FREE!
by Graham Murray
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Copyright© 2011, Graham Murray
Published by Living Books USA
Cover design by author
ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under
International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any
unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part
of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system without express
written permission from the author / publisher.
For free agent writers worldwide
* * *
FREE!
An explanation of why you should
not release free ebooks on the WWW
Right now, eBooks are the in-thing in the world of literature, although in many cases, ‘literature’ is pushing the term to its utmost limits. Very few ebooks are worthy of the label ‘literature’ as the vast majority of new releases are pornography disguised under the pseudonym, ‘erotica’, whilst many others are nothing more than blogs, personal gripes, eye-watering ‘poetry’, and user manuals masquerading as books.
As all and sundry may now publish anything they like (with few restrictions), with the minimal of technical ability and equipment, this is to be expected, and we are now seeing everything from “Underwater Flower Arranging” to “How I Spent Last Wednesday in Podunk” to “20 Poems I wrote Last Night”. You get the idea.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, there is also a glut of ‘Get Rich Quick’ schemes and other snake oil merchants doing the rounds, although these are rapidly being stamped out, and rightly so. I have always felt that victims of these schemes deserve all they get, simply for being so stupid to fall for these scams – and scams they are, without exception. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Neither can you ‘Get Rich Quick’. And even if you could, would you share it with the whole world?
But I digress because this article is aimed at real writers - those who can string a sentence together and write a decent publication, whether fiction or non-fiction. You know who you are because you know what g-r-a-m-m-a-r is and where to locate a spelling checker. Chances are, like me you’re already published on paper and are feeling your way around electronic publishing, even if it is initially only a toe in the water.
My own recent analysis of new ebook releases at the world’s largest electronic distributor showed that over 90% of new titles were of the ‘erotic’ flavour and fortunately, most of them were free. When one reads the content of many of these titles, it becomes apparent why they are indeed free. It would be sacrosanct to charge an unsuspecting public for them and probably violates several human rights, intelligence being prime.
I will assume here that you write either novels or short stories (or both) of a suitable caliber to be called entertaining literature, that their average word length exceeds four and that your IQ is somewhat higher than room temperature. Tough odds, I know, but . . .
I am also going to assume that it is your intention to get these books into the Premium Catalog for release to the major online distributors and outlets such as Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Amazon, Stanza, Diesel, Sony et al. Now, this is where you need to pay very close attention and heed the following words of wisdom that I am about to impart. Believe me when I say that you will thank me later.
So in the meantime, I shall say, “You’re welcome . . .”
When you publish your ebook (and you should only be doing this through “Smashwords” for a variety of reasons), you have the option to make the title ‘free’, and this is where you need to tread very carefully, because this decision is the one could end your writing career. I already know and understand your reasoning for making your ebook free and sympathize, but there are ways of doing this that will not compromise your standing as an author. In fact, there is only one way of doing this without inadvertently throwing yourself to the wolves.
Would you open a website with a huge banner stating, “Chinese hackers welcome!”, or surf porn and P2P websites without proper antivirus software installed on your system? No? Then why make your precious writing free? Because this is what you are effectively doing. As soon as you make your title free, you open the floodgates for every half-witted maniac to attack it and effectively destroy its chances of any success.
Am I trying to scare you? You bet I am.
Think very carefully before you mark your work as ‘free’ because believe me - and I speak from experience when I say this - it can, and will have devastating long-term repercussions not only on that particular book, but on all your previous and future releases and thus on your career as a writer. Not only will you shoot yourself in the foot, you will have put both barrels in your mouth and pulled the trigger. And like these actions, withdrawing a ‘free’ book later is impossible, as the damage has already been done.
I stated in my ebook, “How to join the ebook revolution” that you should always have something free to offer your potential readers. I then explained exactly how one goes about doing this. You offer a ‘freebie’ because in their wisdom, the creators of ebook readers such as Kindle decided to make a few books free to entice readers to buy their products. This ‘few free books’ has turned into over a million books and the number is rising. Readers now scan for free books before they’ll shell out a penny on anything that carries a price.
Getting the public to spend a measly dollar on your title has become akin to drawing blood from a stone. Sure, you hear about all these wonderful ‘success’ stories, but these are lottery numbers, i.e. one in many millions. You never hear about the (literally) millions of ebooks that will never sell a single copy however long they remain available. And it is most of them.
If you’re honest with yourself, are you really ecstatic about your ebook sales? Did they fly off the shelves as you imaged? Or are you sitting on x number of books that have sold one or two copies at most? If so, you’re just like everyone else. eBook sales, for the most part, are very poor compared to their paper cousins. I can honestly state that my ebooks sales are as high as they are because I was published in paper first, which established me as a writer.
Being prolific helps as well. As I have over sixty publications dotted across the globe, these sales numbers can add up. Even if I sell a single copy of each title at three dollars each, every day, it all adds up. It soon hits $5000/month. When some titles hit 5000+ in a single month, and this encourages readers to read the other books in the series, I take the Bugatti out for a spin. However, if like most writers you’re relying on the sale of a single novel, the outlook can be very bleak indeed. When are you giving up your day job to become a full-time author?
I did this in almost seven years ago, but it is still a full-time job marketing my material. I didn’t retire at all; I merely changed careers from medicine and technology to writing. I’m not quite sure yet which one actually requires the most work.
The true success stories are freaks, oddities and flukes. They are akin to J.K Rowling, Star Wars, The Beatles, and Elvis Presley; the right place at the right time.
One of my titles, “Li’l Red in the Hood” sold 5177 copies at Amazon in June 2011. That’s better than most New York Times Best seller listings. For some reason, only this one out of a series of four stories sold this well. Why? Sheer chance and the foibles of the buying public. According to my latest sales report (MTD, August 2011), I’m selling around twenty books every day. Not massive figures, I agree, but it keeps the wolves from the door.