I subscribe to a
service called BookBub, which notifies me of daily e-book deals. The prices for
a Kindle version range from $2.99 to free.
Although I’d had
bad luck with free books in the past, I decided to try one or two of those “deals.”
After all, what did I have to lose?
A lot, as I will
explain two paragraphs down.
Free means badly
written by an author who clearly has no understanding of the principles of
fiction writing. I’m sure there are exceptions, but that is what it has meant every
time I’ve gotten a Kindle book for that price. And that includes those books
advertised as having “over 5000 five-star Goodreads ratings.” I’m convinced
that these authors join a network of writers who agree to give five-star ratings
to each other’s books without even reading them.
I’m a busy woman
who already has a long reading list. Any time spent on a bad book is time I can’t
spend on a good one. And although I’m much better than I used to be, something
in me still balks at putting a book down before I have finished it. So I don’t
buy free books.
The main reason to
give away free books is to generate paid sales. If people will love your book,
they will rave about it and tell all their friends (Facebook or otherwise), who
will then rush out and buy it. Or if it is the first in a series, the people
who receive the free one will pay for the subsequent ones. That’s the theory,
anyway.
These authors of
these substandard books probably believe they are good writers, but there are
only two reasons why conventional (as opposed to experimental) books don’t
sell. The author is either a poor marketer (which I understand very well) or a
bad writer.
If you are a poor
marketer, I doubt that giving away free books is enough to overcome it, and if
you are a bad writer, the practice can actually be counterproductive.
Given an
interesting concept, I might take a chance and spend a few dollars to buy a
book. I have bought several of the $1.99 and $2.99 books highlighted on BookBub,
and most have been worth it. If the book I paid for is bad, I won’t buy another
from the same writer. But at least that person has made a portion of the money
I already spent. If the book is free, the writer doesn’t even get that.
So before you sell
your book for free, pay a professional to do a substantive edit, or find a
group of beta readers who will be brutally honest with you.
You’ll regret it
if you don’t.
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