I started publishing ebooks as far back as 2009. One of the many questions I had was how on earth would I be able to gain enough exposure and sell more copies? The biggest suggestion is to offer your books for free. So I have. I have taken full advantage of both Smashwords and Amazon when it comes to giving away free books. The only problem I thought I had was the exclusivity agreement that Amazon proposed. Three months is a very long time to wait to put your ebooks up on other sites. But, nevertheless, I tried it.
I tried it with all six of my titles.
Here's how many copies I've given away in all:
Smashwords - 4,274 copies
Amazon - 2,023 copies
Total: 6,297 copies
Does giving away free copies translate to actual paid sales?
In my opinion - Nope!
If anything, I think this helps you lose money. Both Free and 99 cents used to be good tactics to get your books out there. Sadly, that's not the case anymore. Sure, it is fun to get that little bit of an ego boost when you see your free title climb the charts...but that euphoric high is short lived once the promotions end.
The only thing that carried over was that I recieved one or two extra reviews and that's pretty much it.
So, for now, I think I'm going to drop out of KDP altogether and consider it just a simple experiment that didn't quite work for me.
After all, if exposure was key, I think I've exposed myself enough already.
No comments:
Post a Comment