A lot of people have been asking me if free kindle books increase sales.
So I wanted to take some time to talk about that today.
Now before we get started I wanted to briefly discuss the two different types of free books.
Under Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) platform, an eBook can either be
(1) free (on a promotional and thus temporary basis) or
(2) free permanently.
Obviously, if you offer a free book permanently, you won’t make any money.
So the focus of this blog post is on whether free book promotions will increase your book royalties.
Is Offering Free Books Smart?
I see many new self-published authors offering books for free all the time.
Now, people have different opinions about this.
But in my opinion is that is not a good strategy for new authors for several reasons.
First, because you are a new author (or at least a new pen name), your name will not be highly recognizable.
As a result, you will probably not get many downloads (likely less than 100 or 200 downloads).
Now, you may argue that it helps build up your audience.
However, I believe writing (and publishing) consistently is what builds an audience on a long-term basis.
Second, working for free kind of sucks if you ask me.
And I’m the kind of person who kind of gets easily discouraged if I’m not making money.
So from a pure psychological standpoint, offering a book for free when you are just starting out is not good for your money making mindset.
In fact, I still remember the high I got when I sold my first book.
I made $2 bucks and I couldn’t believe someone paid for something I wrote! I was like a shark that smelled blood.
And I wanted MORE and that really motivated me to publish more books!
When To Publish Free Books?
Now I’m not 100% against offering free books. I just think authors need to be strategic about it.
And there are a few instances where I think it may be appropriate to offer a book for free on KDP.
The first is when you are promoting a book in a series. Let’s say you have a 3 or 4+ book series.
It may be smart to offer the first book for free to get readers hooked and get them to buy books 3, 4, 5, and so on.
Now just be sure to end book 1 on a cliffhanger so they are much more likely to buy the other books in the series!
The other time when I think offering free books is appropriate is when you have a large catalog of books.
This way you can advertise your catalog of books in the backmatter to try and up-sell them.
I have seen this work a few times with my own books.
Sometimes when I offer a book for free, I see a noticeable increase in sales from my backmatter. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s really nice when it does!
But those are really the only two situations where I see offering a free book can actually help you make more money.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I think free kindle books CAN increase your sales. However, you have to be smart about it.
Creating a free book as a new kindle author isn’t going to help you much. And I don’t think it’s going to help you build an audience – at least the kind that you want.
But, there are some situations where offering free books can result in a noticeable increase in sales.
As always, it’s smart to experiment around and see what works with you.
Readers, have any of you had good experiences with offering books for free on KDP?
Did it really increase your sales? Or did nothing really happen?
Let me know in the comments!