By Kristy Tate //
I’ll admit I clumsily stumbled into this method. I had heard of it, but I didn’t think it would work for me because my books are mostly stand-alones. But, surprise, it is working for me. Here’s what happened: an uber-successful author in my genre organized a round-robin that I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in. I thought my book had to be free the first Friday in April, so I set it free on April 3rd. Turns out, it wouldn’t be shared on the authors’ newsletter lists until April 21st. Immediately, there was a dramatic uptick in my sales for that series. On the day it was shared to the other authors’ newsletters, it reached #64 in Amazon’s store. Since then, the sales of the other books in that series have been humming along. To date, I’ve given away 3,985 copies of The Billionaire’s Beagle.
I haven’t spent any money on advertising, but because it is working so well, I booked a Freebooksy ad for tomorrow and a Robin Reads ad for the first week of May. (I’ll let you know how those go.)
My friend Jackie Hyman, writing as Jacqueline Diamond, has been using the first in series method for a few months. Here’s what she had to say about it:
Making the first book in a series perma-free is different from giving away a book short-term. I see it as an investment, so I waited until I had at least four books in the series.
It was an easy choice for my Safe Harbor Medical Romance series because there are more than a dozen subsequent books for the reader to—hopefully—purchase. With the spin-off Safe Harbor Medical Mystery series, I have only four books, but after a few years I decided to risk it.
On the plus side, after I bought a few ads, some websites that focus on free books picked these up and so I continue to get downloads. This is different from a book that might be free for only a few days.
Another plus is that the books received a lot of ratings and reviews. Happily, these have been overwhelmingly positive.
However, many readers who go for freebies aren’t willing to pay for books. Maybe they can’t afford to, or they mostly read from a subscription service such as Kindle Unlimited. Or—unpleasant thought—they download from pirate sites.
Also, readers often download large numbers of books that they don’t have time to read immediately. Since I’m willing to leave these books free for the long-term, I’m willing to wait for a payoff.
Has there been an up tick in sales of subsequent books? Yes, but it’s not huge. I’m glad I did this, but although I have quite a few series, I don’t plan to make any more books perma-free.
The two books and the Amazon links are:
The Would-Be Mommy, Book One of Safe Harbor Medical Romances
The Case of the Questionable Quadruplet, Book One of the Safe Harbor Medical Mysteries
Because the first in series free method is working so well for my Misbehaving Billionaires, I’m going to set another book written under a different pen name free. Because my young adult books are written in trilogies, I’m not sure how it will go.
How about you? Have you tried the first in series free method? Do you think it might work for your books?
But before that strategy can work, you need to write a string of books.
KRISTY TATE is the Social Media Director for O.C. Writers and a USA Today bestselling author. To date, her newsletter subscriber list is edging toward 15,000. www.KristyTate.com.
I don’t have the opportunity to freebie a first in a series with my publisher, but thanks for always sharing your marketing and promo experiences!