Soo… a bunch of indies on the Kindle Boards are getting Amazon to make books free, and they’re finding that if the books are in a series, they have tons of sales on the ones that aren’t free. As most of the followers of this blog know, I’m no stranger to giving stuff away, but I’ve always come at it from the idea that it’s free on the blog, but if you want it on an ereader, then I’ll charge. After all, I gotta find a way to make some kind of money off this stuff if I want writing to someday be my career.
But putting a book free for a month-ish within the Jason and Azazel series might help give it a little nudge, especially if I did in September, when everyone will go back to school and hopefully all start talking about what they read over the summer. (And at least 1000 new people read the J&A books over the summer. And they paid me for them! I could kiss these people. Seriously.) Anyway, I was wondering about your opinions on making the second book free instead of the first one.
Would that piss you off? If you saw a free book, and saw it was the second in a series, would you be like, “Author’s just trolling for cash” or would you think, “Eh. Free book. Maybe I’ll pick that up. Oh, it’s the second in the series, and the first book’s only $3. Maybe I’ll pick up both of them”???
Inquiring minds want to know.
I’d be more comfortable making Trembling free for several reasons: 1) Breathless consistently ranks higher and drives sales to the other books. If I make it free, it will screw up my rankings and also-boughts, which could take time to settle down, meaning the series would lose visibility once I make it unfree. 2) Trembling is a much more visceral book. If you like Trembling, you’ll like my books. I think Breathless is a little bit easier to take. I’d like to introduce people to the gritty side of my writing, so they know what they’re in for. 3) Breathless can be read as a stand-alone, whereas Trembling cannot. If people get hooked on it, they’re more likely to want to read the other books, instead of being satisfied with the ending of Breathless.
On the other hand, maybe I should just not make any of the books free and see what happens. Or maybe I should make The Stillness in the Air free?
What are your thoughts?
(More blog posts to follow on the first book in my witch series, The Toil and Trouble Trilogy, what’s next on the blog after Between finishes up serializing, and the horror book I plan to release for Halloween.)
(Oh, and the image is from my really funny vampire novella that sells for a dollar. You should buy it if you haven’t already. It’s cheap, it’s quick, and it’ll be more satisfying than whatever you thought I was implying with those two descriptors.)
