Let's Talk About Downloading Free Books

Let's get one thing straight, right off the bat. I released Black Water Creek a little over a month ago and I would like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to everybody that bought a copy for $3.99. Thank you so much for shelling out your hard earned money. Thanks for taking a chance on me in hopes that you'll be entertained for a few hours. I honestly hope I didn't let you down.

Now that I got that out of the way, I need to apologize to the people I just thanked. The Kindle version of Black Water Creek is going to be free for the next few days. I feel guilty because I'm afraid those of you who bought the book are going to feel cheated that I'm giving it away just a month later.

You may wonder why some authors temporarily give away their work for free. Simple. It creates more paid sales. When a book is offered for free, it often gets downloaded very quickly by many people. I've often given away 20,000 to 30,000 copies in just a few days. Sometimes just a few hundred or a thousand.

Out of say, 20,000 downloads, there is a significant number of people who never get around to reading it. Or they're book hoarders who simply take pleasure in adding to their Kindle library and have no way of reading everything they've collected. There isn't anything good or bad about this. It's just reality.

So let's say that leaves 15,000 out of 20,000 people who actually read the book (uneducated guess) they downloaded. Out of those 15,000 I can expect:

1. Amazon reviews. Certainly not everybody, but I would be happy with 10 to 50 reviews.
   
2. Sales for my other books from those who enjoyed the free book. I don't know about you, but if I enjoy a book I almost always look to see what else the author has available.
   
3. Increased subscriptions to this blog and my mailing list.
   
4. Increased Facebook/Twitter friends and followers.
   
5. Increased email from readers who enjoyed the book and wanted to say hello.
   
6. Most importantly - increase in paid sales after the book is no longer available for free. Ultimately, this is the main goal. I won't pretend to know what goes on under the hood of Amazon, but freebie numbers in the 15,000+ range often lead to a good number of steady paid sales afterward. This is mostly because the book is more visible on Amazon.com.
   

So that's why I do it and I thought some folks who already bought the book could use an explanation. My two cents for your $3.99. Thanks.

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