Free Lessons Learned (especially for Canadian writers)

Appaloosa Summer just had a free run on Kindle. For those of you who don’t know, this is one of the benefits of signing up for KDP Select. You agree that your book will only be available on Kindle for 90 days, and they give you certain perks, including the ability to set your book’s price to free for five days out of your contract.

I’ve now used up all five days, and each time, my free offering was in conjunction with something else I wanted to be part of.

The first time, I had postcards printed up advertising the free download so they could be put in the “loot” bags of runners in the Wolfe Island Classic 5 / 10K race. The second time it was to be part of Digital Book Day (great initiative, which I hope to participate in again). This last time was as part of the Trillium Hunter Jumper Championships - I sent 1,000 postcards to be inserted into participant swag bags, and handed out to volunteers.

What have I learned? Well, here’s some specific data from my most recent free run:

- Total number of free downloads: 1,100 even. This is not a big number. Established authors would be disappointed with this number. I’m thrilled. My first free run got me just over 300 downloads, so I’m definitely moving in the right direction.

- Countries where the book was downloaded: Brazil, Denmark, Italy, India, Japan, the UK, the US, and Canada.

- Promotion I did for this offer: 1,000 postcards handed out to horse-lovers in Canada. Half-page ad in the program at the THJA Championship show (read by horse lovers). Notices posted on a few “free book” websites which notify readers of books offered for free on certain days – not sure of their reach.

- Downloads in Canada: Twelve. That’s right – 1-2. Twelve. And, one of those was from a woman here in Ottawa who had the book personally recommended to her by my number-one fan, Lynn. So, really, eleven organic downloads. Remember, I directly informed a thousand Canadians of this book being free. I don’t even know if any of the eleven are from those people, or if they’re just Canadians reading free book websites.

- Biggest downloading country: The US! Thank you America! And I’m not talking peanuts, I’m talking 1,057 downloads from the US of A. Which is so important, because man those Americans read! They read a lot, and they read on their Kindles, and they buy tonnes of eBooks.

- Benefits of giving away 1,100 books: Exposure. Interest. Increased sales. Yes, that’s right – increased sales. Also, over a dozen new “to-read” adds on Goodreads. Several new Facebook likes. A new reader reaching out to me directly.

So, to sum up my free lessons learned, from my free days, I would say there are three main ones:

(1) Don’t be afraid to give your book away for free. You have to take a leap of faith and, if you do, you’ll see the rewards.

(2) It’s very hard to know how people find your books. I don’t know how those 1,057 Americans found my book. You can do your best, but you also have to just let readers and consumers choose. It’s kind of cool to sit back and watch.

(3) Canadian writers – you really need to understand there is a market beyond Canada. In fact, I would argue your main market is beyond Canada (for certain genres – please ignore me if you’ve written a non-fiction book on the Canadian political system). I could be wrong – I only have my numbers – but my numbers tell me Canadians are not nearly as big eBook adopters as the US and the UK (and Denmark – across all my campaigns I think more people in Denmark have downloaded my book than in Canada). I also have the suspicion that more Canadians have Kobos than people in other countries. Which is fine – you can publish your book to Kobo – but you miss out on some of the great things about Kindle Select (like keeping seventy per cent of your sale price).

Just to drive this Canadian point home – I could not be more Canadian. I’ve never lived in another country. I learned to write here, started my career here. I do school visits here, and participate in writing activities here. The majority of my newsletter list, and Facebook likes, etc. are in Canada. The last eBook I sold in Canada was on June 24. And, with a couple of exceptions, I’ve sold books every single day since then. Just none here in Canada.

I would say, if you’re only looking at Canada, you’re missing out. You’re not giving yourself the full business plan picture. There’s a whole big eBook-buying world out there and it couldn’t be easier to reach it. You just hit “Publish.”