Amazon Boosting Kindle Sales by Giving Away Books

Posted by: rasp1 on: 01/25/2010 05:52 AM [ Print | 0 comment(s) ]

Half of the best seller list for the Kindle are free, as in beer, no charge what so ever. Some books are in the public domain, but some Authors that are still alive and kicking are trying the 'teaser' route with their books.

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The number 1 and 2 for the week are "Cape Refuge" and "Southern Storm" by Terri Blackstock. Terri is best known for Christian thrillers. And both books are free on the Kindle and the respective apps on various platforms.

Several publishers from Harlequin to Scholastic are offering free wares to the world. The hope of this ploy is to get some free publicity for lesser known authors in the hope that the word of mouth will lead readers to the for pay versions of the books.

Penguin has disavowed giving books away. They stated, "We feel that the value of the book is too important to do that." They don't see the value in positive word of mouth and buzz.

Smaller publisher Samhain has been offering a free title every two weeks for the last year. They look at any pay throughs from the free copies to the paid copies of books as free money.

Back in October, Samhain gave away "Giving Chase" to the tune of 26,897. The author saw a bump in sales from another book, "Chased" from 97 copies the night before to 2,666. That is a nice 27.50x increase, not to shabby.

This long tail boost in sales from giving away older, lesser known titles from authors that have gotten hidden in the mass of titles on the market is brilliant. This is a well known long proven way to get sales in. Get them in the door with the give away, and reel them in.

Bottom Line

Publishers are kicking and screaming the move to the digital world just like the music and movie industry. They are still wanting to charge $25 for a hard back, and $13 for a paperback book, when they pay nothing for the actual publishing cost of a digital book. But us consumers are demanding our content on our terms, and sooner or later the publishers will wise up. Either that, or sink down to the bottom of obscurity.

Tagged as: ebooks, kindle, Amazon, free