Know Your Value

...stop giving away your books for free

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I’m going to speak from my own experiences as a self-published pulp fiction author of a half dozen novels who is well into his second year. Not to mention being a former self-published author of political and economic books over a decade ago. Also, I have two decades worth of marketing experience, which I will get into later in this piece.

As the title of the article states, know your value and stop giving your books away for free (or nearly free).

Now, I’m not here to tout my own success from some sort of place of superiority, I am very far from where I’d like to be. However, as my success does grow, I see a lot of my contemporaries struggling to find their footing. Many of these other authors have been at this longer than I have, but they are barely able to make a sale. Or, at least, they openly express that publicly online. I have no idea what their sales actually are unless they share screenshots (some do).

The trend I see among these writers, though, is that they are the ones who either give free copies away regularly, have their books up for free with Kindle Unlimited, or they just severely discount their books via big sales with other authors doing the same or through various other promotions. Frankly, I think these tactics work against them and diminish the perceived value of their work.

In regards to Kindle Unlimited, from my experience, it was a complete waste of my time and I feel, greatly diminished the value of my books for those who accessed them that way. The KENP royalties for the year that I participated in the program were less than $5. That equated to less than a half of a percent of my total royalties.

Additionally, almost everyone who read my books via Kindle Unlimited, didn’t read very much. Most people would read 3-7 pages and nope out, onto the next “free sample”. What it told me is that you aren’t catering to your own audience this way, you are catering to the fickle readers that sample a bunch of different things. It’s basically window shopping, as opposed to serious readers wanting to invest their time and money into an experience. While I do know that this is a method some claim works for them, I saw no evidence of that and thus, pulled the plug on it as soon as I was able to.

Speaking from the place of a consumer, when I am looking for something new to read, I am more attracted to a regularly priced book with a handful of good reviews than looking through a sea of highly discounted books in a big sale or on Kindle Unlimited. If a book is good enough, $15 or so is a fair price for the amount of enjoyment I will get for it. I’ll often times spend more than that. And as a consumer, I see a lot of this free (or nearly free) content as a big pile of meh.

I know that’s not fair or an accurate assessment of some of the offerings but historically speaking, free stuff usually means its not up to snuff. That is something engrained in the human psyche, and as a consumer, you are less likely to cherish something you didn’t actually invest in.

Furthermore, people want to support creators and products they enjoy. I don’t want your free book. If it’s good, I want to give you my money. In fact, I’ve given a ton of my contemporaries my money because I want to support them, I want them to succeed, and I want them to get paid for their time and hard work.

I think the real issue with people not gaining the traction they desire, is that they haven’t found a method to market themselves in a way that is unique and separates them from the pack. Granted, I have worked in marketing for two decades and am the senior creative director for a major worldwide brand, so I have an edge in that regard.

However, with the tools we have today, it’s never been easier to carve out your own niche in the larger world and cater to your specific audience. That just takes a bit of moxie, consistency, and an ability to adapt as trends change around you. The good old method of trial and error, and adjusting based off of what does and does not work for you. I am also always happy to answer marketing questions if I can. But your marketing needs to be unique to you. It’s probably not wise to simply mimic your contemporaries that have found their own way, as people see through that kind of stuff. Especially if you’re all within the same circle of creators and fans.

Getting off the marketing tangent and back to perceived value, I’ll give an example within he industry I work in: premium tobacco. If I walk into a humidor to buy a cigar, I’m not even looking at the ones on the counter priced at $6 with a big starburst sticker. I want something $10+, usually. Even if I am told by the humidor salesman that that $6 stick is “pretty good” and a “value”, I’m just not buying it. I know that the chance of me having more satisfaction from the cigar priced at $16 is far more likely.

Additionally, the company putting out that $6 cigar is cutting corners somehow. It could be chopped tobacco or from a crop they got at a discount because for a myriad of possible reasons, it did not sell to other manufacturers. If that’s not the case, they are severely undervaluing their product and aren’t making much money, which is just terrible business strategy. Either way, I perceive more value in the $10+ cigar and I am far more likely to buy that over saving a few bucks.

I get that writing might just be your hobby, but if you’re not here to try and make money and don’t have aspirations of making it your full-time job, why are you reading this article? Why are you beating yourself up over not getting more sales? Sure, you may want to share your stories with the world, and that’s great (I feel this way too), but to not value your own work and price it accordingly, won’t help you make others see the value you believe is there.

At the end of the day, regardless of what I just laid out, I know that you want others to perceive value in what you do. The thing is, you won’t achieve that giving it away for free.