A lot of people say that putting your book up to be sold on sites such as Amazon for free will boost your sales, but I'm really skeptical. Won't that put readers off--thinking that something must be wrong if the book is free? If this person really invested a lot in the book, they wouldn't be giving it away for free. Something's fishy here.
Am I just being paranoid, or is this a real thing? Is there a way to avoid making people suspicious about the quality of my book just because it's free?
Answer
On kboards there is a forum post by successfully self-published author Elle Casey about how "perma-free" works for her.
Things that I would consider:
Making money off perma-free books works by luring those that want to sample a new author into buying the sequels (or other books by the same author), so you need to either have other books published or the sequels ready to be published within a few weeks. Elle Casey publishes at least one book per month.
While there is a huge community of readers that actively search for free or cheap self-published books, that community only partly overlaps with readers of traditionally, publisher-published books. Most renowned blogs and all newspapers do not review self-published novels. While there are exceptions (e.g. Amanda Hocking), self-publishing (and even more so free self-publishing) will put you outside the traditional publishing community of readers, reviewers, book distributors, film makers (!) and so on. For that reason alone, I would only consider it in the event that I could not sell even my third attempt at a novel to a publisher.
I do not read free (or self-published) books. I have tried a few (among them one by Elle Casey) and found them all to be poorly written (or lacking the loving guidance of an experienced editor). As I don't lack reading matter, there is no reason for me to waste my valuable time trying to find the few rare gems among all the self-published mediocrity and trash.
I have published an erotic short story on Amazon for free. Without any kind of advertisement it got enough downloads to remain in the top twenty of its genre for half a year. (I published it that way because no publisher would touch it due to its offensive content.)
In sum, I believe that if you publish your book for free, you can be as financially and popularly successful as any traditionally published author. But you have to give up on the admiration and satisfaction that comes with being accepted by a traditional publisher.
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