Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

There are two excellent posts on Teleread.org -

1. Ficbot wonders whether Free really is the best price and concludes that a free sample is much better. 
2. Shortcovers’ President talks about how a free new book can get a reader to buy other books from the store. The interview is a must read – He even guarantees a $100 eReader by next year.

These are excellent posts that thankfully miss a crucial point that this post will cover.

Why would you offer something Free?

Let’s leave out people who want to help others for no financial reward whatsoever (even though they do get a lot of other rewards – it’s not as altruistic as it might seem).

Let’s say someone wants to make a living writing or publishing or selling ebooks. They would offer free ebooks for a reason -

1. Offer something free and kick in reciprocation (plus other things like good will). Google are the kings of this.  
2. Establish a customer relationship i.e. they have bought something from your store. That’s why you have to click on ‘buy’ and sign-up even for free ebooks. After that point committment and consistency kick in and those free ebook customers prefer you.
3. It’s free marketing i.e. people come find your books and read them instead of you having to find people. This is discussed in detail below. 
4. Get people to like you i.e. make interactions with you fun because they get something free.  
5. Turn a customer into a paying customer by hooking them in.

 There must be some reason behind it.

Our wiring makes it really hard for us to recognize things like reciprocation and committment. In fact, it’s almost impossible to admit it in ourselves. 

So let’s talk in terms that we can’t block out i.e. marketing.

Customer Acquisition Costs and Free Books as Marketing

Almost every business has customer acquisition costs. Wireless companies spend hundreds of dollars, including marketing and subsidized handsets.

With books, you do have marketing and store advertising and more. However, ebooks provide another option i.e. free ebooks.

There are 3 levels here -

1. An author offering one or more of his books free to create a following that will buy his other books, believe his ideas, and make him famous. A particularly well-off (or desperate) author might just want people to read his work. 
2. A Publisher offering a few of the books in their catalogue free to establish authors and get free marketing. 
3. An eBook Store using free ebooks to lure in customers.

In all 3 cases, especially the latter two, there is always a focus on ‘sales in the future’.

The free ebook is just marketing.

Since everyone has found out about free marketing via free ebooks we run into another challenge.

How do you get readers to read free eBooks? Are samples better?

FicBot thinks samples are better. However, you have to look at the numbers.

1. Nearly everyone downloads a free ebook. Look at the Kindle Store bestsellers list and it’ll be painfully obvious.
2. Only people who are interested in your genre AND find your book download the sample. That’s not easy with 350,000 options.

A free ebook does two big things -

1. It lets users find you.  
2. It gets you onto users’ Kindles.

Yes, it’ll be hard to get some people to read your book. However, consider your most likely future customers -

1. Ones that are into the genre you write in. 
2. Those that like your story idea.

They are much more likely to read your free ebook because it interests them. That’s great because they are exactly the people likely to buy your paid ebooks.

With a free eBook you reach almost every reader interested in your genre.

Plus you get the bonus of people who normally NEVER read your genre also downloading your book and possibly turning into customers.

Ficbot’s main argument i.e. people will never read your free ebook only applies to people who aren’t interested in your niche. Those aren’t who you’re targeting anyways.

Quick Note on how to avoid devaluing your work

If you restrict free ebooks to just one of your books, or to just the first book in the series, then you make it clear that -

1. The free book is to let readers test the waters. 
2. The other books are paid and not worthless.

That’s actually the crux of this post -

Use Free only as Marketing. 

Keep one or two books free to reel in customers.
Make every first book in a series free.

Charge good money for all your other books ($5 to $10).

Do you want to make money or do you want to make others money?

Look back to the list of why Publishers and Bookstores would want free and you realize that sometimes there’s a conflict of interest.

It gets even worse when you consider -

1. Cellular Networks and Internet Service Providers. 
2. Companies that only sell eReaders and not Books. 

And other companies that want you to give away your books so they can make money.

It’s crucial to not set all your books at zero. The free ebook is just marketing.

Filed under: publishing