Give away your books for free to sell more? - Writers Forum

HarryG · 04-02-2008, 09:39 AM

The writer, Paulo Coelho, once sold ten copies of one of his books in the whole of Russia. Since then, he has made free copies of his books available as downloadable PDFs on the internet, which led to an extra 10 million sales. I'll try, once more and for the last time, to post the link:

Paulo Coelho’s Blog

His reasoning is that nobody will read a whole book as a PDF (I wouldn't), while the people who really want to read it, will buy it.

It seems contrary to everything I've ever believed in.

Selorian · 04-02-2008, 09:59 AM

Neil Gaiman, creator of the Sandman comics and author of Neverwhere, Stardust, and other books, recently did the same thing. He has blogged about it extensively, and included info from his publisher about downloads of the free book and the sales increase of the paper copy. The results are worth taking notice of and would make me willing to give it a try myself.

CodeRed · 04-02-2008, 10:05 AM

I bookmarked the site where Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods' was available. I read about half-way through the first chapter before deciding to buy it instead - for two reasons. 1, I can't curl up with my computer in bed (it's a desk top) and 2, it was using far too much bandwidth to load the pages and would have cost me more in the long run.

Mike C · 04-02-2008, 10:13 AM

Corey Doctorow's been doing this for years with the permission of his publishers, and Baen now have a free library of ebooks of slower-selling titles. They've found that once the book's available free, paper sales increase.

lin · 04-02-2008, 11:10 AM

Hey, I'll give you one of my books if you promise to buy 10 million of them.

Dawnstorm · 04-02-2008, 11:30 AM

Bean Free Library

Read the mission statement.

HarryG · 04-02-2008, 01:50 PM

And yet – other authors are now complaining of the 'theft' of their works, where their books are scanned by fraudsters, given new covers and spines, with the sales profits going to the criminals. Wouldn't it make those criminals lives even easier if the PDFs were freely available?

lin · 04-02-2008, 10:26 PM

Quote:

their books are scanned by fraudsters, given new covers and spines, with the sales profits going to the criminals.

Is there any evidence of this happening? This seems HIGHLY unlikely. But these are unlikely times.

Mike C · 04-03-2008, 12:07 AM

It happens with Harry Potters, and has happened with a Gabriel García Márquez novel in South America, I think in both cases they were selling the counterfeit before the publication date. I would think there's very few books it would be worth faking - they don't sell enough.

Judith Tramayne · 04-03-2008, 04:07 PM

Giving away some of your books free does work. I used to give away over 2,000 per month times 9 years.

Now I've changed this somewhat after getting a marketing consultant who told me "I was giving away the farm." (LOL)

I still give away 3 free ebooks but for the other ebooks and videos I've made and offer free, the visitor must be willing to give me their name and email address before they're immediately taken to the download page.

The reason is I want to build a relationship with my visitors now so they will be comfortable when they buy my products. Usually no visitor will buy immediately.

I mean let's face it, they don't know me from a hole in the wall. But after really great information I send them either with my EZ Ezine or ebooks, they can see I am authentic and want to do business with me.

Judith

SueC · 04-08-2008, 11:39 AM

Judith is on the right track - you need to approach it more from a marketing perspective. There are lots of other things to give away, like book chapters, stories, things to get visitors interested in your work, as well as getting them on a list where you can send them interesting stuff that you don't share on your site,w hich makes them feel "special".