Free eBooks for Everybody, or Serious Testing in Progress

Warning: Math Ahead

So I joined the Kindle Select Publishing program, which allows authors to include their books for lending in the Kindle Prime Lending Library. It also allows them to offer their enrolled books free for up to 5 days every 3 months. In exchange for these benefits, authors are required to make their ebook exclusive to Amazon for the duration of their enrollment.

So what do you get in exchange for exclusivity? What are the cold, hard facts? Is it worth removing your books from all other venues? Well, I'm asking the same questions, and I'm testing the program to the fullest this month.

Last week, I made Absolute Liability free on Kindle for one day. This resulted in increased visibility on the Amazon Kindle Top 100 Free list and a shake-up of my "customers who bought" feature. These two factors, I assume, pushed the book as high as rank 374 when it returned to sale at $2.99. It also provided some visibility for Death Benefits. This resulted in my highest earnings day ever.

Is that a consistent result? Will a book in a smaller market do as well? I don't know, but I'm finding out. Today both my historical romance novels–Charlotte Collins and Caroline Bingley–will be free. So if you aren't sure you want to spend money on a romance about minor characters in Pride and Prejudice, now is the time to download them and give them a go for free. And you'll be helping with my experiment.

Indies, check back later for more results of this trial.