Free E-books: Why I Dislike Them
Self-publishing would be so much better without free e-books!
The internet is awash with free e-books. If you want to read but don’t want to hand over some money, being able to download e-books for no cost at all is great.
However, it’s not so great for the people who write the books. Yes, free e-books do have some advantages, but in my opinion, the cons outweigh the pros. In this post, I’ll reveal why.
Why Free E-books Are Good
Before I start ranting and raving about why I dislike free e-books, I’ll briefly summarise what’s good about them from the perspective of an independent, self-published author. Here’s my brief list of things that are good about free e-books:
Giving e-books away for free can help gain new readers
If you’re an unknown author who’s just starting out, it’s hard to convince people to spend money on your e-book. However, some* people will be much more likely to download your e-book if it’s free. By giving away something for nothing, you could end up finding readers who would otherwise have never downloaded your work.
Free e-books can help series sell
It’s common practice for the first instalment of a series to be free. The idea behind this is simple: it doesn’t matter if the first e-book in the series is free because if someone reads it, they could then pay to download any number of subsequent instalments. It’s better to have a customer who receives the first instalment for free and pays for the next ones rather than having no customers at all.
*I say ‘some’ because not everyone actually downloads e-books for free; some only go for full-cost or discounted titles because they think if an e-book’s free, it must be of low quality.
Why Free E-books Are Bad
Now for the meat of the blog post! Even though free e-books can have their advantages, I wholeheartedly believe, as a self-published writer, that they do more harm than good. Here’s a rundown of why giving away e-books for nothing is, frankly, an awful practice.
The truth is, I don’t like giving things away for free. I’m sure a lot of other self-published authors feel the same way. Whether you’ve spent days, weeks, months or years working on a writing project, it means something to you. It’s a creative piece of work and something unique that you’re proud of. When you’ve dedicated a lot of time to something and put a lot of thought into it, the last thing you want is to give it away for free.
But the thing is, if you’re a self-published author, you’re essentially starting right at the bottom and are competing with countless other writers. Each and every day, new e-books are becoming available to download online; the competition is constantly increasing. When you’re an unknown name, most people won’t give your e-book a second glance, let alone make an effort to pay for it and read the thing. The only way to guarantee you’ll get your e-book onto people’s devices is to give it away for free.
This sounds like a good move to make. When you make your e-book free and let people know about it, you’ll inevitably get some downloads. The problem is that there are always loads of free e-books available to download, and e-readers can comfortably store more e-books than you can read in goodness knows how many lifetimes. If someone downloads one of my e-books for free, great! But they’ll probably have dozens, if not hundreds, of other titles they’ve acquired for nothing. This begs the question: when will they get round to reading mine? There’s a good chance they won’t read it at all since they have so many other e-books to choose from.
If you use a paid newsletter service to advertise your free e-book, you can easily get hundreds or thousands of downloads. While this looks good, the reality is that only a handful of people will actually read your e-book. People are much more likely to read something they’ve paid for over something they’ve got for free. There’s no telling how many downloads will turn into reads, but if you have a thousand free downloads, for example, you should expect at least some people to read what you’ve written; your e-book might earn a small number of reviews from these downloads. Earning reviews is what most self-published authors really want from free giveaways. This is because reviews help convince new readers that your book is worth downloading. People are more likely to download something with lots of reviews than an e-book that doesn’t have any.
A key issue with free e-books is that they can potentially replace paid downloads. When you make your e-book free and promote it, someone who downloads it for no cost might have been willing to pay for it. When the free downloads come in, there’s no telling how many of them could have been paid downloads at some point or other. But the thing is, the people willing to pay for your e-book might only have seen it for the first time when it was free.
Another point to make is that being free can, in the eyes of some readers, devalue a piece of work. Some people might think that if an author’s giving away an e-book for free, it mustn’t be very good and is therefore probably not worth downloading, despite it costing nothing. A product can attract more attention when it’s free, but at the same time, its being free can also put some people off. When you run a free giveaway, you could well get lots of downloads and a few reviews, but there could be a handful of readers who have seen your work being given away for free and have deemed it not worth reading.
It’s very much a race to the bottom. The problem is that the platforms that distribute e-books decided to let them be free. If the lowest cost for any e-book at any time was $0.99, for example, that wouldn’t be so bad. I would much prefer it if this was the case. If there were no free e-books and the lowest cost was $0.99, it would make things much better for all authors. This means that we wouldn’t have to give away our works for free to find readers. The base of $0.99 isn’t a lot of money, but it would be better to earn a little bit as opposed to nothing. I previously said that people are more likely to download something if it’s free, but if there were no free e-books and the base was $0.99, people might be more willing to part with their money. If you set your e-book to $0.99, you would more than likely get far fewer downloads than if you’d made it free, but you’d at least have some royalties. Plus, you might end up with more reviews since paid e-books have a better chance of being read than free ones.
Lastly, the fact that e-books can be free can make people less likely to spend money on them. Why should someone pay to download your sci-fi epic when they can easily find another perfectly good sci-fi epic that’s currently free to download? Also, someone might come across your e-books, but they might put off paying to download any number of them because they think sooner or later you’ll make them free.
Summary
Free e-books are the bane of my life. That’s an exaggeration, but you get my point. I don’t like giving away my writing for free, but I feel that I have to if I’m going to find readers and eventually build up a following of some kind. I just wish that free e-books had never existed. It would be a much better system for authors all round if every single e-book had to be paid for.
Until I’ve properly ‘made it’ (which is many years off, if it’s ever going to happen!) I’ll no doubt make some of my e-books free to download every once in a while. I’d rather not do this, but what choice do I have? You have to play the game, and this one involves giving away your hard work for nothing.
My free giveaways will be few and far between. If you want to find out when one of my e-books will be (reluctantly) free to download, subscribe to my newsletter. I hope that if you do get a D. T. Adams e-book for free that you read it, enjoy it and leave a review – all feedback is greatly appreciated.