The Power of Free - Exodus Perfect ebook on Smashwords

exodus perfects So having spent some time thinking on it I have decided two things.

That Exodus: Perfects is the best start to the series (it is the start of the main arc of the story).
That obscurity is the biggest threat to being an author.

So given both 1 & 2 above the solution is a more or less permanently free ebook of Exodus Perfects. Now that the exclusivity of Exodus Perfects to Amazon has expired I can make it available through other sources.

Free Ebook on Amazon Kindle

When you sign up for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) it offers you a 90 day tie in to their KDP Select programme, which allows you to give your title away for free 5 days out of 90. At first sight it seems to be the only way to make your book free for any period of time, other than just dropping it on a website. That last option would work, but will shift significantly fewer copies and is still prone to obscurity. Also, when you use a large distributor you get sales data on the number of people that have downloaded your book.

Ebook publishing on Smashwords

However what I subsequently discovered is that Amazon will price match. Also, other places can sell your ebook for you, or rather give people a free ebook. This means that Amazon will also (hopefully) give people a free ebook. So I went for smashwords. There’s a reason why I chose them though, partly they came with good recommendations, and partly they’re one of the few distributors that covers everything Amazon doesn’t. Smashwords will distribute your ebook to Apple, Google, Barnes & Noble and a host of others (although you do need an ISBN for the full range).

Why free ebook?

There’s a major difference in the rate at which people will download a free ebook against a very cheap (minimum price $0.99 US or £0.77). A handful of people will pay you for a novella from an unknown author (some people bought mine), but hundreds will download a free ebook. OK, the people who pay are very likely to actually read it, much more so than the hundreds that download it for free. However, if someone has your book on their e-reader then there is a chance, albeit small, that they’ll read it, enjoy it, and leave a review somewhere.

Anyway, it’s a theory that’s worth a spin. I don’t write with the intent of making money from it. I write because I enjoy writing, and what makes it enjoyable, is the idea that other people might like my stories (although I’m not niave enough to expect many people to like them, and I know that lots of folk won’t like them at all).