Why I Have to Give Away My Book for Free

I was at a convention not long ago discussing book sales with another author. When I mentioned that I take advantage of the Amazon offer to give away your book for free for five days, she couldn't believe it. "Why would you give away your book for free?"

So people might actually read it, I guess.

Independent books, both from self-published authors and small presses, often get a bad rap. It's hard to get people to drop even a dollar on a Kindle book from someone they have never heard of on a book that might only have a smattering of reviews. When I put out AFTER EVERYONE DIED, it did almost nothing at first. The free week of books got it downloaded over 5000 times in five days. From those downloads, I got over 50 reviews, and that helped launch the book to a considerable amount of sales. Would I have liked the $2000 or so those 5000 downloads would have brought me? Sure. Who wouldn't like a couple thousand dollars? However, those free books got me an additional 20K sales and change. In the long run, the book benefited from the free giveaway.

Now, with LONG EMPTY ROADS, I had two minds about the sequel: on one hand, I know that sequels usually do not do as well as initial books. On the other hand, I was hopeful that it might. Since its release on Feb. 2, LER has not done nearly as well as I hoped. Part of it might be marketing (or my general lack thereof). Part of it might be not hitting the fifty review threshold that is so important to Amazon. And part of it is probably just the fact that we have a society where people are used to getting free things. I sympathize with people who bargain-hunt and get free stuff. Everything in society has gone up except paychecks the last few years. People's dollars don't go as far as they used to. When people need entertainment, it all seems frivolous, to some degree. Why drop $40 on tickets, popcorn, and drinks at the theater when that same film will be out on Blu-Ray in three months for $15? Why pay $30 for a hardcover when the paperback will be $18 in six months? Why pay $18 for a paperback when the Kindle edition will be $10? Why buy a book from a no-name nobody for $5? Five bucks isn't nothing.

The biggest challenge for an author, be it me, JK Rowling, or Stephen King, is getting people to actually buy the book. People are more than willing to at least try a free book, but for someone unfamiliar with an author, a free book is the only way to get them to take a shot on something new.

So, for the next five days, LONG EMPTY ROADS is free. Hopefully, I can get another 25 reviews out of it, and maybe some of those reviews will be positive. If that happens, maybe both books in the Survivor Journals series will start showing up in Amazon marketing and maybe other people will actually pay for them. Who knows?

This book-selling business is hard. And I'm not good at it.

I always marvel at the authors who really work at selling their books. They're out there doing spiels, pounding pavement, attending cons, doing events--it's a ton of work. I write books because it's all I know how to do. Everything else is beyond me. I'm not a salesman. This is why I'm so dependent on kind words from strangers and social media posts. I'm not the kind of author who will churn out a ton of marketing material to sell a book. I'd rather spend that time writing another book.

Many, many thanks to those of you who have written reviews of AED or LER already. They are invaluable to me. Please take this week to tell friends of the free book giveaway. The more people I can get to download the book this week, the better.

I just checked the sales dashboard for Amazon--since midnight, over 120 have downloaded it. Fingers crossed, everyone.

--Sean

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079J6R5Y8