Three or five free days? Should I set a higher or lower price after launching?

Why should I give away by book free anyway?

These questions & others come to mind of each author when launching a new book.

In this essay I will express my opinion and what I see as being done around the world. It’s important to emphasize that there is no right or wrong here.

In Amazon there are a lot of trial & error phases, also the book subject can influence on the right strategy, plus, in Amazon they constantly change the inner promotional algorithms, meaning what’s right today might not be in 4 months from now.

It’s time to start with the question: Why should I give away my book for free?

This question is true & depends on 2 things:

  1. Is this your first book?
  2. Do you have any other way to promote your book & make Amazon readers aware of it?

If this is your first book, second or perhaps fifth so far & you still didn’t make the best seller’s list by now, then we recommend having free days promotion. Yes, Amazon enables you, the independent writer, to expose your book to their millions of readers, those who always seek for free offers. Everyone likes free gifts.

With proper work on your book, you can make hundred & thousands of readers to download it, following that Amazon’s search engines identify an interest in the new book and will help to further promote it by emailing their booklovers. On the other hand, if you already have several successful book lists on Amazon and you have built your readers’ mailing list you might not need the free days’ promotion. Perhaps an email to your mailing list with a price offer of $0.99 for several days will be enough for the initial marketing process.

You can also use the Countdown as initial marketing for your book.

We at ‘Simple Story’ love making use of the free days’ platforms.

 

Now, supposedly if we have decided to use the free days’ platforms, the question is:
for how long? For those of you who forgot, Amazon allows 5 free days every 90 days.

Should I choose one day, two or five?

Here, opinions divide, also among the groups of authors we are linked to and consult with. We will show here the two leading opinions.

One opinion says that with proper work on your book 3 free days are enough.

The other say let’s give all 5 free days during the initial launch, so as many people as possible would enjoy the book.

We at ‘Simple Story’ think it depends on the downloads performance during the campaign days, if a book is highly successful during the first 3 days, there’s no need or point to continue giving it for free and move on to sell it by our set price.

If the book is not visible enough, you cannot reach an interested audience, you should continue to ‘make some noise’ about your book on social media platforms, mailing lists and any other way you can to make sure the book is exposed to as many readers as possible and capitalize on Amazon’s maximum free days offer.

Moving on to the last troubling question, at the end of the book initial launch what price should I offer: high or low?

Here also, opinions divide. Some say it’s best to end a launch in the middle of the last free day (you can end it by pressing a button), offer even an expensive book by $0.99 and make a lot of sales. Amazon likes it when your book is paid for, more than the free loans, then Amazon will have more reasons to future promote you.

On the other hand, some say that it is best to come out of the launch with a maximum price per book (each book by its genre), to make more money now and use the momentum of a successful launch.

What do we say? As such who want to look at books as a long-term business, we prefer to come out with a low price and make a lot of sales have a good sale history on Amazon.

But, as I mentioned before, it is not scientific knowledge, we don’t actually have a proof that this strategy works best.

In conclusion, publishing a book requires a lot of preparations towards launching it (reviews, mailing lists data, social networks etc.). These actions are the key to success, anyone chooses his own strategy for each book.

We wish you a successful launch, for every new book as well as the revival of older ones.

Amit