“Getting Paid vs. Driving Downloads”

Every author wants to get paid for their work, if for no other reason than to pay bills and have your work validated by fattening your checking account.  But a few months ago, I set most of my science fiction ebook titles available at Smashwords to free.  Why?

For as long as I have been uploading titles to Smashwords, I have been using download volume as a basic indicator of how successful the title was.  Downloads going up means people are interested enough to take a closer look at your work.  There had been some sales as well, although not that many.   And like most ebooks, following Smashwords recommendations, I had priced my works around $2.99 or $3.99, even $1.99.  Not a lot of money.

Then download volume began to plateau out.  Flatlined in some cases.  I wondered what I should do.  Smashwords is pretty good at offering suggestions on how to drive downloads.  New and better covers.  More intensive marketing efforts.  Crash social media to get word out of your work.  This blog is actually a result of Smashwords recommendations.

But one recommendation stuck with me.  When sales and downloads are flat, Smashwords recommends setting all your titles with prices to zero.  No cost.  The rationale is that this may tempt more people to take a closer look at an unknown author: “Hmmm, this looks interesting…and it’s free…maybe I’ll download all or part of it and take a look.”

I’m happy to report that this worked, even better than I expected.  While some of my titles are still priced at around $2.99, all of my science fiction is now free.  And when I did that, there was an immediate spike in downloads and it’s pretty much stayed that way from the time I did it.  I now plan to continue making my science fiction available for free downloads for the time being. 

As of this post, I am getting about a hundred downloads a week across all titles.  So there is some interest out there.

Fortunately, I don’t need the money.  It’s not that I’m independently wealthy.  It’s just that I have other sources of income and I write stories now because I love to do that. 

Smashwords is a big promoter of doing whatever it takes to supercharge your downloads.  In fact, they have a book marketing guide with 39 tips on good marketing practices for ebook authors.  I’ve taken many of their ideas to heart and tried to put them into practice.  I now work with two blogs, this one and one directly related to my series Tales of the Quantum Corps.  I have a web site on wix.com, though it needs updating.  I’ve set my sf titles to free.  I’ve got a new series called Nanotroopers going, with mentions of upcoming releases and schedules in the front and back matter of the book file.  And I’ve started to add mentions of related or upcoming titles in much of my work, at the end of the book file.

One thing I haven’t done is invest in some new covers, especially for Tales.  I’m sure that would be a good investment and I’m sure I’ll do that pretty soon. 

So for an ebook author interested in gaining an audience, driving downloads is really more important than sales and dollars, important as those may be.  It’s all about getting noticed and gaining an audience, then making it as easy as possible for an interested reader to link to your book and make the sale…or the download.

The next post to The Word Shed will come on August 22 and will cover an update on my Nanotroopers series…where it is now and what’s coming up.  Also, what’s it been like to do a series that uploads a new episode every 3 weeks.

See you on August 22.

Phil B.