The Final Results of My Free Ebook Offer Experiment
By: Mateja Klaric
Tags: Self Publishing, Writing, Publishing, Books, Marketing

I’m not sure how to interpret this paradox but for some weird reason, as also reported by other writers, books tend to get worse reviews when they are offered for free. The results of my experiment confirmed this. If you have any idea why some readers might be more critical of the book if they get it for free, let me know in the comments.

Another rather disappointing thing was the low number of new subscribers. I placed a subscription form in the book where I offered my next book for free as an incentive. According to some self-published writers, for instance, Mark Dawson, this should work well but it resulted in only three new subscribers.

It’s also true, though, that not everyone will start reading the book as soon as they download it, so this number might increase later on. So far, though, the conversion rate is 0.4%, which is not exactly fantastic. I find it easier to get new subscribers on my blog.

The bottom line

Running a free book promotion has some benefits — more readers will become familiar with your work, additional reviews will likely be posted, and new subscribers can be gained. On the other hand, though, one should not expect wonders, or at least not anytime soon.

While the visibility of your free ebook will get a nice boost, you will also never know whether the people who downloaded it for free also cared enough to actually read it. When readers pay for books, it’s more likely that they are truly interested in them.

Also, when something is available at no cost this tends to subconsciously reduce the perception of its value. This could explain why books get worse reviews when they are available for free.

The sales and earnings from my second book on Amazon (ebook + paperback) Source: BookReport

All things considered, though, I’m quite happy with the results of my free ebook offer experiment. Thanks to it, well over 1,000 readers (including the previous sales and free downloads on Draft2Digital) now have my book, and that in less than 5 months since it was published.

I see this as quite a success given that this is only my second book, that it was written for a limited and highly specific audience, and that I’m still a new writer on the block. The results are also great in comparison with my first book — I invested almost no money in its promotion and hasn’t offered it for free. The sales and downloads were thus pretty abysmal.

The sales report below testifies to just how important book promotion is for sales, and how much a free offer helps in raising awareness of the book’s existence. Here are the Amazon sales of my first book that was published a year ago, so that you can compare the results:

The sales and earnings from my first book on Amazon (ebook + paperback) Source: BookReport

By promoting my second book in various ways, I was able to reach ten times more readers than with the first one and increase the earnings threefold.

According to various sources (Smashwords, Derek Murphy, and others), it takes at least five self-published books before one can expect to generate a more substantial income. I’m not there yet but I do see these results as a confirmation that I’m taking the steps in the right direction.