First book in series free question

Its a numbers game in my opinion.  First you have to define what is your goal.  One a day?  One a week?  Ten a day?  How many copies of book one do you need to sell to be satisfied?  If your're satisfied, then leave it alone.

After that, you're going to need some hard numbers.  How many people who are paying for book one go on to the rest of the series.  Then how many people who pick up book one for free, move on to the rest of the series?  If your goal is money, then it will be simple to calculate what is better for you.  Sell 10, pick up 5 buy through?  Give away 100 pick up 10 buy through?  Give away 1000 and pick up 10 buy through?  You won't ever know until you can get your hands on your own data.  You might be able to get a general idea from some of threads and blogs where people post their promotion results.  But remember, that is their book, their blurb, cover, promotion and results, not yours.

Also there is the luck factor.  Selling ten might make you more money, but 100 given away puts your book in front of more people.  Even if they don't get around to reading it, they still clicked on it and downloaded it.  They might just hear about it later and remember that they have it.

Jnassise said:

I wouldn't say that's true at all. If it was, I wouldn't have bothered to ask.

Click to expand...

Let's get a bit more specific, then. For a lot of top sellers, no, this isn't true. Name recognition is the selling point -- nevermind that top sellers usually have a lot of physical product to move. There is also the matter of genre -- I think fantasy/sci-fi are most suited for the strategy. But if you are a mid-lister of any sort you have a lot of freedom to test out your pricing. SBJones asked the right questions. Are you content with how your books are selling right now? Do you believe there is a strong or growing readership there? If not, consider a loss leader. I glanced at the "free" lists of a number of genres and found columns and columns of "Book One". If you're an unknown author, what better way to attract potential buyers? Hugh Howey frequents this forum and WOOL is perma-free as far as I can tell, maybe he'll say a word about his experiences. Digital products are hard to beat when it comes to producing a loss leader; there's just nothing genuinely "lost", but there is something to be gained. Perhaps "almost universal" was a stretch, but it is one of the most frequently cited "strategies" I've personally seen, both in discussion and practice.

Back in 2010 I released Amulet and Amulet 2.  They both sold a few copies a month on Amazon.

Here's the numbers of copies sold for Amulet 2:

Jan 2011 - 1
Feb 2011 - 8
Mar 2011 - 5
Apr 2011 - 5
May 2011 - 3
Jun 2011 - 3
Jul 2011 - 495
Aug 2011 - 276
Sep 2011 - 221
Oct 2011 - 202
Nov 2011 - 207
Dec 2011 - 190
Jan 2012 - 308
Feb 2012 - 251
Mar 2012 - 249
Apr 2012 - 211
May 2012 - 216

In July of 2011, Amulet 1 went free on Amazon due to price matching.  Amulet 2 went from averaging around five copies a month, to over 200 a month.