What happens when you give your ebooks away for free — update
I tested what happens when you give your ebooks away for free with two editions of my book How to Self-Publish Your Book: The Fast, Free & Easy Way. When I offered the first edition of the book for free, I got 678 free downloads in a month. All in all, the book got 14 reviews, both from sold and free copies and my email list got 10 new subscribers who wanted another free ebook.
I don’t think these results justify giving your ebook away for free UNLESS it’s the first book in a series and you want to give it away as a tester so that the readers then start buying other books in the series. That can work but other than that, I’d say don’t expect too much from free ebook offers.
As for the new edition of How to Self-Publish Your Book: The Fast, Free & Easy Way, it was published in November 2018 and I enrolled it in Amazon KDP Select to test how making an ebook exclusive on Amazon would work. The program includes promotion option of offering your ebook for free for a few days. During these free days, the book got 213 downloads.
So far, the book has 4 reviews and, as I noticed before, there is a curious phenomenon that when you start giving away your books away for free, they tend to get less stars in reviews even though the reviews are positive. For instance, one of the book reviews is only 3 stars but says nothing but positive things about the book.
In effect, this 3 star review that is there for no clear reason can cause more damage than good. People tend to glance at the overall star ratings when evaluating the book and a low review can negatively affect their decision to buy. That’s I’ll just stop giving my books away for free in the future.
I didn’t offer anything as an incentive to subscribers in the new edition, and only one or two people subscribed. But then I get most of my subscribers from blog posts anyway and I do not need to give them my books for free — they subscribe because I offer good and useful content through blog posts.
