can see why your free promo worked– it’s a good book, fun read and definitely makes me want to read more about Myrtle!
Any time my book has been made available free, I’ve jumped into the top 5 in urban fantasy downloads. I hope it helps build up interest in the sequel!
That is so interesting. The numbers are amazing.
T
Wow, that’s really interesting. It makes sense though. When I like a book by an author I usually end up buying his or her other books. Even better getting one book free, liking it, and then of course you’d want to buy others. I’m glad it’s working out for you!!
Deb–Oh, I like the way you put it. It *is* advertising, isn’t it? Amazon will give me so much visibility that it works very similarly to placing ads. It’s just that I’m paying in lost revenue…but making up for it, to some degree, with sales for the other books (for right now, anyway.)
Margot–That’s exactly what I don’t know. So I’d say for a new author to proceed with caution. Another caveat…sometimes when you’re *ready* for your sale to end, Amazon hasn’t run a price check with the other sites to see that you’ve raised the price–and you can get stuck with the free promo for a while longer than you wanted.
Karen–Exactly. Yes, couldn’t really encapsulate to my husband why I was doing this. It kind of ended up being, “Well, we have this vaction this summer, right? And this will double my book sales. I’ll have more visibility.” That was really the only way I could explain it… from an income perspective. But on the face of it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to run these things.
Karen–Thanks for saying so! That’s interesting that WiDo runs these promos, too.
Paul–And that’s why we should probably time these things to coincide with a new release. I’m planning to do the same around July, too.
Laura–I’m the same way. And I’ve actually read quite a few reviews where the reviewer stated they were going to buy my other books (well, my other *Myrtle Clover* books. Some did say they’d try my other series, too.)
*hops over to Smashwords and downloads the freebie in EPUB & PDF format*
What you’re doing with that freebie is called a “loss leader”: You lead with something sold at cost or at a loss, with the goal that it’ll trigger more profits (from satisfied customers that want more) than it will cost you (from customers who just want the freebie).
You’re not the only author I’ve seen who’s having success with this method. In fact, it’s how I got hooked on Lindsay Buroker.
I would be willing to use this method, myself, but only after I have at least three books out. I’ve dabbled in “free short story”, and it doesn’t seem to do anything for novel sales, unless the story has the same MCs as the novel. Even then…it doesn’t seem to be the same.
It’s great to be a fly on the wall here (getting ready to self publish a mystery novel in about 6 weeks)… thank you for the good information and advice!
Those are fabulous numbers. I THINK I’m going to put my 1st book up for free immediately on SW and then hope for the Amazon match. I won’t put it out until the 2nd book’s ready though. I’m hoping that’ll garner some interest in a newbie author :)
I’ve heard other authors say a free book bumped up the sales of the non-free books. Glad that worked for you.
I’ve not been inclined to try a free promo with the two back list mysteries, but I’m still open to the idea if I get a new book out one of these days.
Carradee–Aren’t you sweet! Thanks. :)
Ha! Yes, it’s a loss leader product for sure. And the losses can be staggering, but then the profits on the other side are very nice.
I totally understand wanting to wait until you have several books. I think it will go even better when I have an additional title in the series for sale. I have a release on Tuesday…I wonder if it will have any effect on that Penguin release.
Julia –Congratulations on your upcoming release!
Alex–It did. Of course, who knows if it will the next time I run one?
Teresa–Thanks!
Jemi–Sounds like a great plan to me. :) I’d probably take the free listing off Smashwords before I was really ready to end the promotion…it always seems to me that it takes a while to trickle down to Amazon at the *end* of the promotion, although the price match at the beginning of it happens pretty quickly.
I was a marketing consultant (the new kind, not the plaid polyester sports coat kind) before I started writing, and I continue to be, well, confused and amazed that artists are the last to this party.
In the old world, samples were a staple of marketing. Try something, like it, buy it.
In the new world, generosity is your greatest marketing tool. Not one of the greatest. THE greatest.
Yes, if you have a series, it’s better. But if you’re an unknown author trying to get interest in your first book, give it away.
Yes, it’s hard. But selling 3 copies and languishing in obscurity is hard, too.
What do you do when you finish a book? Write another one. And another one. And another one.
If you only have one book, assume that you’re always going to struggle. Somewhere around your third book, folks start saying, hey, this person might be around for a while.
Yes, you should only give your book away if you have others. But every author should have others.
The publisher’s page in all 10 of my books says to ask me for a free digital copy. I don’t even track whether the folks who get free copies ever buy from me. That’s not the point. The point is that the message that spreads, wins. The author who makes a name makes the money.
If you have any doubt about the psychology and business behind “free”, check out Chris Anderson’s book by that title (Free.) It’s a must-read for anyone who’s in business . . . and if you’re an author trying to sell books, you’re in business.
I listened to an author’s talk at my state’s book festival. Her mysteries had been unable to be traditionally
agented. The author used KDP Select
and at that time had 200,000 free downloads, but had 100,000 purchases.
She definitely felt it was worth giving away books to find an audience.
Patricia–I think it’s a good idea to have several books up to sort of lessen the sting of losing so much income on free downloads. :)
Joel –Ha! Well, I know a few authors who are very, very good at sales. But the vast majority of the ones I know are reticent sellers, a little introverted, and perhaps not very business-oriented. I include myself in that group, except I’d call myself *very* introverted. Yes, we’re not quick at jumping on any type of marketing bandwagon…usually.
A very good point about having more than one book. I think authors should always immediately start working on the next book for *many* different reasons. A big one is a financial motive. But also so that we can avoid tunnel vision with the one book that we have out. If we only have one book, it’s sort of like only-child syndrome–we focus too much on the one book instead of moving on.
jkb–I agree with her. My only caveat is that we need to keep monitoring the situation to make sure that it continues to be a good idea to run these sorts of promos. As the number of books and the number of free books on the market increases, it may end up later that it’s too challenging to get visibility among the other offerings…that we might want to look at other methods of discoverability. (For me, that would probably mean trying advertising for the first time, etc.)
The key here, as you have said, is to give away a “good” book. I self-published long before e-books were popular, so I was giving away paperback copies of my only book. My husband didn’t understand why. But for every 1 book I gave away, it seems I sold 10 through word-of-mouth. So free works if the free book is good (or, in my case, slightly decent). ;)
Elizabeth, I’m your poster who brags about 30 years of sales & marketing background.
You and Ms. Rusch are both right, and a little wrong about watching the numbers. You should be marketing for March right now. You don’t need to look at those numbers until 01-April. If you were doing expensive direct-sales ads, you would look before and after. In both cases you want to know if your methods are effective.
FREE BOOKS are having a diminishing effect for lesser-knowns than someone like yourself. The reason being: Among your ~10,000 hardcore evangelizing fans are people who’ve tried to get a friend to read your work. But the friend has books and favorites and stacks of TBR and little time.
However, when the friend sees FREE, he/she thinks, “Sally’s been trying to get me to read ESC’s work, why not?” Some of those friends will like your work and *bang* you have a new fan. General rule: 1% of a group will like just about anything reasonable. With your scenario, I would expect 3-5% conversion from never-heard-of-you to new-fan. I don’t know what your fan base is, and how many of those are evangelists, but that is how far your free book will take you. (Keep in mind, it’s an ever-increasing number that will peak and decline at some point.)
Now imagine how that works for an unknown author. New authors should rely on advertising and/or hand-selling via reviews.
Peace, Seeley
Linda–Good helps! Life is too short to read bad books (even bad *free* books!) Yours was obviously a good one. :)
Seeley–Hi there!
Exactly. Yes. I’m tracking it because I want to know if what I’m doing (i.e., setting myself up for lost revenue) is worthwhile and making a difference with my sales. Sounds like my tracking windows might be a bit off, though.
That’s an interesting point and one that I hadn’t really thought of. There’s definitely a “what do I have to lose?” aspect of a free book promo….and if an online friend happened to mention to a potential new reader that I might be worth a try, then the free promo makes the perfect time to try it out.
Reviews are becoming increasingly important, aren’t they? I think that Amazon is starting to figure reviews into their algorithm to a larger extent than in the past.