Giving away free books: how it works

If you have enrolled onto KDP select, or if you are considering doing so, read this success story:

https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/why-giving-away-thousands-of-free-books-is-a-good-thing/

Dear Shelagh,
Has anyone here ever scheduled and Event on Facebook? After reading the post, I am considering doing so. The end of my first 90 days on KDP will be up March 19th for all the single stories, and in April for All The Stories book. Since beginning this adventure with the free promotions, one of the Tales has been in the top 100 free - Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > World Literature > Mythology. For sales, my royalties yesterday totaled $32.04. At .35 cents each that is almost 90 people who have paid. Wahoo! I know I did this all wrong. I need marketing advice for the next 90 days.

Love,
Betty

You are doing great, Betty! Sales for children's books cannot match books written for adults (Kindle owners). Keep chipping away.

I hate to tell you what my royalties are for my self-published ebook....you are doing grrreat.

Betty,
I am proud to know you.

Happy for you, Betty. Your determination pays off.

I am laughing, I got an email statetment that I sold no books.
Then got a check in the mail . Too funny!

Better than receiving an email saying you sold some books and a check for $0.00!

The first term for your book in the KDP program is about to be renewed on March 6th, Alice. I can set up a new free promotion any time after the 6th. Do you have any preferred dates for the free promotion?

Shelagh,
Anytime will work for me. Thank you.

I am wondering about timing of promotions. I doubt that The Ides Of March is some date to grab a hold on, but I wonder about school vacations for Easter. I am thinking about Basil - Kung Fu Rabbit for Easter.
What are the best promotion dates of the year?

Love,
Betty

If there is a best promotion date, Betty, you can bet that others have the same idea and readers will be faced with a deluge of free books to choose from. Pick dates that suit you and the time you have available to promote the free book.

Dear Shelagh,
You have given me an idea to consider. I think back to the time when my children were young. I was working all week, coming home tired to the bones. My children wanted my attention. I read them a story every night. A short story. In those days, nothing much was available except the stories that I had read to my ownself when I was their age. Now, many short stories are out there and the ebook reader makes them very convienient. So many to choose from, however. I imagine the trick is to keep your free stories up front as long as you can. Alice's stories, your own stories, my stories are all candidates for the read a little, discuss and love your child a lot kind of story.

Diane has kindly allowed me to try to write a story about her beautiful African Red Bellied Parrot, Sport. It is the first story I have tried to write in quite a while. On another thread we discussed the evaporation of our personal muses. Mine had gone way past Africa, but with the help of all y'all she has slowly peeked around my corner. I read Ann's post about knowing your character and knowing the setting of the story. I have been learning about Diane's beautiful Sport and slowly putting the story together. Finally, I am at a point that I can see the history, the unfolding, the freedom of spirit that a caged bird must feel for the story to end happilyt.

The good part is that I am back to blurting. For me, that is good.

Love,
Betty

That is good, Betty. Readers love new stories. Always have, always will.

I echo D.K.'s comments. None of my self-published Kindle books in fiction, poetry and law have approached these sales. Congratulations, Betty!

Now for a dissonant note about the KDP Select promotions. I put two of my three books (poetry and short-story collection) on KDP Select and tried three days of promotions at different times, one day at a time. The free downloads were gratifying--hundreds for both--and both books did well on their respective free book rankings, especially during the first day. However, this did not translate into any significant uptick in sales--neither for the Kindle books nor for their respective paperback versions. My experience seems to indicate that there are a healthy number of people trolling for free books both here and in the U.K., but when the giveaways end, paid sales are either unaffected or fall off from sales prior to the giveaways. Perhaps my case is unusual because the three books are in unrelated fields and someone who likes the poetry book will not necessarily be interested in the intellectual property book or in the speculative fiction collection. Perhaps. But I suspect that authors with my experience largely remain silent about it while the few with very good sales resulting from this program and its lending and giveaway options understandably sound off about it giving off an impression of success that may not be translatable for most authors.

I suspect that KDP Select works well for two groups of authors: those with related titles who can give away the first book in a series as a loss leader, even if its sales are hurt, and more than make it up by increased interest and sales of their related titles. Thus, giving away book one of a trilogy can invigorate the two sequels. The other group I believe can reap significant benefit is authors who are well known in their fields whose works may lead to significant "borrows" for which they can be compensated especially for books selling at nominal prices of $.99-2.99 where the royalties may be lower than the author's share of the KDP pool for books borrowed. (My books have been borrowed only a couple of times, perhaps in part because they list at $2.99 and $1.99 respectively and I suspect readers prefer to borrow costlier books given their one book per month limit, though this is only supposition on my part.)

Bottom line: I will definitely not renew my books in KDP Select after the 90 day period and will re-list them on BN and elsewhere and am thankful to not have enrolled my intellectual property book in the program which has significantly and steadily increased in sales for both the Kindle and soft cover versions over the past three months. I know I am not alone in this experience despite the many voices touting the benefits of the KDP Select program. I also believe that the flood of free books made possible by this popular program will eventually hurt sales for the vast majority of authors rather than help them as readers' focus on their overstuffed Kindles with free books rather than search for new books to buy of both the electronic and soft/hard cover varieties.

Victor, I think the freebie as a loss leader followed by sequels at a price, makes good sense.

What Abe said.

I love my Kindle Fire and will get my hubby one.

Abe,

I absolutely agree. My basic point is that for those of us who do not have current sequels or ones planned for the immediate future, this program can hurt much more than it helps.

Victor

The first of my series of detective books is published on Kindle. The second is in beta reading now, and I am writing the third. My plan aligns with what you said. When all three are published, later this year, I'll make the first one free for a promotional period.

It has been my experience with the little stories I have put up as free that after the first two days I may have just as well pulled them off the promotion and waitied for a while and put them up again for another two days. One day was not enough and three days in a row was a waste of promotional time by a day, in my experience. But that is my experience, only, and I have no following at all. I consider that people who are looking for free books have a short attention time limit and turn on to other free stories if they have not selected yours.

I consider it is like people who go to a library, search the shelf for someone they know or someone they have been told about, pick out something that is close to what they were looking for after reading the first three pages, take it home and, after a few drinks. prop up their pillow and hope to enjoy. It is the way it is.

Love,
Betty

I agree Betty.

Rather than participating in the KDP Select I will do occasional book giveaways at Library Thing and Goodreads. People requesting the free books are likelier to actually read the product description and learn a little more about the author than those who simply download free books that they may or may not be interested in reading and may or may not actually read.

With the exception of the books and textbooks published through traditional publishers that I do not control, I've made my new books available through Google Books so that anyone who wants to get a decent preview of my writing can access them for free. I also offer free previews of most of my books through my website. I think that is more that enough for anyone to get a good idea of whether my books are worth buying at their modest price in their Kindle or soft cover versions. I'd rather send a free paperback to one of 650 people who are interested in my book than allow 650 people to download it for free based on a title or book cover.

Again, though, for someone with related books in a given genre and especially for books in a series, giving away a book makes perfect sense.

Victor

When I want free books, I go to the Kindle Top 100 Free books of the day and select two or three. Sometimes I'm lucky; sometimes I'm not.

Dear Victor,
I think that children's books are the hardest genre there is for a new author to get noticed. Children are overwhelmed by the Disney presentations. Movies, action figures, princess castles, coloring books all made to order baby sitters.
For me, if I had nothing to give away for free, chances were slim that a single person would have read one of my stories. I doubt that many people have looked at my website.
But, if I had enough stories to keep one or two in the top 100 free maybe, just maybe people would start buying
[/i]The Tales Of Wooffer's Woods (All The Stories) as a Kindle download or paperback version of the same.

I have begun writing new stories for the second edition of The Tales of Wooffer's Woods.
I wish you all success with your venture. It is a wilderland out there. None of us know the right path to take.

Dear Diane,
I have begun to read The Virginian by Owen Wister because our Ann has quoted from it a couple of times. There is poetry in his prose and I love that. It is a free Kindle download. Worth ever so much more. The story of Sport is coming along.
Love,
Betty

Betty,

I hope you are enjoying one of my favorite novels of all time. I have had it on my computer for some time, as a Project Gutenberg download, but as the Kindle Reader is so much easier to use, especially on my new little netbook (Lynn told me I would be using it for a book reader; I told her my phone was fine; she said, "Wait and see." Now I have to apologize to her), I just downloaded the free version, too, and am rereading it.


remember when we were both reading Huckleberry Finn? We swapped some cool posts. We should do that again. Maybe some of the others would be interested, too.

Ann

Dear Ann,
There are books that sing to your heart. They are few.

I imagine the writer has a song that they have hoarded in their heart and finally it had to burst out. With your Redstone series I imagine that your heart has exploded and your soul is now on paper. You, my friend, are not just another sappy voice, your voice is poetry. you are the real deal.

Love,
Betty