I’ll admit I clumsily stumbled into this method. I had heard of it, but I didn’t think it would work for me because my books are mostly stand-alones. But, surprise, it is working for me. Here’s what happened: an uber-successful author in my genre organized a round-robin that I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in. I thought my book had to be free the first Friday April, so I set it free on April 3rd. Turns out, it wouldn’t be shared on the authors’ newsletter lists until April 21st. Immediately, there was a dramatic uptick in my sales for that series. On the day it was shared to the other authors’ newsletters, it reached #64 in Amazon’s store. Since then, the sales of the other books in that series have been humming along. To date, I’ve given away 3,985 copies of The Billionaire’s Beagle.
I haven’t spent any money on advertising, but because it was
working so well, I booked a Freebooksy ad for tomorrow and a Robin Reads ad for
the first week of May. (I’ll let you know how those go.)
My friend Jackie Hyman, writing as Jacqueline Diamond, has
been using the first in series method for a few months. Here’s what she had to
say about it:
Making the first book in a series perma-free is different
from giving away a book short-term. I see it as an investment, so I waited
until I had at least four books in the series.
It was an easy choice for my Safe Harbor Medical Romance
series because there are more than a dozen subsequent books for the reader
to—hopefully—purchase. With the spin-off Safe Harbor Medical Mystery series, I
have only four books, but after a few years I decided to risk it.
On the plus side, after I bought a few ads, some websites
that focus on free books picked these up and so I continue to get downloads.
This is different from a book that might be free for only a few days.
Another plus is that the books received a lot of ratings
and reviews. Happily, these have been overwhelmingly positive.
However, many readers who go for freebies aren’t willing
to pay for books. Maybe they can’t afford to, or they mostly read from a subscription
service such as Kindle Unlimited. Or—unpleasant thought—they download from
pirate sites.
Also, readers often download large numbers of books that
they don’t have time to read immediately. Since I’m willing to leave these
books free for the long-term, I’m willing to wait for a payoff.
Has there been an up tick in sales of subsequent books?
Yes, but it’s not huge. I’m glad I did this, but although I have quite a few
series, I don’t plan to make any more books perma-free.
The two books and the Amazon links are:
The Would-Be Mommy, Book One of Safe Harbor Medical
Romances, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0716ZYY5P
The Case of the Questionable Quadruplet, Book One of the
Safe Harbor Medical Mysteries, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CRASWUK.
Because the first in series free method is working so well
for my Misbehaving Billionaires, I’m going to set another book written
in a different pen name free. Because my young adult books are written in
trilogies, I’m not sure how it will go.
How about you? Have you tried the first in series free
method? Do you think it might work for your books?
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