[nico]

We have a couple of permafree titles, one to start each of our series. I've noticed a declining rate of downloads over time. I know i can perk them up with more promos, but i was wondering if others have experimented with cycling titles in and out of permafree status. Sort of like a semi-permafree book. Anyone care to share thoughts on this?

 

[Justawriter]

Yes, I recently did that, end of December, switched my book one and book 2, taking book one back to paid. It had been permafree for about six months and switching up helped quite a bit and the book is selling decently again. My books are standalones set in the same world, so order isn't really that important.

 

[C. Gockel]

I'm doing a redesign. I'm thinking of "un-permafreeing" at least for a few weeks in April while I get all the covers changed.

 

[Ros_Jackson]

Yes, partly by accident. I took my title off permafree in the UK deliberately, and it fell off permafree in the US as a result. Then it came back on permafree in the US, and downloads got a boost due to EreaderIQ. I suspect some other email list picked it up at the same time, because it reached #2 in its subcategory. This isn't the first time such a thing has happened: the last time it returned to permafree after a break I got a small boost in downloads. The lesson seems to be, if your downloads are tailing off it may be better to return to paid, wait a while, and then try again.

 

[cinisajoy]

Ereaderiq is very popular.   

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'd never do it. Getting to free in the non-US stores requires the stars to align already as it is, plus I'd lose my place in the Free rankings. I don't want to lose what I've built.

 

[Philip Gibson]

This is an interesting idea, pulsing your permafree.

If you have enough books in Select, and if your books don't need to be read in sequence, you can have a kind of 'hybrid permafree' by using up all, or most, of the 5 free days every 90 days for each book and have one of your books free all the time.

A while back, I worked out how many books are needed to do this. Too tired to do it now, but it wasn't all that many.

Philip

 

[Carol (was Dara)]

After I get my second series well and truly launched, I'm playing with the idea of cycling the book 1s of each series in and out of free. The idea would be to always have one free entry point but to let each opening book take a six month turn at it. It'd give me a chance to see how a book that's been free for a long time can perform on the paid list, in front of eyes that've never seen it before. If results are dismal, I'll give up the experiment quickly and my freebies will go back to permanently permanent. My thinking is that there are people who never look at the free lists and, to them, my aging freebies would be fresh. I'm also curious to see how the advertising would go for that.

 

[alawston]

If you have enough books in Select, and if your books don't need to be read in sequence, you can have a kind of 'hybrid permafree' by using up all, or most, of the 5 free days every 90 days for each book and have one of your books free all the time.

A while back, I worked out how many books are needed to do this. Too tired to do it now, but is wasn't all that many.

Philip

Unless I'm missing something (I usually do), dividing 90 Select days by 5 give you a required total of 18 books in order to have something on permafree every single day.

 

[ML-Larson]

If you have enough books in Select, and if your books don't need to be read in sequence, you can have a kind of 'hybrid permafree' by using up all, or most, of the 5 free days every 90 days for each book and have one of your books free all the time.

A while back, I worked out how many books are needed to do this. Too tired to do it now, but is wasn't all that many.

Philip

This is sort of how I do it. Every time I release something new, the previously released book goes free for five days. Eventually, I want to get to a point where I can always have something free, but I need to really get writing before I can do that.

 

[hardnutt]

I'd never do it. Getting to free in the non-US stores requires the stars to align already as it is, plus I'd lose my place in the Free rankings. I don't want to lose what I've built.

+1

I'd like to feel able to give this in and out of permafree a go, but it took so long for my first in series book to go permafree in the US and UK that I daren't risk it. Still haven't been able to permafree it anywhere else. :-(

 

[AnnelieseVandell]

+1

I'd like to feel able to give this in and out of permafree a go, but it took so long for my first in series book to go permafree in the US and UK that I daren't risk it. Still haven't been able to permafree it anywhere else. :-(

I'm curious about this. When you switch from free to paid (or vice versa), do you essentially have to start from Square One in the rankings? There's no sort of carryover that happens?

 

[SB James]

The only way I'd consider doing this is if I had also made my book 1 free, then took it off free. The Beginning is now free in so many places that to go through the ordeal of taking it back would be a task. And if I wanted to make that one free again, I'd have to go through a lot of trouble like I did before.

 

[Ros_Jackson]

The negative reactions to pulsing a permafree on this thread seem to suggest why it's done well for me. It's a high-risk strategy (and in my case it wasn't a strategy at all), and I don't think many people are doing it deliberately. So it's worth saving up for when downloads have slowed to such a trickle that your book is off all of its lists in all of the stores.

 

[nico]

I'm not sure why people have so much trouble getting books price matched to free. I always just email Amazon through KDP and they usually fix it within a few hours.

 

[Mark E. Cooper]

I have four series, 4 permafrees. I've tried switching them off a couple of times over the years, and as visibility declined, so did sales. After the panic, and the despair, and the bills piling up, I went back to permafree, and things returned to normal. I'll never do it again.

 

[Philip Gibson]

Unless I'm missing something (I usually do), dividing 90 Select days by 5 give you a required total of 18 books in order to have something on permafree every single day.

Yes, 18 books would allow you to rotate the books through the KDP 5-day Select periods so that there is always one of your books available for free. In the first 30 days, 6 of the books would have been free (each for 5 days). In the second 30 days, another 6 and after the final 30 days of the 90 day period, all 18 would have been free at some point. Then the sequence could be repeated for as long as the KDP Select rules remain the same.

 

[hardnutt]

How long, dare I ask? I'm waiting for them to price match one of my books with bated breath, trying to get an idea of how long I'll be waiting...

A couple of months! But I persisted. I'm a very patient woman.

 

[hardnutt]

I'm curious about this. When you switch from free to paid (or vice versa), do you essentially have to start from Square One in the rankings? There's no sort of carryover that happens?

I don't know as I've never switched this book back to paid and it's my only permanent freebie. But I'm sure someone will be able to tell you.

 

[anniejocoby]

How long, dare I ask? I'm waiting for them to price match one of my books with bated breath, trying to get an idea of how long I'll be waiting...

It will go faster if you contact them and tell them about your other freebies on other platforms. Contact them - I think that there is even an option for telling them that the book is free someplace else, send them the links to Nook, Apple, Kobo and Google, and wherever else it's free, and it should happen in 24 hours. At least, that's what worked for me.