behold the power of permafree!

A common argument among indie writers is whether or not “permafree” is still a good tactic. The idea is that once you have a series of books, you make the first book free in hopes that people will read the book, like it, and then move on to read the rest of the books in the series.

As it happens, I was recently able to put the idea to the test. On December 1st, CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP, the first book in my CLOAK GAMES series, went permafree. That provided an excellent testing ground for examining the results of making the first book free.

Let’s see how we did!

The 2nd book, CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER, sold 6 times as many copies in December as it did in November.

The 3rd book, CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST, sold 6 times as many copies in December as it did in November.

The 4th book, CLOAK GAMES: SHADOW JUMP, sold about two and a half times as many copies in December as it did in November.

The 5th book, CLOAK GAMES: SHATTER STONE, came out on December 1st, so it really wasn’t useful for the test. That said, it did have the strongest opening month of any CLOAK GAMES book to date.

So in the right circumstances, it seems like permafree is still a useful marketing tactic.

-JM