Patrick Reinken's Blog: Writing to Write - Posts Tagged "omicron"
Making ebooks free
On the boards - both here and on other discussion sites - you commonly see strings that come down to a simple issue: If you make an ebook free, will it increase sales of your other books?
I've no idea, of course. My common sense tells me it will, at least if the writing is any good. I mean, if the writing's no good in a free book, why would anyone expect a reader will think, "Well, I really didn't like that at all, but I'm gonna go ahead and get the other one, even though I have to pay for it this time."
Readers don't do that. People don't do that, because people avoid pain.
So the expectation is simple - a good free book might prompt someone to buy a book by the same author.
Whether that has any play in it ... well, that's another thing.
But I'm going to find out.
First, I'm assuming Glass House is good enough that at least some people might want to pay a buck to buy another of my books. I'm not stating that an absolute truth, mind you; I'm just assuming it for the test here (I figure if people don't like it, I'll hear that in the end, too).
Second, over the past couple weeks, I've reset the price for Glass House to free, and it's finally pushed out to all major sellers - B&N, Apple, Sony, and about an hour and a half ago, Amazon (a task that takes some discussion board friends and some finger crossing, as many of you out there know). Basically, that means it's free across probably 99 percent of the available sales volumes.
The book's cousin - and I say "cousin" because they sit side by side in my discussion board signatures and on my Goodreads page and have been out for close to the same amount of time and are both thrillers - is Omicron, and it's out there, too.
Will sales of Omicron increase as people pick up Glass House for free, (hopefully) read it and enjoy it, and look for another book to read?
I'll keep you posted....
I've no idea, of course. My common sense tells me it will, at least if the writing is any good. I mean, if the writing's no good in a free book, why would anyone expect a reader will think, "Well, I really didn't like that at all, but I'm gonna go ahead and get the other one, even though I have to pay for it this time."
Readers don't do that. People don't do that, because people avoid pain.
So the expectation is simple - a good free book might prompt someone to buy a book by the same author.
Whether that has any play in it ... well, that's another thing.
But I'm going to find out.
First, I'm assuming Glass House is good enough that at least some people might want to pay a buck to buy another of my books. I'm not stating that an absolute truth, mind you; I'm just assuming it for the test here (I figure if people don't like it, I'll hear that in the end, too).
Second, over the past couple weeks, I've reset the price for Glass House to free, and it's finally pushed out to all major sellers - B&N, Apple, Sony, and about an hour and a half ago, Amazon (a task that takes some discussion board friends and some finger crossing, as many of you out there know). Basically, that means it's free across probably 99 percent of the available sales volumes.
The book's cousin - and I say "cousin" because they sit side by side in my discussion board signatures and on my Goodreads page and have been out for close to the same amount of time and are both thrillers - is Omicron, and it's out there, too.
Will sales of Omicron increase as people pick up Glass House for free, (hopefully) read it and enjoy it, and look for another book to read?
I'll keep you posted....
Making ebooks free (II)
A few posts down, I raised the question about whether making one ebook free would increase sales of your other books. That post is right here.
I'd made Glass House free, and it had finally reached Amazon the day I wrote that post. That was fairly late on October 18th, and over the two and a half days since, downloads of Glass House have gone up exponentially. No surprise - it's free, and people like free things.
But Omicron isn't free, it's 99 cents. Sure, that's not a lot, but it's still a buck, and it's a world where a buck counts even more every day.
Downloads of Omicron have gone up about 2,500%. That's obviously a big jump, but I need to be clear - it only looks big because Omicron was at a pace of perhaps 1 download every 5 days (.2 per day), and there have been 10 downloads in the past 2 days (5 per day).
That's a twenty-five-fold increase, on a daily basis.
That's probably due to the free book, bringing traffic to a site where people also can find Omicron. That partly answers the basic question, but it's only a possible indicator on the way to the bigger question.
If the question is really looking at selling ebooks to make money (and based on reading the boards, it is), the writer's interest is in finding ways to dramatically increase sales of paid ebooks. Can free ebooks have that meaningful an impact?
Twenty-five hundred percent up is a big measure, but it's more muted when you consider that it's .2 increased to 5 per day. At 99 cents, no one's printing money by increasing sales like that (at Amazon's 35% percent royalty rate for a 99-cent ebook, it's around $1.75 a day and $52 a month).
Which brings me back to the point that's implied in the earlier post - what sorts of things might happen in the longer run?
I hope those 10 buyers picked up Omicron because it's a good book (I think it is...). But they may have bought it just because it's inexpensive and was in proximity to something else they got. The measure of any real impact in "free leads to paid sales" still waits, though, because again, I think that impact depends almost completely on whether the free book/story is any good.
If it is ... if people read the free work and like it and look for more and turn to other available books ... what will the impact be then? Could it be 10,000%? 50,000%? 100,000%?
Numbers like that seem impossible, but they're not. Taking the .2 per day figure, an increase of 100,000% would be 200 downloads a day (at the same royalty rate, that's $70 a day and $2100 a month).
I think impacts like that and more could be found, but only if the writing is good. So to me, the answer to whether "free" on one book increases "paid" on another so far has to be yes at a fairly low level in the short term, and it depends on how people see worth in the longer term.
I'd made Glass House free, and it had finally reached Amazon the day I wrote that post. That was fairly late on October 18th, and over the two and a half days since, downloads of Glass House have gone up exponentially. No surprise - it's free, and people like free things.
But Omicron isn't free, it's 99 cents. Sure, that's not a lot, but it's still a buck, and it's a world where a buck counts even more every day.
Downloads of Omicron have gone up about 2,500%. That's obviously a big jump, but I need to be clear - it only looks big because Omicron was at a pace of perhaps 1 download every 5 days (.2 per day), and there have been 10 downloads in the past 2 days (5 per day).
That's a twenty-five-fold increase, on a daily basis.
That's probably due to the free book, bringing traffic to a site where people also can find Omicron. That partly answers the basic question, but it's only a possible indicator on the way to the bigger question.
If the question is really looking at selling ebooks to make money (and based on reading the boards, it is), the writer's interest is in finding ways to dramatically increase sales of paid ebooks. Can free ebooks have that meaningful an impact?
Twenty-five hundred percent up is a big measure, but it's more muted when you consider that it's .2 increased to 5 per day. At 99 cents, no one's printing money by increasing sales like that (at Amazon's 35% percent royalty rate for a 99-cent ebook, it's around $1.75 a day and $52 a month).
Which brings me back to the point that's implied in the earlier post - what sorts of things might happen in the longer run?
I hope those 10 buyers picked up Omicron because it's a good book (I think it is...). But they may have bought it just because it's inexpensive and was in proximity to something else they got. The measure of any real impact in "free leads to paid sales" still waits, though, because again, I think that impact depends almost completely on whether the free book/story is any good.
If it is ... if people read the free work and like it and look for more and turn to other available books ... what will the impact be then? Could it be 10,000%? 50,000%? 100,000%?
Numbers like that seem impossible, but they're not. Taking the .2 per day figure, an increase of 100,000% would be 200 downloads a day (at the same royalty rate, that's $70 a day and $2100 a month).
I think impacts like that and more could be found, but only if the writing is good. So to me, the answer to whether "free" on one book increases "paid" on another so far has to be yes at a fairly low level in the short term, and it depends on how people see worth in the longer term.
