Self-publishing can be a doorway to success the likes of which few authors rarely see. Some of the biggest names in the industry rose to prominence after independently publishing their works. But, reaching these lofty heights is not easy. Becoming an author through the self-published route is a challenging process, and presents a number of hurdles that may not be present for authors who gain their notoriety through the traditional publishing scene.
When attempting to succeed in the self-publishing world, you need to use all the tools you have at your disposal. One such tool that you have, that traditionally published authors don’t, is the ability to give your book away for free.
After all, you and nobody else controls the price.
But why would you do that? It would seem crazy to put so much effort into a project, only to offer it up for the grand total of nothing. In actual fact, there are definite advantages to listing your eBook as a free product. In this article, we look at why, as well as how to do it.
Get Your Name Out There
Perhaps one of the biggest issues in the self-publishing space, and one of the greatest challenges new authors face in 2019, is discoverability. There are nearly 800,000 self-published books committed to stores annually, which creates an immense amount of competition for those who are looking to become a commercially successful writer.
For new authors, finding your audience is incredibly difficult in the current publishing climate, which means you’ll need all the help you can get. By listing an eBook as free, you effectively open yourself up to the market as a ‘risk-free’ option.
Payment for an eBook from an unknown author, whose works you’ve never read before, is less appealing to your typical reader than going for that tried-and-tested best seller. You have to coax your readership into your world, and from there you can start to establish your rapport with them, building a name for yourself as an author that writes content worth paying for.
The basic principle is that offering something for nothing means you are more likely to get downloads and interest. By getting more downloads and interest, you open opportunities to sell yourself in other ways — such as being the damn good writer that you are — and by doing so, create a platform from which you can then sell other works.
Hook Your Readers Into a Series
Writing a series of crime novels or an epic fantasy saga? If so, you’ve likely got lots of books to come, and plenty of chances to sell more and more copies to fans of the series. But onboarding fans, as we’ve already discussed, is not easy.
What you want to do is give them a taste. Hook them in and stop them for leaving until the final word hits the page. Samples can support this, but a reader is a lot more likely to become truly invested in your series if they’ve read an entire book from start to finish.
Offering them the first in your eBook series for free presents more opportunities for downloads, and exposes a greater number of readers to your saga. The more people that read, the more likely you are to produce fans of the series, which in turn allows you to then offer up following works as paid books.
Now they’re invested, now they want to know more, your reader is a lot more likely to go ahead and pay to go deeper into the world you’ve created than if you started out trying to charge them from book one.
Acquire Much Needed Feedback
Reviews and feedback are essential in publishing. They not only help you promote your book, and entice others to pick it up, but they also allow you to see how your ideas and creations are being perceived in the commercial space. What are you doing well? What aren’t you doing well?
The more feedback you get, the better your next publications can be. However, achieving reviews can be a difficult and time-consuming process. More often than not, it involves outreach and paid services. Yet, there are other opportunities.
Genuine reviews from consumers are like gold dust. Collect these and you’ll be primed to climb the ladder of self-publishing success. But how do you build up a healthy supply? The simple answer is, you get more downloads and you reach more people.
Giving your eBook away for free is one surefire way to do that.
How to ‘Sell’ Your eBook for Free
Okay, so we all know that really, we want to be marketing our self-published books on Amazon Kindle and their eBook marketplace. Amazon have the lion’s share of the book retail market. Around 20% of all books sold in the U.S are done so on Kindle, and as a whole, the international Amazon platform sells around 500 million eBooks per year.
If you want to get downloads, you need to be on Amazon.
But Amazon doesn’t like to give away things for free. That won’t net them any profit, so why bother? The result is that you can’t just list your eBook as free on Amazon, which is a problem. This doesn’t mean you can’t give it away, though, you just have to put in a little extra leg work.
The process is actually quite simple.
Amazon won’t let you list your eBook for free right off the bat, but being a competitive marketplace that wants to dominate any rival, they won’t just let somebody else give customers a better deal either. All you have to do is list your eBook for free in other places, such as iBooks, Nook by Barnes and Noble and Kobo. Once you’ve done this, just message Amazon from your KDP account with links to your eBook listed as free in other locations. Amazon will then ‘price match’ your published works, bringing it down to $0.00.
Now you can give away your eBook for free and enjoy the benefits that come with it.
An important note to be aware of is that Amazon will occasionally update their systems or decide to switch your listing back to paid. Keep an eye out and if you see them change it, just message them again. It’s more than likely an automated process and they’ll usually revert it for you. Just be sure to ask nicely!
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