Giving away your work for free has some great benefits. If you do good work and create something useful, people will find out about what you’re doing. You won’t have to pay for advertising to build an audience.
In that way, the “free” work you create is really an alternative to what old-school businesses had to spend on getting the word out about what they had to offer. ~Corbett Barr, writer/entrepreneur
For five days, (Thursday, Jan. 5 to Monday, Jan. 9) I gave away BOTH of my novels to anyone with a Kindle device or Kindle app.
While some people “got” what I was trying to do by participating in this program, others thought I was a bit insane.
“Why would you give people your book for free? Don’t you want to make money?”
Well, yes, and no.
Yes, I want to get paid for writing, that’s why I normally charge someone to read my books. But no, I don’t have to get paid every time someone reads my work.
I decided to give the free promo thing a shot because, at this stage in my writing career, I am more concerned with finding an audience than I am with making money. I believe if I find the first thing, the other will surely follow.
So how well did my gratis experiment go? At the end of five days, just under 1,600 people across four different countries downloaded my books and at its peak, my book reached #58 on the Kindle Contemporary Romance Top 100 Free list.
The bottom line is, my work went out to a huge audience, and the results of the promo far exceeded my expectations. I am so happy I was able to reach that many people.
Now for the big question: Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.
*A note about comments. There are no comments on Vida de Verde. If you’d like to engage with me about this or any other post, feel free to email me at amanda@amandabretz.com or reach out to me on Google+, Twitter or Facebook.
