Free or not free? That is the ebook question of the day.

I personally think the Blue Fire series is a good story that many out there would enjoy. In reality, without a marketing campaign, it’s impossible for people to even know my series exists. I dare anyone to be able to find them without knowing my name or the exact title of one of the books. Even using the exact keywords the books are associated with, it can’t be found. I’m just too far down on the list. I have several other items working against me…

I’m a new, unknown writer with just a few followers.
In the digital world, my books are way too long – each falling into the epic category. I’m not going to change this. The length is determined by what I want to say and I like to talk…a lot.
I have no publisher so no one has my back. I wouldn’t even know how to approach a publisher and, right now, I don’t want to deal with the inevitable denials that most books get when starting out. I want to keep this hobby fun.
My book covers are artistic and include no naked people, which is a serious drawback for a romance novel. But my story isn’t focused solely on romance and each of my covers have meaning (that I’ll explain in later posts). I’m also not into drawing people so I had to stick with something more symbolic.

My first marketing approach was to use the ‘It’s cheap!” campaign. Although .99 cents is a bargain for any book, it appears the low price isn’t as big a draw as I had hoped. I decided to change to the drug dealer campaign… give the first book away, get them hooked, and then offer the next books in the series for a price (be it a cheap price). With this in mind, I set out to make book 1 free. I first went to my Amazon KDP authoring site and found that they won’t let me post my book as free, except on approved free days within the KDP Select program (great program that I will discuss in a later post). I sent them an email asking if they would price match as they have done for other authors but I was denied. *sad music* I also publish from smashwords.com. They had no issue with me changing the price so book 1, “Unquiet Slumber” is now free on their site. They then turned around and communicated this price change to the retailers they publish to on my behalf – -Barnes and Noble, Sony, Apple Store, and other select retailers. None of them had issues with my free price.

Did this change have any effect? Well, thanks for asking. Since I’m thrilled when even one person selects one of my books, I was overjoyed with the results. The hits on my series Facebook page is going steadily up. On Barnes and Noble, my book went from 400,000+ in rank and just days later it was at 43,000. Also within days, I’ve had over 79 downloads on smashwords.com and it was added to 5 personal libraries. It doesn’t match the stats for 50 Shades of Grey but I couldn’t be happier. Maybe some of my readers will like it and consider later books as I continue to publish the next parts in the series. The other retailers I won’t know until smashwords posts a monthly report. I’ll share the results.

So to answer the original question, “Free or not free?” If you are a novice writer like me, my answer is go free – - even if just for a little while. If I win the jack pot and the interest in my series continue to rise, I can consider putting a price back on it. For now, I’m going to let book 1 swirl around the free book cyberspace pond and see if a few people get hooked on the wonderful world of Lagrangia.