Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

That is the question. Most of us who write books want others to read them. For that to happen, people have to know the books are out there. One way we try and get the word out is through mass freebies.
But I wonder if readers have gotten so used to watching for freebies they've stopped looking for books to buy. Freebies for reviews and contests aside, are indie authors doing themselves more harm than good by giving away the store?

I've wondered the same question about free. But, I do offer some of my writing for free ... several short stories set in my alternative worlds. I don't do free promotions for my paid work because I haven't figured out how to do it on Amazon without doing Kindle Select.

Sales? I'm a "dribble seller", but I give-away a lot of short stories. Can't see where I've made any conversion from "free" to "paid".

I figure, if they take the first book for free and don't like it enough to buy the second one, then that's fair. The challenge SHOULD be to get them to read the first one. Once they've done that, they should be waiting to buy the next. It shouldn't be a challenge to sell it to them. I still don't sell a lot, but I've definitely sold more since doing a free promo of book one.

I just wonder if, instead of looking for your (or my) next book, readers are just looking for the nearest free one.

I always sell more after a freebie, sometimes substantially more.

There are also a couple of writers who have secured my business with freebies or .99 deals. There's also the stuff I've deleted un or partially read, usually because it's terrible, occasionally because it is not what I expected.

It is worth mentioning that there are a few writers that I will download when free, but will not buy, and it's not because they're giving away the store. It's because the quality is marginal. It's the difference between picking something up from the 25 cent table at the church sale and buying it in B&N. I might read it, but there are dozens and dozens of books that occupy a higher priority in my budget.

D.C. wrote: "I always sell more after a freebie, sometimes substantially more.

There are also a couple of writers who have secured my business with freebies or .99 deals. There's also the stuff I've deleted ..."

I could say the same for myself on all accounts.

I'm very close to being finished with my first novel, and am planning to offer it free to Goodreads members for a very limited time. After that it will be .99 for a short period. Both "promotions" are geared towards generating initial interest, as was making the first two chapters free while I finished writing. The feedback I have received so far has been positive, so we'll just have to wait and see.

KD wrote: "I'm very close to being finished with my first novel, and am planning to offer it free to Goodreads members for a very limited time. After that it will be .99 for a short period. Both "promotions"..."

Free tends to work best if you have multiple titles. It does raise the visibility of the free title, and I've had sales piggyback off a free period, but keep in mind that the people who've gotten that one free won't buy the same title.

D.C. wrote: "KD wrote: "I'm very close to being finished with my first novel, and am planning to offer it free to Goodreads members for a very limited time. After that it will be .99 for a short period. Both "..."

Although continued promotion could encourage them to actually read said free title :). So keep on keepin on, and don't be afraid to try new things.

I did do three of my five days on Amazon. It's gotten my book out there and people began adding it to their to-read list. It was less than ten percent, but I don't expect it. I don't to-read everything I buy or download.

Point is, it was sedentary until I did the free weekend. I guess I'm hoping they'll read book one and be open to book two (three and four) and everything else I write. One can hope...

D.C. wrote: "KD wrote: "I'm very close to being finished with my first novel, and am planning to offer it free to Goodreads members for a very limited time. After that it will be .99 for a short period. Both "..."

This has been my experience. The first book in my series is free, and many people are purchasing the second book because they want to continue reading about the characters.

I think free is a good thing, but it should be used primarily by authors with, at the very least, two books. If, for example, you have three titles published in a series, making the first free is a good strategic move.

There will always be readers who'd rather not buy anything - and will only ever download what costs them nothing. However, there will also ALWAYS be those of us willing to put down the cash for a rewarding story. In the long-term, you get what you pay for.

Even those who hold out for freebies aren't valueless to your bottom line. I know I have at least a couple of readers who wait for freebies and jump on them, but--the ones I'm aware of review, they increase visibility, and they recommend my books to their friends. Personally, I really appreciate their loyalty, too.

I've been downloading quite a few freebies of late. I'm new to this whole kindle thing. As I work my way through them I've been leaving reviews. Also, I've bought other books, or plan to when my to read list has dwindled a bit, by the authors that I've enjoyed. Most of what I've download for free are books I would have never considered reading. Its opening my eyes to new genres and writers.

I'm all for free if it's for a limited time and the author is announcing it briefly. I don't like straight up free the minute it's released and remains free and is promoted on all freebie sites..I just don't get the idea behind it.

Justin wrote: "I'm all for free if it's for a limited time and the author is announcing it briefly. I don't like straight up free the minute it's released and remains free and is promoted on all freebie sites..I ..."

Usually either to increase the author's fanbase, or as a gift to the public. Or both.

Don't get me wrong: there's nothing the matter with giving your books away free if you want. But it seems that if we're doing it as a means to develop paying customers, the mass of readers downloading freebies may not be turning into buyers of our future work.

I have three books out and did free promos on all of them to get them out. Now I plan not to go freewith my fourth book, but take the Countdown path which has been just great in terms of revenue generation.

Not convinced that the free thing has really helped, to be honest.

Joel wrote: "Don't get me wrong: there's nothing the matter with giving your books away free if you want. But it seems that if we're doing it as a means to develop paying customers, the mass of readers downloa..."

You are correct about the mass not becoming buyers. It's the few I'm aiming for.

During the three years since my novel was released, the marketing representative, assigned by the publisher, has only provided 15 promotional copies to be given away for free - 5 for me to give to whomever I chose, when the book was initially released, and 10 in November, 2013, as prizes for the winners of a Goodreads Giveaway contest.

The marketing representative projected that the contest would probably attract approximately 1.000 participants and about half of them would indicate their intent to read the book, whether they won or not.

The projection proved accurate. 1,045 readers entered the giveaway and 452 placed the book on their TBR shelf. When I excitedly informed the marketing rep. of this, he cautioned me to temper my anticipation, because, based upon his experience, intent to read a book posted on a literary website is more wishful thinking than actual intent and seldom, if ever, translates into an actual sale.

The marketing rep's. forecast proved prophetic. The two quarterly sales reports and royalty checks, received, since the giveaway contest closed in January, 2014, reflected no dramatic increase in sales.

Jim wrote: "During the three years since my novel was released, the marketing representative, assigned by the publisher, has only provided 15 promotional copies to be given away for free - 5 for me to give to ..."

I enjoy doing Goodreads Giveaways. I've got one going now, in fact. But I don't think of them as doing much for book sales. Silly as it sounds, I think of them more as a way to do something for the Goodreads community. It's fun to do that once in awhile.

I have tried free on a couple of titles alongside Kindle Countdown. The first free resulted in nearly 3,000 downloads and a no 1 on the KDP genre list for two days.

Unfortunately due to my own editing errors reviewers who have not set their Kindles to auto-update are still reviewing the original version prior to professional editing.

My second book which has never been free is my best seller. My third had free days and countdowns as has my fourth and fifth. No impact at all and barely any free downloads either.

Not sure why a first book from a new author had thousands of free downloads and follow up books had nothing including the sequel to the first book. I remain unconvinced that free achieve anything.

Have never done a Goodreads Giveaway - perhaps I need to

I think free will only make sense for the first time writer,an unknown and a self-published author. There is no point to make subsequent work free. But if you have a full length novel as your first work, the best way is to write another short story as a prelude to your work to be given away for free.

What I don't understand is for well-known authors, traditionally published who also give their works for free? I mean what's up with that? Also there is no point to give your subsequent work for free.

I'm myself had done three free giveaway of my short story for free with a mixed result. Sometimes it helps with the sales afterward and it helps to get the review. But for my coming second short story (coming out Oct 12) I'm not going to give it away for free anymore.

I believe there are 10,000+ novels in English published every month. As a first-time author I'm discovering that it is difficult to even give away copies of a book. You just get lost in the relentless flood of new work. I've put up links to free downloads here on Goodreads and elsewhere, but this generated very little interest.

Just getting strangers to read the book is a challenge. The Goodreads Giveaway program is working well for me in that regard. I've got about 800 requests for 15 books. It appears that there are hundreds of people who play that lottery. Whether it will generate sales, or even reviews, I remain doubtful, but we'll see. The Giveaway ends tomorrow.

I am personally against this 'freebie culture'. To start with, I don't know how many people really read books downloaded for free. It's a click and it's on your kindle, but will you read it? There is no data to tell us how many 'giveaway' books get read in the end...

The second point is that I believe it 'undermines' or devalues the books (I can hear tomatoes whizz ing past my ears, but that's my view...). I mean that it encourages people to download books on the basis of their price, rather than of the beauty if the book (encourages does not mean everybody who downloads a free book does so, but I believe this is the culture being encouraged).

This said, it depends on the reasons why it's free/super discounted. If it were free/super discounted to make it available to people for whom the full price is too much, I'd be all for it. For many people and on many countries, £3 is a lot of money! Also having said this, one of my books is permanently available for free, but that's because I wrote it as a little present to my readers and it will stay like that.... It's not a promotion, it's a present.

Adriano wrote: "I am personally against this 'freebie culture'. To start with, I don't know how many people really read books downloaded for free. It's a click and it's on your kindle, but will you read it? There ..."

Totally agree with all points.

New writers often reach for FREE automatically thinking it will make them more visible. But if thousands of other new writers are doing the same, you're still a needle in a haystack.

Look on pretty much any eBook site and you'll see that there's an absolute glut of FREE.

Supply and demand says that will devalue the product. But unfortunately I think it only serves to devalue indie books. The big publishing houses aren't seeing a dive in book prices, and they continue to sell because people trust their quality more.

For indie authors, I think, the dangers of FREE are many:
* Devaluation
* FREE makes your work appear amateurish. You're more likely to look like a noob desperate for attention.
* There is, as Adriano says a FREE culture: people who only download free books. These people are often hoarders, more than readers. They get a brief high from downloading any book for free. Doesn't mean they'll ever read them.
* Free book hoarders are actually more likely to give 1-star reviews to books they've downloaded...just on the basis that the book is in a genre they don't like. It's true. It happens.

All that said, FREE is a viable marketing strategy IF it's used sparingly and smartly. As many have said, the first book in a series could be made free in the hopes of getting paying customers on the rest of the series. That's totally cool...IF you write a good series. The problem with it that I see is that in most of the series I've read the first book is really the only one worth paying for. But that's a different scenario.

Another viable FREE scenario (which I'm trying to employ, but amazon's being really annoying in their failure to play along!) is to make some short stories free that are in the same setting as other longer works. In my case, I've got two short stories set in the same SF universe as a not-free novella already published. I'll shortly be publishing a not-free collection that will include another novella and a new novelette (in addition to the two free short stories). The short stories I hope are representative of the other stories set in this universe, so they should be good examples of what I write.

When the one short story was price matched to FREE by amazon, there was a small blip in sales of my other work. But so far I've been unable to twist amazon's arm to set the other (more important) short story to FREE, so it's sitting at $0.99. **shrug**

Oh, and on a contrary note, I've read the experience of some people who have counter-intuitively RAISED their book prices and experienced an increase in sales.

Actually...I think right before my collection comes out, I'll do that on my not-free novella and novel and see what happens.

Basically it seems that the biggest jump in my amazon sales always comes when something new happens: publishing a new work, dropping a price to free, etc.

Will be interesting to see what happens.

In the past, Baen Books has made many of their older books free.

Micah wrote: "Adriano wrote: "I am personally against this 'freebie culture'. To start with, I don't know how many people really read books downloaded for free. It's a click and it's on your kindle, but will you..."

Yep, on all points. My free days got a couple of thousand downloads. NO reviews - not even bad ones. The first gave some following bump in sales. The second - barely a blip. Mine sold better after I raised the price.

Actually, my first freebie has worked well for me.It helped me more on GR than it did on Amazon. I ran it for three days right before a holiday. I will be running three single day freebie promotions spread over several weeks. To see what it does for my visibility.

My first romance novel was free for 5 days at the end of the summer and was downloaded over 12,500 times, resulting in about 300 sales the week after (sales were combined 1st and 2nd novels).
Second romance novel was free for 3 days in September resulting in only about 5,000 downloads and NO increase in sales after. Go figure. I just think it's luck of the draw...no rhyme or reason to how one promotion works and the other doesn't. However, thinking my timing may have been bad for second offering (right after a holiday weekend?)
Doing my first 99 cent offering next week on my first novel so we'll see how that goes. Ugh!!!!

I don't like to put the books as Free I like to drop them to .99 sometimes, but I don't like it when I hear authors say they are selling so many books but they are actually free. I try to sell my books legitimately, i don't think a free book should get a higher selling record if they are not actually being bought.I also feel it causes others to lose sales to freebies. I'd rather do review for review or have the books on Kindle Unlimited.

I understand the logic behind the "free Promotions", but am hesitant to try it again. I've done it twice, with my first two novels with no noticeable upswing in sales. After talking to several "readers" who take advantage of free book offers all the time, filling their e-readers up with a back-log of books they admit that they'll never get around to reading, I begin to wonder just how effective freebies really are. Judging from psychology as I know it, people are more apt to read a book they paid for because it has more value in their minds. I will probably do another freebie of my first novel sometime again in the future, but all the others will only go on sale now and then.

P.S. wrote: "I don't like to put the books as Free I like to drop them to .99 sometimes, but I don't like it when I hear authors say they are selling so many books but they are actually free. I try to sell my b..."

Agree a sale means an exchange of value - free is not a sale by definition. Given that Amazon et al must lose money on the deal not sure why they support it. They have to pay for the delivery infrastructure the storing of the book the sales processing. Not trying to make money for Amazon etc. but economically they are creating a cost problem for themselves.

They compensate at lower than $2.99 by changing the royalty level from 70% down to 35% so as freebies have grown so have Amazon's costs but of course they limit free days in KDP Select, although some get round the limitation outside select by forcing Amazon to price match a Smashwords or other free edition. Still not sure of the whole point. Still I have tried free days and now countdown as alternative pricing strategies

I've concluded the key isn't the free price as much as it is the free advertising. You can post a notice about your freebie in dozens of places at no cost; that's how people find out about it. If there could be something similar for indie/self-published authors, that would, I think, serve us better than giving away the store.

To be fair ive a lot of free on my kindle at this poiont. Go through them at my leisure but I just grab what I see when I see it, so it'll take a long time to get through. I grab those less for the titles and more for the, "yep its free" marker, so it probably gets them out there, but doesnt necessarily get them read.

I have separate folders on my Kindle for books that I download. A FREE folder and a PURCHASED folder -- which do you think I read from first? Even the 99 cent cheapos go in the purchased folder. I don't even look at the free folder unless I have nothing left in the purchased folder.
So, yeah, my free book may have been downloaded 12,500 times, but I'll be lucky if even a few hundred of those actually take the time to read it.
On the other hand, 350 people downloaded it when it was 99 cents so they are more likely to read it - so not only will I get paid more, it's going to get READ more!

This is my first novel and I do have a giveaway Juror 1389: Dorsie Raines Renningerwhich I did to establish a presence on Goodreads. However, what I've found to be most effect in giving away free copies is to find "people of influence". I live in a large retirement community with over 100 book clubs. My beta readers were from book clubs (people of influence). One beta reader is a "person of influence" throughout the community, in many social groups, influential in church related activities, etc. She has become the official 1389 Ambassador. Through her I've been invited as guest speaker to over 10 book clubs (15+ members)that will be reading 1389. By word-of-mouth book club facilitators tell other facilitators what their clubs are reading. Through my "person of influence", I've also been invited to three "Wanna be Writers" groups. This all translates to hard sales because these readers want their books signed. Consider finding your "people of influence" to help in your word-of-mouth marketing campaign. Much, much better than faceless people who just collect freebies because they're free.

Follow-Up Post: I'm new on Goodreads and if I made an error in stating my book giveaway in my former post, my apologies. Hope you'll extend a forgiveness to a newbie. Next time I'll be a more respectful/knowledgeable participant.

I have gotten books on Kindle Unlimited for free and that is how I often discover new writers. I also leave reviews on Goodreads and Amazon and tell people about them on social networking sites. It also spurs me to purchase other books that the authors have for sale on Amazon, especially if the books are part of a series. So, even though I am just a clinical social worker and published poet, and not a "person of influence", you would be surprised at how much people like myself can improve your book recognition and sales.

After reading this post I'm thinking about changing my strategy from doing several free days, to just dropping it to 99 cents. It also has the added benefit of not dropping my paid Kindle ranking, which I've worked hard to maintain.

The only reason I'd go free is to gain exposure and gain reviews (which I badly need). But if people aren't going to read it, there's not much point is there.

Remember, although you can only have one set period of Kindle Countdown (99 cents)per 3 months -- you can do it in both US and UK markets at different times!
Just realized that myself and thought I'd share!

Freebies, as opposed to cheap books:
I've come to the conclusion that there exists a huge pool of readers who aren't buyers.
I'm a buyer, and now I have KU so I can read for free and know the author gets something for his/her work. But I also have hundreds, possibly thousands, of free books I've downloaded and not gotten around to reading.
I believe that many get the free emails and look only for what's free. If their reading time is saturated by free stuff, why pay?
I read what I pay for, because the book got me interested enough to overcome the reluctance to spend money on something I wasn't sure I'd like. If I still have time, then I'll look for an interesting freebie.
Meantime, there are inflated numbers of 'sales' that cheapen the ratings.
Freebies aren't really helping any Indie author/publisher.

I figure readers are able to get a free sample of my books on most of the major retailer sites. And I post some short stories for free. Beyond that I am against freebies at this point. But I am for looking for readers who read a lot in the same genre as my book, who leave honest reviews, and who don't have hundreds of books on their to-read list. For these readers I will give a free copy. And most, but not all of them, will eventually read my book and provide a review or at least a rating.

I am always willing to provide free on request especially for fellow authors who I figure may give me a private review if not a public one; however when I tried to get Beta readers via GR I was underwhelmed by the response.

I have not tried free give-aways as they seem to require physical books and I have decided against that publishing route for my latest offerings.

Owww..looks like the debate will go on?

Philip wrote: "I am always willing to provide free on request especially for fellow authors who I figure may give me a private review if not a public one; however when I tried to get Beta readers via GR I was und..."

The freebies I had in mind when I started this post referred to the Kindle KDP Select option of offering up to five days of freebies every three months. I've tried that with the Kindle version of one of my books, and was underwhelmed. Some people have had better experiences, but it sounds like most have not.

Joel wrote: "Philip wrote: "I am always willing to provide free on request especially for fellow authors who I figure may give me a private review if not a public one; however when I tried to get Beta readers v..."

Same here Joel, yes they may help spread the name and therefore they could be equated to an ad campaign but like on-line ad campaigns I am unconvinced they are doing an individual author or the self-pub community any good. Going to be trying another countdown instead soon so I guess I'll see as a comparison

Angela wrote: "I have gotten books on Kindle Unlimited for free and that is how I often discover new writers. I also leave reviews on Goodreads and Amazon and tell people about them on social networking sites. It..."

You are a person of influence. "Person of influence" is a marketing term used to help sales representatives identify a person within a organization who can influence a decision maker to purchase a product or not. In this venue a decision maker is a potential reader.

L.F. wrote: "I understand the logic behind the "free Promotions", but am hesitant to try it again. I've done it twice, with my first two novels with no noticeable upswing in sales. After talking to several "r..."

The object of free "sales" used to be to increase your "number of sales" count with Amazon, for the purpose of moving your book from obscurity to page one or two of the listings (the all-important "visibility" portion of marketing). Then, after the free days expired, you'd find yourself well up in the normal listings. It didn't matter if those books got read or not -- only that they went out Amazon's "door".

It worked great through 2012. Then Amazon changed the "rules" (their formulas) and that "play" no longer worked unless you could manage over 2000-3000 "give-aways" (hard to do). For all intents and purposes, that "golden goose" was slaughtered.

The "count-down" play seems rather lame by comparison and publishers and authors have been thrashing around trying to find another way to get "visible".