Free giveaway books

It's amazing. You put any book up for free and it starts getting downloaded. For example my book about beating anxiety, the refreshingly titled:

How to Beat Anxiety

That downloaded very quickly in the hundreds and hundreds. Particularly in the USA. This was the first ebook I wrote. It was based on my solid professional experience and it is exactly what I would be telling my patients face to face. What I say in it works too. So it wasn't a useless infoproduct. When it went on money sale, sure it sold. It sold slowly but as we speak averages about 2 copies a day. This isn't bad as I'm only into the weeks stage of my ebook career.

Some of my books downloaded well and then are lucky to sell one, or in one or two cases zero copies.

Then I look at my behaviour with free ebooks. I download them. I only download the ones that are of some interest. So, I've downloaded smoothie recipes, books about bitcoin, how to drive a woman crazy in bed (I knew all this anyway of course), erotica (just to see how people wrote it).  I wouldn't have bought any of these books even for 99 cents, even though when I read them (apart from the erotica which with some well-written exceptions - was utter drivel. I've got nothing against rude words, but they just should be in the right order) - I thought they were useful, ok books that I was glad I'd read. But I wouldn't have paid money for them.

So take my ghost books. One of which is here:

Three Celtic Ghost Stories

It's 99 cents. It's about 12,000 words (iirc). That means each of the carefully crafted, and if I may say, pretty good, stories is 33 cents. That's about 20p in British. This is the kind of money that if you dropped the coin a large proportion of people wouldn't stoop to pick it up off the floor. But it's still a barrier that free isn't.

So, my thoughts about free are that some people download anything that's free, and they're not your real readers. They are never going to buy your books even if they are stupidly cheap. And if someone has no real interest in your books, they aren't even going to shell out 99 cents. I swear down (as they say) that I have never bought an erotic novelette, even for dirt cheap and I probably never will. I can't see myself buying a romance either.

So what's the value of giving away books? Now, +Sean Platt  and +Johnny B. Truant  (my new heroes - so their plan does work you see? Made me into a fan) say it's about funnels.