Free Books Can Hurt

I found that giving away free books can hurt an author's sales. For years, I've refused to give away books, although I have offered them on 99-cent sales. It bothers me that I "purchase" two to three free Christian books a day, and obviously, I don't read that fast. I have over 5,000 unread free books in my Kindle cloud. I never need to buy books with so many free ones available.

However, because I was doing an author takeover and hosting a Facebook page where the administrator wants the author to offer a free book as a party favor, I tried it for the first time. I gave away plenty of copies of the book -- 363 of them -- but I didn't generate even a single sale in that series. In addition, I've only gotten two new reviews from all those giveaways.  

 

Even worse, all my sales have drastically dropped, and over a month later, they still aren't back to where they were. All I can figure is that readers started expecting me to give away other free books and decided to wait for that. I can't see that happening now. I see no advantages to the giveaway. However, I've seen many disadvantages. But as the old adage goes, "Live and learn."

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